“Miss Kay predicted my future as a writer in the most emphatic terms. I felt I hardly had much choice in the matter.”
Dame Muriel Spark.

On this day, seventy years ago, Christina Kay died in Edinburgh. She was a schoolteacher who was the model for the title character in Muriel Spark’s novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie which was also adapted in film and TV versions.

Gillespie’s was the model for the Marcia Blaine School in ‘The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie’. One teacher in particular, Miss Christina Kay, was the inspiration for Muriel Spark’s most famous creation — the Edinburgh schoolmistress Jean Brodie. Although the unconventional fictional character was in some ways unlike her real life model, Muriel felt that Miss Kay ‘had it in her, unrealised, to be the character I invented.‘

Younger fans of the Harry Potter films may be surprised to learn that Dame Maggie Smith‘s portrayal of Professor Minerva McGonagall was a tongue-in-cheek homage to her earlier Best Actress Oscar-winning portrayal of another feisty Scottish teacher, Miss Jean Brodie.

Jean Brodie: Little girls! I am in the business of putting old heads on young shoulders, and all my pupils are the crème de la crème. Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life. You girls are my vocation. If I were to receive a proposal of marriage tomorrow from the Lord Lyon, King of Arms, I would decline it. I am dedicated to you in my prime. And my summer in Italy has convinced me that I am truly in my prime.

Jean Brodie: I am a teacher! I am a teacher, first, last, always! Do you imagine that for one instant I will let that be taken from me without a fight? I have dedicated, sacrificed my life to this profession. And I will not stand by like an inky little slacker and watch you rob me of it and for what? For what reason? For jealousy! Because I have the gift of claiming girls for my own. It is true I am a strong influence on my girls. I am proud of it! I influence them to be aware of all the possibilities of life… of beauty, honour, courage. I do not, Miss Mackay, influence them to look for slime where it does not exist! I am going. When my class convenes, my pupils will find me composed and prepared to reveal to them the succession of the Stuarts. And on Sunday, I will go to Cramond to visit Mr. Lowther. We are accustomed, bachelor and spinster, to spend our Sundays together in sailing and walking the beaches and in the pursuit of music. Mr. Lowther is teaching me to play the mandolin. Good day, Miss Mackay.

Christina Kay

Christina Kay (11 June 1878 – 23 May 1951), who was born in Edinburgh and died in Midhope, West Lothian, was a Scottish school teacher and served as an inspiration for Miss Jean Brodie, the leading character in the novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark.

Christina Kay was an only child and she was born at 4 Grindlay Street, Edinburgh, where she lived most of her life. She was a pupil at the James Gillespie’s School for Girls from the age of five, and she later taught there. Her father, Alexander Kay, a cabinet maker, died when she was 15. She continued to live with her mother and cared for her until her death in 1913.

Christina Kay was trained as a teacher at the Church of Scotland College, Edinburgh, between 1897 and 1899. She was described as an “exemplary” student. She taught at the James Gillespie’s School for Girls. Because she did not have a university degree she remained a class mistress and did not get promotion. She retired in 1942.

One of Christina Kay’s pupils was Muriel Camberg, better known as the author Muriel Spark, whose literary success Kay predicted. The main character in Spark’s novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is based on Christina Kay. Like Miss Jean Brodie, Kay told her pupils about her travels in Italy and was an admirer of Mussolini. She had a picture of the Fascisti on her classroom wall. Kay called her class “the crème de la crème” and formed friendships with individual pupils, including Muriel Camberg and her friend Frances Niven. She took some of them on private outings.

She remained unmarried and cared for her mother until the latter’s death in 1913. Her pupils believed a rumour that she had lost a fiancé in the First World War, though she never confirmed it. In The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie Miss Brodie also had a fiancé whom she lost in the war.

Kay was a devout Christian and remained unmarried. She is buried in Abercorn Cemetery, West Lothian, as she had wished

The occupation of Christina Kay’s father, a cabinet maker, is also neatly inserted into Jean Brodie’s own ancestry, as she reminds us:

Jean Brodie: “I am a descendant, do not forget, of Willie Brodie, a man of substance, a cabinet maker and designer of gibbets, a member of the Town Council of Edinburgh and a keeper of two mistresses who bore him five children between them. Blood tells. He played much dice and fighting cocks. Eventually he was a wanted man for hav­ing robbed the Excise Office – not that he needed the money, he was a night burglar only for the sake of the danger in it. Of course, he was arrested abroad and was brought back to the Tolbooth prison, but there was mere chance. He died cheerfully on a gibbet of his own devising in seventeen-eighty-eight. However all this may be, it is the stuff I am made of.“

From The Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women (Edinburgh University Press).

Christina Kay

BORN: NORTH BERWICK, 11 JUNE 1878 

DIED: MIDHOPE, WEST LOTHIAN, 23 MAY 1951

THE daughter of Mary Ann MacDonald and Alexander Kay, a cabinet maker, led an uneventful life, but one that would inspire one of the great characters of 20th-century literature: Miss Jean Brodie. From the age of five, Christina Kay was a pupil at James Gillespie’s School for Girls, where she would later teach. Between 1897 and 1899, she completed her teacher training at the Church of Scotland college in Edinburgh, where her conduct was described as “exemplary”. An only child and a devout Christian, Kay was born and lived in the same flat, at 4 Grindlay Street, Edinburgh, almost all her life. Her father died when she was 15, and she lived with her mother, caring for her until her death in 1913. 

Kay devoted her life to teaching at Gillespie’s. Since in her early years very few women could take degrees, as younger colleagues later could, she remained a “class mistress”, without promotion. But she was an inspirational teacher to her classes of 11 and 12-year-olds, sharing with them her passion for the arts. In 1929-30 they included the young Muriel Camberg (later Spark), whose literary success she predicted. Spark’s Curriculum Vitae (1992), vividly recalling Miss Kay, makes it clear that Jean Brodie was based on “that character in search of an author”.

Kay would exhilarate her pupils by speaking in “dazzling non-sequiturs” about her foreign travels, particularly to Italy, and the great art she saw there, reproductions of which adorned her schoolroom walls. She admired Mussolini, and a picture of his Fascisti was given wall space. Kay called her entire class the “crme de la crme”, but she also had favourites, including Camberg and her friend Frances Niven, whom she took to exhibitions, theatre and ballet. Most of her pupils found her teaching unforgettable. 

Kay kept her coming retiral in 1942 secret, but a tribute in the school magazine said that “service like hers must surely be unique”. After her death in 1951, she was buried in Abercorn churchyard. 

Jean Brodie, the inspiration for John Keating in Dead Poets Society

While Christina Kay appears to have been the inspiration for Miss Jean Brodie, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie appears to have been the inspiration for the 1989 American film, Dead Poets Society, which is set in the fictional elite conservative Vermont boarding school for boys, Welton Academy rather than the fictional elite Marcia Blaine School for Girls in Edinburgh. Like Jean Brodie, John Keating (played to perfection by the late Robin Williams) is an unconventional teacher with a powerful influence on his boys. He forms a special friendship with some of his pupils, and as with Jean Brodie, there is a tragic death which results in Keating being sacked.

I was surprised to encounter Robin Williams many years ago on the Champs Elysées in Paris where he and a friend were strolling unrecognised amongst the crowds. My surprise may have shown on my face and I will never forget him stopping, turning around, beaming and breathing in a quiet “Hi!” which seemed to typify his understated genius.