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Title: Traditions of Edinburgh
Author: Chambers, Robert
Language: English
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TRADITIONS OF EDINBURGH
* * * * *
[Illustration: AN ELEGANT MODERN CITY.
PAGE 8.]
* * * * *
TRADITIONS OF EDINBURGH
by
ROBERT CHAMBERS, LL.D.
Illustrated by James Riddel, R.S.W.
[Illustration]
London: 38 Soho Square, W.
W. & R. Chambers, Limited
Edinburgh: 339 High Street
J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia
1912
Edinburgh:
Printed by W. & R. Chambers, Limited.
INTRODUCTORY NOTICE.
1868.
I am about to do what very few could do without emotion—revise a
book which I wrote forty-five years ago. This little work came out in
the Augustan days of Edinburgh, when Jeffrey and Scott, Wilson and
the Ettrick Shepherd, Dugald Stewart and Alison, were daily giving
the productions of their minds to the public, and while yet Archibald
Constable acted as the unquestioned emperor of the publishing world. I
was then an insignificant person of the age of twenty; yet, destitute
as I was both of means and friends, I formed the hope of writing
something which would attract attention. The subject I proposed was
one lying readily at hand, the romantic things connected with Old
Edinburgh. If, I calculated, a first _part_ or _number_ could be
issued, materials for others might be expected to come in, for scores
of old inhabitants, even up perhaps to the very ‘oldest,’ would then
contribute their reminiscences.
The plan met with success. Materials almost unbounded came to me,
chiefly from aged professional and mercantile gentlemen, who usually,
at my first introduction to them, started at my youthful appearance,
having formed the notion that none but an old person would have thought
of writing such a book. A friend gave me a letter to Mr Charles
Kirkpatrick Sharpe, who, I was told, knew the scandal of the time of
Charles II. as well as he did the merest gossip of the day, and had
much to say regarding the good society of a hundred years ago.
Looking back from the year 1868, I feel that C. K. S. has himself
become, as it were, a tradition of Edinburgh. His thin effeminate
figure, his voice pitched _in alt_—his attire, as he took his daily
walks on Princes Street, a long blue frock-coat, black trousers,
rather wide below, and sweeping over white stockings and neat
shoes—something like a web of white cambric round his neck, and a
brown wig coming down to his eyebrows—had long established him as
what is called a character. He had recently edited a book containing
many stories of diablerie, and another in which the original narrative
of ultra-presbyterian church history had to bear a series of cavalier
notes of the most mocking character. He had a quaint biting wit, which
people bore as they would a scratch from a provoked cat. Essentially,
he was good-natured, and fond of merriment. He had considerable gifts
of drawing, and one caricature portrait by him, of Queen Elizabeth
dancing, ‘high and disposedly,’ before the Scotch ambassadors, is the
delight of everybody who has seen it. In jest upon his own peculiarity
of voice, he formed an address-card for himself consisting simply of
the following anagram:
[Illustration]
_quasi dicitur_ C sharp. He was intensely aristocratic, and cared
nothing for the interests of the great multitude. He complained that
one never heard of any gentlefolks committing crimes nowadays, as if
that were a disadvantage to them or the public. Any case of a Lady
Jane stabbing a perjured lover would have delighted him. While the
child of whim, Mr Sharpe was generally believed to possess respectable
talents by which, with a need for exerting them, he might have achieved
distinction. His ballad of the ‘Murder of Caerlaverock,’ in the
_Minstrelsy_, is a masterly production; and the concluding verses haunt
one like a beautiful strain of music:
‘To sweet Lincluden’s haly cells
Fu’ dowie I’ll repair;
There Peace wi’ gentle Patience dwells,
Nae deadly feuds are there.
In tears I’ll wither ilka charm,
Like draps o’ balefu’ yew;
And wail the beauty that cou’d harm
A knight sae brave and true.’
After what I had heard and read of Charles Sharpe, I called upon him at
his mother’s house, No. 93 Princes Street, in a somewhat excited frame
of mind. His servant conducted me to the first floor, and showed me
into what is generally called amongst us the back drawing-room, which
I found carpeted with green cloth, and full of old family portraits,
some on the walls, but many more on the floor. A small room leading
off this one behind, was the place where Mr Sharpe gave audience. Its
diminutive space was stuffed full of old curiosities, cases with family
bijouterie, &c. One petty object was strongly indicative of the man—a
calling-card of Lady Charlotte Campbell, the once adored beauty, stuck
into the frame of a picture. He must have kept it at that time about
thirty years. On appearing, Mr Sharpe received me very cordially,
telling me he had seen and been pleased with my first two numbers.
Indeed, he and Sir Walter Scott had talked together of writing a book
of the same kind in company, and calling it _Reekiana_, which plan,
however, being anticipated by me, the only thing that remained for him
was to cast any little matters of the kind he possessed into my care. I
expressed myself duly grateful, and took my leave. The consequence was
the appearance of notices regarding the eccentric Lady Anne Dick, the
beautiful Susanna, Countess of Eglintoune, the Lord Justice-clerk Alva,
and the Duchess of Queensberry (the ‘Kitty’ of Prior), before the close
of my first volume. Mr Sharpe’s contributions were all of them given
in brief notes, and had to be written out on an enlarged scale, with
what I thought a regard to literary effect as far as the telling was
concerned.
By an introduction from Dr Chalmers, I visited a living lady who might
be considered as belonging to the generation at the beginning of the
reign of George III. Her husband, Alexander Murray, had, I believe,
been Lord North’s Solicitor-general for Scotland. She herself, born
before the Porteous Riot, and well remembering the Forty-five, was
now within a very brief space of the age of a hundred. Although she
had not married in her earlier years, her children, Mr Murray of
Henderland and others, were all elderly people. I found the venerable
lady seated at a window in her drawing-room in George Street, with her
daughter, Miss Murray, taking the care of her which her extreme age
required, and with some help from this lady, we had a conversation of
about an hour. She spoke with due reverence of her mother’s brother,
the Lord Chief-justice Mansfield, and when I adverted to the long
pamphlet against him written by Mr Andrew Stuart at the conclusion
of the Douglas Cause, she said that, to her knowledge, he had never
read it, such being his practice in respect of all attacks made upon
him, lest they should disturb his equanimity in judgment. As the old
lady was on intimate terms with Boswell, and had seen Johnson on his
visit to Edinburgh—as she was the sister-in-law of Allan Ramsay the
painter, and had lived in the most cultivated society of Scotland
all her long life—there were ample materials for conversation with
her; but her small strength made this shorter and slower than I could
have wished. When we came upon the _poet_ Ramsay, she seemed to have
caught new vigour from the subject: she spoke with animation of the
child-parties she had attended in his house on the Castle-hill during a
course of ten years before his death—an event which happened in 1757.
He was ‘charming,’ she said; he entered so heartily into the plays of
children. He, in particular, gained their hearts by making houses for
their dolls. How pleasant it was to learn that our great pastoral poet
was a man who, in his private capacity, loved to sweeten the daily life
of his fellow-creatures, and particularly of the young! At a warning
from Miss Murray, I had to tear myself away from this delightful and
never-to-be-forgotten interview.
I had, one or two years before, when not out of my teens, attracted
some attention from Sir Walter Scott by writing for him and presenting
(through Mr Constable) a transcript of the songs of the _Lady of the
Lake_, in a style of peculiar calligraphy, which I practised for want
of any better way of attracting the notice of people superior to
myself. When George IV. some months afterwards came to Edinburgh, good
Sir Walter remembered me, and procured for me the business of writing
the address of the Royal Society of Edinburgh to His Majesty, for
which I was handsomely paid. Several other learned bodies followed the
example, for Sir Walter Scott was the arbiter of everything during that
frantic time, and thus I was substantially benefited by his means.
According to what Mr Constable told me, the great man liked me, in
part because he understood I was from Tweedside. On seeing the earlier
numbers of the _Traditions_, he expressed astonishment as to ‘where
the boy got all the information.’ But I did not see or hear from him
till the first volume had been completed. He then called upon me one
day, along with Mr Lockhart. I was overwhelmed with the honour, for Sir
Walter Scott was almost an object of worship to me. I literally could
not utter a word. While I stood silent, I heard him tell his companion
that Charles Sharpe was a writer in the _Traditions_, and taking up the
volume, he read aloud what he called one of his _quaint bits_. ‘The
ninth Earl of Eglintoune was one of those patriarchal peers who live to
an advanced age—indefatigable in the frequency of their marriages and
the number of their children—who linger on and on, with an unfailing
succession of young countesses, and die at last leaving a progeny
interspersed throughout the whole of Douglas’s _Peerage_, two volumes,
folio, re-edited by Wood.’ And then both gentlemen went on laughing for
perhaps two minutes, with interjections: ‘How like Charlie!’—‘What a
strange being he is!’—‘_Two volumes, folio, re-edited by Wood_—ha,
ha, ha! There you have him past all doubt;’ and so on. I was too much
abashed to tell Sir Walter that it was only an impudent little bit
of writing of my own, part of the solution into which I had diffused
the actual notes of Sharpe. But, having occasion to write next day to
Mr Lockhart, I mentioned Sir Walter’s mistake, and he was soon after
good enough to inform me that he had set his friend right as to the
authorship, and they had had a _second_ hearty laugh on the subject.
A very few days after this visit, Sir Walter sent me, along with a kind
letter, a packet of manuscript, consisting of sixteen folio pages, in
his usual close handwriting, and containing all the reminiscences he
could at the time summon up of old persons and things in Edinburgh.
Such a treasure to me! And such a gift from the greatest literary man
of the age to the humblest! Is there a literary man of the present
age who would scribble as much for any humble aspirant? Nor was this
the only act of liberality of Scott to me. When I was preparing a
subsequent work, _The Popular Rhymes of Scotland_, he sent me whole
sheets of his recollections, with appropriate explanations. For years
thereafter he allowed me to join him in his walks home from the
Parliament House, in the course of which he freely poured into my
greedy ears anything he knew regarding the subjects of my studies. His
kindness and good-humour on these occasions were untiring. I have since
found, from his journal, that I had met him on certain days when his
heart was overladen with woe. Yet his welcome to me was the same. After
1826, however, I saw him much less frequently than before, for I knew
he grudged every moment not spent in thinking and working on the fatal
tasks he had assigned to himself for the redemption of his debts.
All through the preparation of this book, I was indebted a good deal
to a gentleman who was neither a literary man nor an artist himself,
but hovered round the outskirts of both professions, and might be
considered as a useful adjunct to both. Every votary of pen or pencil
amongst us knew David Bridges at his drapery establishment in the
Lawnmarket, and many had been indebted to his obliging disposition. A
quick, dark-eyed little man, with lips full of sensibility and a tongue
unloving of rest, such a man in a degree as one can suppose Garrick to
have been, he held a sort of court every day, where wits and painters
jostled with people wanting coats, jerkins, and spotted handkerchiefs.
The place was small, and had no saloon behind; so, whenever David
had got some ‘bit’ to show you, he dragged you down a dark stair to
a packing-place, lighted only by a grate from the street, and there,
amidst plaster-casts numberless, would fix you with his glittering eye,
till he had convinced you of the fine handling, the ‘buttery touches’
(a great phrase with him), the admirable ‘scummling’ (another), and
so forth. It was in the days prior to the Royal Scottish Academy and
its exhibitions; and it was left in a great measure to David Bridges
to bring forward aspirants in art. Did such a person long for notice,
he had only to give David one of his best ‘bits,’ and in a short
time he would find himself chattered into fame in that profound, the
grate of which I never can pass without recalling something of the
buttery touches of those old days. The Blackwood wits, who laughed at
everything, fixed upon our friend the title of ‘Director-general of the
Fine Arts,’ which was, however, too much of a truth to be a jest. To
this extraordinary being I had been introduced somehow, and, entering
heartily into my views, he brought me information, brought me friends,
read and criticised my proofs, and would, I dare say, have written
the book itself if I had so desired. It is impossible to think of him
without a smile, but at the same time a certain melancholy, for his
life was one which, I fear, proved a poor one for himself.
Before the _Traditions_ were finished, I had become favourably
acquainted with many gentlemen of letters and others, who were pleased
to think that Old Edinburgh had been chronicled. Wilson gave me a
laudatory sentence in the _Noctes Ambrosianæ_. The Bard of Ettrick,
viewing my boyish years, always spoke of and to me as an unaccountable
sort of person, but never could be induced to believe otherwise than
that I had written all my traditions from my own head. I had also
the pleasure of enjoying some intercourse with the venerable Henry
Mackenzie, who had been born in 1745, but always seemed to feel as if
the _Man of Feeling_ had been written only one instead of sixty years
ago, and as if there was nothing particular in antique occurrences.
The whole affair was pretty much of a triumph at the time. Now, when I
am giving it a final revision, I reflect with touched feelings, that
all the brilliant men of the time when it was written are, without an
exception, passed away, while, for myself, I am forced to claim the
benefit of Horace’s humanity:
‘Solve senescentem mature sanus equum, ne
Peccet ad extremum ridendus, et ilia ducat.’
INTRODUCTION TO PRESENT ISSUE.
It has been very shrewdly remarked by a famous essayist and critic
that a book is none the worse for having survived a generation or
two. Robert Chambers’s _Traditions of Edinburgh_ has survived many
generations since its first appearance in 1825, and I have before me
a copy of this edition in the original six parts, published at two
shillings each, the first of which aroused in Sir Walter Scott so much
interest. The work when completed appears to have passed through many
reprints, but retained its original form until it was remodelled and
almost rewritten in 1846, much new matter being then added, and certain
passages altogether omitted. Shortly before his death the author again
revised the work, adding a new introduction, in which he reviewed the
changes of the preceding forty years. This was in 1868, and since that
time old Edinburgh has almost ceased to exist. Many an ancient wynd
and close has disappeared, or remains simply as a right of way, on
all sides surrounded by modern buildings. The City Improvements Act,
obtained by Dr William Chambers when Lord Provost of Edinburgh in 1865
and again in 1868, swept away hundreds of old buildings; and to it is
due the disappearance of Leith Wynd, St Mary’s Wynd, Blackfriars Wynd,
the Ancient Scottish Mint in the Cowgate, and other landmarks more or
less familiar to our grandfathers. These changes are confined not alone
to the old town of Edinburgh, but extend to other districts which at
the beginning of the nineteenth century were comparatively modern and
fashionable. Brown Square and the buildings adjoining it known as ‘the
Society’ have passed away, being intersected by the modern Chambers
Street. Adam Square, adjoining the College, has been absorbed in South
Bridge Street; Park Street and Park Place, where was once a fashionable
boarding-school for young ladies, have disappeared to make room for
the M’Ewan Hall and other University buildings.
If it is true that the old town of Edinburgh has been modernised out of
existence, the remark applies equally to its immediate suburbs. Indeed
the all-round changes of the last forty years can fitly be compared
to like changes which within the same period have taken place in the
city of Rome. Until within very recent times Edinburgh bore some slight
resemblance to the Rome of the Popes, with its stately villas and great
extent of walled-in garden ground. Much of this aristocratic old-world
aspect has passed away, and one can but lament the disappearance of
many an eighteenth-century house and grounds, interesting in not a few
cases as the former residence of a citizen whose memory extended back
to the Edinburgh of Sir Walter Scott and the famous men who were his
contemporaries and friends.
Falcon Hall on the south side of the town, with its great gardens and
walled-in parks, has disappeared. So also has the interesting villa
of Abbey Hill, occupied until very recent times by the Dowager Lady
Menzies. The Clock Mill House adjoining Holyrood Palace and the Duke’s
Walk, and surrounded by ancient trees, has gone, as have likewise the
many fine old residences with pleasant gardens which adjoined the two
main roads between Edinburgh and Leith. All have passed away, giving
place to rows of semi-detached villas and endless lines of streets
erected for the housing of an ever-increasing population.
One of the few surviving examples of the old Scotch baronial mansion
is Coates House, standing within the grounds of St Mary’s Episcopal
Cathedral at the west end of the city. This house was occupied by
Robert Chambers for several years prior to his removal to St Andrews
in 1840. It has since been modernised, and is now used for various
purposes in connection with the Cathedral.
Although Robert Chambers died so long ago as 1871, no adequate story of
his life has since been attempted. This is a matter for regret in view
of some comparatively recent discoveries, particularly those relating
to the history of the authorship of that famous work, _Vestiges of the
Natural History of Creation_, made public for the first time in 1884.
Of that work, written between the years 1841-44, in the solitude of
Abbey Park, St Andrews, a recent writer has said: ‘This book was almost
as great a source of wonder in its time as the _Letters of Junius_, or
_Waverley_ itself. The learning and common-sense of the book, its rare
temperateness and common-sense, commanded immediate attention. It was
the wonder of the world at that period, nor was the authorship ever
acknowledged, I believe.’ The mystery is now solved; but be it said
that in the opinion of many Robert Chambers is more interesting as an
antiquary than a scientist. It is in the former capacity that his name
will be handed down to posterity as author of the standard work on the
tradition and antiquities of the Scottish capital. The outstanding
feature of the present issue of the _Traditions_ is the series of
original drawings which have been provided by Mr James Riddel, R.S.W.,
and it is hoped they will enable the reader more readily to realise
the city’s old world charm, so sympathetically described by Robert
Chambers. While a few notes have been added to this edition, it has not
been deemed advisable to alter the text, and therefore that fact must
be borne in mind where dates and lapses of time are mentioned.
C. E. S. CHAMBERS.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
THE CHANGES OF THE LAST HUNDRED YEARS 1
THE CASTLE-HILL 11
Hugo Arnot—Allan Ramsay—House of the Gordon Family—Sir David
Baird—Dr Webster—House of Mary de Guise.
THE WEST BOW 26
The Bowhead—Weigh-house—Anderson’s Pills—Oratories—Colonel
Gardiner—‘Bowhead Saints’—‘The Seizers’—Story of a Jacobite
Canary—Major Weir—Tulzies—The Tinklarian Doctor—Old
Assembly Room—Paul Romieu—‘He that Tholes Overcomes’—Provost
Stewart—Donaldsons the Booksellers—Bowfoot—The Templars’
Lands—The Gallows Stone.
JAMES’S COURT 55
David Hume—James Boswell—Lord Fountainhall.
STORY OF THE COUNTESS OF STAIR 63
THE OLD BANK CLOSE 70
The Regent Morton—The Old Bank—Sir Thomas Hope—Chiesly of
Dalry—Rich Merchants of the Sixteenth Century—Sir William
Dick—The Birth of Lord Brougham.
THE OLD TOLBOOTH 82
SOME MEMORIES OF THE LUCKENBOOTHS 95
Lord Coalstoun and his Wig—Commendator Bothwell’s House—Lady
Anne Bothwell—Mahogany Lands and Fore-stairs—The
Krames—Creech’s Shop.
SOME MEMORANDA OF THE OLD KIRK OF ST GILES 105
THE PARLIAMENT CLOSE 109
Ancient Churchyard—Booths attached to the High
Church—Goldsmiths—George Heriot—The Deid-Chack.
MEMORIALS OF THE NOR’ LOCH 117
THE PARLIAMENT HOUSE 119
Old Arrangements of the House—Justice in Bygone Times—_Court
of Session Garland_—Parliament House Worthies.
CONVIVIALIA 138
TAVERNS OF OLD TIMES 158
THE CROSS—CADDIES 174
THE TOWN-GUARD 179
EDINBURGH MOBS 183
The Blue Blanket—Mobs of the Seventeenth Century—Bowed Joseph.
BICKERS 189
SUSANNA, COUNTESS OF EGLINTOUNE 192
FEMALE DRESSES OF LAST CENTURY 199
THE LORD JUSTICE-CLERK ALVA 204
Ladies Sutherland and Glenorchy—The Pin or Risp.
MARLIN’S AND NIDDRY’S WYNDS 209
Tradition of Marlin the Pavier—House of Provost Edward—Story
of Lady Grange.
ABBOT OF MELROSE’S LODGING 223
Sir George Mackenzie—Lady Anne Dick.
BLACKFRIARS WYND 228
Palace of Archbishop Bethune—Boarding-Schools of the Last
Century—The Last of the Lorimers—Lady Lovat.
THE COWGATE 240
House of Gavin Douglas the Poet—Skirmish of Cleanse-the-Causeway
—College Wynd—Birthplace of Sir Walter Scott—The Horse
Wynd—Tam o’ the Cowgate—Magdalen Chapel.
ST CECILIA’S HALL 249
THE MURDER OF DARNLEY 256
MINT CLOSE 260
The Mint—Robert Cullen—Lord Chancellor Loughborough.
MISS NICKY MURRAY 265
THE BISHOP’S LAND 269
JOHN KNOX’S MANSE 271
HYNDFORD’S CLOSE 275
HOUSE OF THE MARQUISES OF TWEEDDALE—THE BEGBIE TRAGEDY 279
THE LADIES OF TRAQUAIR 286
GREYFRIARS CHURCHYARD 288
Signing of the Covenant—Henderson’s Monument—Bothwell Bridge
Prisoners—A Romance.
STORY OF MRS MACFARLANE 291
THE CANONGATE 295
Distinguished Inhabitants in Former Times—Story of a
Burning—Morocco’s Land—New Street.
ST JOHN STREET 302
Lord Monboddo’s Suppers—The Sister of Smollett—Anecdote of
Henry Dundas.
MORAY HOUSE 306
THE SPEAKING HOUSE 312
PANMURE HOUSE—ADAM SMITH 318
JOHN PATERSON THE GOLFER 320
LOTHIAN HUT 323
HENRY PRENTICE AND POTATOES 325
THE DUCHESS OF BUCCLEUCH AND MONMOUTH 327
CLAUDERO 330
QUEENSBERRY HOUSE 336
TENNIS COURT 344
Early Theatricals—The Canongate Theatre—Digges and Mrs
Bellamy—A Theatrical Riot.
MARIONVILLE—STORY OF CAPTAIN MACRAE 351
ALISON SQUARE 358
LEITH WALK 360
GABRIEL’S ROAD 366
INDEX 369
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
An Elegant Modern City _Frontispiece_
Map of Edinburgh, Old and New xxvi
A series of towers rising from a palace on the plain
to a castle in the air _Colour Drawing_ 1
White Hart Inn, Grassmarket ” ” 2
Newhaven Fishwife ” ” 4
Rouping-Wife ” ” 9
The Castle-Hill ” ” 11
Duke of Gordon’s House ” ” 18
The Bowhead ” ” 27
Grassmarket, from west end of Cowgate ” ” 50
Edinburgh, from the Calton Hill ” ” 83
St Giles, West Window ” ” 105
Heriot’s Hospital, from Greyfriars Churchyard ” ” 113
A Suggestion of the North Loch and St Cuthbert’s,
from Allan Ramsay’s Garden ” ” 117
The Parliament House ” ” 128
‘Auld Reekie,’ from Largo ” ” 152
Upper Baxter’s Close, where Burns first resided
in Edinburgh ” ” 164
White Horse Inn ” ” 170
Forenoon at the Cross ” ” 174
The Town-Guard ” ” 179
The Castle, from Princes Street ” ” 214
Blackfriars Wynd ” ” 228
The Cowgate ” ” 240
Old Houses, College Wynd (near here Sir Walter
Scott was born) ” ” 242
John Knox’s Manse ” ” 274
Greyfriars Churchyard ” ” 288
St John’s Close, Entrance to Canongate Kilwinning
Mason Lodge ” ” 305
* * * * *
The objects of interest between the Castle and Holyrood are grouped
topographically in the following list, with references to the Map.
CASTLE.
Blair’s or Baird’s Close 1| Castlehill Walk or A| Allan Ramsay’s House a
Brown’s Close 3| Esplanade | Blyth’s Close 2
Webster’s Close 5| CASTLEHILL B| Nairn’s Close 4
Site of the Duke of b| Weigh-House d| Tod’s Close 6
Gordon’s House | | Site of Mary of c
| Guise’s House
West Bow CC| LAWNMARKET D| Mylne’s Court 8
Angle of Bow Z| Tolbooth e| James’s Court 10
Riddel’s Close 7| Luckenbooths f| Lady Stair’s Close 12
Brodie’s Close 9| St Giles’ | Upper Baxter’s 14
Old Bank Close 11| {Haddo’s Hole Church g| Close
Liberton’s Wynd 13| {Tolbooth Church h| Wardrop’s Court 16
| {Old Church | Paterson’s Court 18
| {New Church |
Hope’s Close 15| HIGH STREET EE| Dunbar’s Close 20
Beith’s or Bess Wynd 17| Cross x| Byres’s Close 22
Parliament Close 19| Guard House i| Writers’ Court 24
Parliament House k| Tron Church j| Royal Exchange 26
Back Stairs 21| | Mary King’s Close 28
Fishmarket Close 23| | Post-Office Close 30
Assembly Close 25| | Anchor Close 32
Bell’s Wynd 27| | Lyon Close 34
Peebles Wynd 29| | Jackson’s Close 36
Marlin’s Wynd 31| | Fleshmarket Close 38
Niddry’s Wynd 33| | Fleshmarket m
Site of St Cecilia’s Hall l| | Greenmarket n
Dickson’s Close 35| | Halkerston’s Wynd 40
Cant’s Close 37| | Carrubber’s Close 42
Strichen’s Close 39| | Bailie Fife’s Close 44
Blackfriars Wynd 41| | Chalmers’ Close 46
Todrick’s Wynd 43| | John Knox’s Manse p
Mint Close 45| |
The Old Mint o| |
Hyndford’s Close 47| |
Tweeddale Court 49| Nether Bow Port. F|
St Mary’s Wynd 51| | Leith Wynd 48
Chessels’s Court 53| | Morocco’s Land 50
Weir’s Close 55| | New Street 52
Old Playhouse Close 57| | Jack’s Land 54
St John’s Close 59| | Tolbooth Wynd 56
St John’s Street 61| CANONGATE. | Canongate Church 58
Moray House 63| | Canongate Churchyard q
Speaking House 65| | Panmure House 60
Acheson House 67| | Golfers’ Land 62
Queensberry House 69| | White Horse Inn 64
| | Water Gate r
EDINBURGH OLD AND NEW.
