Harry Lauder’s walking stick for auction – did it see Beinn Mhor?

It certainly saw stage action. Sixty years after his death on 26th February 1950, one of the crooked walking canes associated with Music-Hall entertainer, Sir Harry Lauder‘s stage performances is coming up for auction.

Shapes Auction in Edinburgh have it in the catalogue for sale on 6th March, in a disposal by Lauder’s great nephews, Harry and Colin Vallance.

Lauder was one of the great popular entertainers of his day, a favourite of King Edward VII and a friend of Sir Thomas Lipton, some of whose racing yachts often saw action in the Clyde.

His only son John was a captain in the 8th Argyll and Sutherland Highlands and was killed in action at Poiziers in the first World War, on 28th December 1916. It was for his son that Lauder wrote what may be his best known song, Keep right on to the end of the road.

John Lauder was buried in France but his father raised a memorial to him at the Lauder cemetery in Glenbranter in Cowal, where his mother is buried.

For whatever reason, Lauder himself is not, as would have been expected, buried there himself. He is with his mother and brother George, at Bent Cemetery in Hamilton.

He lived for many of his later years in Dunoon, at Laudervale and the Beinn Mhor Walk in Cowal is associated with him.

The cane to be sold at Shapes is a Shepherd’s Crook, sectioned and easily packable in Lauder’s stage kit. It certainly tapped the boards often enough. The question is, did it poke about Beinn Mhor?

The Shapes estimate of the price it will fetch is generously wide, to say the least – anything from fifty to a few thousand pounds.

The photograph at the top is of the summit of Beinn Mhor in Cowal, taken from the south. It has been placed in the Public Domain by copyright holder, Viewfinder.