1. Croll's natural environment: Perthshire's geography

Perth is a beautiful, wooded, low-lying city, nesting below the crags of Kinnoull Hill, an ancient volcanic outcrop overlooking the wide expanse of Strathtay like a geological sentry over the rift valley below. Perth sits on the River Tay, just below the high tide mark, despite being 40 km from the sea. It is possibly Scotland's oldest town, and a long-standing crossing point and trading centre, since at least the Roman period (Peacock Reference Peacock1849). In Croll's time, a single bridge spanned the Tay connecting George Street to Bridgend and opening access to the N and E banks of the Tay and further into Angus.

Following the Tay upstream from the city, the terrain wanders very gently uphill through the open grasslands of the North Inch and past the grounds of Scone Palace – the ancient coronation location of the Scottish monarchs – at which point you are quickly surrounded by pockets of broad-leafed woodland, which open out to gently rolling farmland. The Tay takes you past the ancient Roman camp at Bertha, the old cotton mills at Stanley, and alongside some of the best salmon fishing beats in the country. After approximately 18 km the Tay is joined by the meandering River Isla – and it is just before this confluence that the parish of Cargill sits on the river's eastern bank. In Croll's time, the Scottish Midland Junction Railway weaved a path alongside the Tay from Perth all the way to Forfar, crossing the river in Cargill just by the graveyard where Croll and his family are buried (see Fig. 1).

Figure 1 Map of area around Little Whitefield (courtesy of Kenny MacLean).

In later life, Croll would often travel by train if returning to Wolfhill, disembarking at Cargill. Owing to its proximity to the graveyard, it can be posited that he would often pay his respects here whilst waiting for a lift from his close friend the Minister, who would appear with his horse and trap, and give Croll a lift towards Wolfhill (Irons Reference Irons1896).

From Cargill, the view W is to the hills above Birnam and the famous bluebell woods around Kinclaven. The climb up from Cargill is very steep, but after 2 km and an ascent of approximately 100 m, climbing away from the River Tay, it begins to level out, and the view opens up to one of rich sweeping farmland and the near distant Sidlaws. Dunsinane Hill (which was made famous in Shakespeare's Macbeth) and King's Seat are the most prominent and visible hills at this end of the range. At the foot of Dunsinane, the village of Collace – with its large basalt quarry – can be seen on its western edge.

This area is Whitefield, and is Croll's natural environment. His roots go very deep here, his family were known to have lived and farmed in this area for 200 years and probably much longer. As Croll (Irons Reference Irons1896, p. 9) remarked in his autobiographical sketch,

Interestingly, farmers with the surname Croll still tend the land around Whitefield to this day.

When Croll was three years old, the crofts around Whitefield were cleared by the local landowner, and Croll's family were forced to leave Whitefield. They were offered less productive land, which they needed to clear and drain to make productive, in a nearby area which became the village of Wolfhill. Wolfhill itself nestles in a shallow dip, ringed by pockets of woodland and surrounded by farmland in every direction. Even today drainage is poor here, a consequence of the clay-rich soil, and the reason the landowner Lord Willoughby offered the land to the families he cleared in the first place – it was poor quality agricultural land and, therefore, dispensable. Croll attests to this in Irons (Reference Irons1896, p. 50), ‘Lord Willoughby evinced a kindly sympathy with his humble tenants, and … set apart two pieces of land for feuing purposes: the first, a stretch of wasteland about a mile to the south of Little Whitefield, now known as Wolfhill.’

Surrounded by paths and track; by stone and river and forest; by standing stones and ancient history; and by visible geological features such as kame terraces and kettlehole lochs (Bell Reference Bell1986), it is possible to see how much this peaceful landscape – Croll's natural and personal historical environment – came to shape him and influence his thinking.

Nevertheless, Croll (in Irons Reference Irons1896, p. 14) tells of his own surprise at ultimately ending up working within the field of geology:

With an understanding of how invested and conscious Croll was of the Wolfhill and surrounding landscape, it is perhaps not surprising that he should find a home for his intellect in such a closely related field. His reverence for nature was a life-long passion – an anchor for his soul, which he references many times in his writing and which he used as a daily ritual wherever possible for meditation, contemplation and quiet study:

This connection with nature is a product of his childhood, and Perthshire's environment played a key role, becoming a strong influence on his personality in later life, in much the way that it did in later years for another big-picture thinker from Perthshire, Patrick Geddes (Woolf Reference Woolf2017). Being used to his own company, and at one in such a remote setting, Croll was at once shy and reluctant to perform in more public settings and less happy in the urban environment. This was tested in his brief career as a tea and coffee salesman and shopkeeper in Perth city centre, and then to the extreme with his role as a door-to-door insurance salesman in Dundee, Edinburgh and Leicester. As Croll (in Irons Reference Irons1896, p. 29) records, ‘To one like me, naturally so fond of retirement and even of solitude, it was painful to be constantly obliged to make up to strangers.’

2. Croll's social environment: family

Croll was not just a product of peace and silence and Perthshire's natural landscape, he was also greatly influenced by his social environment – the family and friends with whom he was so familiar.