In the map the streets and buildings printed in black represent the
historic Old Town; those in red indicate not merely the ‘New Town’ to
the north, specifically so called, but some part of the alterations,
additions, and extensions round the ancient nucleus that have gone to
constitute the Edinburgh of the present day.
[Illustration: Map]
KEY TO THE STREETS AND BUILDINGS NOT NAMED ON MAP.
Acheson House 67
Allan Ramsay’s House a
Anchor Close 32
Angle of Bow Z
Assembly Close 25
Back Stairs 21
Bailie Fife’s Close 44
Bank of Scotland red F
Beith’s or Bess Wynd 17
Bell’s Wynd 27
Blackfriars Wynd 41
Blair’s or Baird’s Close 1
Blyth’s Close 2
Bristo N
Bristo Port O
Brodie’s Close 9
Brown’s Close 3
Byres’s Close 22
Calton Burying-Ground t
Candlemaker Row T
Canongate Church 58
Canongate Churchyard q
Cant’s Close 37
Carrubber’s Close 42
Castlehill B
Castlehill Walk or Esplanade A
Castle Wynd 74
Chalmers’ Close 46
Chessels’s Court 53
College Wynd 71
Council Chambers red G
County Buildings red I
Court of Session red K
Cowgate J J
Cowgate Port L
Cross x
Dickson’s Close 35
Dunbar’s Close 20
Established Church Assembly Hall red h
Fishmarket Close 23
Fleshmarket m
Fleshmarket Close 88
Free Library red L
General Post-Office red E
Golfers’ Land 62
Gordon’s (Duke of) House b
Greenmarket n
Guard House i
Halkerston’s Wynd 40
Heriot’s Hospital V
Heriot-Watt College red n n
High School Wynd 72
High Street E E
Holyrood G
Hope’s Close 15
Horse Wynd 70
Hyndford’s Close 47
Jack’s Land 54
Jackson’s Close 36
James’s Court 10
John Knox’s Manse p
Lady Stair’s Close 12
Lauriston M M
Lawnmarket D
Leith Wynd 48
Liberton’s Wynd 13
Luckenbooths f
Lyon Close 34
Magdalen Chapel 66
Marlin’s Wynd 31
Mary King’s Close 28
Mary of Guise’s House, Site of c
Mint Close 45
Mint, The Old o
Moray House 63
Morocco’s Land 50
Mutrie’s Hill u
Mylne’s Court 8
Nairn’s Close 4
Nether Bow Port F
New Street 52
Niddry’s Wynd 33
Old Bank Close 11
Old Playhouse Close 57
Panmure House 60
Parliament Close 19
Parliament House k
Paterson’s Court 18
Peebles Wynd 29
Pleasance R
Portsburgh H
Post-Office Close 80
Potterrow P
Potterrow Port Q
Queensberry House 69
Register House red A
Riddel’s Close 7
Royal Exchange 26
Royal Infirmary K
Royal Scottish Academy Galleries red B
St Cecilia’s Hall, Site of l
St Giles’—
Haddo’s Hole Church g
Tolbooth Church h
St John’s Close 59
St John’s Street 61
St Mary’s Wynd 51
Scottish National Gallery red C
Scott’s (Sir Walter) Monument red D
Sheriff Court House red M
Speaking House 65
S.S.C. Library red J
Strichen’s Close 39
Surgeons’ Hall red o
Tailors’ Hall 68
Todrick’s Wynd 43
Tod’s Close 6
Tolbooth e
Tolbooth Wynd 56
Trinity College Church S
Tron Church j
Tweeddale Court 49
Upper Baxter’s Close 14
Wardrop’s Court 16
Water Gate r
Webster’s Close 5
Weigh-House d
Weir’s Close 55
West Bow C C
West Port I
White Hart Inn 73
White Horse Inn 64
Writers’ Court 24
* * * * *
[Illustration: A series of towers rising from a palace on the plain to
a castle in the air.
PAGE 1.]
* * * * *
TRADITIONS OF EDINBURGH.
THE CHANGES OF THE LAST HUNDRED YEARS.
[1745-1845.]
[Illustration: Fortified Gate,
Nether Bow Port, from Canongate.]
Edinburgh was, at the beginning of George III.’s reign, a picturesque,
odorous, inconvenient, old-fashioned town, of about seventy thousand
inhabitants. It had no court, no factories, no commerce; but there
was a nest of lawyers in it, attending upon the Court of Session; and
a considerable number of the Scotch gentry—one of whom then passed
as rich with a thousand a year—gave it the benefit of their presence
during the winter. Thus the town had lived for some ages, during
which political discontent and division had kept the country poor. A
stranger approaching the city, seeing it piled ‘close and massy, deep
and high’—a series of towers, rising from a palace on the plain to
a castle in the air—would have thought it a truly romantic place;
and the impression would not have subsided much on a near inspection,
when he would have found himself admitted by a fortified gate through
an ancient wall, still kept in repair. Even on entering the one old
street of which the city chiefly consisted, he would have seen much
to admire—houses of substantial architecture and lofty proportions,
mingled with more lowly, but also more arresting wooden fabrics; a
huge and irregular, but venerable Gothic church, surmounted by an
aërial crown of masonry; finally, an esplanade towards the Castle,
from which he could have looked abroad upon half a score of counties,
upon firth and fell, yea, even to the blue Grampians. Everywhere he
would have seen symptoms of denseness of population; the open street a
universal market; a pell-mell of people everywhere. The eye would have
been, upon the whole, gratified, whatever might be the effect of the
_clangor strepitusque_ upon the ear, or whatever might have been the
private meditations of the nose. It would have only been on coming to
close quarters, or to quarters at all, that our stranger would have
begun to think of serious drawbacks from the first impression. For an
inn, he would have had the White Horse, in a close in the Canongate;
or the White Hart, a house which now appears like a carrier’s inn,
in the Grassmarket. Or, had he betaken himself to a private lodging,
which he would have probably done under the conduct of a ragged varlet,
speaking more of his native Gaelic than English, he would have had to
ascend four or five stories of a common stair, into the narrow chambers
of some Mrs Balgray or Luckie Fergusson, where a closet-bed in the
sitting-room would have been displayed as the most comfortable place in
the world; and he would have had, for amusement, a choice between an
extensive view of house-tops from the window and the study of a series
of prints of the four seasons, a sampler, and a portrait of the Marquis
of Granby, upon the wall.
[Illustration: House-tops.]
[Illustration: WHITE HART INN, GRASSMARKET.
PAGE 2.]
On being introduced into society, our stranger might have discovered
cause for content with his lodging on finding how poorly off were the
first people with respect to domestic accommodations. I can imagine
him going to tea at Mr Bruce of Kennet’s, in Forrester’s Wynd—a
country gentleman and a lawyer (not long after raised to the bench),
yet happy to live with his wife and children in a house of fifteen
pounds of rent, in a region of profound darkness and mystery, now
no more. Had he got into familiar terms with the worthy lady of the
mansion, he might have ascertained that they had just three rooms and
a kitchen; one room, ‘my lady’s’—that is, the kind of parlour he was
sitting in; another, a consulting-room for the gentleman; the third,
a bedroom. The children, with their maid, had beds laid down for
them at night in their father’s room; the housemaid slept under the
kitchen dresser; and the one man-servant was turned at night out of the
house. Had our friend chanced to get amongst tradespeople, he might
have found Mr Kerr, the eminent goldsmith in the Parliament Square,
stowing his _ménage_ into a couple of small rooms above his booth-like
shop, plastered against the wall of St Giles’s Church; the nursery
and kitchen, however, being placed in a cellar under the level of the
street, where the children are said to have rotted off like sheep.
But indeed everything was on a homely and narrow scale. The
College—where Munro, Cullen, and Black were already making themselves
great names—was to be approached through a mean alley, the College
Wynd. The churches were chiefly clustered under one roof; the jail
was a narrow building, half-filling up the breadth of the street; the
public offices, for the most part, obscure places in lanes and dark
entries. The men of learning and wit, united with a proportion of men
of rank, met as the _Poker Club_ in a tavern, the best of its day, but
only a dark house in a close, to which our stranger could scarcely have
made his way without a guide. In a similar situation across the way,
he would have found, at the proper season, the _Assembly_; that is, a
congregation of ladies met for dancing, and whom the gentlemen usually
joined rather late, and rather merry. The only theatre was also a poor
and obscure place in some indescribable part of the Canongate.
The town was, nevertheless, a funny, familiar, compact, and not
unlikable place. Gentle and semple living within the compass of a
single close, or even a single stair, knew and took an interest
in each other.[1] Acquaintances might not only be formed,
Pyramus-and-Thisbe fashion, through party-walls, but from window to
window across alleys, narrow enough in many cases to allow of hand
coming to hand, and even lip to lip. There was little elegance, but
a vast amount of cheap sociality. Provokingly comical clubs, founded
each upon one joke, were abundant. The ladies had tea-drinkings at the
primitive hour of six, from which they cruised home under the care
of a lantern-bearing, patten-shod lass; or perhaps, if a bad night,
in Saunders Macalpine’s sedan-chair. Every forenoon, for several
hours, the only clear space which the town presented—that around the
Cross—was crowded with loungers of all ranks, whom it had been an
amusement to the poet Gay to survey from the neighbouring windows of
Allan Ramsay’s shop. The jostle and huddlement was extreme everywhere.
Gentlemen and ladies paraded along in the stately attire of the period;
tradesmen chatted in groups, often bareheaded, at their shop-doors;
caddies whisked about, bearing messages, or attending to the affairs
of strangers; children filled the kennel with their noisy sports. Add
to all this, corduroyed men from Gilmerton, bawling coals or yellow
sand, and spending as much breath in a minute as could have served
poor asthmatic Hugo Arnot for a month; fishwomen crying their caller
haddies from Newhaven; whimsicals and idiots going along, each with
his or her crowd of listeners or tormentors; sootymen with their bags;
town-guardsmen with their antique Lochaber axes; water-carriers with
their dripping barrels; barbers with their hair-dressing materials;
and so forth—and our stranger would have been disposed to acknowledge
that, though a coarse and confused, it was a perfectly unique scene,
and one which, once contemplated, was not easily to be forgotten.
A change at length began. Our northern country had settled to sober
courses in the reign of George II., and the usual results of industry
were soon apparent. Edinburgh by-and-by felt much like a lady who,
after long being content with a small and inconvenient house, is
taught, by the money in her husband’s pockets, that such a place is no
longer to be put up with. There was a wish to expatiate over some of
the neighbouring grounds, so as to get more space and freer air; only
it was difficult to do, considering the physical circumstances of the
town, and the character of the existing outlets. Space, space!—air,
air! was, however, a strong and a general cry, and the old romantic
city did at length burst from its bounds, though not in a very regular
way, or for a time to much good purpose.
[Illustration: NEWHAVEN FISHWIFE.
PAGE 4.]
A project for a new street on the site of Halkerston’s Wynd, leading
by a bridge to the grounds of Mutrie’s Hill, where a suburb might be
erected, was formed before the end of the seventeenth century.[2] It
was a subject of speculation to John, Earl of Mar, during his years
of exile, as were many other schemes of national improvement which
have since been realised—for example, the Forth and Clyde Canal. The
grounds to the north lay so invitingly open that the early formation
of such a project is not wonderful. Want of spirit and of means
alone could delay its execution. After the Rebellion of 1745, when
a general spirit of improvement began to be shown in Scotland, the
scheme was taken up by a public-spirited provost, Mr George Drummond,
but it had to struggle for years with local difficulties. Meanwhile,
a sagacious builder, by name James Brown, resolved to take advantage
of the growing taste; he purchased a field near the town for £1200,
and _feued_ it out for a square. The speculation is said to have ended
in something like giving him his own money as an annual return. This
place (George Square) became the residence of several of the judges
and gentry. I was amused a few years ago hearing an old gentleman in
the country begin a story thus: ‘When I was in Edinburgh, in the year
’67, I went to George Square, to call for Mrs Scott of Sinton,’ &c.
To this day some relics of gentry cling to its grass-green causeways,
charmed, perhaps, by its propinquity to the Meadows and Bruntsfield
Links. Another place sprang into being, a smaller quadrangle of neat
houses, called Brown’s Square.[3] So much was thought of it at first
that a correspondent of the _Edinburgh Advertiser_, in 1764, seriously
counsels his fellow-citizens to erect in it an equestrian statue of
the then popular young king, George III.! This place, too, had some
distinguished inhabitants; till 1846, one of the houses continued to
be nominally the town mansion of a venerable judge, Lord Glenlee. We
pass willingly from these traits of grandeur to dwell on the fact of
its having been the residence of Miss Jeanie Elliot of Minto, the
authoress of the original song, _The Flowers of the Forest_; and even
to bethink ourselves that here Scott placed the ideal abode of Saunders
Fairford and the adventure of Green Mantle. Sir Walter has informed
us, from his own recollections, that the inhabitants of these southern
districts formed for a long time a distinct class of themselves, having
even places of polite amusement for their own recreation, independent
of the rest of Edinburgh. He tells us that the society was of the first
description, including, for one thing, most of the gentlemen who wrote
in the _Mirror_ and the _Lounger_. There was one venerable inhabitant
who did not die till half the New Town was finished, yet he had never
once seen it!
The exertions of Drummond at length procured an act (1767) for
extending the royalty of the city over the northern fields; and a
bridge was then erected to connect these with the elder city. The
scheme was at first far from popular. The exposure to the north and
east winds was felt as a grievous disadvantage, especially while houses
were few. So unpleasant even was the North Bridge considered that a
lover told a New-Town mistress—to be sure only in an epigram—that
when he visited her, he felt as performing an adventure not much short
of that of Leander. The aristocratic style of the place alarmed a
number of pockets, and legal men trembled lest their clients and other
employers should forget them if they removed so far from the centre
of things as Princes Street and St Andrew Square. Still, the move was
unavoidable, and behoved to be made.
It is curious to cast the eye over the beautiful city which now extends
over this district, the residence of as refined a mass of people as
could be found in any similar space of ground upon earth, and reflect
on what the place was a hundred years ago. The bulk of it was a farm,
usually called Wood’s Farm, from its tenant (the father of a clever
surgeon, well known in Edinburgh in the last age under the familiar
appellation of _Lang Sandy Wood_). Henry Mackenzie, author of the _Man
of Feeling_, who died in 1831, remembered shooting snipes, hares, and
partridges about that very spot to which he alludes at the beginning of
the paper on Nancy Collins in the _Mirror_ (July 1779): ‘As I walked
one evening, about a fortnight ago, _through St Andrew Square_, I
observed a girl meanly dressed,’ &c. Nearly along the line now occupied
by Princes Street was a rough enclosed road, called the _Lang Gait_ or
_Lang Dykes_, the way along which Claverhouse went with his troopers
in 1689, when he retired in disgust from the Convention, with the
resolution of raising a rebellion in the Highlands. On the site of the
present Register House was a hamlet or small group of houses called
_Mutrie’s Hill_; and where the Royal Bank now stands was a cottage
wherein ambulative citizens regaled themselves with fruit and curds and
cream. Broughton, which latterly has been surprised and swamped by the
spreading city, was then a village, considered as so far afield that
people went to live in it for the summer months, under the pleasing
idea that they had got into the country. It is related that Whitefield
used to preach to vast multitudes on the spot which by-and-by became
appropriated for the _Theatre Royal_. Coming back one year, and finding
a playhouse on the site of his tub, he was extremely incensed. Could it
be, as Burns suggests,
‘There was rivalry just in the job!’
James Craig, a nephew of the poet Thomson, was entrusted with the duty
of planning the new city. In the engraved plan, he appropriately quotes
from his uncle:
‘August, around, what PUBLIC WORKS I see!
Lo, stately streets! lo, squares that court the breeze!
See long canals and deepened rivers join
Each part with each, and with the circling main,
The whole entwined isle.’
The names of the streets and squares were taken from the royal family
and the tutelary saints of the island. The honest citizens had
originally intended to put their own local saint in the foreground; but
when the plan was shown to the king for his approval, he cried: ‘Hey,
hey—what, what—_St Giles Street!_—never do, never do!’ And so, to
escape from an unpleasant association of ideas, this street was called
_Princes Street_, in honour of the king’s two sons, afterwards George
IV. and the Duke of York. So difficult was it at the very first to
induce men to build that a premium of twenty pounds was offered by the
magistrates to him who should raise the first house; it was awarded to
Mr John Young, on account of a mansion erected by him in Rose Court,
George Street. An exemption from burghal taxes was granted to the
first house in the line of Princes Street, built by Mr John Neale,
haberdasher (afterwards occupied by Archibald Constable, and then
as the Crown Hotel), in consequence of a bargain made by Mr Graham,
plumber, who sold this and the adjoining ground to the town.[4] Mr
Shadrach Moyes, when having a house built for himself in Princes
Street, in 1769, took the builder bound to rear another farther along
besides his, to shield him from the west wind! Other quaint particulars
are remembered; as, for instance: Mr Wight, an eminent lawyer, who had
planted himself in St Andrew Square, finding he was in danger of having
his view of St Giles’s clock shut up by the advancing line of Princes
Street, built the intervening house himself, that he might have it in
his power to keep the roof low for the sake of the view in question;
important to him, he said, as enabling him to regulate his movements in
the morning, when it was necessary that he should be punctual in his
attendance at the Parliament House.
[Illustration: ROUPING-WIFE.
PAGE 9.]
The foundation was at length laid of that revolution which has ended
in making Edinburgh a kind of double city—_first_, an ancient and
picturesque hill-built one, occupied chiefly by the humbler classes;
and _second_, an elegant modern one, of much regularity of aspect,
and possessed almost as exclusively by the more refined portion of
society. The New Town, keeping pace with the growing prosperity of
the country, had, in 1790, been extended to Castle Street; in 1800
the necessity for a second plan of the same extent still farther to
the north had been felt, and this was after acted upon. Forty years
saw the Old Town thoroughly changed as respects population. One after
another, its nobles and gentry, its men of the robe, its ‘writers,’
and even its substantial burghers, had during that time deserted
their mansions in the High Street and Canongate, till few were left.
Even those modern districts connected with it, as St John Street, New
Street, George Square, &c., were beginning to be forsaken for the sake
of more elegantly circumstanced habitations beyond the North Loch. Into
the remote social consequences of this change it is not my purpose
to enter, beyond the bare remark that it was only too accordant with
that tendency of our present form of civilisation to separate the high
from the low, the intelligent from the ignorant—that dissociation,
in short, which would in itself run nigh to be a condemnation of
all progress, if we were not allowed to suppose that better forms
of civilisation are realisable. Enough that I mention the tangible
consequences of the revolution—a flooding in of the humbler trading
classes where gentles once had been; the houses of these classes,
again, filled with the vile and miserable. Now were to be seen
hundreds of instances of such changes as Provost Creech indicates in
1783: ‘The Lord Justice-Clerk Tinwald’s house possessed by a French
teacher—Lord President Craigie’s house by a rouping-wife or salewoman
of old furniture—and Lord Drummore’s house left by a chairman for want
of accommodation.’ ‘The house of the Duke of Douglas at the Union, now
possessed by a wheelwright!’ To one who, like myself, was young in
the early part of the present century, it was scarcely possible, as
he permeated the streets and closes of ancient Edinburgh, to realise
the idea of a time when the great were housed therein. But many a
gentleman in middle life, then living perhaps in Queen Street or
Charlotte Square, could recollect the close or the common stair where
he had been born and spent his earliest years, now altogether given up
to a different portion of society. And when the younger perambulator
inquired more narrowly, he could discover traces of this former
population. Here and there a carved coat-armorial, with supporters,
perhaps even a coronet, arrested attention amidst the obscurities of
some _wynd_ or court. Did he ascend a stair and enter a floor, now
subdivided perhaps into four or five distinct dwellings, he might
readily perceive, in the massive wainscot of the lobby, a proof that
the refinements of life had once been there. Still more would this idea
be impressed upon him when, passing into one of the best rooms of the
old house, he would find not only a continuation of such wainscoting,
but perhaps a tolerable landscape by Norie on a panel above the
fireplace, or a ceiling decorated by De la Cour, a French artist,
who flourished in Edinburgh about 1740. Even yet he would discover a
very few relics of gentry maintaining their ground in the Old Town,
as if faintly to show what it had once been. These were generally old
people, who did not think it worth while to make any change till the
great one. There is a melancholy pleasure in recalling what I myself
found about 1820, when my researches for this work were commenced.
In that year I was in the house of Governor Fergusson, an ancient
gentleman of the Pitfour family, in a floor, one stair up, in the
Luckenbooths. About the same time I attended the book-sale of Dr Arrot,
a physician of good figure, newly deceased, in the Mint Close. For
several years later, any one ascending a now miserable-looking stair
in Blackfriars Wynd would have seen a door-plate inscribed with the
name MISS OLIPHANT, a member of the Gask family. Nay, so late as 1832,
I had the pleasure of breakfasting with Sir William Macleod Bannatyne
in Whiteford House, Canongate (afterwards a type-foundry), on which
occasion the venerable old gentleman talked as familiarly of the levees
of the _sous-ministre_ for Lord Bute in the old villa at the Abbey Hill
as I could have talked of the affairs of the Canning administration;
and even recalled, as a fresh picture of his memory, his father drawing
on his boots to go to make interest in London in behalf of some of the
men in trouble for the Forty-five, particularly his own brother-in-law,
the Clanranald of that day. Such were the connections recently existing
between the past system of things and the present. Now, alas! the sun
of Old-Town glory has set for ever. Nothing is left but the decaying
and rapidly diminishing masses of ancient masonry, and a handful of
traditionary recollections, which be it my humble but not unworthy task
to transmit to future generations.[5]
[Illustration: Carved Armorial, with Supporters.]
FOOTNOTES
[1] Mr W. B. Blaikie (_The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club_, vol.
ii.) gives a list of the occupants of a first-class tenement some
years subsequent to the ’45 Rebellion: ‘First-floor, Mrs Stirling,
fishmonger; second, Mrs Urquhart, lodging-house keeper; third-floor,
the Countess Dowager of Balcarres; fourth, Mrs Buchan of Kelloe; fifth,
the Misses Elliot, milliners and mantua-makers; garrets, a variety of
tailors and other tradesmen.’
[2] Pamphlet _circa_ 1700, Wodrow Collection, Adv. Lib.
[3] Brown Square finally disappeared with the making of Chambers Street.
[4] Mr William Cowan, in vol. i. of _The Book of the Old Edinburgh
Club_, says this exemption applied to the three eastmost tenements in
Princes Street.
[5] The late Bruce J. Home drew up in 1908 ‘A Provisional List of Old
Houses Remaining in High Street and Canongate,’ which was printed,
with accompanying map, in the first volume of _The Old Edinburgh Club
Book_. The statement is therein made ‘that since 1860 two-thirds of the
ancient buildings in the Old Town of Edinburgh have been demolished.’
The map showed, coloured in red, the remaining buildings of the Old
Town which had survived until the beginning of the twentieth century.
THE CASTLE-HILL.
HUGO ARNOT—ALLAN RAMSAY—HOUSE OF THE GORDON FAMILY—SIR DAVID
BAIRD—DR WEBSTER—HOUSE OF MARY DE GUISE.
[Illustration: THE CASTLE-HILL.
PAGE 11.]
The saunter which I contemplate through the streets and stories, the
lanes and legends, of Old Edinburgh may properly commence at the
Castle-hill, as it is a marked extremity of the city as well as its
highest ground.
The Castle-hill is partly an esplanade, serving as a parade-ground for
the garrison of the Castle, and partly a street, the upper portion of
that vertebral line which, under the various names of Lawnmarket, High
Street, and Canongate, extends to Holyrood Palace. The open ground—a
scene of warfare during the sieges of the fortress, often a place of
execution in rude times—the place, too, where, by a curious legal
fiction, the Nova Scotia baronets were enfeoffed in their ideal estates
on the other side of the Atlantic—was all that Edinburgh possessed
as a readily accessible promenade before the extension of the city.
We find the severe acts for a strict observance of the Sabbath, which
appeared from time to time in the latter part of the seventeenth and
early part of the eighteenth century, denouncing the King’s Park, the
Pier of Leith, and the _Castle-hill_ as the places chiefly resorted
to for the profane sport of walking on ‘the Lord’s Day.’ Denounce as
they might, human nature could never, I believe, be altogether kept
off the Castle-hill; even the most respectable people walked there in
multitudes during the intervals between morning and evening service.
We have an allusion to the promenade character of the Castle-hill in
Ramsay’s city pastoral, as it may be called, of _The Young Laird and
Edinburgh Katy_—
‘Wat ye wha I met yestreen,
Coming down the street, my jo?
My mistress in her tartan screen,
Fu’ bonny, braw, and sweet, my jo.
“My dear,” quoth I, “thanks to the night,
That never wished a lover ill,
Since ye’re out o’ your mother’s sight,
Let’s tak’ a walk up to _the hill_.”’
