The disappearance of Malcolm Macmillan
Could such a sad tale have had a happy ending?
To be honest, he doesn’t really look a happy man, does he? I feel he has rather a haunted, nervous look in his eyes. This sketch was drawn by a friend just a year or two before Malcolm vanished.
Last week I read a fascinating substack by Laura Thompson about the eleven days when Agatha Christie disappeared, and then was found. I couldn’t help being reminded of the story of Malcolm, eldest son and heir of Alexander Macmillan, founder of the international publishing house. These are the facts, as we know them:
In July 1889 Malcolm Kingsley Macmillan, aged 36, was completing a lengthy tour of the Eastern Mediterranean. The last stop on his itinerary, as he had told his family, before he was due to head for home, was Istanbul, where he met up with an old friend from Balliol, Arthur Hardinge, a junior member of the British Embassy staff. The two of them set off on a short expedition to visit Brussa, some 150km south of the capital, and climb Mount Olympus, (known as Mt Uludag today, a popular skiing resort), taking a guard with them. On 11 July they set out from Brussa on horseback at 8am, reaching the foot of the mountain at midday. They then set off on foot to climb the mountain, planning to reach the peak and return down in time to eat the lunch they had brought. It was by no means an arduous or difficult ascent. Hardinge, being younger and fitter than Malcolm, resolved to go up the steeper, faster route, leaving Malcolm to follow. Within forty minutes, Hardinge had reached the top. Malcolm was never seen again, and nothing to explain his disappearance was ever found.
Of course, this was all very difficult for Hardinge. He wrote a long letter of explanation to Sir William White, the British Ambassador, to use when talking to the family. Here is the sketchmap he drew:
Extensive searches were made of the area, the Turkish police were involved, a local band of ‘Albanian shepherds’, considered to be suspicious, may or may not have been questioned. It is not clear. Malcolm’s cousin Maurice and his brother-in-law Norman Maclehose travelled out to Turkey and drew two main conclusions: that the path and landscape was not so dangerous that Malcolm could have had an accident and not been detected (ie it was not ravine/crevasse country), and that if foul play was the only answer, the local authorities were not being sufficiently diligent in their enquiries.
Back at home, Malcolm’s brother George felt that some fuss should be made. On 15 August, he wrote to the office of the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury: ‘We feel that we are entitled to claim from the Foreign Office that the suspected murder of a British subject in the Turkish dominions should be regarded as a matter of political interest, which cannot be allowed to pass without the most stringent enquiry directed not only to the detection but to the punishment of the perpetrators.’ The Embassy became increasingly uncomfortable with anything that might rock the boat in Turkey, and suggested that the family appoint their own legal representative in Istanbul. When George proposed writing to The Times cautioning British tourists against taking risks in the Turkish countryside, the British Embassy leapt into action to discourage him, in a masterpiece of tact:
Sir William White does not think that criticisms in the British press are likely to have any salutary effect and deprecates the publication of such a statement as you propose in your letter. Lord Salisbury is disposed to agree. (Private note: The Turks might possibly reply and with some effect, that startling crimes and mysterious disappearances occurred in other countries, which the Police were unable in any way to trace. But they would be more likely simply to sulk.)
George took the hint, particularly as the newspapers at the time were full of the unsolved crimes of Jack the Ripper.
The one thing that is certain is that Malcolm’s father, Alexander Macmillan, never recovered from the loss. In November he wrote to his friend, William Gladstone:
Thank you for your kind allusion to the cloud of personal trouble which has been hanging over our family now for more than four months. In the absence of all news we can scarcely hope now that our anxiety can be relieved. Indeed the result of strenuous enquiries leaves but little doubt as to a fatal termination.
Of course the most likely explanation is that poor Malcolm was set upon by brigands, perhaps intent on kidnapping him and holding him for ransom. It is hard to believe that he was murdered and buried on the mountain in so short a timescale, with no trace of the body or any struggle ever being found, so maybe he was taken to a nearby settlement and died/was killed there .
However, there is a mad, alternative version that sometimes plays around in my head: that the whole thing was a put up job between Malcolm and his old friend Hardinge, and that Malcolm chose this moment to escape from a life he was not enjoying, and set off for a new, secret existence. I’m thinking of Sebastian Flyte fleeing his family for Morocco - but without the alcoholism. There are just too many loose ends and things that don’t make sense. There is much about Hardinge’s story, as he wrote it for White, that is hard to read – he was, after all, not just Malcolm’s friend and travelling companion, but a member of the consular staff, with a well-connected and wealthy Englishman under his protection. The idea that within just forty minutes he had completely lost sight of Malcolm, and had kept the armed guard with himself rather than assigning him to look after his guest, is shocking. That he thought it appropriate, in the circumstances, to mention that he sat down and ate his lunch before even wondering where Malcolm was, does not make his tale any more sympathetic. I have stared hard at the few photos of Uludag that I can find that aren’t snow-covered: it looks a pretty open landscape, with good visibility, no trees or rocky outcrops. Certainly the Macmillan party who went out there completely discounted the idea of an accident.
If the location is a poor fit for the story Hardinge told, there is much in Malcolm’s circumstances and character that suggests a very unfulfilled man. He had been suffering from depression for many years, and had on more than one occasion needed medical treatment for mental health problems. As a young boy he had failed to settle at boarding school, and then had fought with his father about going in to the family business. When he finally managed to escape from behind a desk to study in Oxford, as I describe in my book, nothing worked out as planned and he barely scraped a degree. His travels around Europe had been increasingly prolonged, he regularly ran out of money and had to be bailed out by his brother. He had tried to start a career as an author and critic, but the one book he produced, Dagonet the Jester, is pretty much unreadable, and it sank without trace. After his disappearance, his family had a collection of his letters privately printed: the Preface, written one assumes by George, declared that if Malcolm’s life had been spared, his knowledge and faculties ‘might have resulted in work of permanent value in the field of criticism, if not of creation.’ It seems a harsh judgement on a man of nearly forty, to have had so many opportunities and achieved so little.
In July 1889, Malcolm was due to return home, to the family firm he did not want to join, to a life on an allowance from a father who was clearly disappointed in him. He may have been under some pressure to marry, and there is very little to suggest that this held any attraction for him: his printed letters are full and affectionate, but all are addressed to male friends from College.
Of course, my fanciful theory holds no water: Malcolm had absolutely no money, his family never heard from him again, where could he have gone. But still, it’s nice to ponder an alternative universe where Malcolm found friendship and acceptance for what he was, and lived happily ever after.
Fascinating - and thank you so much Sarah for the mention!
I love your theory. Hope it's true.
I remain in awe of all that you know about this subject!!