The most notable of these must surely be his father David Croil. Croll talks of his childhood pride at being related to his father, a stone mason, and how most people, when they realised who he was, would light up and always speak kindly about his father. Croll's relationship with his father was obviously very close, and he attributes many of his qualities to him. He describes his mother as ‘firm, shrewd, and observing, and gifted with…common sense’, whereas his father is described as ‘mild, thoughtful and meditative, and possessed of strong religious and moral sentiments’ (Irons Reference Irons1896, p. 10). He knew he took more of his father's traits. Initially unwilling to attend school because of ill health (see Section 5 of this paper), it was his father who acted as his first teacher, which will undoubtedly have influenced his learning, as much in style as in content.

Although his parents were keen James enjoyed his childhood and were quite relaxed about his learning, he describes his father as ‘disappointed’ that Croll did not more quickly take to reading, so it would seem David Croil was both thoughtful and keen for James to better himself through education (Irons 1896).

Bearing in mind this relationship, it is perhaps again less surprising that Croll's contribution fell mostly in the field of geology, despite Croll's claim it was of no interest to him, when his father's practicing profession was a stonemason – albeit a travelling stonemason. But perhaps like the natural environment he grew up in, this was more of an implicit influence than a tacit one.

James did not just inherit his father's interest in learning, and character, but also his remarkable powers of recall and memory. Croll refers to a series of events in his early childhood, which he recalls with great clarity, including the baptism of his brother, despite being only 18 months of age; and of moving house from Little Whitefield to Wolfhill, when he can only have been three years of age, echoing the fact that his father could recall incidents from his childhood as early as two years of age (Irons Reference Irons1896, p. 11).

This personal influence is referred to with a note of melancholy too, as Croll (Irons Reference Irons1896, p. 10) also notes that his father ‘had the misfortune to possess a most anxious and sensitive mind’, which hints that perhaps he thought and worried too much. It is telling that Croll goes on to say that ‘I have often thought that, had I possessed some more of my mother's qualities and less of some of my father's, the battle of life would not have proved so painful to me.’

This makes it clear that Croll could see the downsides of his father's (and, by implication, his own) character. Although this alludes to Croll's sense that he suffered more than his fair share of hardship, it also hints at an inherited and more negative outlook on life, and possibly even a more private pessimism. However, whilst this might have influenced his metaphysical and philosophical mind, there is no question that others of his father's traits served him rather better in life.

Croll (Irons Reference Irons1896, p. 10) describes his father David's ‘amiable disposition and high moral character’, which he says, ‘made him greatly esteemed and respected’. This character – and the associated esteem and respect – was also shared it would seem by Croll.

3. Croll's social environment: friends

Croll certainly had some very close and loyal friends, and seemed to be able to inspire compassion and respect in many of his acquaintances, even when in some cases he only knew them slightly (Irons Reference Irons1896).

Croll enjoyed the intellectual freedom of open discussion, especially savouring his relationship with his friend and local minister the Reverend Andrew Bonar of the Free Church of Scotland (and in 1878/1879 its Moderator). This may possibly have been the first instance of intellectual equivalency in his life, after growing up knowing no one who was even interested in the intellectual aspects of his life, and certainly no one who knew very much about any of the subjects he was fascinated by. Bonar though was at the heart of what Croll described as a remarkable religious movement taking place in the parish of Collace, a part of national challenge to the Church of Scotland taking place in the Disruption. For him as a young man it must have been exciting and liberating to be able to vent his intellectual curiosity amongst friends and in such a safe space. Croll thrived in this social environment, and enjoyed the intellectual freedom and camaraderie he felt at this time. When he was forced to move through to Paisley, Renfrewshire, for work, he rued giving up this sense of belonging and he was disappointed that there was a very different approach in religious debate and attitude he met in the West. The fellowship experienced within the parochial network in Collace was formative, and Croll (Irons Reference Irons1896, p. 17) refers to it fondly: ‘I was soon then amongst kindred spirits; and the year that followed was probably the happiest in my life.’

Croll reportedly connected with people quickly, and he must have exuded a keen intellect and quiet respect. Throughout his life, several of his acquaintances took him under their wing and formed close bonds of friendship, intellectual empathy or paternalism. David Irons, for example, whom Croll approached for a job in a coffee shop in Perth, formed such a friendship with him that Irons eventually set Croll up with his own shop in Elgin. It was David's son, James, who wrote Croll's sketch and memoir. David Irons is described by Croll (Irons Reference Irons1896, p. 21) as being ‘one of the kindest friends I have ever met with in life…’. Irons (Reference Irons1896, p. 71) goes on to write, David Irons was ‘a kind intelligent well-read man who took a deep interest in him [Croll] had many conversations with him on religious matters and encouraged him in all that pertained to his spiritual and temporal welfare.’