A memory of these Sunday promenadings here calls me to introduce what I
have to say regarding a man of whom there used to be a strong popular
remembrance in Edinburgh.
HUGO ARNOT.
The cleverly executed _History of Edinburgh_, published by Arnot
in 1779, and which to this day has not been superseded, gives some
respectability to a name which tradition would have otherwise handed
down to us as only that of an eccentric gentleman, of remarkably
scarecrow figure, and the subject of a few _bon-mots_.
He was the son of a Leith shipmaster, named Pollock, and took the name
of Arnot from a small inheritance in Fife. Many who have read his
laborious work will be little prepared to hear that it was written when
the author was between twenty and thirty; and that, antiquated as his
meagre figure looks in Kay’s Portraits, he was at his death, in 1786,
only thirty-seven. His body had been, in reality, made prematurely old
by a confirmed asthma, accompanied by a cough, which he himself said
would carry him off like a rocket some day, when a friend remarked,
with reference to his known latitudinarianism: ‘Possibly, Hugo, in the
contrary direction.’
[Illustration: Hugo Arnot, looking so like his meat.]
Most of the jokes about poor Hugo’s person have been frequently
printed—as Harry Erskine meeting him on the street when he was gnawing
at a spelding or dried haddock, and congratulating him on _looking so
like his meat_; and his offending the piety of an old woman who was
cheapening a Bible in Creech’s shop, by some thoughtless remark, when
she first burst out with: ‘Oh, you monster!’ and then turning round and
seeing him, added: ‘And he’s an anatomy too!’ An epigram by Erskine is
less known:
‘The Scriptures assure us that much is forgiven
_To flesh and to blood_ by the mercy of Heaven;
But I’ve searched the whole Bible, and texts can find none
That extend the assurance _to skin and to bone_.’
Arnot was afflicted by a constitutional irritability to an extent
which can hardly be conceived. A printer’s boy, handing papers to him
over his shoulder, happened to touch his ear with one of them, when he
started up in a rage, and demanded of the trembling youth what he meant
by insulting him in that manner! Probably from some quarrel arising
out of this nervous weakness—for such it really was—the Edinburgh
booksellers, to a man, refused to have anything to do with the
prospectuses of his _Criminal Trials_, and Arnot had to advertise that
they were to be seen in the coffee-houses, instead of the booksellers’
shops.
About the time when he entered at the bar (1772), he had a fancy for a
young lady named Hay (afterwards Mrs Macdougall), sister of a gentleman
who succeeded as Marquis of Tweeddale, and then a reigning toast.
One Sunday, when he contemplated making up to his divinity on the
Castle-hill, after forenoon service, he entertained two young friends
at breakfast in his lodgings at the head of the Canongate. By-and-by
the affairs of the toilet came to be considered. It was then found that
Hugo’s washerwoman had played false, leaving him in a total destitution
of clean linen, or at least of clean linen that was also _whole_. A
dreadful storm took place, but at length, on its calming a little, love
found out a way, by taking the hand-ruffles of one cast garment, in
connection with the front of another, and adding both to the body of
a third. In this eclectic form of shirt the meagre young philosopher
marched forth with his friends, and was rewarded for his perseverance
by being allowed a very pleasant chat with the young lady on ‘the
hill.’ His friends standing by had their own enjoyment in reflecting
what the beauteous Miss Hay would think if she knew the struggles which
her admirer had had that morning in preparing to make his appearance
before her.
Arnot latterly dwelt in a small house at the end of the Meuse Lane in
St Andrew Street, with an old and very particular lady for a neighbour
in the upper-floor. Disturbed by the enthusiastic way in which he
sometimes rang his bell, the lady ventured to send a remonstrance,
which, however, produced no effect. This led to a bad state of matters
between them. At length a very pressing and petulant message being
handed in one day, insisting that he should endeavour to call his
servants _in a different manner_, what was the lady’s astonishment
next morning to hear a pistol discharged in Arnot’s house! He was
simply complying with the letter of his neighbour’s request, by firing,
instead of ringing, as a signal for shaving-water.
ALLAN RAMSAY.
On the north side of the esplanade—enjoying a splendid view of the
Firth of Forth, Fife and Stirling shires—is the neat little villa of
Allan Ramsay, surrounded by its miniature pleasure-grounds. The sober,
industrious life of this exception to the race of poets having resulted
in a small competency, he built this odd-shaped house in his latter
days, designing to enjoy in it the Horatian quiet which he had so often
eulogised in his verse. The story goes that, showing it soon after to
the clever Patrick, Lord Elibank, with much fussy interest in all its
externals and accommodations, he remarked that the wags were already at
work on the subject—they likened it to a goose-pie[6] (owing to the
roundness of the shape). ‘Indeed, Allan,’ said his lordship, ‘now I see
you in it, I think the wags are not far wrong.’
[Illustration: Allan Ramsay’s Villa.]
The splendid reputation of Burns has eclipsed that of Ramsay so
effectually that this pleasing poet, and, upon the whole, amiable and
worthy man, is now little regarded. Yet Ramsay can never be deprived
of the credit of having written the best pastoral poem in the range of
British literature—if even that be not too narrow a word—and many of
his songs are of great merit.
Ramsay was secretly a Jacobite, openly a dissenter from the severe
manners and feelings of his day, although a very decent and regular
attender of the Old Church in St Giles’s. He delighted in music and
theatricals, and, as we shall see, encouraged the Assembly. It was also
no doubt his own taste which led him, in 1725, to set up a circulating
library, whence he diffused plays and other works of fiction among
the people of Edinburgh. It appears, from the private notes of the
historian Wodrow, that, in 1728, the magistrates, moved by some
meddling spirits, took alarm at the effect of this kind of reading on
the minds of youth, and made an attempt to put it down, but without
effect. One cannot but be amused to find amongst these self-constituted
guardians of morality Lord Grange, who kept his wife in unauthorised
restraint for several years, and whose own life was a scandal to his
professions. Ramsay, as is well known, also attempted to establish a
theatre in Edinburgh, but failed. The following advertisement on this
subject appears in the _Caledonian Mercury_, September 1736: ‘The New
Theatre in Carrubber’s Close being in great forwardness, will be opened
the 1st of November. These are to advertise the gentlemen and ladies
who incline to purchase annual tickets, to enter their names before the
20th of October next, on which day they shall receive their tickets
from Allan Ramsay, on paying 30s.—no more than forty to be subscribed
for; after which none will be disposed of under two guineas.’
The late Mrs Murray of Henderland knew Ramsay for the last ten years of
his life, her sister having married his son, the celebrated painter.
She spoke of him to me in 1825, with kindly enthusiasm, as one of the
most amiable men she had ever known. His constant cheerfulness and
lively conversational powers had made him a favourite amongst persons
of rank, whose guest he frequently was. Being very fond of children,
he encouraged his daughters in bringing troops of young ladies about
the house, in whose sports he would mix with a patience and vivacity
wonderful in an old man. He used to give these young friends a kind
of ball once a year. From pure kindness for the young, he would help
to make dolls for them, and cradles wherein to place these little
effigies, with his own hands.[7] But here a fashion of the age must
be held in view; for, however odd it may appear, it is undoubtedly
true that to make and dispose of dolls, such as children now alone are
interested in, was a practice in vogue amongst grown-up ladies who had
little to do about a hundred years ago.
Ramsay died in 1757. An elderly female told a friend of mine that
she remembered, when a girl, living as an apprentice with a milliner
in the Grassmarket, being sent to Ramsay Garden to assist in
making _dead-clothes_ for the poet. She could recall, however, no
particulars of the scene but the roses blooming in at the window of the
death-chamber.
The poet’s house passed to his son, of the same name, eminent as a
painter—portrait-painter to King George III. and his queen—and a man
of high mental culture; consequently much a favourite in the circles
of Johnson and Boswell. The younger Allan enlarged the house, and
built three additional houses to the eastward, bearing the title of
Ramsay Garden. At his death, in 1784, the property went to his son,
General John Ramsay, who, dying in 1845, left this mansion and a large
fortune to Mr Murray of Henderland. So ended the line of the poet. His
daughter Christian, an amiable, kind-hearted woman, said to possess a
gift of verse, lived for many years in New Street. At seventy-four she
had the misfortune to be thrown down by a hackney-coach, and had her
leg broken; yet she recovered, and lived to the age of eighty-eight.
Leading a solitary life, she took a great fancy for cats. Besides
supporting many in her own house, curiously disposed in bandboxes,
with doors to go in and out at, she caused food to be laid out for
others on her stair and around her house. Not a word of obloquy would
she listen to against the species, alleging, when any wickedness of a
cat was spoken of, that the animal must have acted under provocation,
for by nature, she asserted, cats are harmless. Often did her maid go
with morning messages to her friends, inquiring, with her compliments,
after their pet cats. Good Miss Ramsay was also a friend to horses, and
indeed to all creatures. When she observed a carter ill-treating his
horse, she would march up to him, tax him with cruelty, and, by the
very earnestness of her remonstrances, arrest the barbarian’s hand. So
also, when she saw one labouring on the street, with the appearance of
defective diet, she would send rolls to its master, entreating him to
feed the animal. These peculiarities, although a little eccentric, are
not unpleasing; and I cannot be sorry to record them of the daughter of
one whose heart and head were an honour to his country.
[Illustration: Happy.]
[Illustration: Contented.]
[Illustration: Repose.]
[Illustration: Convivial.]
[1868.—It seems to have been unknown to the biographers of Allan
Ramsay the painter that he made a romantic marriage. In his early
days, while teaching the art of drawing in the family of Sir Alexander
Lindsay of Evelick, one of the young ladies fell in love with him,
captivated probably by the tongue which afterwards gave him the
intimacy of princes, and was undoubtedly a great source of his success
in life. The father of the enamoured girl was an old proud baronet; her
mother, a sister of the Chief-Justice, Earl of Mansfield. A marriage
with consent of parents was consequently impossible. The young people,
nevertheless, contrived to get themselves united in wedlock.
[Illustration: Allan Ramsay’s Monument, Princes Street Gardens.]
The speedily developed talent of Ramsay, the illustrious patronage they
secured to him, and the very considerable wealth which he acquired must
have in time made him an acceptable relation to those proud people. A
time came when their descendants held the connection even as an honour.
The wealth of the painter ultimately, on the death of his son in 1845,
became the property of Mr Murray of Henderland, a grandson of Sir
Alexander Lindsay and nephew of Mrs Allan Ramsay; thence it not long
after passed to Mr Murray’s brother, Sir John Archibald Murray, better
known by his judicial name of Lord Murray. This gentleman admired the
poet, and resolved to raise a statue to him beside his goose-pie house
on the Castlehill; but the situation proved unsuitable, and since his
own lamented death, in 1858, the marble full-length of worthy Allan,
from the studio of John Steell, has found a noble place in the Princes
Street Gardens, resting on a pedestal, containing on its principal side
a medallion portrait of Lord Murray, on the reverse one of General
Ramsay, on the west side one of the General’s lady, and on the east
similar representations of the General’s two daughters, Lady Campbell
and Mrs Malcolm. Thus we find—owing to the esteem which genius ever
commands—the poet of the _Gentle Shepherd_ in the immortality of
marble, surrounded by the figures of relatives and descendants who so
acknowledged their aristocratic rank to be inferior to his, derived
from mind alone.]
HOUSE OF THE GORDON FAMILY.
[Illustration: Doorway of Duke of Gordon’s House.
Now built into School in Boswell’s Court.]
Tradition points out, as the residence of the Gordon family, a house,
or rather range of buildings, situated between Blair’s and Brown’s
Closes, being almost the first mass of building in the Castle-hill
Street on the right-hand side. The southern portion is a structure
of lofty and massive form, battlemented at top, and looking out upon
a garden which formerly stretched down to the old town-wall near
the Grassmarket, but is now crossed by the access from the King’s
Bridge.[8] From the style of building, I should be disposed to assign
it a date a little subsequent to the Restoration. There are, however,
no authentic memorials respecting the alleged connection of the
Gordon family with this house,[9] unless we are to consider as of
that character a coronet resembling that of a marquis, flanked by two
deer-hounds, the well-known supporters of this noble family, which
figures over a finely moulded door in Blair’s Close.[10] The coronet
will readily be supposed to point to the time when the _Marquis of
Huntly_ was the principal honour of the family—that is, previous to
1684, when the title of Duke of Gordon was conferred.[11]
[Illustration: DUKE OF GORDON’S HOUSE.
PAGE 18.]
In more recent times, this substantial mansion was the abode of Mr
Baird of Newbyth; and here it was that the late gallant Sir David
Baird, the hero of Seringapatam, was born and brought up. Returning in
advanced life from long foreign service, this distinguished soldier
came to see the home of his youth on the Castle-hill. The respectable
individual whom I found occupying the house in 1824 received his
visitor with due respect, and after showing him through the house,
conducted him out to the garden. Here the boys of the existing tenant
were found actively engaged in throwing cabbage-stalks at the tops
of the chimneys of the houses of the Grassmarket, situated a little
below the level of the garden. On making one plump down the vent, the
youngsters set up a great shout of triumph. Sir David fell a-laughing
at sight of this example of practical waggery, and entreated the father
of the lads ‘not to be too angry; he and his brother, when living here
at the same age, had indulged in precisely the same amiable amusement,
the chimneys then, as now, being so provokingly open to such attacks
that there was no resisting the temptation.’
The whole matter might have been put into an axiomatic form—Given a
garden with cabbage-stalks, and a set of chimneys situated at an angle
of forty-five degrees below the spot, any boys turned loose into the
said garden will be sure to endeavour to bring the cabbage-stalks and
the chimneys into acquaintance.
The Citadel seems to have been a little nest of aristocracy, of the
Cavalier party. In 1745 one of its inhabitants was Dame Magdalen Bruce
of Kinross, widow of the baronet who had assisted in the Restoration.
Here lived with her the Rev. Robert Forbes, Episcopal minister of
Leith [afterwards Bishop of Orkney], from whose collections regarding
Charles Edward and his adventures a volume of extracts was published
by me in 1834. [The _Lyon in Mourning_ is here referred to, from which
Dr Chambers published a number of the narratives in his _Jacobite
Memoirs_ (1834), and from which he also utilised some information
of the Rebellion of 1745 in the preparation of his _History of the
Rebellion_. At his death he bequeathed the work to the Advocates’
Library, Edinburgh, where it now remains. It consists of eight small
octavo volumes of manuscript of about two hundred pages, each bound
in black leather, with blackened edges, and around the title-page of
each volume a deep black border. The collection was the work of the
Rev. Robert Forbes, a clergyman of the Episcopal Church of Scotland,
who became in 1762 Bishop of Ross and Caithness. It was treasured
by his widow for thirty years, and then bought by Sir Henry Stewart
of Allanton in 1806. Dr Robert Chambers unearthed it for historical
purposes, and later purchased it from Sir Henry Stewart. Some relics
which Forbes succeeded in obtaining from his correspondents—such as
a piece of the Prince’s garter, a piece of the gown he wore as Betty
Burke, and of the string of the apron he then had on, a fragment of a
waistcoat worn by the Prince, and other things—were preserved on the
inside of some of the boards of the volumes. The _Lyon in Mourning_ was
edited by Mr Henry Paton from the manuscript in the Advocates’ Library,
and published in three volumes by the Scottish History Society (1895).]
Throughout those troublous days, a little Episcopal congregation was
kept together in Leith; their place of worship being the _first floor_
of an old, dull-looking house in Queen Street (dated 1615), the lower
floor of which was, in my recollection, a police-office.
DR WEBSTER.
An isolated house which formerly stood in Webster’s Close,[12] a little
way down the Castle-hill, was the residence of the Rev. Dr Webster,
a man eminent in his day on many accounts—a leading evangelical
clergyman in Edinburgh, a statist and calculator of extraordinary
talent, and a distinguished figure in festive scenes. The first
population returns of Scotland were obtained by him in 1755; and he was
the author of that fund for the widows of the clergy of the Established
Church which has proved so great a blessing to many, and still exists
in a flourishing state.[13] He was also deep in the consultations of
the magistrates regarding the New Town.
It is not easy to reconcile the two leading characteristics of this
divine—his being the pastor of a flock of noted sternness, called,
from the church in which they assembled, the _Tolbooth Whigs_; and his
at the same time entering heartily and freely into the convivialities
of the more mirthful portion of society. Perhaps he illustrated the
maxim that one man may steal horses with impunity, &c.; for it is
related that, going home early one morning with strong symptoms of
over-indulgence upon him, and being asked by a friend who met him
‘what the Tolbooth Whigs would say if they were to see him at this
moment,’ he instantly replied: ‘They would not believe their own eyes.’
Sometimes he did fall on such occasions under plebeian observation, but
the usual remark was: ‘Ah, there’s Dr Webster, honest man, going hame,
nae doubt, frae some puir afflicted soul he has been visiting. Never
does he tire o’ well-doing!’ And so forth.
The history of Dr Webster’s marriage is romantic. When a young and
unknown man, he was employed by a friend to act as go-between,
or, as it is termed in Scotland, black-fit, or black-foot, in a
correspondence which he was carrying on with a young lady of great
beauty and accomplishment. Webster had not acted long in that
character, till the young lady, who had never entertained any affection
for his constituent, fell deeply in love with himself. Her birth and
expectations were better than his; and however much he might have been
disposed to address her on his own behalf, he never could have thought
of such a thing so long as there was such a difference between their
circumstances. The lady saw his difficulty, and resolved to overcome
it, and that in the frankest manner. At one of these interviews,
when he was exerting all his eloquence in favour of his friend, she
plainly told him that he would probably come better speed if he were
to speak for himself. He took the hint, and, in a word, was soon
after married to her. He wrote upon the occasion an amorous lyric,
which exhibits in warm colours the gratitude of a humble lover for
the favour of a mistress of superior station, and which is perhaps
as excellent altogether in its way as the finest compositions of
the kind produced in either ancient or modern times. There is one
particularly impassioned verse, in which, after describing a process of
the imagination by which, in gazing upon her, he comes to think her a
creature of more than mortal nature, he says that at length, unable to
contain, he clasps her to his bosom, and—
‘Kissing her lips, she turns woman again!’
HOUSE OF MARY DE GUISE.
The restrictions imposed upon a city requiring defence appear as one of
the forms of misery leading to strange associations. We become, in a
special degree, sensible of this truth when we see the house of a royal
personage sunk amidst the impurities of a narrow close in the Old Town
of Edinburgh. Such was literally the case of an aged pile of buildings
on the north side of the Castle-hill, behind the front line of the
street, and accessible by Blyth’s, Nairn’s, and Tod’s Closes, which was
declared by tradition to have been the residence of Mary de Guise, the
widow of James V., and from 1554 to 1560 regent of this realm.
[Illustration: Ancient Pile of Buildings, North Side of Castle-Hill.]
Descending the first of these alleys about thirty yards, we came to
a dusky, half-ruinous building on the left-hand side, presenting one
or two lofty windows and a doorway, surrounded by handsome mouldings;
the whole bearing that appearance which says: ‘There is here something
that has been of consequence, all haggard and disgraced though it now
be.’ Glancing to the opposite side of the close, where stood another
portion of the same building, the impression was confirmed by further
appearances of a goodly style of architecture. These were, in reality,
the principal portions of the palace of the Regent Mary; the former
being popularly described as her _house_, the latter as her _oratory_
or chapel. The close terminated under a portion of the building; and
when the visitor made his way so far, he found an exterior presented
northwards, with many windows, whence of old a view must have been
commanded, first of the gardens descending to the North Loch, and
second, of the Firth of Forth and Fife. One could easily understand
that, when the gardens existed, the north side of the house might have
had many pleasant apartments, and been, upon the whole, tolerable as
a place of residence, albeit the access by a narrow alley could never
have been agreeable. Latterly the site of the upper part of the garden
was occupied by a brushmaker’s workshops and yard, while the lower was
covered by the Earthen Mound. In the wall on the east side there was
included, as a mere portion of the masonry, a stray stone, which had
once been an architrave or lintel; it contained, besides an armorial
device flanked by the initials A. A., the legend NOSCE TEIPSUM, and the
date 1557.
Reverting to the door of the queen’s house, which was simply the access
of a common stair, we there found an ornamented architrave, bearing the
legend,
LAUS ET HONOR DEO,
terminated by two pieces of complicated lettering, one much
obliterated, the other a monogram of the name of the Virgin Mary,
formed of the letters M. R.[14] Finally, at the extremities of this
stone, were two Roman letters of larger size—I. R.—doubtless the
initials of James Rex, for James V., the style of cutting being
precisely the same as in the initials seen on the palace built by that
king in Stirling Castle; an indirect proof, it may be remarked, of this
having been the residence of the Regent Mary.
Passing up a spiral flight of steps, we came to a darksome lobby,
leading to a series of mean apartments, occupied by persons of the
humblest grade. Immediately within the door was a small recess in the
wall, composed of Gothic stonework, and supposed by the people to
have been designed for containing holy-water, though this may well be
matter of doubt. Overhead, in the ceiling, was a round entablature,
presenting a faded coronet over the defaced outline of a shield. A
similar object adorned the ceiling of the lobby in the second floor,
but in better preservation, as the shield bore three _fleurs de lis_,
with the coronet above, and the letters H. R. below. There was a third
of these entablatures, containing the arms of the city of Edinburgh,
in the centre of the top of the staircase. The only other curious
object in this part of the mansion was the door of one of the wretched
apartments—a specimen of carving, bearing all the appearance of having
been contemporary with the building, and containing, besides other
devices, bust portraits of a gentleman and lady. This is now in the
possession of the Society of the Antiquaries of Scotland.
A portion of the same building, accessible by a stair nearer the head
of the close, contained a hall-like apartment, with other apartments,
all remarkable for their unusually lofty ceilings. In the large room
were the remains of a spacious decorated chimney, to which, in the
recollection of persons still living, there had been attached a chain,
serving to confine the tongs to their proper domain. This was the
memorial of an old custom, of which it is not easy to see the utility,
unless some light be held as thrown upon it by a Scottish proverb,
used when a child takes a thing and says he found it: ‘You found it,
I suppose, where the Highlandman found the tongs.’ In the centre of
almost all the ceilings of this part of the mansion I found, in 1824,
circular entablatures, with coats of arms and other devices, in stucco,
evidently of good workmanship, but obscured by successive coats of
whitening.
The place pointed out by tradition as the queen-regent’s oratory was in
the first-floor of the building opposite—a spacious and lofty hall,
with large windows designed to make up for the obscurity of the close.
Here, besides a finely carved piscina, was a pretty large recess, of
Gothic structure, in the back-wall, evidently designed for keeping
things of importance. Many years ago, out of the wall behind this
recess, there had been taken a small iron box, such as might have been
employed to keep jewellery, but empty. I was the means of its being
gifted to Sir Walter Scott, who had previously told me that ‘a passion
for such little boxes was one of those that most did beset him;’ and it
is now in the collection at Abbotsford.
The other portions of the mansion, accessible from different alleys,
were generally similar to these, but somewhat finer. One chamber was
recognised as the _Deid-room_; that is, the room where individuals of
the queen’s establishment were kept between their death and burial.
It was interesting to wander through the dusky mazes of this ancient
building, and reflect that they had been occupied three centuries ago
by a sovereign princess, and one of the most illustrious lineage.
Here was the substantial monument of a connection between France and
Scotland, a totally past state of things. She whose ancestors owned
Lorraine as a sovereignty, who had spent her youth in the proud halls
of the Guises in Picardy, and been the spouse of a Longueville,
was here content to live—in a _close_ in Edinburgh! In these
obscurities, too, was a government conducted, which had to struggle
with Knox, Glencairn, James Stewart, Morton, and many other powerful
men, backed by a popular sentiment which never fails to triumph. It
was the misfortune of Mary to be placed in a position to resist the
Reformation. Her own character deserved that she should have stood
in a more agreeable relation to what Scotland now venerates, for she
was mild and just, and sincerely anxious for the good of her adopted
country. It is also proper to remember on the present occasion that ‘in
her court she maintained a decent gravity, nor would she tolerate any
licentious practices therein. Her maids of honour were always busied in
commendable exercises, she herself being an example to them in virtue,
piety, and modesty.’[15] When all is considered, and we further know
that the building was strong enough to have lasted many more ages,
one cannot but regret that the palace of Mary de Guise, reduced as it
was to vileness, should not now be in existence. The site having been
purchased by individuals connected with the Free Church, the buildings
were removed in 1846 to make room for the erection of an academical
institution or college for the use of that body.[16]
FOOTNOTES
[6] This jest was doubtless based on Swift’s famous poem on Vanbrugh’s
house (1704). The peculiar architectural features of Allan’s ‘goose
pie’ have been almost entirely obliterated by recent alterations. Only
the two circular upper stories remain in their original form.
[7] ‘My mother was told by those who had enjoyed his plays, that he had
a child’s puppet stage and a set of dressed dolls for actors, which
were in great favour with old and young.’—C. K. Sharpe’s note in
Wilson’s _Reminiscences_.
[8] King’s Bridge crosses King’s Stables Road, and the access from it
is Johnston Terrace.
[9] When Mrs Cockburn, author of ‘Flowers of the Forest,’ entered on
occupation of the house in 1756, it was described in the Baird titles
as ‘my lodging in the castle-hill of Edinburgh, formerly possessed by
the Duchess of Gordon.’
[10] A Board-school now occupies the site of the mansion. The doorway
referred to is rebuilt into the school-house.
[11] George, sixth Earl of Huntly, took his last illness, June 1636,
in ‘his house in the Canongate.’ George, the first duke, who had held
out the Castle at the Revolution, died December 1716, at his house in
the Citadel of Leith, where he appears to have occasionally resided for
some years. I should suppose the house on the Castle-hill to have been
inhabited by the family in the interval.
[12] Webster’s Close became Brown’s Close when the property changed
hands, and two brothers of that name occupied the house. To Brown’s
Close the recently formed Society of Antiquaries of Scotland removed in
1794 from Gosford’s Close, because the latter was too narrow to admit
of the members being carried to the place of meeting in sedan-chairs.
[13] Before the Government bounty had supplemented the poor stipends
of the Scotch Church up to £150, many of them were so small that the
widow’s allowance from this fund nearly equalled them. Such was the
case of Cranshaws, a pastoral parish among the Lammermoor Hills. A
former minister of Cranshaws having wooed a lass of humble rank, the
father of the lady, when consulted on the subject, said, ‘Tak’ him,
Jenny; he’s as gude deid as living!’ meaning, of course, that she would
be as well off as a widow as in the quality of a wife.
[14] ‘The monograms of the name of our blessed lady are formed of the
letters M. A., M. R., and A. M., and these stand respectively for
Maria, Maria Regina, and Ave Maria. The letter M. was often used by
itself to express the name of the Blessed Virgin, and became a vehicle
for the most beautiful ornament and design; the letter itself being
entirely composed of emblems, with some passage from the life of our
lady in the void spaces.’—_Pugin’s Glossary of Ecclesiastical Ornament
and Costume_, 1844.
[15] Keith’s History.
[16] The New College and Assembly Hall of the (United) Free Church.
THE WEST BOW.
THE BOWHEAD—WEIGH-HOUSE—ANDERSON’S PILLS—ORATORIES—COLONEL
GARDINER—‘BOWHEAD SAINTS’—‘THE SEIZERS’—STORY OF A JACOBITE
CANARY—MAJOR WEIR—TULZIES—THE TINKLARIAN DOCTOR—OLD
ASSEMBLY ROOM—PAUL ROMIEU—‘HE THAT THOLES OVERCOMES’—PROVOST
STEWART—DONALDSONS THE BOOKSELLERS—BOWFOOT—THE TEMPLARS’
LANDS—THE GALLOWS STONE.
[The West Bow has long since disappeared as a street; see note
on p. 54.]
In a central part of Old Edinburgh—the very Little Britain of our
city—is a curious, angular, whimsical-looking street, of great
steepness and narrowness, called the West Bow. Serving as a connection
between the Grassmarket and Lawnmarket, between the Low and the High
Town, it is of considerable fame in our city annals as a passage for
the entry of sovereigns, and the scene of the quaint ceremonials used
on those occasions. In more modern times, it has been chiefly notable
in the recollections of country-people as a nest of the peculiarly
noisy tradesmen, the white-iron smiths, which causes Robert Fergusson
to mark, as one of the features of Edinburgh deserted for a holiday:
‘The tinkler billies[17] o’ the Bow
Are now less eident[18] clinkin.’
Another remarkable circumstance connected with the street in the
popular mind is its having been the residence of the famed wizard,
Major Weir. All of these particulars serve to make it a noteworthy
sort of place, and the impression is much favoured by its actual
appearance. A perfect Z in figure, composed of tall antique houses,
with numerous dovecot-like gables projecting over the footway, full
of old inscriptions and sculpturings, presenting at every few steps
some darksome lateral profundity, into which the imagination wanders
without hindrance or exhaustion, it seems eminently a place of old
grandmothers’ tales, and sure at all times to maintain a ghost or two
in its community. When I descend into particulars, it will be seen what
grounds there truly are for such a surmise.
To begin with
THE BOWHEAD.
[Illustration: THE BOWHEAD.
PAGE 27.]
This is a comparatively open space, though partially straightened
again by the insertion in it of a clumsy, detached old building
called the _Weigh-house_, where enormous masses of butter and cheese
are continually getting disposed of. Prince Charles had his guard
at the Weigh-house when blockading the Castle; using, however, for
this purpose, not the house itself, but a floor of the adjacent tall
tenement in the Lawnmarket, which appears to have been selected on a
very intelligible principle, in as far as it was the deserted mansion
of one of the city clergy, the same Rev. George Logan who carried on a
controversy with Thomas Ruddiman, in which he took unfavourable views
of the title of the Stuart family to the throne, not only then, but at
any time. It was, no doubt, as an additional answer to a bad pamphlet
that the Highlanders took up their quarters at Mr Logan’s.
ANDERSON’S PILLS.
In this tall _land_, dated 1690, there is a house on the second-floor
where that venerable drug, Dr Anderson’s pills, is sold, and has
been so for above a century. As is well known, the country-people in
Scotland have to this day [1824] a peculiar reverence for these pills,
which are, I believe, really a good form of aloetic medicine. They
took their origin from a physician of the time of Charles I., who gave
them his name. From his daughter, Lillias Anderson, the patent came
to a person designed Thomas Weir, who left it to his daughter. The
widow of this last person’s nephew, Mrs Irving, is now the patentee; a
lady of advanced age, who facetiously points to the very brief series
of proprietors intervening between Dr Anderson and herself, as no
inexpressive indication of the virtue of the medicine. [Mrs Irving died
in 1837, at the age of ninety-nine.] Portraits of Anderson and his
daughter are preserved in this house: the physician in a Vandyke dress,
with a book in his hand; the lady, a precise-looking dame, with a pill
in her hand about the size of a walnut, saying a good deal for the
stomachs of our ancestors. The people also show a glove which belonged
to the learned physician.
[1868.—In 1829 Mrs Irving lived in a neat, self-contained mansion in
Chessels’s Court, in the Canongate, along with her son, General Irving,
and some members of his family. The old lady, then ninety-one, was
good enough to invite me to dinner, when I likewise found two younger
sisters of hers, respectively eighty-nine and ninety. She sat firm and
collected at the head of the table, and carved a leg of mutton with
perfect propriety. She then told me, at her son’s request, that in the
year 1745, when Prince Charles’s army was in possession of the town,
she, a child of four years, walked with her nurse to Holyrood Palace,
and seeing a Highland gentleman standing in the doorway, she went
up to him to examine his peculiar attire. She even took the liberty
of lifting up his kilt a little way; whereupon her nurse, fearing
some danger, started forward for her protection. But the gentleman
only patted her head, and said something kind to her. I felt it as
very curious to sit as guest with a person who had mingled in the
Forty-five. But my excitement was brought to a higher pitch when,
on ascending to the drawing-room, I found the general’s daughter, a
pretty young woman recently married, sitting there, dressed in a suit
of clothes belonging to one of the nonagenarian aunts—a very fine one
of flowered satin, with elegant cap and lappets, and silk shoes three
inches deep in the heel—the same having been worn by the venerable
owner just seventy years before at a Hunters’ Ball at Holyrood Palace.
The contrast between the former and the present wearer—the old lady
shrunk and taciturn, and her young representative full of life and
resplendent in joyous beauty—had an effect upon me which it would be
impossible to describe. To this day, I look upon the Chessels’s Court
dinner as one of the most extraordinary events in my life.]
[Illustration: Chessels’s Court, Canongate.]
ORATORIES—COLONEL GARDINER.
This house presents a feature which forms a curious memorial of the
manners of a past age. In common with all the houses built from
about 1690 to 1740—a substantial class, still abundant in the High
Street—there is at the end of each row of windows corresponding to
a separate mansion, a narrow slit-like window, such as might suffice
for a closet. In reality, each of these narrow apertures gives light
to a small cell—much too small to require such a window—usually
entering from the dining-room or some other principal apartment.
The use of these cells was to serve as a retreat for the master of
the house, wherein he might perform his devotions. The father of a
family was in those days a sacred kind of person, not to be approached
by wife or children too familiarly, and expected to be a priest in
his own household. Besides his family devotions, he retired to a
closet for perhaps an hour each day to utter his own prayers;[19]
and so regular was the custom that it gave rise, as we see, to this
peculiarity in house-building. Nothing could enable us more clearly
to appreciate that strong outward demonstration of religious feeling
which pervaded the nation for half a century after the agonies of ‘the
Persecution.’ I cannot help here mentioning the interest with which
I have visited Bankton House,[20] in East Lothian, where, as is well
known, Colonel Gardiner spent several years of his life. The oratory
of the pious soldier is pointed out by tradition, and it forms even a
more expressive memorial of the time than the closets in the Edinburgh
houses. Connected with a small front room, which might have been a
library or _study_, is a little recess, such as dust-pans and brooms
are kept in, consisting of the angular space formed by a stair which
passes overhead to the upper floor. This place is wholly without light,
yet it is said to have been the place sacred to poor Gardiner’s private
devotions. What leaves hardly any doubt on the matter is that there has
been a wooden bolt within, capable only of being shot from the inside,
and therefore unquestionably used by a person desiring to shut himself
in. Here, therefore, in this darksome, stifling little cell, had this
extraordinary man spent hours in those devotional exercises by which he
was so much distinguished from his class.[21]
BOWHEAD SAINTS—SEIZERS—A JACOBITE BLACKBIRD.
In the latter part of the seventeenth century, the inhabitants of
the West Bow enjoyed a peculiar fame for their piety and zeal in
the Covenanting cause. The wits of the opposite faction are full of
allusions to them as ‘the Bowhead Saints,’ ‘the godly plants of the
Bowhead,’ and so forth. [This is the basis of an allusion by a later
Cavalier wit, when describing the exit of Lord Dundee from Edinburgh,
on the occasion of the settlement of the crown upon William and Mary:
‘As he rode down the sanctified bends of the Bow,
Ilka carline was flyting, and shaking her pow;
But some young plants of grace, that looked couthie and slie,
Said: “Luck to thy bonnet, thou bonnie Dundee!”’
It is to be feared that Sir Walter has here shown a relenting towards
the ‘young plants,’ for which they would not have thanked him.] All the
writings of the wits of their own time speak of the system to which
they were opposed as one of unmitigated sternness. It was in those days
a custom to patrol the streets during the time of divine service, and
take into captivity all persons found walking abroad; and indeed make
seizure of whatever could be regarded as guilty of Sabbath-breaking.
It is said that, led by a sneaking sense, the patrol one day lighted
upon a joint of meat in the course of being roasted, and made prize of
it, leaving the graceless owner to chew the spit. On another occasion,
about the year 1735, a capture of a different kind was made. ‘The
people about that time,’ says Arnot, ‘were in use to teach their birds
to chant the songs of their party. It happened that the blackbird of an
honest Jacobitical barber, which from his cage on the outside of the
window gave offence to the zealous Whigs by his songs, was neglected,
on a Saturday evening, to be brought within the house. Next morning
he tuned his pipe to the usual air, _The king shall enjoy his own
again_. One of the _seizers_, in his holy zeal, was enraged at this
manifestation of impiety and treason in one of the feathered tribe.
He went up to the house, seized the bird and the cage, and with much
solemnity lodged them in the City-Guard.’[22] Pennycook, a burgess
bard of the time, represents the officer as addressing the bird:
‘Had ye been taught by me, a _Bowhead saint_,
You’d sung the Solemn League and Covenant,
Bessy of Lanark, or the Last Good-night;
But you’re a bird prelatic—that’s not right....
Oh could my baton reach the laverocks too,
They’re chirping _Jamie, Jamie_, just like you:
I hate vain birds that lead malignant lives,
But love the chanters to the Bowhead wives.’
MAJOR WEIR.[23]
[Illustration: Major Weir’s House.]
It must have been a sad scandal to this peculiar community when
Major Weir, one of their number, was found to have been so wretched
an example of human infirmity. The house occupied by this man still
exists, though in an altered shape, in a little court accessible by
a narrow passage near the first angle of the street. His history is
obscurely reported; but it appears that he was of a good family in
Lanarkshire, and had been one of the ten thousand men sent by the
Scottish Covenanting Estates in 1641 to assist in suppressing the Irish
Papists. He became distinguished for a life of peculiar sanctity,
even in an age when that was the prevailing tone of the public mind.
According to a contemporary account: ‘His garb was still a cloak, and
somewhat dark, and he never went without his staff. He was a tall black
man, and ordinarily looked down to the ground; _a grim countenance,
and a big nose_. At length he became so notoriously regarded among the
Presbyterian strict sect, that if four met together, be sure Major
Weir was one. At private meetings he prayed to admiration, which made
many of that stamp court his converse. He never married, but lived in
a private lodging with his sister, Grizel Weir. Many resorted to his
house, to join him and hear him pray; but it was observed that he could
not officiate in any holy duty without the black staff, or rod, in his
hand, and leaning upon it, which made those who heard him pray admire
his flood in prayer, his ready extemporary expression, his heavenly
gesture; so that he was thought more angel than man, and was termed
by some of the holy sisters ordinarily _Angelical Thomas_.’ Plebeian
imaginations have since fructified regarding the staff, and crones
will still seriously tell how it could run a message to a shop for
any article which its proprietor wanted; how it could answer the door
when any one called upon its master; and that it used to be often seen
running before him, in the capacity of a link-boy, as he walked down
the Lawnmarket.
After a life characterised externally by all the graces of devotion,
but polluted in secret by crimes of the most revolting nature, and
which little needed the addition of wizardry to excite the horror of
living men, Major Weir fell into a severe sickness, which affected his
mind so much that he made open and voluntary confession of all his
wickedness. The tale was at first so incredible that the provost, Sir
Andrew Ramsay,[24] refused for some time to take him into custody. At
length himself, his sister (partner of one of his crimes), and his
staff were secured by the magistrates, together with certain sums
of money, which were found wrapped up in rags in different parts of
the house. One of these pieces of rag being thrown into the fire by
a bailie, who had taken the whole in charge, flew up the chimney,
and made an explosion like a cannon. While the wretched man lay in
prison, he made no scruple to disclose the particulars of his guilt,
but refused to address himself to the Almighty for pardon. To every
request that he would pray, he answered in screams: ‘Torment me no
more—I am tormented enough already!’ Even the offer of a Presbyterian
clergyman, instead of an established Episcopal minister of the city,
had no effect upon him. He was tried April 9, 1670, and being found
guilty, was sentenced to be strangled and burnt between Edinburgh and
Leith. His sister, who was tried at the same time, was sentenced to be
hanged in the Grassmarket. The execution of the profligate major took
place, April 14, at the place indicated by the judge. When the rope
was about his neck, to prepare him for the fire, he was bid to say:
‘Lord, be merciful to me!’ but he answered as before: ‘Let me alone—I
will not—I have lived as a beast, and I must die as a beast!’ After
he had dropped lifeless in the flames, his stick was also cast into
the fire; and, ‘whatever incantation was in it,’ says the contemporary
writer already quoted,[25] ‘the persons present own that it gave rare
turnings, and was long a-burning, as also himself.’
The conclusion to which the humanity of the present age would come
regarding Weir—that he was mad—is favoured by some circumstances;
for instance, his answering one who asked if he had ever seen the
devil, that ‘the only feeling he ever had of him was in the dark.’ What
chiefly countenances the idea is the unequivocal lunacy of the sister.
This miserable woman confessed to witchcraft, and related, in a serious
manner, many things which could not be true. Many years before, a fiery
coach, she said, had come to her brother’s door in broad day, and a
stranger invited them to enter, and they proceeded to Dalkeith. On the
way, another person came and whispered in her brother’s ear something
which affected him; it proved to be supernatural intelligence of the
defeat of the Scotch army at Worcester, which took place that day. Her
brother’s power, she said, lay in his staff. She also had a gift for
spinning above other women, but the yarn broke to pieces in the loom.
Her mother, she declared, had been also a witch. ‘The secretest thing
that I, or any of the family could do, when once a mark appeared upon
her brow, she could tell it them, though done at a great distance.’
This mark could also appear on her own forehead when she pleased. At
the request of the company present, ‘she put back her head-dress, and
seeming to frown, there was an exact horse-shoe shaped for nails in her
wrinkles, terrible enough, I assure you, to the stoutest beholder.’[26]
At the place of execution she acted in a furious manner, and with
difficulty could be prevented from throwing off her clothes, in order
to die, as she said, ‘with all the shame she could.’
The treatise just quoted makes it plain that the case of Weir and his
sister had immediately become a fruitful theme for the imaginations
of the vulgar. We there receive the following story: ‘Some few
days before he discovered himself, a gentlewoman coming from the
Castle-hill, where her husband’s niece was lying-in of a child, about
midnight perceived about the Bowhead three women in windows shouting,
laughing, and clapping their hands. The gentlewoman went forward,
till, at Major Weir’s door, there arose, as from the street, a woman
about the length of two ordinary females, and stepped forward. The
gentlewoman, not as yet excessively feared, bid her maid step on, if
by the lantern they could see what she was; but haste what they could,
this long-legged spectre was still before them, moving her body with a
vehement cachinnation and great unmeasurable laughter. At this rate the
two strove for place, till the giantess came to a narrow lane in the
Bow, commonly called the Stinking Close, into which she turning, and
the gentlewoman looking after her, perceived the close full of flaming
torches (she could give them no other name), and as if it had been a
great number of people stentoriously laughing, and gaping with tahees
of laughter. This sight, at so dead a time of night, no people being
in the windows belonging to the close, made her and her servant haste
home, declaring all that they saw to the rest of the family.’
For upwards of a century after Major Weir’s death, he continued to
be the bugbear of the Bow, and his house remained uninhabited. His
apparition was frequently seen at night, flitting, like a black and
silent shadow, about the street. His house, though known to be deserted
by everything human, was sometimes observed at midnight to be full of
lights, and heard to emit strange sounds, as of dancing, howling, and,
what is strangest of all, spinning. Some people occasionally saw the
major issue from the low close at midnight, mounted on a black horse
without a head, and gallop off in a whirlwind of flame. Nay, sometimes
the whole of the inhabitants of the Bow would be roused from their
sleep at an early hour in the morning by the sound as of a coach and
six, first rattling up the Lawnmarket, and then thundering down the
Bow, stopping at the head of the terrible close for a few minutes, and
then rattling and thundering back again—being neither more nor less
than Satan come in one of his best equipages to take home the major and
his sister, after they had spent a night’s leave of absence in their
terrestrial dwelling.
About fifty years ago, when the shades of superstition began
universally to give way in Scotland, Major Weir’s house came to be
regarded with less terror by the neighbours, and an attempt was made
by the proprietor to find a person who should be bold enough to
inhabit it. Such a person was procured in William Patullo, a poor man
of dissipated habits, who, having been at one time a soldier and a
traveller, had come to disregard in a great measure the superstitions
of his native country, and was now glad to possess a house upon the
low terms offered by the landlord, at whatever risk. Upon its being
known that Major Weir’s house was about to be reinhabited, a great deal
of curiosity was felt by people of all ranks as to the result of the
experiment; for there was scarcely a native of the city who had not
felt, since his boyhood, an intense interest in all that concerned that
awful fabric, and yet remembered the numerous terrible stories which
he had heard respecting it. Even before entering upon his hazardous
undertaking, William Patullo was looked upon with a flattering sort
of interest, similar to that which we feel respecting a regiment on
the march to active conflict. It was the hope of many that he would
be the means of retrieving a valuable possession from the dominion
of darkness. But Satan soon let them know that he does not tamely
relinquish any of the outposts of his kingdom.
On the very first night after Patullo and his spouse had taken up their
abode in the house, as the worthy couple were lying awake in their bed,
not unconscious of a certain degree of fear—a dim, uncertain light
proceeding from the gathered embers of their fire, and all being silent
around them—they suddenly saw a form like that of a calf, which came
forward to the bed, and, setting its forefeet upon the stock, looked
steadfastly at the unfortunate pair. When it had contemplated them thus
for a few minutes, to their great relief it at length took itself away,
and, slowly retiring, gradually vanished from their sight. As might
be expected, they deserted the house next morning; and for another
half-century no other attempt was made to embank this part of the world
of light from the aggressions of the world of darkness.
It may here be mentioned that, at no very remote time, there were
several houses in the Old Town which had the credit of being haunted.
It is said there is one at this day in the Lawnmarket (a flat), which
has been shut up from time immemorial. The story goes that one night,
as preparations were making for a supper-party, something occurred
which obliged the family, as well as all the assembled guests, to
retire with precipitation, and lock up the house. From that night it
has never once been opened, nor was any of the furniture withdrawn:
the very goose which was undergoing the process of being roasted at
the time of the occurrence is still at the fire! No one knows to whom
the house belongs; no one ever inquires after it; no one living ever
saw the inside of it; it is a condemned house! There is something
peculiarly dreadful about a house under these circumstances. What
sights of horror might present themselves if it were entered! Satan is
the _ultimus hæres_ of all such unclaimed property!
Besides the many old houses that are haunted, there are several endowed
with the simple credit of having been the scenes of murders and
suicides. Some contain rooms which had particular names commemorative
of such events, and these names, handed down as they had been from
one generation to another, usually suggested the remembrance of some
dignified Scottish families, probably the former tenants of the houses.
There is a common-stair in the Lawnmarket which was supposed to be
haunted by the ghost of a gentleman who had been mysteriously killed,
about a century ago, in open daylight, as he was ascending to his own
house: the affair was called to mind by old people on the similar
occasion of the murder of Begbie. A deserted house in Mary King’s
Close (behind the Royal Exchange) is believed by some to have met
with that fate for a very fearful reason. The inhabitants of a remote
period were, it is said, compelled to abandon it by the supernatural
appearances which took place in it on the very first night after they
had made it their residence. At midnight, as the goodman was sitting
with his wife by the fire reading his Bible, and intending immediately
to go to bed, a strange dimness which suddenly fell upon his light
caused him to raise his eyes from the book. He looked at the candle,
and saw it burning blue. Terror took possession of his frame. Turning
away his eyes, there was, directly before him, and apparently not two
yards off, the head as of a dead person, looking him straight in the
face. There was nothing but a head, though that seemed to occupy the
precise situation in regard to the floor which it might have done had
it been supported by a body of the ordinary stature. The man and his
wife fainted with terror. On awaking, darkness pervaded the room.
Presently the door opened, and in came a hand holding a candle. This
came and stood—that is, the body supposed to be attached to the hand
stood—beside the table, whilst the terrified pair saw two or three
couples of feet skip along the floor, as if dancing. The scene lasted
a short time, but vanished quite away upon the man gathering strength
to invoke the protection of Heaven. The house was of course abandoned,
and remained ever afterwards shut up. Such were grandams’ tales at no
remote period in our northern capital:
‘Where Learning, with his eagle eyes,
Seeks Science in her coy abode.’
TULZIES.
At the Bowhead there happened, in the year 1596, a combat between James
Johnston of Westerhall and a gentleman of the house of Somerville,
which is thus related in that curious book, the _Memorie of the
Somervilles_.
‘The other actione wherein Westerhall was concerned happened three
years thereftir in Edinburgh, and was only personal on the same
account, betwext Westerhall and Bread (Broad) Hugh Somervill of the
Writes. This gentleman had often formerly foughten with Westerhall upon
equal termes, and being now in Edinburgh about his privat affaires,
standing at the head of the West Bow, Westerhall by accident comeing up
the same, some officious and unhappy fellow says to Westerhall: “There
is Bread Hugh Somervill of the Writes.” Whereupon Westerhall, fancying
he stood there either to waitt him, or out of contempt, he immediately
marches up with his sword drawen, and with the opening of his mouth,
crying: “Turne, villane;” he cuttes Writes in the hint head a deep and
sore wound, the foullest stroak that ever Westerhall was knoune to
give, acknowledged soe, and much regrated eftirwards by himself. Writes
finding himself strucken and wounded, seeing Westerhall (who had not
offered to double his stroak), drawes, and within a short tyme puttes
Westerhall to the defensive part; for being the taller man, and one of
the strongest of his time, with the advantage of the hill, he presses
him sore. Westerhall reteires by little, traverseing the breadth of
the Bow, to gain the advantage of the ascent, to supply the defect of
nature, being of low stature, which Writes observeing, keepes closse to
him, and beares him in front, that he might not quyte what good-fortune
and nature had given him. Thus they continued neer a quarter of ane
hour, clearing the callsay,[27] so that in all the strait Bow there
was not one to be seen without their shop doores, neither durst any man
attempt to red them, every stroak of their swords threatening present
death both to themselves and others that should come neer them. Haveing
now come from the head of the Bow neer to the foot thereof, Westerhall
being in a pair of black buites, which for ordinary he wore closse
drawen up, was quyte tyred. Therefore he stepes back within a shop
doore, and stood upon his defence. The very last stroak that Writes
gave went neer to have brocken his broad sword in peaces, haveing
hitt the lintell of the door, the marke whereof remained there a long
tyme. Thereftir, the toune being by this tyme all in ane uproar, the
halbertiers comeing to seaze upon them, they wer separated and privatly
convoyed to ther chambers. Ther wounds but slight, except that which
Writes had upon his head proved very dangerous; for ther was many bones
taken out of it; however, at lenth, he was perfectly cured, and the
parties themselves, eftir Hugh Lord Somerville’s death, reconcealled,
and all injuries forgotten.’