Another example is William Crum, Chairman of Andersonian College, Glasgow, who, as Irons (Reference Irons1896, p. 91) described,

And similarly, the Director of the Scottish Geological Survey, Archibald Geikie, must also have seen something special in Croll. Geikie had learned of Croll through his output of scientific papers, and was impressed by his theories – not only persuading and cajoling Croll to come and join him as a civil servant, but also being heavily involved in efforts later in life to secure Croll a pension when he was finally obliged to retire early though ill health. All these examples indicate friends and colleagues who went out of their way to look out for Croll and to give him opportunity; they imply a strong bond and respect shown to Croll, akin to that shown to his father.

4. Croll's economic environment: penny to a pound

In addition to influences from his natural and social environments, Croll was also, to a degree, a product of relative poverty and his own ill health.

Despite his father's best efforts, it took a chance encounter with the cheap but popular scientific Penny Magazine (Fig. 2) to light the spark of Croll's intellect, spotting it in a shop window, and becoming a regular and avid reader ever after. He was so aware of the importance of this magazine as an influence that as Irons (Reference Irons1896, p. 57) describes, in later life ‘he took the trouble of procuring several odd volumes of the work that he might be the possessor of a complete copy of the magazine from its first number down to its last.’ He goes on to describe its influence on the young Croll (Irons Reference Irons1896, p. 56): ‘the country boy found in the eight large pages of the little magazine what to him was truly a feast of reason, a feast which in him produced a flow of soul.’

Figure 2 Example of front cover of the Penny Magazine.

He progressed from the Penny Magazine to those science and philosophy books he could get his hands on. He left school at age 14 to tend the family smallholding when it proved too small to sustain the family and his father had to return to his work as a travelling stonemason. Thereafter, Croll undertook a surprising array of jobs in his ongoing efforts to try to earn a living. The cost of university though, Croll states, was beyond him, despite his desire to attend:

Croll was never well off financially, living for much of his life in quite severe poverty. The common Scots phrase ‘It's a sair fecht for a hauf loaf’ (which, in standard English, translates loosely as ‘It's a hard fight to get half a meal’), was perhaps an apposite one, and poverty both plagued and haunted him. For much of his 20s and 30s he had little stability in employment, lurching between roles as diverse as millwright, joiner, hotelier and journalist, uncertainty compounded by his own or his wife's ill health. The stability he finally realised aged 38 was a welcome break, but it did not resolve his financial difficulties.

As the janitor at Anderson library, he was paid £1/week plus taxes, a house and coal (Anderson Library 1860), which had to cover himself, his wife and his brother David (who was hunchbacked and had lived at home in Wolfhill until their parents died) – but he was very content in this role. He had access to the extensive library, and his brother David would work alongside him, giving him more time for study. As he stated (Croll, quoted in Irons 1986, p. 91), ‘[m]y salary was small, it is true … but this was more than compensated by advantages to me of another kind.’ He was clearly contented despite the poor salary: ‘I have never been in any place so congenial to me as that institution proved’ (Irons 1986, p. 30). He reportedly felt empathy with any student who couldn't afford the lectures, so long as he felt the student was appropriately motivated by a hunger to learn. Each lecture was normally attended with a paid ticket, but he would admit students with a nod, if they wanted to hear any single lecture, but couldn't afford a ticket (Irons 1986).

His lack of funds also had an impact in later life, when his reputation began to grow, and he began to receive accolades. He was hesitant about receiving honours for his work, because in many cases recipients were asked to pay a fee, although his natural reticence was a factor too. Indeed, Fleming (Reference Fleming and Fleming2006, p. 45) states that:

His only real financial comfort was during his employment with the Geological Survey in Edinburgh, but he was forced to retire early through ill health, in most part through his own sense of honour, precipitating a long struggle to get any sort of adequate pension, and plunging himself back into straitened times. On his deathbed, his one stated regret was financial – that he had not better provided for his wife of 32 years, Isabella (Irons Reference Irons1896).

Whilst his lack of money was a constant concern, and it prevented him receiving a formal education, it may have led Croll to become much more multi-disciplinary than might otherwise have been the case. In earlier life, he was constrained not by the limits of a known subject, but by his access to reading materials. However, once he took on the job of janitor at the Anderson library, he was really only constrained by the limits of his own interest, despite his poverty.

His economic environment may, therefore, have both helped and hindered him throughout his life – encouraging a more creative approach to his learning, whilst holding him back from wider reach and acclaim. But however true this is of his poverty, it is even more true of his personal environment – his fairly constant ill health.

5. Croll's personal environment: plagued by ill health

It was Croll's ill health that prevented his early attendance at school:

It was his ill health that forced him to abandon his occupation as a joiner in Paisley and return to Perth at the age of 25; it also made him unsuitable as a shopkeeper in Elgin. His almost continual struggle with a variety of disabilities, including ossified joints, headaches, possible heart problems and, in 1865, his most severe affliction, ‘a twitch in a part of the upper and left side of the head’ (Croll in Irons Reference Irons1896, p. 33), meant that he was held back in some of his studies and was forced to continually reinvent himself to find a way to earn money.

But as Fleming (Reference Fleming and Fleming2006, p. 44) points out, ‘Croll's physical disabilities and his “strangely chequered career” allowed him time for reading and writing in his favorite subjects, metaphysical and physical.’