In times of civil war, personal rencontres of this kind, and even
skirmishes between bands of armed men—usually called tulzies—were of
no unfrequent occurrence upon the streets of Edinburgh. They abounded
during the troublous time of the minority of James VI. On the 24th of
November 1567, the Laird of Airth and the Laird of Wemyss met upon
the High Street, and, together with their followers, fought a bloody
battle, ‘many,’ as Birrel the chronicler reports, ‘being hurte on both
sides by shote of pistoll.’ Three days afterwards there was a strict
proclamation, forbidding ‘the wearing of guns or pistolls, or aney
sick-like fyerwork ingyne, under ye paine of death, the king’s guards
and shouldours only excepted.’ This circumstance seems to be referred
to in _The Abbot_, where the Regent Murray, in allusion to Lord
Seyton’s rencontre with the Leslies, in which Roland Græme had borne
a distinguished part, says: ‘These broils and feuds would shame the
capital of the Great Turk, let alone that of a Christian and reformed
state. But if I live, this gear shall be amended; and men shall say,’
&c.
On the 30th of July 1588, according to the same authority, Sir William
Stewart was slain in Blackfriars Wynd by the Earl of Bothwell [the
fifth earl], who was the most famed disturber of the public peace in
those times. The quarrel had arisen on a former occasion, on account of
some despiteful language used by Sir William, when the fiery earl vowed
the destruction of his enemy in words too shocking to be repeated; ‘sua
therafter rancountering Sir William in ye Blackfriar Wynd by chance,
told him he vold now ...; and vith yat drew his sword; Sir William
standing to hes defence, and having hes back at ye vall, ye earle mad a
thrust at him vith his raper, and strake him in at the back and out at
the belley, and killed him.’
Ten years thereafter, one Robert Cathcart, who had been with the Earl
of Bothwell on this occasion, though it does not appear that he took an
active hand in the murder, was slain in revenge by William Stewart, son
of the deceased, while standing inoffensively at the head of Peebles
Wynd, near the Tron.
In June 1605, one William Thomson, a dagger-maker in the West Bow,
which was even then remarkable for iron-working handicraftsmen, was
slain by John Waterstone, a neighbour of his own, who was next day
beheaded on the Castle-hill for his crime.
In 1640, the Lawnmarket was the scene of a personal combat between
Major Somerville, commander of the forces then in the Castle, devoted
to the Covenanting interest (a relation of Braid Hugh in the preceding
extract), and one Captain Crawfuird, which is related in the following
picturesque and interesting manner by the same writer: ‘But it would
appear this gentleman conceived his affront being publict, noe
satisfactione acted in a private way could save his honour; therefore
to repair the same, he resolves to challange and fight Somervill upon
the High Street of Edenburgh, and at such a tyme when ther should be
most spectators. In order to this designe, he takes the occasione, as
this gentleman was betwext ten and eleven hours in the foirnoon hastily
comeing from the Castle (haveing been then sent for to the Committie of
Estates and General Leslie anent some important busines), to assault
him in this manner; Somervill being past the Weigh-house, Captaine
Crawfuird observeing him, presentlie steps into a high chope upon the
south side of the Landmercat, and there layes by his cloak, haveing a
long broad sword and a large Highland durke by his side; he comes up to
Somervill, and without farder ceremonie sayes: “If you be a pretty man,
draw your sword;” and with that word pulles out his oune sword with
the dagger. Somervill at first was somewhat stertled at the impudence
and boldnesse of the man that durst soe openly and avowedly assault
him, being in publict charge, and even then on his duty. But his honour
and present preservatione gave him noe tyme to consult the conveniency
or inconveniency he was now under, either as to his present charge or
disadvantage of weapons, haveing only a great kaine staff[28] in his
hand, which for ordinary he walked still with, and that same sword
which Generall Rivane had lately gifted him, being a half-rapper sword
backed, hinging in a shoulder-belt far back, as the fashion was then,
he was forced to guaird two or three strokes with his kaine before he
got out his sword, which being now drawne, he soon puts his adversary
to the defencive part, by bearing up soe close to him, and putting home
his thrusts, that the captaine, for all his courage and advantage of
weapons, was forced to give back, having now much adoe to parie the
redoubled thrusts that Somervill let in at him, being now agoeing.
‘The combat (for soe in effect it was, albeit accidental) begane about
the midle of the Landmercat. Somervill drives doune the captaine, still
fighting, neer to the goldsmiths’ chops, where, fearing to be nailled
to the boords (these chops being then all of timber), he resolved by
ane notable blow to revenge all his former affronts; makeing thairfor a
fent, as if he had designed at Somervill’s right side, haveing parried
his thrust with his dagger, he suddenly turnes his hand, and by a
back-blow with his broadsword he thought to have hamshekelled[29] him
in one, if not both of his legges, which Somervill only prevented by
nimbly leaping backward at the tyme, interposeing the great kaine that
was in his left hand, which was quyte cut through with the violence of
the blow. And now Providence soe ordered it, that the captaine missing
his mark, overstrake himself soe far, that in tyme he could not recover
his sword to a fit posture of defence, untill Somervill, haveing beaten
up the dagger that was in the captaine’s left hand with the remaineing
part of his oune stick, he instantly closes with him, and with the
pummil of his sword he instantly strikes him doune to the ground, where
at first, because of his baseness, he was mynded to have nailled him
to the ground, but that his heart relented, haveing him in his mercy.
And att that same instant ther happened several of his oune soulders
to come in, who wer soe incensed, that they wer ready to have cut the
poor captaine all in pieces, if he had not rescued him out of theire
hands, and saw him safely convoyed to prisone, where he was layd in
the irones, and continued in prisone in a most miserable and wretched
condition somewhat more than a year.’[30]
THE TINKLARIAN DOCTOR.
In the early part of the last century, the Bowhead was distinguished as
the residence of an odd, half-crazy varlet of a tinsmith named William
Mitchell, who occasionally held forth as a preacher, and every now
and then astounded the quiet people of Edinburgh with some pamphlet
full of satirical personalities. He seems to have been altogether a
strange mixture of fanaticism, humour, and low cunning. In one of his
publications—a single broadside, dated 1713—he has a squib upon the
magistrates, in the form of a _leit_, or list, of a new set, whom he
proposes to introduce in their stead. At the end he sets forward a
claim on his own behalf, no less than that of representing the city in
parliament. In another of his prose pieces he gives a curious account
of a journey which he made into France, where, he affirms, ‘the king’s
court is six times bigger than the king of Britain’s; his guards have
all feathers in their hats, and their horse-tails are to their heels;
and their king [Louis XV.] is one of the best-favoured boys that
you can look upon—blithe-like, with black hair; and all his people
are better natured in general than the Scots or English, except the
priests. Their women seem to be modest, for they have no fardingales.
The greatest wonder I saw in France, was to see the braw people fall
down on their knees on the clarty ground when the priest comes by,
carrying the cross, to give a sick person the sacrament.’
The Tinklarian Doctor, for such was his popular appellation, appears to
have been fully acquainted with an ingenious expedient, long afterwards
held in view by publishers of juvenile toy-books. As in certain sage
little histories of Tommy and Harry, King Pepin, &c., we are sure
to find that ‘the good boy who loved his lessons’ always bought his
books from ‘kind, good, old Mr J. Newberry, at the corner of St Paul’s
Churchyard, where the greatest assortment of nice books for good boys
and girls is always to be had’—so in the works of Mr Mitchell we find
some sly encomium upon the Tinklarian Doctor constantly peeping forth;
and in the pamphlet from which the above extract is made, he is not
forgetful to impress his professional excellence as a whitesmith.
‘I have,’ he says, ‘a good pennyworth of pewter spoons, fine, like
silver—none such made in Edinburgh—and silken pocks for wigs, and
French white pearl-beads; all to be sold for little or nothing.’ _Vide_
‘A part of the works of that Eminent Divine and Historian, Dr William
Mitchell, Professor of Tinklarianism in the University of the BOWHEAD;
being a Syze of Divinity, Humanity, History, Philosophy, Law, and
Physick; Composed at Various Occasions for his own Satisfaction and the
World’s Illumination.’ In his works—all of which were adorned with a
cut of the Mitchell arms—he does not scruple to make the personages
whom he introduces speak of himself as a much wiser man than the
Archbishop of Canterbury, all the clergymen of his native country, and
even the magistrates of Edinburgh! One of his last productions was
a pamphlet on the murder of Captain Porteous, which he concludes by
saying, in the true spirit of a Cameronian martyr: ‘If the king and
clergy gar hang me for writing this, I’m content, because it is long
since any man was hanged for religion.’ The learned Tinklarian was
destined, however, to die in his bed—an event which came to pass in
the year 1740.
The profession of which the Tinklarian Doctor subscribed himself
a member has long been predominant in the West Bow. We see from a
preceding extract that it reckoned dagger-makers among its worthy
denizens in the reign of James VI. But this trade has long been
happily extinct everywhere in Scotland; though their less formidable
brethren the whitesmiths, coppersmiths, and pewterers have continued
down to our own day to keep almost unrivalled possession of the Bow.
Till within these few years, there was scarcely a shop in this street
occupied by other tradesmen; and it might be supposed that the noise
of so many hammermen, pent up in a narrow thoroughfare, would be
extremely annoying to the neighbourhood. Yet however disagreeable their
clattering might seem to strangers, it is generally admitted that the
people who lived in the West Bow became habituated to the noise, and
felt no inconvenience whatever from its ceaseless operation upon their
ears. Nay, they rather experienced inconvenience from its cessation,
and only felt annoyed when any period of rest arrived and stopped it.
Sunday morning, instead of favouring repose, made them restless; and
when they removed to another part of the town, beyond the reach of
the sound, sleep was unattainable in the morning for some weeks, till
they got accustomed to the quiescence of their new neighbourhood. An
old gentleman once told me that, having occasion in his youth to lodge
for a short time in the West Bow, he found the incessant clanking
extremely disagreeable, and at last entered into a paction with some
of the workmen in his immediate neighbourhood, who promised to let him
have another hour of quiet sleep in the mornings for the consideration
of some such matter as half-a-crown to drink on Saturday night. The
next day happening (out of his knowledge) to be some species of Saint
Monday, his annoyers did not work at all; but such was the force of a
habit acquired even in a week or little more, that our friend awoke
precisely at the moment when the hammers used to commence; and he was
glad to get his bargain cancelled as soon as possible, for fear of
another morning’s want of disturbance.
OLD ASSEMBLY-ROOM.
At the first angle of the Bow, on the west side of the street, is a
tall picturesque-looking house, which tradition points to as having
been the first place where the fashionables of Edinburgh held their
dancing assemblies. Over the door is a well-cut sculpture of the arms
of the Somerville family, together with the initials P. J. and J.
W., and the date 1602. These are memorials of the original owner of
the mansion, a certain Peter Somerville, a wealthy citizen, at one
time filling a dignified situation in the magistracy, and father of
Bartholomew Somerville, who was a noted benefactor to the then infant
university of Edinburgh. The architrave also bears a legend (the title
of the eleventh psalm):
IN DOMINO CONFIDO.
Ascending by the narrow spiral stair, we come to the second floor, now
occupied by a dealer in wool, but presenting such appearances as leave
no doubt that it once consisted of a single lofty wainscoted room, with
a carved oak ceiling. Here, then, did the fair ladies whom Allan Ramsay
and William Hamilton celebrate meet for the recreation of dancing with
their toupeed and deep-skirted beaux. There in that little side-room,
formed by an _outshot_ from the building, did the merry sons of Euterpe
retire to _rosin their bows_ during the intervals of the performance.
Alas! dark are the walls which once glowed with festive light; burdened
is that floor, not with twinkling feet, but with the most sluggish of
inanimate substances. And as for the fiddlers-room—enough:
‘A merry place it was in days of yore,
But something ails it now—the place is cursed.’[31]
[Illustration: Old Assembly-Room.]
Dancing, although said to be a favourite amusement and exercise of the
Scottish people, has always been discountenanced, more or less, in the
superior circles of society, or only indulged after a very abstemious
and rigid fashion, until a comparatively late age. Everything that
could be called public or promiscuous amusement was held in abhorrence
by the Presbyterians, and only struggled through a desultory and
degraded existence by the favour of the Jacobites, who have always
been a less strait-laced part of the community. Thus there was nothing
like a conventional system of dancing in Edinburgh till the year 1710,
when at length a private association was commenced under the name of
‘the Assembly;’ and probably its first quarters were in this humble
domicile. The persecution which it experienced from rigid thinkers and
the uninstructed populace of that age would appear to have been very
great. On one occasion, we are told, the company were assaulted by an
infuriated rabble, and the door of their hall perforated with red-hot
spits.[32] Allan Ramsay, who was the friend of all amusements, which
he conceived to tend only to cheer this sublunary scene of care, thus
alludes to the Assembly:
‘Sic as against the Assembly speak,
The rudest sauls betray,
When matrons noble, wise, and meek,
Conduct the healthfu’ play;
Where they appear nae vice daur keek,
But to what’s guid gies way,
Like night, sune as the morning creek
Has ushered in the day.
Dear E’nburgh, shaw thy gratitude,
And o’ sic friends mak sure,
Wha strive to mak our minds less rude,
And help our wants to cure;
Acting a generous part and guid,
In bounty to the poor:
Sic virtues, if right understood,
Should every heart allure.’
We can easily see from this, and other symptoms, that the Assembly
had to make many sacrifices to the spirit which sought to abolish it.
In reality, the dancing was conducted under such severe rules as to
render the whole affair more like a night at La Trappe than anything
else. So lately as 1753, when the Assembly had fallen under the control
of a set of directors, and was much more of a public affair than
formerly, we find Goldsmith giving the following graphic account of its
meetings in a letter to a friend in his own country. The author of the
_Deserted Village_ was now studying the medical profession, it must be
recollected, at the university of Edinburgh:
‘Let me say something of their balls, which are very frequent here.
When a stranger enters the dancing-hall, he sees one end of the room
taken up with the ladies, who sit dismally in a group by themselves;
on the other end stand their pensive partners that are to be; but no
more intercourse between the sexes than between two countries at war.
The ladies, indeed, may ogle, and the gentlemen sigh, but an embargo is
laid upon any closer commerce. At length, to interrupt hostilities, the
lady-directress, intendant, or what you will, pitches on a gentleman
and a lady to walk a minuet, which they perform with a formality
approaching to despondence. After five or six couple have thus walked
the gauntlet, all stand up to country-dances, each gentleman furnished
with a partner from the aforesaid lady-directress. So they dance much,
and say nothing, and thus concludes our Assembly. I told a Scotch
gentleman that such a profound silence resembled the ancient procession
of the Roman matrons in honour of Ceres; and the Scotch gentleman told
me (and, faith, I believe he was right) that I was a very great pedant
for my pains.’
In the same letter, however, Goldsmith allows the beauty of the women
and the good-breeding of the men.
It may add to the curiosity of the whole affair, that when the Assembly
was reconstituted in February 1746, after several years of cessation,
the first of a set of regulations hung up in the hall[33] was: ‘_No
lady to be admitted in a night-gown, and no gentleman in boots_.’ The
eighth rule was: ‘No misses in skirts and jackets, robe-coats, nor
stay-bodied gowns, to be allowed to dance in country-dances, but in a
sett by themselves.’
In all probability it was in this very dingy house that Goldsmith
beheld the scene he has so well described. At least it appears that the
improved Assembly Room in Bell’s Wynd (which has latterly served as a
part of the accommodations of the Commercial Bank) was not built till
1766.[34] Arnot, in his _History of Edinburgh_, describes the Assembly
Room in Bell’s Wynd as very inconvenient, which was the occasion of the
present one being built in George Street in 1784.
PAUL ROMIEU.
At this angle of the Bow the original city-wall crossed the line of the
street, and there was, accordingly, a gate at this spot,[35] of which
the only existing memorial is one of the hooks for the suspension of
the hinges, fixed in the front wall of a house, at the height of about
five feet from the ground. It is from the arch forming this gateway
that the street takes its name, _bow_ being an old word for an arch.
The house immediately _without_ this ancient port, on the east side of
the street, was occupied, about the beginning of the last century, and
perhaps at an earlier period, by Paul Romieu, an eminent watchmaker,
supposed to have been one of the French refugees driven over to this
country in consequence of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. This
is the more likely, as he seems, from the workmanship of his watches,
to have been a contemporary of Tompion, the famous London horologist
of the reign of Charles II. In the front of the house, upon the third
story, there is still to be seen the remains of a curious piece of
mechanism—namely, a gilt ball representing the moon, which was made to
revolve by means of a clock.[36]
‘HE THAT THOLES OVERCOMES.’
Pursuing our way down the steep and devious street, we pass an antique
wooden-faced house, bearing the odd name of the _Mahogany Land_,
and just before turning the second corner, pause before a stone one
of equally antiquated structure,[37] having a wooden-screened outer
stair. Over the door at the head of this stair is a legend in very old
lettering—certainly not later than 1530—and hardly to be deciphered.
With difficulty we make it out to be:
HE YT THOLIS OVERCVMMIS.
_He that tholes_ (that is, bears) _overcomes_; equivalent to what
Virgil says:
‘Quidquid erit, superanda omnis fortuna ferendo est.’
_Æneid_, v.
We may safely speculate on this inscription being antecedent in date to
the Reformation, as after that period merely moral apothegms were held
in little regard, and none but biblical inscriptions were actually put
upon the fronts of houses.
[Illustration: Mahogany Land, West Bow.]
On the other side of the street is a small shop (marked No. 69), now
occupied by a dealer in small miscellaneous wares,[38] and which was,
a hundred years ago, open for a nearly similar kind of business, under
the charge of a Mrs Jeffrey. When, on the night of the 7th September
1736, the rioters hurried their victim Porteous down the West Bow, with
the design of executing him in the Grassmarket, they called at this
shop to provide themselves with a rope. The woman asked if it was to
hang Porteous, and when they answered in the affirmative, she told them
they were welcome to all she had of that article. They coolly took
off what they required, and laid a guinea on the counter as payment;
ostentatious to mark that they ‘did all in honour.’
PROVOST STEWART’S HOUSE—DONALDSONS THE BOOKSELLERS.
The upper floors of the house which looks down into the Grassmarket
formed the mansion of Mr Archibald Stewart, Lord Provost of Edinburgh
in 1745. This is an abode of singular structure and arrangements,
having its principal access by a close out of another street, and
only a postern one into the Bow, and being full of curious little
wainscoted rooms, concealed closets, and secret stairs. In one
apartment there is a cabinet, or what appears a cabinet, about three
feet high: this, when cross-examined, turns out to be the mask of a
trap-stair. Only a smuggler, one would think, or a gentleman conducting
treasonable negotiations, could have bethought him of building such a
house. Whether Provost Stewart, who was a thorough Jacobite, was the
designer of these contrivances, I cannot tell; but fireside gossip
used to have a strange story as to his putting his trap-stair to use
on one important occasion. It was said that, during the occupation of
Edinburgh by the Highland army in ’45, his lordship was honoured one
evening with a secret visit from the Prince and some of his principal
officers. The situation was critical, for close by was the line between
the Highland guards and the beleaguered environs of the Castle.
Intelligence of the Prince’s movements being obtained by the governor
of the fortress, a party was sent to seize him in the provost’s house.
They made their approach by the usual access from the Castle-hill
Street; but an alarm preceded them, and before they obtained admission,
the provost’s visitors had vanished through the mysterious cabinet, and
made their exit by the back-door. What real foundation there may have
been for this somewhat wild-looking story I do not pretend to say.
The house was at a subsequent time the residence of Alexander Donaldson
the bookseller, whose practice of reprinting modern English books in
Edinburgh, and his consequent litigation with the London booksellers,
attracted much attention sixty years since. Printing and publishing
were in a low state in Edinburgh before the time of Donaldson. In
the frank language of Hugo Arnot: ‘The printing of newspapers and of
school-books, of the fanatick effusions of Presbyterian clergymen, and
the law papers of the Court of Session, joined to the patent Bible
printing, gave a scanty employment to four printing-offices.’ About
the middle of the century, the English law of copyright not extending
to Scotland, some of the booksellers began to reprint the productions
of the English authors of the day; for example, the _Rambler_ was
regularly reproduced in this manner in Edinburgh, with no change but
the addition of English translations of the Latin mottoes, which were
supplied by Mr James Elphinstone. From this and minor causes, it came
to pass that, in 1779, there were twenty-seven printing-offices in
Edinburgh. The most active man in this trade was Alexander Donaldson,
who likewise reprinted in Edinburgh, and sold in London, English books
of which the author’s fourteen years’ copyright had expired, and which
were then only protected by a usage of the London trade, rendering it
dishonourable as between man and man, among themselves, to reprint a
book which had hitherto been the assigned property of one of their
number. Disregarding the rule of his fraternity, Donaldson set up a
shop in the Strand for the sale of his cheap Edinburgh editions of the
books of expired copyright. They met an immense sale, and proved of
obvious service to the public, especially to those of limited means;
though, as Johnson remarked, this made Donaldson ‘no better than Robin
Hood, who robbed the rich in order to give to the poor.’ In reality,
the London booksellers had no right beyond one of class sentiment,
and this was fully found when they wrestled with Mr Donaldson at law.
Waiving all question on this point, Donaldson may be considered as a
sort of morning-star of that reformation which has resulted in the
universal cheapening of literary publications. Major Topham, in 1775,
speaks of a complete set of the English classics which he was bringing
out, ‘in a very handsome binding,’ at the rate of one and sixpence a
volume!
[Donaldson, in 1763, started a twice-a-week newspaper under the name of
the _Edinburgh Advertiser_, which was for a long course of years the
prominent journal on the Conservative side, and eminently lucrative,
chiefly through its multitude of advertisements. All his speculations
being of a prosperous nature, he acquired considerable wealth, which
he left to his son, the late Mr James Donaldson, by whom the newspaper
was conducted for many years. James added largely to his wealth by
successful speculations in the funds, where he held so large a sum
that the rise of a per cent. made him a thousand pounds richer than he
had been the day before. Prompted by the example of Heriot and Watson,
and partly, perhaps, by that modification of egotism which makes
us love to be kept in the remembrance of future generations, James
Donaldson, at his death in 1830, devoted the mass of his fortune—about
£240,000—for the foundation of a _hospital_ for the maintenance and
education of poor children of both sexes; and a structure for the
purpose was erected, on a magnificent plan furnished by Mr Playfair, at
an expense, it is said, of about £120,000.
The old house in the West Bow—which was possessed by both of these
remarkable men in succession, and the scene of their entertainments to
the literary men of the last age, with some of whom Alexander Donaldson
lived on terms of intimacy—stood unoccupied for several years before
1824, when it was burnt down. New buildings now occupy its site.]
TEMPLARS’ LANDS.
We have now arrived at the _Bow-foot_, about which there is nothing
remarkable to be told, except that here, and along one side of the
Grassmarket, are several houses marked by a cross on some conspicuous
part—either an actual iron cross, or one represented in sculpture.
This seems a strange circumstance in a country where it was even
held doubtful, twenty years ago, whether one could be placed as an
ornament on the top of a church tower. The explanation is that these
houses were built upon lands originally the property of the Knights
Templars, and the cross has ever since been kept up upon them, not
from any veneration for that ancient society, neither upon any kind
of religious ground; the sole object has been to fix in remembrance
certain legal titles and privileges which have been transmitted into
secular hands from that source, and which are to this day productive of
solid benefits. A hundred years ago, the houses thus marked were held
as part of the barony of Drem in Haddingtonshire, the baron of which
used to hold courts in them occasionally; and here were harboured many
persons not free of the city corporations, to the great annoyance of
the adherents of local monopoly. At length, the abolition of heritable
jurisdictions in 1747 extinguished this little barony, but not
certain other legal rights connected with the _Templar Lands_, which,
however, it might be more troublesome to explain than advantageous
to know.
[Illustration: GRASSMARKET
from west end of Cowgate.
PAGE 50.]
THE GALLOWS STONE.
In a central situation at the east end of the Grassmarket, there
remained till very lately a massive block of sandstone, having a
quadrangular hole in the middle, being the stone which served as a
socket for the gallows, when this was the common place of execution.
Instead of the stone, there is now only a St Andrew’s cross, indicated
by an arrangement of the paving-stones.
This became the regular scene of executions after the Restoration, and
so continued till the year 1784. Hence arises the sense of the Duke of
Rothes’s remark when a Covenanting prisoner proved obdurate: ‘Then e’en
let him glorify God in the Grassmarket!’—the deaths of that class of
victims being always signalised by psalm-singing on the scaffold. Most
of the hundred persons who suffered for that cause in Edinburgh during
the reigns of Charles II. and James II. breathed their last pious
aspirations at this spot; but several of the most notable, including
the Marquis and Earl of Argyll, were executed at the Cross.
As a matter of course, this was the scene of the Porteous riot in 1736,
and of the subsequent murder of Porteous by the mob. The rioters,
wishing to despatch him as near to the place of his alleged crime as
possible, selected for the purpose a dyer’s pole which stood on the
south side of the street, exactly opposite to the gallows stone.
Some of the Edinburgh executioners have been so far notable men as
to be the subject of traditionary fame. In the reign of Charles II.,
Alexander Cockburn, the hangman of Edinburgh, and who must have
officiated at the exits of many of the ‘martyrs’ in the Grassmarket,
was found guilty of the murder of a bluegown, or privileged beggar, and
accordingly suffered that fate which he had so often meted out to other
men. One Mackenzie, the hangman of Stirling, whom Cockburn had traduced
and endeavoured to thrust out of office, was the triumphant executioner
of the sentence.
Another Edinburgh hangman of this period was a reduced gentleman,
the last of a respectable family who had possessed an estate in the
neighbourhood of Melrose. He had been a profligate in early life,
squandered the whole of his patrimony, and at length, for the sake
of subsistence, was compelled to accept this wretched office, which
in those days must have been unusually obnoxious to popular odium,
on account of the frequent executions of innocent and religious men.
Notwithstanding his extreme degradation, this unhappy reprobate could
not altogether forget his original station and his former tastes and
habits. He would occasionally resume the garb of a gentleman, and
mingle in the parties of citizens who played at golf in the evenings on
Bruntsfield Links. Being at length recognised, he was chased from the
ground with shouts of execration and loathing, which affected him so
much that he retired to the solitude of the King’s Park, and was next
day found dead at the bottom of a precipice, over which he was supposed
to have thrown himself in despair. This rock was afterwards called the
_Hangman’s Craig_.
In the year 1700, when the Scottish people were in a state of great
excitement on account of the interference of the English government
against their expedition to Darien, some persons were apprehended for
a riot in the city of Edinburgh, and sentenced to be whipped and put
upon the pillory. As these persons had acted under the influence of
the general feeling, they excited the sympathy of the people in an
extraordinary degree, and even the hangman was found to have scruples
about the propriety of punishing them. Upon the pillory they were
presented with flowers and wine; and when arrayed for flagellation, the
executioner made a mere mockery of his duty, never once permitting his
whip to touch their backs. The magistrates were very indignant at the
conduct of their servant, and sentenced him to be scourged in his turn.
However, when the Haddington executioner was brought to officiate upon
his metropolitan brother, he was so much frightened by the threatening
aspect of the mob that he thought it prudent to make his escape
through a neighbouring alley. The laugh was thus turned against the
magistrates, who, it was said, would require to get a third executioner
to punish the Haddington man. They prudently dropped the whole matter.
At a somewhat later period, the Edinburgh official was a man named John
Dalgleish. He it was who acted at the execution of Wilson the smuggler
in 1736, and who is alluded to so frequently in the tale of the _Heart
of Mid-Lothian_. Dalgleish, I have heard, was esteemed, before his
taking up this office, as a person in creditable circumstances. He is
memorable for one pithy saying. Some one asking him how he contrived in
whipping a criminal to adjust the weight of his arm, on which, it is
obvious, much must depend: ‘Oh,’ said he, ‘I lay on the lash according
to my conscience.’ Either Jock, or some later official, was remarked to
be a regular _hearer_ at the Tolbooth Church. As no other person would
sit in the same seat, he always had a pew to himself. He regularly
communicated; but here the exclusiveness of his fellow-creatures also
marked itself, and the clergyman was obliged to serve a separate table
for the hangman, after the rest of the congregation had retired from
the church.
The last Edinburgh executioner of whom any particular notice has been
taken by the public was John High, commonly called Jock Heich, who
acceded to the office in the year 1784, and died so lately as 1817.
High had been originally induced to undertake this degrading duty in
order to escape the punishment due to a petty offence—that of stealing
poultry. I remember him living in his official mansion in a lane
adjoining to the Cowgate—a small wretched-looking house, assigned by
the magistrates for the residence of this race of officers, and which
has only been removed within the last few years, to make way for the
extension of the buildings of the Parliament Square. He had then a
second wife, whom he used to beat unmercifully. Since Jock’s days, no
executioner has been so conspicuous as to be known by name. The fame of
the occupation seems somehow to have departed.
* * * * *
I have now finished my account of the West Bow; a most antiquated
place, yet not without its virtues even as to matters of the present
day. Humble as the street appears, many of its shopkeepers and other
inhabitants are of a very respectable character. Bankruptcies are said
to be very rare in the Bow. Most of the traders are of old standing,
and well-to-do in the world; few but what are the proprietors of
their own shops and dwellings, which, in such a community, indicates
something like wealth. The smarter and more dashing men of Princes
Street and the Bridges may smile at their homely externals and darksome
little places of business, or may not even pay them the compliment
of thinking of them at all; yet, while they boast not of their
‘warerooms,’ or their troops of ‘young men,’ or their plate-glass
windows, they at least feel no apprehension from the approach of
rent-day, and rarely experience tremulations on the subject of bills.
Perhaps, if strict investigation were made, the ‘bodies’ of the Bow
could show more comfortable balances at the New Year than at least a
half of the sublime men who pay an income by way of rental in George
Street. Not one of them but is respectfully known by a good sum on the
creditor side at Sir William Forbes’s; not one but can stand at his
shop-door, with his hands in his pockets and his hat on, not unwilling,
it may be, to receive custom, yet not liable to be greatly distressed
if the customer go by. Such, perhaps, were shopkeepers in the golden
age![39]
FOOTNOTES
[17] Fellows.
[18] Busy.
[19] Not improbably this was done in a spirit of literal obedience to
the injunction (Matthew vi. 6): ‘Thou, when thou prayest, enter into
thy closet.’ Commentators on this passage mention that every Jewish
house had a place of secret devotion built over the porch.
[20] When Colonel Gardiner occupied it the house was known as Olive
Bank. It was later changed to Bankton House by Andrew Macdowall, who,
when raised to the Bench in 1755, took the title of Lord Bankton.
[21] Bankton House has been burned down and rebuilt since this was
written.
[22] _History of Edinburgh_, p. 205, note.
[23] Before Major Weir took up house in the West Bow he is said to have
lodged in the Cowgate, where he had as a fellow-lodger the fanatic
Mitchell (Ravaillac _redivivus_), who attempted to shoot Archbishop
Sharpe.
[24] Sir Andrew Ramsay was provost of the city, first from 1654 till
1657, and then continuously for eleven years, 1662-73. It was he
who obtained from the king the title of Lord Provost for the chief
magistrate, and secured precedence for him next to the Lord Mayor of
London.
[25] The Rev. Mr Frazer, minister of Wardlaw, in his _Divine
Providences_ (MS. Adv. Lib.), dated 1670.
[26] _Satan’s Invisible World Discovered._
[27] The causeway. A skirmish fought between the Hamiltons and
Douglases, upon the High Street of Edinburgh, in the year 1515, was
popularly termed _Cleanse the Causeway_.
[28] Cane.
[29] Hamstringed.
[30] _Memorie of the Somervilles_, vol. ii. p. 271.
[31] This house was demolished in 1836.
[32] Jackson’s _History of the Stage_, p. 418.
[33] See _Notes from the Records of the Assembly Rooms of Edinburgh_.
Edinburgh: 1842. In the eighteenth century a lady’s ‘night-gown’ was a
special kind of evening-dress, often of silk brocade, &c., other than
full dress; and a gentleman’s night-gown was a dressing-gown, not a
bed-garment.
[34] It was a ball in the room of the Old Assembly Close building
which Goldsmith describes in the letter quoted, and in which public
assemblies were revived in 1746. The new rooms in Bell’s Wynd were
opened in 1756.
[35] Called the ‘Ovir Bow Port.’ It stood about the line of the present
Victoria Terrace.
[36] This house was demolished in 1835, to make way for a passage
towards George IV. Bridge.
[37] Taken down in 1839.
[38] Demolished in 1833.
[39] The narrow, crooked West Bow, descending very steeply from the
Lawnmarket to the Grassmarket, has been almost wholly obliterated by
Victoria Street, a comparatively wide and gradually sloping street
which crosses the line of the old West Bow from George IV. Bridge.
Victoria Street was built in 1835-40; and only a few houses on one side
of the head of the Bow still stand, and these have been rebuilt.
JAMES’S COURT.
DAVID HUME—JAMES BOSWELL—LORD FOUNTAINHALL.
James’s Court, a well-known pile of building of great altitude at
the head of the Earthen Mound, was erected about 1725-27 by James
Brownhill,[40] a joiner, as a speculation, and was for some years
regarded as the _quartier_ of greatest dignity and importance in
Edinburgh. The inhabitants, who were all persons of consequence in
society, although each had but a single floor of four or five rooms and
a kitchen, kept a clerk to record their names and proceedings, had a
scavenger of their own, clubbed in many public measures, and had balls
and parties among themselves exclusively. In those days it must have
been quite a step in life when a man was able to fix his family in one
of the _flats_ of James’s Court.
Amongst the many notables who have harboured here, only two or three
can be said to have preserved their notability till our day, the chief
being David Hume and James Boswell.
[Illustration: Riddel’s Land, Lawnmarket.]
DAVID HUME.
The first fixed residence of David Hume in Edinburgh appears to have
been in _Riddel’s Land_, Lawnmarket, near the head of the West Bow.
He commenced housekeeping there in 1751, when, according to his own
account, he ‘removed from the country to the town, the true scene for a
man of letters.’ It was while in Riddel’s Land that he published his
_Political Discourses_, and obtained the situation of librarian to the
Faculty of Advocates. In this place also he commenced the writing of
his _History of England_. He dates from Riddel’s Land in January 1753,
but in June we find him removed to _Jack’s Land_,[41] a somewhat airier
situation in the Canongate, where he remained for nine years. Excepting
only the small portion composed in the Lawnmarket mansion, the whole
of the _History of England_ was written in Jack’s Land; a fact which
will probably raise some interest respecting that locality. It is, in
reality, a plain, middle-aged fabric, of no particular appearance, and
without a single circumstance of a curious nature connected with it,
besides the somewhat odd one that the continuator of the _History_,
Smollett, lived, some time after, in his sister’s house precisely
opposite.
[Illustration: Jack’s Land, Canongate.]
Hume removed at Whitsunday 1762 to a house which he purchased in
James’s Court—the eastern portion of the third floor in the west
stair (counting from the level of the court). This was such a step
as a man would take in those days as a consequence of improvement in
his circumstances. The philosopher had lived in James’s Court but a
short time, when he was taken to France as secretary to the embassy.
In his absence, which lasted several years, his house was occupied
by Dr Blair, who here had a son of the Duke of Northumberland as a
pupil. It is interesting to find Hume, some time after, writing to his
friend Dr Ferguson from the midst of the gaieties of Paris: ‘I am
sensible that I am misplaced, and I wish twice or thrice a day for _my
easy-chair and my retreat in James’s Court_.’ Then he adds a beautiful
sentiment: ‘Never think, dear Ferguson, that as long as you are master
of your own fireside and your own time, you can be unhappy, or that
any other circumstance can add to your enjoyment.’[42] In one of his
letters to Blair he speaks minutely of his house: ‘Never put a fire in
the south room with the red paper. It was so warm of itself that all
last winter, which was a very severe one, I lay with a single blanket;
and frequently, upon coming in at midnight starving with cold, have
sat down and read for an hour, as if I had had a stove in the room.’
From 1763 till 1766 he lived in high diplomatic situations at Paris;
and thinking to settle there for life, for the sake of the agreeable
society, gave orders to sell his house in Edinburgh. He informs us,
in a letter to the Countess de Boufflers (_General Correspondence_,
4to, 1820, p. 231), that he was prevented by a singular accident
from carrying his intention into effect. After writing a letter to
Edinburgh for the purpose of disposing of his house, and leaving it
with his Parisian landlord, he set out to pass his Christmas with
the Countess de Boufflers at L’Isle Adam; but being driven back by a
snowstorm, which blocked up the roads, he found on his return that the
letter had not been sent to the post-house. More deliberate thoughts
then determined him to keep up his Edinburgh mansion, thinking that,
if any affairs should call him to his native country, ‘it would be
very inconvenient not to have a house to retire to.’ On his return,
therefore, in 1766, he re-entered into possession of his _flat_ in
James’s Court, but was soon again called from it by an invitation
from Mr Conway to be an under-secretary of state. At length, in 1769,
he returned permanently to his native city, in possession of what he
thought opulence—a thousand a year. We find him immediately writing
from his retreat in James’s Court to his friend Adam Smith, then
commencing his great work _On the Wealth of Nations_ in the quiet of
his mother’s house at Kirkcaldy: ‘I am glad to have come within sight
of you, and to have a view of Kirkcaldy from my windows; but I wish
also to be within speaking-terms of you,’ &c. To another person he
writes: ‘I live still, and must for a twelvemonth, in my old house in
James’s Court, which is very cheerful, and even elegant, but too small
to display my great talent for cookery, the science to which I intend
to addict the remaining years of my life!’
Hume now built a superior house for himself in the New Town, which was
then little beyond its commencement, selecting a site adjoining to St
Andrew Square. The superintendence of this work was an amusement to
him. A story is related in more than one way regarding the manner in
which a denomination was conferred upon the street in which this house
is situated. Perhaps, if it be premised that a corresponding street at
the other angle of St Andrew Square is called _St Andrew Street_—a
natural enough circumstance with reference to the square, whose title
was determined on in the plan—it will appear likely that the choosing
of ‘St David Street’ for that in which Hume’s house stood was not
originally designed as a jest at his expense, though a second thought,
and the whim of his friends, might quickly give it that application.
The story, as told by Mr Burton, is as follows: ‘When the house was
built and inhabited by Hume, but while yet the street of which it was
the commencement had no name, a witty young lady, daughter of Baron
Ord, chalked on the wall the words, ST DAVID STREET. The allusion was
very obvious. Hume’s “lass,” judging that it was not meant in honour or
reverence, ran into the house much excited, to tell her master how he
was made game of. “Never mind, lassie,” he said, “many a better man has
been made a saint of before.”’
That Hume was a native of Edinburgh is well known. One could wish
to know the spot of his birth; but it is not now perhaps possible
to ascertain it. The nearest approach made to the fact is from
intelligence conveyed by a memorandum in his father’s handwriting among
the family papers, where he speaks of ‘my son David, born in the _Tron
Church parish_’—a district comprehending a large square clump of town
between the High Street and Cowgate, east of the site of the church
itself.
One of Hume’s most intimate friends amongst the other sex was Mrs
Cockburn, author of one of the beautiful songs called _The Flowers of
the Forest_. While he was in France in 1764, she writes to him from
_Baird’s Close,[43] Castle-hill_: ‘The cloven foot for which thou
art worshipped I despise; yet I remember _thee_ with affection. I
remember that, in spite of vain philosophy, of dark doubts, of toilsome
learning, God has stamped his image of benignity so strong upon thy
_heart_, that not all the labours of thy head could efface it.’ After
Hume’s return to Edinburgh, he kept up his acquaintance with this
spirited and amiable woman. The late Mr Alexander Young, W.S., had some
reminiscences of parties which he attended when a boy at her house, and
at which the philosopher was present. Hume came in one evening behind
time for her _petit souper_, when, seeing her bustling to get something
for him to eat, he called out: ‘Now, no trouble, if you please, about
quality; for you know I’m only a glutton, not an epicure.’ Mr Young
attended at a dinner where, besides Hume, there were present Lord
Monboddo and some other learned personages. Mrs Cockburn was then
living in the neat first floor of a house at the end of Crighton
Street, with windows looking along the Potterrow. She had a son of
eccentric habits, in middle life, or rather elderly, who came in during
the dinner tipsy, and going into a bedroom, locked himself in, went to
bed, and fell asleep. The company in time made a move for departure,
when it was discovered that their hats, cloaks, and greatcoats were all
locked up in Mr Cockburn’s room. The door was knocked at and shaken,
but no answer. What was to be done? At length Mrs Cockburn had no
alternative from sending out to her neighbours to borrow a supply of
similar integuments, which was soon procured. There was then such fun
in fitting the various _savants_ with suitable substitutes for their
own proper gear! Hume, for instance, with a dreadnought riding-coat;
Monboddo with a shabby old hat, as unlike his own neat chapeau as
possible! In the highest exaltation of spirits did these two men of
genius at length proceed homeward along the Potterrow, Horse Wynd,
Assembly Close, &c., making the old echoes merry with their peals of
laughter at the strange appearance which they respectively made.[44]
I lately inspected Hume’s _cheerful and elegant_ mansion in James’s
Court, and found it divided amongst three or four tenants in humble
life, each possessing little more than a single room. It was amusing
to observe that what had been the dining-room and drawing-room towards
the north were _each_ provided with one of those little side oratories
which have been described elsewhere as peculiar to a period in
Edinburgh house-building, being designed for private devotion. Hume
living in a house with two private chapels!
JAMES BOSWELL.
It appears that one of the immediately succeeding leaseholders of
Hume’s house in James’s Court was James Boswell. Mr Burton has made
this tolerably clear (_Life of Hume_, ii. 137), and he proceeds to
speculate on the fact of Boswell having there entertained his friend
Johnson. ‘Would Boswell communicate the fact, or tell what manner
of man was the landlord of the habitation into which he had, under
the guise of hospitality, entrapped the arch-intolerant? Who shall
appreciate the mental conflict which Boswell may have experienced on
this occasion?’ It appears, however, that by the time when Johnson
visited Boswell in James’s Court, the latter had removed into a better
and larger mansion right below and on the level of the court—namely,
that now (1846) occupied by Messrs Pillans as a printing-office. This
was an extraordinary house in its day; for it consisted of two floors
connected by an internal stair. Here it was that the Ursa Major of
literature stayed for a few days, in August 1773, while preparing to
set out to the Hebrides, and also for some time after his return. Here
did he receive the homage of the trembling literati of Edinburgh; here,
after handling them in his rough manner, did he relax in play with
little Miss Veronica, whom Boswell promised to consider peculiarly in
his will for showing a liking to so estimable a man. What makes all
this evident is a passage in a letter of Samuel himself to Mrs Thrale
(Edinburgh, August 17), where he says: ‘Boswell has very handsome and
spacious rooms, level with the ground on one side of the house, and on
the other four stories high.’ Boswell was only tenant of the mansion.
It affords a curious idea of the importance which formerly attached to
some of these Old Town residences, when we learn that this was part of
the entailed estate of the Macdowalls of Logan, one of whom sold it,
by permission of an act of parliament, to redeem the land-tax upon his
country property.
Boswell ceased to be a citizen of Edinburgh in 1785, when he was
pleased to venture before the English bar. He is little remembered
amongst the elder inhabitants of our city; but the late Mr William
Macfarlane, the well-known small-debt judge, told me that there was
_this_ peculiarity about him—it was impossible to look in his face
without being moved by the comicality which always reigned upon it. He
was one of those men whose very look is provocative of mirth. Mr Robert
Sym, W.S., who died in 1844, at an advanced age, remembered being at
parties in this house in Boswell’s time.
LORD FOUNTAINHALL.
Before James’s Court was built, its site was occupied by certain
closes, in one of which dwelt Lord Fountainhall, so distinguished as an
able, liberal, and upright judge, and still more so by his industrious
habits as a collector of historical memorabilia, and of the decisions
of the Court of Session. Though it is considerably upwards of a century
since Lord Fountainhall died,[45] a traditionary anecdote of his
residence in this place has been handed down till the present time by a
surprisingly small number of persons. The mother of the late Mr Gilbert
Innes of Stow was a daughter of his lordship’s son, Sir Andrew Lauder,
and she used to describe to her children the visits she used to pay to
her venerable grandfather’s house, situated, as she said, where James’s
Court now stands. She and her sister, a little girl like herself,
always went with their maid on the Saturday afternoons, and were shown
into the room where the aged judge was sitting—a room covered with
gilt leather,[46] and containing many huge presses and cabinets, one
of which was ornamented with a death’s-head at the top. After amusing
themselves for an hour or two with his lordship, they used to get each
a shilling from him, and retire to the anteroom, where, as Mrs Innes
well recollected, the waiting-maid invariably pounced upon their money,
and appropriated it to her own use. It is curious to think that the
mother of a gentlewoman living in 1839 (for only then did Miss Innes
of Stow leave this earthly scene) should have been familiar with a
lawyer who entered at the bar soon after the Restoration (1668), and
acted as counsel for the unfortunate Earl of Argyll in 1681; a being of
an age as different in every respect from the present as the wilds of
North America are different from the long-practised lands of Lothian or
Devonshire.
The judicial designation of Lord Fountainhall was adopted from a
place belonging to him in East Lothian, now the property of his
representative, Sir Thomas Dick Lauder. The original name of the place
was Woodhead. When the able lawyer came to the bench, and, as usual,
thought of a new appellative of a territorial kind—‘Woodhead—Lord
Woodhead,’ thought he; ‘that will never do for a judge!’ So the name of
the place was changed to Fountainhall, and he became Lord Fountainhall
accordingly.
[1868.—The western half of James’s Court having been destroyed by
accidental fire, the reader will now find a new building on the spot.
The houses rendered interesting by the names of Blair, Boswell,
Johnson, and Hume are consequently no more.]
FOOTNOTES
[40] From whom it got its name—James’s Court.
[41] A ‘land’ still standing (1912) as it was when Hume lived there. It
was also the residence of the Countess of Eglinton when she left the
Stamp Office Close in the High Street. See p. 192.
[42] Burton’s _Life of Hume_, ii. 173.
[43] Formerly called Blair’s Close (p. 19). The name was altered to
Baird’s Close when the Gordon property passed into the possession of
Baird of Newbyth.
[44] Mrs Cockburn, writing to Miss Cumming at Balcarres, describes ‘a
ball’ she gave in this house. ‘On Wednesday I gave a ball. How do ye
think I contrived to stretch out this house to hold twenty-two people,
and had nine couples always dancing? Yet this is true; it is also true
that we had a table covered with divers eatables all the time, and
that everybody ate when they were hungry and drank when they were dry,
but nobody ever sat down.... Our fiddler sat where the cupboard is,
and they danced in both rooms. The table was stuffed into the window
and we had plenty of room. It made the bairns all very happy.’—_Mrs
Cockburn’s Letters_, edited by T. Craig Brown.
[45] His lordship died September 20, 1722 (Brunton and Haig’s
_Historical Account of the Senators of the College of Justice_).
[46] A stuff brought, I believe, from Spain, and which was at one time
much in fashion in Scotland.
STORY OF THE COUNTESS OF STAIR.
[Illustration: Lady Stair’s House as Restored.]
In a short alley leading between the Lawnmarket and the Earthen Mound,
and called _Lady Stair’s Close_,[47] there is a substantial old
mansion, presenting, in a sculptured stone over the doorway, a small
coat-armorial, with the initials W. G. and G. S., the date 1622, and
the legend:
FEAR THE LORD, AND DEPART
FROM EVILL.
The letters refer to Sir William Gray of Pittendrum, the original
proprietor of the house, and his wife. Within there are marks of good
style, particularly in the lofty ceiling and an inner stair apart from
the common one; but all has long been turned to common purposes; while
it must be left to the imagination to realise the terraced garden which
formerly descended towards the North Loch.
[Illustration]
This was the last residence of a lady conspicuous in Scottish society
in the early part of the last century—the widow of the celebrated
commander and diplomatist, John, Earl of Stair. Lady Eleanor Campbell
was, by paternal descent, nearly related to one of the greatest
historical figures of the preceding century, being the granddaughter
of the Chancellor, Earl of Loudon, whose talents and influence
on the Covenanting side were at one time believed to have nearly
procured him the honour of a secret death at the command of Charles
I. Her ladyship’s first adventure in matrimony led to a series of
circumstances of a marvellous nature, which I shall set down exactly as
they used to be related by friends of the lady in the last century. It
was her lot, at an early age, to be united to James, Viscount Primrose,
a man of the worst temper and most dissolute manners. Her ladyship, who
had no small share of the old chancellor in her constitution, could
have managed most men with ease, by dint of superior intellect and
force of character; but the cruelty of Lord Primrose was too much for
her. He treated her so barbarously that she had even reason to fear
that he would some day put an end to her life. One morning she was
dressing herself in her chamber, near an open window, when his lordship
entered the room behind her with a drawn sword in his hand. He had
opened the door softly, and although his face indicated a resolution of
the most horrible nature, he still had the presence of mind to approach
her with caution. Had she not caught a glimpse of his face and figure
in the glass, he would in all probability have come near enough to
execute his bloody purpose before she was aware or could have taken
any measures to save herself. Fortunately, she perceived him in time
to leap out of the open window into the street. Half-dressed as she
was, she immediately, by a very laudable exertion of her natural good
sense, went to the house of Lord Primrose’s mother, where she told her
story, and demanded protection. That protection was at once extended;
and it being now thought vain to attempt a reconciliation, they never
afterwards lived together.
Lord Primrose soon afterwards went abroad. During his absence, a
foreign conjurer, or fortune-teller, came to Edinburgh, professing,
among many other wonderful accomplishments, to be able to inform any
person of the present condition or situation of any other person, at
whatever distance, in whom the applicant might be interested. Lady
Primrose was incited by curiosity to go with a female friend to the
lodgings of the wise man in the Canongate, for the purpose of inquiring
regarding the motions of her husband, of whom she had not heard for a
considerable time. It was at night; and the two ladies went, with the
tartan _screens_ or _plaids_ of their servants drawn over their faces
by way of disguise. Lady Primrose having described the individual
in whose fate she was interested, and having expressed a desire to
know what he was at present doing, the conjurer led her to a large
mirror, in which she distinctly perceived the appearance of the inside
of a church, with a marriage-party arranged near the altar. To her
astonishment, she recognised in the shadowy bridegroom no other than
her husband. The magical scene was not exactly like a picture; or if
so, it was rather like the live pictures of the stage than the dead
and immovable delineations of the pencil. It admitted of additions
to the persons represented, and of a progress of action. As the lady
gazed on it, the ceremonial of the marriage seemed to proceed. The
necessary arrangements had at last been made, the priest seemed to
have pronounced the preliminary service; he was just on the point of
bidding the bride and bridegroom join hands, when suddenly a gentleman,
for whom the rest seemed to have waited a considerable time, and in
whom Lady Primrose thought she recognised a brother of her own, then
abroad, entered the church, and advanced hurriedly towards the party.
The aspect of this person was at first only that of a friend who had
been invited to attend the ceremony, and who had come too late; but as
he advanced, the expression of his countenance and figure was altered.
He stopped short; his face assumed a wrathful expression; he drew
his sword, and rushed up to the bridegroom, who prepared to defend
himself. The whole scene then became tumultuous and indistinct, and
soon after vanished entirely away.[48]
When Lady Primrose reached home she wrote a minute narrative of the
whole transaction, to which she appended the day of the month on which
she had seen the mysterious vision. This narrative she sealed up in the
presence of a witness, and then deposited it in one of her drawers.
Soon afterwards her brother returned from his travels, and came to
visit her. She asked if, in the course of his wanderings, he had
happened to see or hear anything of Lord Primrose. The young man only
answered by saying that he wished he might never again hear the name of
that detested personage mentioned. Lady Primrose, however, questioned
him so closely that he at last confessed having met his lordship, and
that under very strange circumstances. Having spent some time at one of
the Dutch cities—it was either Amsterdam or Rotterdam—he had become
acquainted with a rich merchant, who had a very beautiful daughter,
his only child, and the heiress of his large fortune. One day his
friend the merchant informed him that his daughter was about to be
married to a Scottish gentleman, who had lately come to reside there.
The nuptials were to take place in the course of a few days; and as he
was a countryman of the bridegroom, he was invited to the wedding. He
went accordingly, was a little too late for the commencement of the
ceremony, but fortunately came in time to prevent the sacrifice of an
amiable young lady to the greatest monster alive in human shape—his
own brother-in-law, Lord Primrose!
The story proceeds to say that although Lady Primrose had proved her
willingness to believe in the magical delineations of the mirror by
writing down an account of them, yet she was so much surprised by
discovering them to be the representation of actual fact that she
almost fainted. Something, however, yet remained to be ascertained.
Did Lord Primrose’s attempted marriage take place exactly at the same
time with her visit to the conjurer? She asked her brother on what day
the circumstance which he related took place. Having been informed,
she took out her key, and requested him to go to her chamber, to open
a drawer which she described, and to bring her a sealed packet which
he would find in that drawer. On the packet being opened, it was
discovered that Lady Primrose had seen the shadowy representation of
her husband’s abortive nuptials on the very evening when they were
transacted in reality.[49]
Lord Primrose died in 1706, leaving a widow who could scarcely be
expected to mourn for him. She was still a young and beautiful woman,
and might have procured her choice among twenty better matches. Such,
however, was the idea she had formed of the marriage state from her
first husband that she made a resolution never again to become a wife.
She kept her resolution for many years, and probably would have done
so till the last but for a singular circumstance. The celebrated Earl
of Stair, who resided in Edinburgh during the greater part of twenty
years, which he spent in retirement from all official employments,
became deeply smitten with her ladyship, and earnestly sued for her
hand. If she could have relented in favour of any man, it would have
been for one who had acquired so much public honour, and whose private
character was also, in general respects, so estimable. But to him also
she declared her resolution of remaining unmarried. In his desperation,
he resolved upon an expedient which strongly marks the character of
the age in respect of delicacy. By dint of bribes to her domestics, he
got himself insinuated overnight into a small room in her ladyship’s
house, where she used to say her prayers every morning, and the window
of which looked out upon the principal street of the city. At this
window, when the morning was a little advanced, he showed himself, _en
déshabillé_, to the people passing along the street; an exhibition
which threatened to have such an effect upon her ladyship’s reputation
that she saw fit to accept of him for a husband.[50]
She was more happy as Countess of Stair than she had been as Lady
Primrose. Yet her new husband had one failing, which occasioned her
no small uneasiness. Like most other gentlemen at that period, he
sometimes indulged too much in the bottle. When elevated with liquor,
his temper, contrary to the general case, was by no means improved.
Thus, on reaching home after a debauch, he generally had a quarrel
with his wife, and sometimes even treated her with violence. On one
occasion, when quite transported beyond the bounds of reason, he gave
her so severe a blow upon the upper part of the face as to occasion the
effusion of blood. He immediately after fell asleep, unconscious of
what he had done. Lady Stair was so overwhelmed by a tumult of bitter
and poignant feeling that she made no attempt to bind up her wound.
She sat down on a sofa near her torpid husband, and wept and bled
till morning. When his lordship awoke, and perceived her dishevelled
and bloody figure, he was surprised to the last degree, and eagerly
inquired how she came to be in such an unusual condition. She answered
by detailing to him the whole history of his conduct on the preceding
evening; which stung him so deeply with regret—for he naturally
possessed the most generous feelings—that he instantly vowed to his
wife never afterwards to take any species of drink except what was
first passed through her hands. This vow he kept most scrupulously till
the day of his death. He never afterwards sat in any convivial company
where his lady could not attend to sanction his potations. Whenever he
gave any entertainment, she always sat next him and filled his wine,
till it was necessary for her to retire; after which, he drank only
from a certain quantity which she had first laid aside.
With much that was respectable in her character, we must not be too
much surprised that Lady Stair was capable of using terms of speech
which a subsequent age has learned to look on as objectionable, even
in the humblest class of society. The Earl of Dundonald, it appears,
had stated to the Duke of Douglas that Lady Stair had expressed
incredulity regarding the genuineness of the birth of his nephews,
the children of Lady Jane Douglas, and did not consider Lady Jane as
entitled to any allowance from the duke on their account. In support
of what he reported, Dundonald, in a letter to the Lord Justice-Clerk,
gave the world leave to think him ‘a damned villain’ if he did not
speak the truth. This seems to have involved Lady Stair unpleasantly
with her friends of the house of Douglas, and she lost little time in
making her way to Holyroodhouse, where, before the duke and duchess
and their attendants, she declared that she had lived to a good old
age, and never till now had got entangled in any _clatters_—that is,
scandal. The old dame then thrice stamped the floor with her staff,
each time calling the Earl of Dundonald ‘a damned villain;’ after which
she retired in great wrath. Perhaps this scene was characteristic, for
we learn from letters of Lady M. W. Montagu that Lady Stair was subject
to hysterical ailments, and would be screaming and fainting in one
room, while her daughter, Miss Primrose, and Lady Mary were dancing in
another.
This venerable lady, after being long at the head of society in
Edinburgh, died in November 1759, having survived her second husband
twelve years. It was remembered of her that she had been the first
person in Edinburgh, of her time, to keep a black domestic servant.[51]
FOOTNOTES
[47] Lady Stair’s Close was originally a _cul de sac_. When the Mound
was begun a thoroughfare was cut through the garden, making the
close the principal communication between the Lawnmarket and Hanover
Street, then the western extremity of the New Town. The name it first
bore was ‘Lady Gray’s Close,’ after the wife of the builder of the
house, and that of Lady Stair’s Close was given to it (_The Book of
the Old Edinburgh Club_, vol. iii.) early in the eighteenth century,
when the house passed into the possession of the first Lady Stair, a
granddaughter of Sir William Gray of Pittendrum. Lord Rosebery, who
represents a branch of the Primroses (other than that to which the
second viscount, mentioned below, belonged), restored the house and
presented it to the city in 1907.
[48] ‘Grace, Countess of Aboyne and Moray, in her early youth, had
the weakness to consult a celebrated fortune-teller, inhabiting an
obscure close in Edinburgh. The sibyl predicted that she would become
the wife of two earls, and how many children she was to bear; but
withal assured her that when she should see a new coach of a certain
colour driven up to her door as belonging to herself, her hearse must
speedily follow. Many years afterwards, Lord Moray, who was not aware
of this prediction, resolved to surprise his wife with the present of
a new equipage; but when Lady Moray beheld from a window a carriage of
the ominous colour arrive at the door of Darnaway, and heard that it
was to be her own property, she sank down, exclaiming that she was a
dead woman, and actually expired in a short time after, November 17,
1738.’—_Notes to Law’s Memorials_, p. xcii.
[49] Lady Primrose’s story forms the groundwork of one of Sir Walter
Scott’s best short stories, _My Aunt Margaret’s Mirror_.
[50] This story loses its point by the discovery made in St Peter’s
upon Cornhill, London, of the marriage register of the second Earl
of Stair with Lady Primrose, 27th March 1708. Thus they were married
persons several years before the presumed date of this story. Miss
Rosaline Masson announced the discovery in an article in _Chambers’s
Journal_ for 1912, entitled, ‘The Secret Marriage of Lady Primrose and
John, Second Earl of Stair.’ She makes this comment: ‘The testimony
of John Waugh, Parson, has lain buried for over two hundred years in
the old Register in the city; but the tale, whispered one day, some
time about the year 1714, in the High Street of Edinburgh, first
among the strutting gallants and loungers at the Cross at noon, and
later on, over the delicate tea-cups, in the gossipy gatherings of
the fair sex—that tale was nowise buried. It has never died. Did not
Kirkpatrick Sharpe repeat it, sixty years after Lady Stair’s death,
to young Robert Chambers, at that time collecting material for his
inimitable book, _Traditions of Edinburgh_?’ The article further tries
to answer the question why the Earl of Stair and the young widow made
this clandestine marriage, which gave opportunity for the story.
[51] Negroes in a servile capacity had been long before known in
Scotland. Dunbar has a droll poem on a female black, whom he calls
‘My lady with the muckle lips.’ In _Lady Marie Stuart’s Household
Book_, referring to the early part of the seventeenth century, there
is mention of ‘ane inventorie of the gudes and geir whilk pertenit to
Dame Lilias Ruthven, Lady Drummond,’ which includes as an item, ‘the
black boy and the papingoe [peacock];’ in so humble an association was
it then thought proper to place a human being who chanced to possess a
dark skin.
THE OLD BANK CLOSE.
THE REGENT MORTON—THE OLD BANK—SIR THOMAS HOPE—CHIESLY OF
DAIRY—RICH MERCHANTS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY—SIR WILLIAM
DICK—THE BIRTH OF LORD BROUGHAM.
OLD BANK CLOSE.
Amongst the buildings removed to make way for George IV. Bridge were
those of a short blind alley in the Lawnmarket, called the Old Bank
Close. Composed wholly of solid goodly structures, this close had an
air of dignity that might have almost reconciled a modern gentleman to
live in it. One of these, crossing and closing the bottom, had been the
Bank of Scotland—the _Auld Bank_, as it used to be half-affectionately
called in Edinburgh—previously to the erection of the present handsome
edifice in Bank Street. From this establishment the close had taken
its name; but it had previously been called _Hope’s Close_, from its
being the residence of a son of the celebrated Sir Thomas Hope, King’s
Advocate in the reign of Charles I.
[Illustration: House of Robert Gourlay.]
The house of oldest date in the close was one on the west side,
of substantial and even handsome appearance, long and lofty, and
presenting some peculiarities of structure nearly unique in our city.
There was first a door for the ground-floor, about which there was
nothing remarkable. Then there was a door leading by the stair to the
_first floor_, and bearing this legend and date upon the architrave:
IN THE IS AL MY TRAIST: 1569.
Close beside this door was another, leading by a longer, but distinct
though adjacent stair to the second floor, and presenting on the
architrave the initials R. G. From this floor there was an internal
stair contained in a projecting turret, which connected it with the
higher floor. Thus, it will be observed, there were three houses in
this building, each having a distinct access; a nicety of arrangement
which, together with the excellence of the masonry, was calculated to
create a more respectful impression regarding the domestic ideas of
our ancestors in Queen Mary’s time than most persons are prepared for.
Finally, in the triangular space surmounting an attic window were the
initials of a married couple, D. G., M. S.
Our surprise is naturally somewhat increased when we learn that the
builder and first possessor of this house does not appear to have
been a man of rank, or one likely to own unusual wealth. His name
was Robert Gourlay, and his profession a humble one connected with
the law—namely, that of a messenger-at-arms. In the second book of
Charters in the Canongate council-house, Adam Bothwell, Bishop of
Orkney, and commendator of Holyrood, gave the office of messenger
or officer-at-arms to the Abbey to Robert Gourlay, messenger, ‘our
lovit familiar servitor,’ with a salary of forty pounds, and other
perquisites. This was the Robert Gourlay who built the noble tenement
in the Old Bank Close; and through his official functions it came into
connection with an interesting historical event. In May 1581, when the
ex-Regent Morton was brought to Edinburgh to suffer death, he was—as
we learn from the memoirs of Moyses, a contemporary—‘lodged in Robert
Gourlay’s house, and there keeped by the waged men.’ Gourlay had been
able to accommodate in his house those whom it was his professional
duty to take in charge as prisoners. Here, then, must have taken place
those remarkable conferences between Morton and certain clergymen,
in which, with the prospect of death before him, he protested his
innocence of Darnley’s death, while confessing to a foreknowledge
of it. Morton must have resided in the house from May 29, when he
arrived in Edinburgh, till June 2, when he fell under the stroke of
the ‘Maiden.’ In the ensuing year, as we learn from the authority just
quoted, De la Motte, the French ambassador, was lodged in ‘Gourlay’s
House.’
David Gourlay—probably the individual whose initials appeared on
the attic—described as son of John Gourlay, customer, and doubtless
grandson of the first man Robert—disposed of the house in 1637 to Sir
Thomas Hope of Craighall in liferent, and to his second son, Sir Thomas
Hope of Kerse.[52] We may suppose ‘the Advocate’ to have thus provided
a mansion for one of his children. A grandson in 1696 disposed of the
upper floor to Hugh Blair, merchant in Edinburgh—the grandfather, I
presume, of the celebrated Dr Hugh Blair.
This portion of the house was occupied early in the last century by
Lord Aberuchil, one of King William’s judges, remarkable for the
large fortune he accumulated. About 1780 his descendant, Sir James
Campbell of Aberuchil, resided in it while educating his family. It was
afterwards occupied by Robert Stewart, writer, extensively known in
Perthshire by the name of _Rob Uncle_, on account of the immense number
of his nephews and nieces, amongst the former of whom was the late
worthy General Stewart of Garth, author of the work on the Highland
regiments.
The building used by the bank was also a substantial one. Over the
architrave was the legend:
SPES ALTERÆ VITÆ,
with a device emblematising the resurrection—namely, a couple of
cross-bones with wheat-stalks springing from them, and the date 1588.
Latterly it was occupied as the University Printing-office, and when
I visited it in 1824 it contained an old wooden press, which was
believed to be the identical one which Prince Charles carried with him
from Glasgow to Bannockburn to print his gazettes, but then used as a
_proof-press_, like a good hunter reduced to the sand-cart. This house
was removed in 1834, having been previously sold by the Commissioners
of Improvements for £150. The purchaser got a larger sum for a leaden
roof unexpectedly found upon it. When the house was demolished, it was
discovered that every window-shutter had a communication by wires with
an intricate piece of machinery in the garret, designed to operate upon
a bell hung at a corner on the outside, so that not a window could have
been forced without giving an alarm.
In the Cowgate, little more than fifty yards from the site of this
building, there is a bulky old mansion, believed to have been the
residence of the celebrated King’s Advocate Hope, himself, the
ancestor of all the considerable men of this name now in Scotland. One
can easily see, amidst all the disgrace into which it has fallen,
something remarkable in this house, with two entrances from the street,
and two _porte-cochères_ leading to other accesses in the rear. Over
one door is the legend:
TECUM HABITA: 1616;[53]
over the other a half-obliterated line, known to have been
AT HOSPES HUMO.
[Illustration: Courtyard, Hope House.]
One often finds significant voices proceeding from the builders of
these old houses, generally to express humility. Sir Thomas here
quotes a well-known passage in Persius, as if to tell the beholder to
confine himself to a criticism of his own house; and then, with more
certain humility, uses a passage of the Psalms (cxix. 19): ‘I am a
stranger upon earth,’ the latter being an anagram of his own name, thus
spelt: THOMAS HOUPE. It is impossible without a passing sensation of
melancholy to behold this house, and to think how truly the obscurity
of its history, and the wretchedness into which it has fallen, realise
the philosophy of the anagram. Verily, the great statesman who once
lived here in dignity and the respect of men was but as a stranger who
tarried in the place for a night, and was gone.
The _Diary of Sir Thomas Hope_, printed for the Bannatyne Club (1843),
is a curious record of the public duties of a great law-officer in
the age to which it refers, as well as of the mixture of worldly and
spiritual things in which the venerable dignitary was engaged. He is
indefatigable in his religious duties and his endeavours to advance
the interests of his family; at the same time full of kindly feeling
about his sons’ wives and their little family matters, never failing,
for one thing, to tell how much the midwife got for her attendance on
these ladies. There are many passages respecting his prayers, and the
‘answers’ he obtained to them, especially during the agonies of the
opening civil war. He prays, for instance, that the Lord would pity
his people, and then hears the words: ‘I will preserve and saiff my
people’—‘but quhither be me or some other, I dar not say.’ On another
occasion, at the time when the Covenanting army was mustering for Dunse
Law to oppose King Charles, Sir Thomas tells that, praying: ‘Lord,
pitie thy pure [i.e. poor] kirk, for their is no help in man!’ he heard
a voice saying: ‘I will pitie it;’ ‘for quhilk I blissit the Lord;’
immediately after which he goes on: ‘Lent to John my _long carabin of
rowet wark_ all indentit;’ &c.[54]
The Countess of Mar, daughter of Esme, Duke of Lennox, died of a
_deadly brash_ in Sir Thomas’s house in the Cowgate, May 11, 1644.
It is worthy of notice that the Hopes are one of several Scottish
families, possessing high rank and great wealth, which trace their
descent to merchants in Edinburgh. ‘The Hopes are of French extraction,
from Picardy. It is said they were originally Houblon, and had their
name from the plant [hop], and not from esperance [the virtue in the
mind]. The first that came over was a domestic of Magdalene of France,
queen of James V.; and of him are descended all the eminent families
of Hopes. This John Hope set up as a merchant of Edinburgh, and his
son, by Bessie or Elizabeth Cumming, is marked as a member of our first
Protestant General Assembly, anno 1560.’[55]
CHIESLY OF DALRY.
The head of the Old Bank Close was the scene of the assassination of
President Lockhart by Chiesly of Dalry,[56] March 1689. The murderer
had no provocation besides a simple judicial act of the president,
assigning an aliment or income of £93 out of his estate to his wife
and children, from whom it may be presumed he had been separated. He
evidently was a man abandoned to the most violent passions—perhaps
not quite sane. In London, half a year before the deed, he told Mr
Stuart, an advocate, that he was resolved to go to Scotland before
Candlemas and kill the president; when, on Stuart remarking that the
very imagination of such a thing was a sin before God, he replied: ‘Let
God and me alone; we have many things to reckon betwixt us, and we will
reckon this too.’ The judge was informed of the menaces of Chiesly, but
despised them.
On a Sunday afternoon, the last day of March—the town being then
under the excitement of the siege of the Castle by the friends of the
new government—Lockhart was walking home from church to his house in
this alley, when Chiesly came behind, just as he entered the close,
and shot him in the back with a pistol. A Dr Hay, coming to visit the
president’s lady, saw his lordship stagger and fall. The ball had gone
through the body, and out at the right breast. He was taken into his
house, laid down upon two chairs, and almost immediately was a dead
man. Some gentlemen passing seized the murderer, who readily owned he
had done the deed, which he said was ‘to learn the president to do
justice.’ When immediately after informed that his victim had expired,
he said ‘he was not used to do things by halves.’ He boasted of the
deed as if it had been some grand exploit.
After torture had been inflicted, to discover if he had any
accomplices, the wretched man was tried by the magistrates of
Edinburgh, and sentenced to be carried on a hurdle to the Cross,[57]
and there hanged, with the fatal pistol hung from his neck, after which
his body was to be suspended in chains at the Gallow Lee, and his right
hand affixed to the West Port. The body was stolen from the gallows, as
was supposed, by his friends, and it was never known what had become
of it till more than a century after, when, in removing the hearthstone
of a cottage in Dalry Park, near Edinburgh, a human skeleton was found,
with the remains of a pistol near the situation of the neck. No doubt
was entertained that these were the remains of Chiesly, huddled into
this place for concealment, probably in the course of the night in
which they had been abstracted from the gallows.
RICH MERCHANTS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY—SIR WILLIAM DICK.
Several houses in the neighbourhood of the Old Bank Close served to
give a respectful notion of the wealth and domestic state of certain
merchants of an early age. Immediately to the westward, in Brodie’s
Close, was the mansion of William Little of Liberton, bearing date
1570. This was an eminent merchant, and the founder of a family now
represented by Mr Little Gilmour of the Inch, in whose possession
this mansion continued under entail, till purchased and taken down
by the Commissioners of Improvements in 1836. About 1780 it was the
residence of the notorious Deacon Brodie, of whom something may be
said elsewhere. Sir William Gray of Pittendrum, mentioned a few pages
back as the original owner of the old house in Lady Stair’s Close, was
another affluent trafficker of that age.
In Riddel’s Close, Lawnmarket, there is an enclosed court, evidently
intended to be capable of defence. It is the place where John
Macmoran, a rich merchant of the time of James VI., lived and carried
on his business. In those days even schoolboys trusted to violence
for attaining their ends. The youths of the High School,[58] being
malcontent about their holidays, barred themselves up in the school
with some provisions, and threatened not to surrender till the
magistrates should comply with their demands. John Macmoran, who held
the office of one of the bailies, came with a _posse_ to deal with the
boys, but, finding them obdurate, ordered the door to be prised open
with a joist. One within then fired a pistol at the bailie, who fell
shot through the brain, to the horror of all beholders, including the
schoolboys themselves, who with difficulty escaped the vengeance of the
crowd assembled on the spot.
It was ascertained that the immediate author of the bailie’s death was
William Sinclair, son of the chancellor of Caithness. There was a great
clamour to have justice done upon him; but this was a point not easily
attained, where a person of gentle blood was concerned, in the reign
of James VI. The boy lived to be Sir William Sinclair of Mey, and, as
such, was the ancestor of those who have, since 1789, borne the title
of Earls of Caithness.
[Illustration: Bailie Macmoran’s House, Riddel’s Court.]
A visit to the fine old mansion of Bailie Macmoran may be recommended.
Its masonry is not without elegance. The lower floor of the building
is now used as ‘The Mechanics’ Library.’[59] Macmoran’s house is in
the floor above, reached by a stone stair, near the corner of the
court. This dwelling offers a fine specimen of the better class of
houses at the end of the sixteenth century. The marble jambs of the
fireplaces and the carved stucco ceilings are quite entire. The larger
room (occupied as a warehouse for articles of saddlery) is that in
which took place two memorable royal banquets in 1598—the first on the
24th of April to James VI. with his queen, Anne of Denmark, and her
brother the Duke of Holstein; and the second on the 2nd of May, more
specially to the Duke of Holstein, but at which their Majesties were
present. These banquets, held, as Birrel says, with ‘grate solemnitie
and mirrines,’ were at the expense of the city. It need hardly be said
that James VI. was fond of this species of entertainment, and the house
of Macmoran was probably selected for the purpose not only because he
was treasurer to the corporation and a man of some mark, but because
his dwelling offered suitable accommodation. The general aspect of the
enclosed court which affords access to Macmoran’s house has undergone
little or no alteration since these memorable banquets; and in visiting
the place, with its quietude and seclusion, one almost feels as if
stepping back into the sixteenth century. Considering the destruction
all around from city improvements, it is fortunate that this remarkable
specimen of an old mansion should have been left so singularly entire.
One of the higher windows continues to exemplify an economical
arrangement which prevailed about the time of the Restoration—namely,
to have the lower half composed of wooden shutters.[60]
The grandest of all these old Edinburgh merchants was William Dick,
ancestor of the Dicks, baronets of Prestonfield. In his youth, and
during the lifetime of his father, he had been able to lend £6000 to
King James, to defray the expense of his journey to Scotland. The
affairs in which he was engaged would even now be considered important.
For example, he farmed the customs on wine at £6222, and the crown
rents of Orkney at £3000. Afterwards he farmed the excise. His fleets
extended from the Baltic to the Mediterranean. The immense wealth he
acquired enabled him to purchase large estates. He himself reckoned his
property as at one time equal to two hundred thousand pounds sterling.
Strange to say, this great merchant came to poverty, and died in a
prison. The reader of the Waverley novels may remember David Deans
telling how his father ‘saw them toom the sacks of dollars out o’
Provost Dick’s window intill the carts that carried them to the army
at Dunse Law’—‘if ye winna believe his testimony, there is the
window itsell still standing in the Luckenbooths—I think it’s a
claith-merchant’s buith the day.’ This refers to large advances which
Dick made to the Covenanters to enable them to carry on the war against
the king. The house alluded to is actually now a claith-merchant’s
booth, having long been in the possession of Messrs John Clapperton &
Company. Two years after Dunse Law, Dick gave the Covenanters 100,000
merks in one sum. Subsequently, being after all of royalist tendencies,
he made still larger advances in favour of the Scottish government
during the time when Charles II. was connected with it; and thus
provoking the wrath of the English Commonwealth, his ruin was completed
by the fines to which he was subjected by that party when triumphant,
amounting in all to £65,000.
Poor Sir William Dick—for he had been made a baronet by Charles
I.—went to London to endeavour to recover some part of his lost means.
When he represented the indigence to which he had been reduced, he was
told that he was always able to procure pie-crust when other men could
not get bread. There was, in fact, a prevalent idea that he possessed
some supernatural means—such as the philosopher’s stone—of acquiring
money. (Pie-crust came to be called _Sir William Dick’s Necessity_.)
The contrary was shown when the unfortunate man died soon after in a
prison in Westminster. There is a picture in Prestonfield House, near
Edinburgh, the seat of his descendant, representing him in this last
retreat in a mean dress, surrounded by his numerous hapless family. A
rare pamphlet, descriptive of his case, presents engravings of three
such pictures; one exhibiting him on horseback, attended by guards
as Lord Provost of Edinburgh, superintending the unloading of one of
his rich ships at Leith; another as a prisoner in the hands of the
bailiffs; the third as dead in prison. A more memorable example of
the instability of fortune does not occur in our history. It seems
completely to realise the picture in Job (chap. xxvii.): ‘The rich man
shall lie down, but he shall not be gathered: he openeth his eyes, and
he is not. Terrors take hold on him as waters, a tempest stealeth him
away in the night. The east wind carrieth him away, and he departeth:
and as a storm, hurleth him out of his place. For God shall cast upon
him, and not spare: he would fain flee out of his hand. Men shall clap
their hands at him, and shall hiss him out of his place.’
The fortunes of the family were restored by Sir William’s grandson,
Sir James, a remarkably shrewd man, who was likewise a merchant
in Edinburgh. There is a traditionary story that this gentleman,
observing the utility of manure, and that the streets of Edinburgh were
loaded with it, to the detriment of the comfort of the inhabitants,
offered to relieve the town of this nuisance on condition that he
should be allowed, for a certain term of years, to carry it away
gratis. Consent was given, and the Prestonfield estate became, in
consequence, like a garden. The Duke of York had a great affection for
Sir James Dick, and used to walk through the Park to visit him at his
house very frequently. Hence, according to the report of the family,
the way his Royal Highness took came to be called _The Duke’s Walk_;
afterwards a famous resort for the fighting of duels. Sir James became
Catholic, and, while provost in 1681, had his house burned over his
head by the collegianers; but it was rebuilt at the public expense.
His grandson, Sir Alexander Dick, is referred to in kindly terms in
Boswell’s _Tour to the Hebrides_ as a venerable man of studious habits
and a friend of men of letters. The reader will probably learn with
some surprise that though Sir William’s descendants never recovered any
of the money lent by him to the State, a lady of his family, living in
1844, was in the enjoyment of a pension with express reference to that
ancient claim.
THE BIRTH OF LORD BROUGHAM.
[1868.—It has been remarked elsewhere that, for a great number of
years after the general desertion of the Old Town by persons of
condition, there were many denizens of the New who had occasion to
look back to the Canongate and Cowgate as the place of their birth.
The nativity of one person who achieved extraordinary greatness and
distinction, and whose death was an occurrence of yesterday, Henry,
Lord Brougham, undoubtedly was connected with the lowly place last
mentioned.
The Edinburgh tradition on the subject was that Henry Brougham,
younger, of Brougham Hall, in the county of Cumberland, in consequence
of a disappointment in love, came to Edinburgh for the diversion of his
mind. Principal Robertson, to whom he bore a letter of introduction,
recommended the young man to the care of his sister—Mrs Syme, widow
of the minister of Alloa—who occupied what was then considered as a
good and spacious house at the head of the Cowgate—strictly the third
floor of the house now marked No. 8—a house desirable from its having
an extraordinary space in front. Here, it would appear, Mr Brougham
speedily consoled himself for his former disappointment by falling in
love with Eleonora, the daughter of Mrs Syme; and a marriage, probably
a hurried one, soon united the young pair. They set up for themselves
(Whitsunday 1778) in an upper floor of a house in the then newly built
St Andrew Square, where, in the ensuing September, their eldest son,
charged with so illustrious a destiny, first saw the light.[61]
Mr Brougham conclusively settled in Edinburgh; he subsequently occupied
a handsome house in George Street. He was never supposed to be a man
of more than ordinary faculties; but any deficiency in this respect
was amply made up for by his wife, who is represented by all who
remember her as a person of uncommon mental gifts. The contrast of the
pair drew the attention of society, and was the subject of a gently
satiric sketch in Henry Mackenzie’s _Lounger_, No. 45, published on the
10th December 1785, which, however, would vainly be looked for in the
reprinted copies, as it was immediately suppressed.]
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES
[52] Raised to the Bench with the title of Lord Kerse.
[53] The lintel bearing this legend is preserved in a doorway at the
top of the staircase of the Free Library, George IV. Bridge. The
Cowgate portion of the Library building (1887-89) occupies the site of
Sir Thomas Hope’s house.
[54] While King’s Advocate, Sir Thomas Hope had the unique experience
of pleading at the Bar before two of his sons who were judges—Lord
Craighall and Lord Kerse. There is a tradition that when addressing the
Court he remained covered, and that from this circumstance the Lord
Advocates still have this privilege, although they do not exercise it.
Probably the custom introduced by Sir Thomas Hope originated in his
being an officer of state, which entitled him to sit in parliament
wearing his hat, and he claimed the same privilege when appearing
before the judges.
[55] See a Memoir by Sir Archibald Steuart Denham in the publications
of the Maitland Club.
[56] The site of Chiesly’s house is that occupied by the Episcopal
Church Training College in Orwell Place.
[57] In _The Domestic Annals of Scotland_ the place of his execution is
given as Drumsheugh, and Sir Walter Scott says he was hanged near his
own house of Dalry.
[58] This was the first High School, built in 1578 in the grounds
of the Blackfriars’ Monastery, of which David Malloch, or Mallet,
was janitor in 1717. The building faced the Canongate. In 1777 it
was replaced by the building now facing Infirmary Street and used in
connection with the university. It is this later building that is
associated with Sir Walter Scott, Lord Brougham, Lord Jeffrey, Lord
Cockburn, and other eminent men of the last quarter of the eighteenth
and first quarter of the nineteenth century.
[59] The Mechanics’ Library was discontinued when the Free Library was
opened. Bailie Macmoran’s house is now used as a university settlement.
[60] After being the residence for a time of Sir John Clerk of Penicuik
and other notable citizens, it was latterly occupied by the widow (the
seventh wife) of the Rev. David Williamson—‘Dainty Davie’—minister of
St Cuthbert’s Church at the time of the Revolution.
[61] The house is marked No. 21. Its back windows enjoy a fine view
of the Firth of Forth and the Fife hills. The registration of his
lordship’s birth appears as follows: ‘Wednesday, 30th September 1778,
Henry Brougham, Esq., parish of St Gilles (_sic_), and Eleonora Syme,
his spouse, a son born the 19th current, named Henry Peter. Witnesses,
Mr Archibald Hope, Royal Bank, and Principal Robertson.’ The parts of
the New Town then built belonged to St Giles’s parish.
THE OLD TOLBOOTH.
The genius of Scott has shed a peculiar interest upon this ancient
structure, whose cant name of the _Heart of Mid-Lothian_ has given a
title to one of his happiest novels. It stood in a singular situation,
occupying half the width of the High Street, elbow to elbow, as it
were, with St Giles’s Church. Antique in form, gloomy and haggard
in aspect, its black stanchioned windows opening through its dingy
walls like the apertures of a hearse, it was calculated to impress
all beholders with a due and deep sense of what was meant in Scottish
law by the _squalor carceris_. At the west end was a projecting
ground-floor, formed of shops, but presenting a platform on which
executions took place. The building itself was composed of two parts,
one more solid and antique than the other, and much resembling, with
its turret staircase, one of those tall, narrow fortalices which
are so numerous in the Border counties. Indeed, the probability is
that this had been a kind of peel or house of defence, required for
public purposes by the citizens of Edinburgh when liable to predatory
invasions. Doubtless the house or some part of it was of great
antiquity, for it was an old and ruinous building in the reign of Mary,
and only narrowly saved at that time from destruction. Most likely
it was the very _pretorium burgi de Edinburgi_ in which a parliament
assembled in 1438 to deliberate on the measures rendered necessary
by the assassination of the poet-king, James I. In those simple days
great and humble things came close together: the house which contained
parliaments upstairs, presented shops in the lower story, and thus
drew in a little revenue to the magistrates. Here met the Court of
Session in its earliest years. Here Mary assembled her parliaments;
and here—on the Tolbooth door—did citizens affix libels by night,
charging the Earl of Bothwell with the murder of Darnley. Long, long
since all greatness had been taken away from the old building, and it
was condemned to be a jail alone, though still with shops underneath.
At length, in 1817, the fabric was wholly swept away, in consequence
of the erection of a better jail on the Calton Hill. The gateway, with
the door and padlock, was transferred to Abbotsford, and, with strange
taste on the part of the proprietor, built into a conspicuous part of
that mansion.
[Illustration: EDINBURGH
from the Calton Hill.
PAGE 83.]
The principal entrance to the Tolbooth, and the only one used in
later days, was at the bottom of the turret next the church. The
gateway was of tolerably good carved stone-work, and occupied by a
door of ponderous massiness and strength, having, besides the lock, a
flap-padlock, which, however, was generally kept unlocked during the
day. In front of the door there always paraded, or rather loitered, a
private of the town-guard, with his rusty red clothes and Lochaber axe
or musket. The door adjacent to the principal gateway was, in the final
days of the Tolbooth, ‘MICHAEL KETTEN’S SHOE-SHOP,’ but had formerly
been a _thief’s hole_. The next door to that, stepping westward, was
the residence of the turnkey; a dismal, unlighted den, where the gray
old man was always to be found, when not engaged in unlocking or
closing the door. The next door westward was a lock-up house, which
in later times was never used. On the north side, towards the street,
there had once been shops, which were let by the magistrates; but
these were converted, about the year 1787, into a guard-house for the
city-guard, on their ancient capitol in the High Street being destroyed
for the levelling of the streets. The ground-floor, thus occupied
for purposes in general remote from the character of the building,
was divided lengthwise by a strong partition wall; and communication
between the rooms above and these apartments below was effectually
interdicted by the strong arches upon which the superstructure was
reared.
On passing the outer door—where the rioters of 1736 thundered with
their sledge-hammers, and finally burnt down all that interposed
between them and their prey—the keeper instantly involved the entrant
in darkness by reclosing the gloomy portal. A flight of about twenty
steps then led to an inner door, which, being duly knocked at, was
opened by a bottle-nosed personage, denominated Peter, who, like his
sainted namesake, always carried two or three large keys. You then
entered _the Hall_, which, being free to all the prisoners except those
of the _East End_, was usually filled with a crowd of shabby-looking
but very merry loungers. A small rail here served as an additional
security, no prisoner being permitted to come within its pale. Here
also a sentinel of the city-guard was always walking, having a bayonet
or ramrod in his hand. The _Hall_, being also the chapel of the jail,
contained an old pulpit of singular fashion—such a pulpit as one
could imagine John Knox to have preached from; which, indeed, he was
traditionally said to have actually done. At the right-hand side of
the pulpit was a door leading up the large turnpike to the apartments
occupied by the criminals, one of which was of plate-iron. The door
was always shut, except when food was taken up to the prisoners. On
the west end of the hall hung a board, on which were inscribed the
following emphatic lines:
‘A prison is a house of care,
A place where none can thrive,
A touchstone true to try a friend,
A grave for men alive—
Sometimes a place of right,
Sometimes a place of wrong,
Sometimes a place for jades and thieves,
And honest men among.’[62]
Apart of the hall on the north side was partitioned off into two
small rooms, one of which was the captain’s pantry, the other his
counting-room. In the latter hung an old musket or two, a pair of
obsolete bandoleers, and a sheath of a bayonet, intended, as one might
suppose, for his defence against a mutiny of the prisoners. Including
the space thus occupied, the hall was altogether twenty-seven feet
long by about twenty broad. The height of the room was twelve feet.
Close to the door, and within the rail, was a large window, thickly
stanchioned; and at the other end of the hall, within the captain’s
two rooms, was a double window of a somewhat extraordinary character.
Tradition, supported by the appearance of the place, pointed out this
as having formerly been a door by which royalty entered the hall in the
days when it was the Parliament House. It is said that a kind of bridge
was thrown between this aperture and a house on the other side of the
street, and that the sovereign, having prepared himself in that house
to enter the hall in his state robes, proceeded at the proper time
along the arch—an arrangement by no means improbable in those days of
straitened accommodation.
The window on the south side of the hall overlooked the outer gateway.
It was therefore employed by the inner turnkey as a channel of
communication with his exterior brother when any visitor was going
out. He used to cry over this window, in the tone of a military order
upon parade: ‘_Turn your hand_,’ whereupon the gray-haired man on the
pavement below opened the door and permitted the visitor, who by this
time had descended the stair, to walk out.
The floor immediately above the hall was occupied by one room for
felons, having a bar along part of the floor, to which condemned
criminals were chained, and a square box of plate-iron in the centre,
called THE CAGE, which was said to have been constructed for the
purpose of confining some extraordinary culprit who had broken half the
jails in the kingdom. Above this room was another of the same size,
also appropriated to felons.
The larger and western part of the edifice, of coarser and apparently
more modern construction, contained four floors, all of which were
appropriated to the use of debtors, except a part of the lowest one,
where a middle-aged woman kept a tavern for the sale of malt liquors.
A turnpike stair gave access to the different floors. As it was
narrow, steep, and dark, the visitor was assisted in his ascent by a
greasy rope, which, some one was sure to inform him afterwards, had
been employed in hanging a criminal. In one of the apartments on the
second floor was a door leading out to the platform whereon criminals
were executed, and in another, on the floor above, was an ill-plastered
part of the wall covering the aperture through which the gallows was
projected. The fourth flat was a kind of barrack, for the use of the
poorest debtors.
There was something about the Old Tolbooth which would have enabled
a blindfolded person led into it to say that it was a jail. It was
not merely odorous from the ordinary causes of imperfect drainage,
but it had poverty’s own smell—the odour of human misery. And yet it
did not seem at first a downcast scene. The promenaders in the hall
were sometimes rather merry, cutting jokes perhaps upon Peter’s nose,
or chatting with friends on the benches regarding the news of the
day. Then Mrs Laing drove a good trade in her little tavern; and if
any messenger were sent out for a bottle of whisky—why, Peter never
searched pockets. New men were hailed with:
‘Welcome, welcome, brother debtor,
To this poor but merry place;
Here nor bailiff, dun, nor fetter,
Dare to show his gloomy face.’
They would be abashed at first, and the first visit of wife or
daughter, coming shawled and veiled, and with timorous glances, into
the room where the loved object was trying to become at ease with his
companions, was always a touching affair. But it was surprising how
soon, in general, all became familiar, easy, and even to appearance
happy. Each had his story to tell, and sympathy was certain and
liberal. The whole management was of a good-natured kind, as far as a
regard to regulations would allow. It did not seem at all an impossible
thing that a debtor should accommodate some even more desolate friend
with a share of his lodging for the night, or for many nights, as is
said to have been done in some noted instances, to which we shall
presently come.
It was natural for a jail of such old standing to have passed through a
great number of odd adventures, and have many strange tales connected
with it. One of the most remarkable traits of its character was a sad
liability to the failure of its ordinary powers of retention when men
of figure were in question. The old house had something like that
faculty attributed by Falstaff to the lion and himself—of knowing
men who ought not to be too roughly handled. The consequence was
that almost every criminal of rank confined in it made his escape.
Lord Burleigh, an insane peer, who, about the time of the Union,
assassinated a schoolmaster who had married a girl to whom he had paid
improper addresses, escaped, while under sentence of death, by changing
clothes with his sister. Several of the rebel gentlemen confined there
in 1716 were equally fortunate; a fact on which there was lately thrown
a flood of light, when I found, in a manuscript list of subscriptions
for the relief of the other rebel gentlemen at Carlisle, the name of
the Guidman of the Tolbooth—so the chief-keeper was called—down for a
good sum. I am uncertain to which of all these personages the following
anecdote, related to me by Sir Walter Scott, refers.
It was contrived that the prisoner should be conveyed out of the
Tolbooth in a trunk, and carried by a porter to Leith, where some
sailors were to be ready with a boat to take him aboard a vessel about
to leave Scotland. The plot succeeded so far as the escape from jail
was concerned, but was knocked on the head by an unlucky and most
ridiculous accident. It so happened that the porter, in arranging the
trunk upon his back, placed the end which corresponded with the feet of
the prisoner _uppermost_. The head of the unfortunate man was therefore
pressed against the lower end of the box, and had to sustain the weight
of the whole body. The posture was the most uneasy imaginable. Yet life
was preferable to ease. He permitted himself to be taken away. The
porter trudged along with the trunk, quite unconscious of its contents,
and soon reached the High Street. On gaining the Netherbow he met an
acquaintance, who asked him where he was going with that large burden.
To Leith, was the answer. The other inquired if the job was good enough
to afford a potation before proceeding farther upon so long a journey.
This being replied to in the affirmative, and the carrier of the box
feeling in his throat the philosophy of his friend’s inquiry, it was
agreed that they should adjourn to a neighbouring tavern. Meanwhile,
the third party, whose inclinations had not been consulted in this
arrangement, was wishing that it were at once well over with him in the
Grassmarket. But his agonies were not destined to be of long duration.
The porter in depositing him upon the causeway happened to make the
end of the trunk come down with such precipitation that, unable to
bear it any longer, the prisoner screamed out, and immediately after
fainted. The consternation of the porter on hearing a noise from his
burden was of course excessive; but he soon recovered presence of mind
enough to conceive the occasion. He proceeded to unloose and to burst
open the trunk, when the hapless nobleman was discovered in a state of
insensibility. As a crowd collected immediately, and the city-guard
were not long in coming forward, there was of course no further chance
of escape. The prisoner did not recover from his swoon till he had been
safely deposited in his old quarters; but, if I recollect rightly, he
eventually escaped in another way.
In two very extraordinary instances an escape from justice has, strange
as it may appear, been effected by _means_ of the Old Tolbooth. At
the discovery of the Rye-House Plot, in the reign of Charles II., the
notorious Robert Fergusson, usually styled ‘The Plotter,’ was searched
for in Edinburgh, with a view to his being subjected, if possible,
to the extreme vengeance of the law. It being known almost certainly
that he was in town, the authorities shut the gates, and calculated
securely upon having him safe within their toils. The Plotter, however,
by an expedient worthy of his ingenious character, escaped by taking
refuge in the Old Tolbooth. A friend of his happened to be confined
there at the time, and was able to afford protection and concealment to
Fergusson, who, at his leisure, came abroad, and betook himself to a
place of safer shelter on the Continent. The same device was practised
in 1746 by a gentleman who had been concerned in the Rebellion, and for
whom a hot search had been carried on in the Highlands.
The case of Katherine Nairne, in 1766, excited in no small degree the
attention of the Scottish public. This lady was allied, both by blood
and marriage, to some respectable families. Her crime was the double
one of poisoning her husband and having an intrigue with his brother,
who was her associate in the murder. On her arrival at Leith in an open
boat, her whole bearing betrayed so much levity, or was so different
from what had been expected, that the mob raised a cry of indignation,
and were on the point of pelting her, when she was with some difficulty
rescued from their hands by the public authorities. In this case the
Old Tolbooth found itself, as usual, incapable of retaining a culprit
of condition. Sentence had been delayed by the judges on account
of the lady’s pregnancy. The midwife employed at her accouchement
(who continued to practise in Edinburgh so lately as the year 1805)
had the address to achieve a jail-delivery also. For three or four
days previous to that concerted for the escape, she pretended to be
afflicted with a prodigious toothache, went out and in with her head
enveloped in shawls and flannels, and groaned as if she had been about
to give up the ghost. At length, when the Peter of that day had become
so habituated to her appearance as not very much to heed her exits and
her entrances, Katherine Nairne one evening came down in her stead,
with her head wrapped all round with the shawls, uttering the usual
groans, and holding down her face upon her hands, as with agony, in the
precise way customary with the midwife. The inner doorkeeper, not quite
unconscious, it is supposed, of the trick, gave her a hearty thump upon
the back as she passed out, calling her at the same time a howling
old Jezebel, and wishing she would never come back to trouble him any
more. There are two reports of the proceedings of Katherine Nairne
after leaving the prison. One bears that she immediately left the town
in a coach, to which she was handed by a friend stationed on purpose.
The coachman, it is said, had orders from her relations, in the event
of a pursuit, to drive into the sea, that she might drown herself—a
fate which was considered preferable to the ignominy of a public
execution. The other story runs that she went up the Lawnmarket to the
Castle-hill, where lived Mr ——, a respectable advocate, from whom, as
he was her cousin, she expected to receive protection. Being ignorant
of the town, she mistook the proper house, and applied at that of the
crown agent,[63] who was assuredly the last man in the world that could
have done her any service. As good luck would have it, she was not
recognised by the servant, who civilly directed her to her cousin’s
house, where, it is said, she remained concealed many weeks.[64] Her
future life, it has been reported, was virtuous and fortunate. She was
married to a French gentleman, became the mother of a large family, and
died at a good old age. Meanwhile, Patrick Ogilvie, her associate in
the dark crime which threw a shade over her younger years, suffered in
the Grassmarket. He had been a lieutenant in the —— regiment, and was
so much beloved by his fellow-soldiers, who happened to be stationed at
that time in Edinburgh Castle, that the public authorities judged it
necessary to shut them up in a fortress till the execution was over
lest they might have attempted a rescue.
The Old Tolbooth was the scene of the suicide of Mungo Campbell while
under sentence of death (1770) for shooting the Earl of Eglintoune.
In the district where this memorable event took place, it is somewhat
remarkable that the fate of the murderer was more generally lamented
than that of the murdered person. Campbell, though what was called ‘a
graceless man,’ was rather popular in his profession of exciseman, on
account of his rough, honourable spirit, and his lenity in the matter
of smuggling. Lord Eglintoune, on the contrary, was not liked, on
account of his improving mania, which had proved a serious grievance
to the old-fashioned farmers of Kyle and Cunningham. There was one
article, called rye-grass, which he brought in amongst them, and
forced them to cultivate; and black prelacy itself had hardly, a
century before, been a greater evil. Then, merely to stir them up a
little, he would cause them to exchange farms with each other; thus
giving their ancient plenishings, what was doubtless much wanted, an
airing, but also creating a strong sense that Lord Eglintoune was
‘far ower fashious.’ His lordship had excited some scandal by his
private habits, which helped in no small degree to render unpopular
one who was in reality an amiable and upright gentleman. He was
likewise somewhat tenacious about matters respecting game—the
besetting weakness of British gentlemen in all ages. On the other
hand, Campbell, though an austere and unsocial man, acted according to
popular ideas both in respect of the game and excise laws. The people
felt that he was on their side; they esteemed him for his integrity
in the common affairs of life, and even in some degree for his birth
and connections, which were far from mean. It was also universally
believed, though erroneously, that he had only discharged his gun by
accident, on falling backward, while retreating before his lordship,
who had determined to take it from him. In reality, Mungo, after his
fall, rose on his elbow and wilfully shot the poor earl, who had given
him additional provocation by bursting into a laugh at his awkward
fall. The Old Tolbooth was supposed by many, at the time, to have had
her usual failing in Mungo’s case. The interest of the Argyll family
was said to have been employed in his favour; and the body which was
found suspended over the door, instead of being his, was thought to
be that of a dead soldier from the Castle substituted in his place.
His relations, however, who were very respectable people in Ayrshire,
all acknowledged that he died by his own hand; and this was the
general idea of the mob of Edinburgh, who, getting the body into their
hands, dragged it down the street to the King’s Park, and, inspired
by different sentiments from those of the Ayrshire people, were not
satisfied till they got it up to the top of Salisbury Crags, from which
they precipitated it down the _Cat Nick_.
[Illustration: Deacon Brodie’s Keys and Dark-Lantern.]
One of the most remarkable criminals ever confined in the Old
Tolbooth was the noted William Brodie. This was a man of respectable
connections, and who had moved in good society all his life,
unsuspected of any criminal pursuits. It is said that a habit of
frequenting cock-pits was the first symptom he exhibited of a decline
from rectitude. His ingenuity as a mechanic gave him a fatal facility
in the burglarious pursuits to which he afterwards addicted himself. It
was then customary for the shopkeepers of Edinburgh to hang their keys
upon a nail at the back of their doors, or at least to take no pains
in concealing them during the day. Brodie used to take impressions of
them in putty or clay, a piece of which he would carry in the palm of
his hand. He kept a blacksmith in his pay, who forged exact copies of
the keys he wanted, and with these it was his custom to open the shops
of his fellow-tradesmen during the night. He thus found opportunities
of securely stealing whatever he wished to possess. He carried on his
malpractices for many years, and never was suspected till, having
committed a daring robbery upon the Excise Office in Chessels’s
Court, Canongate, some circumstances transpired which induced him
to disappear from Edinburgh. Suspicion then becoming strong, he was
pursued to Holland, and taken at Amsterdam, standing upright in a
press or cupboard. At his trial, Henry Erskine, his counsel, spoke
very eloquently in his behalf, representing, in particular, to the
jury how strange and improbable a circumstance it was that a man whom
they had themselves known from infancy as a person of good repute
should have been guilty of such practices as those with which he was
charged. He was, however, found guilty, and sentenced to death, along
with his accomplice Smith. At the trial he had appeared in a full-dress
suit of black clothes, the greater part of which was of silk, and his
deportment throughout the affair was composed and gentlemanlike. He
continued during the period which intervened between his sentence and
execution to dress well and keep up his spirits. A gentleman of his
acquaintance, calling upon him in the condemned room, was surprised
to find him singing the song from the _Beggars’ Opera_, ‘’Tis woman
seduces all mankind.’ Having contrived to cut out the figure of a
draughtboard on the stone floor of his dungeon, he amused himself by
playing with any one who would join him, and, in default of such,
with his right hand against his left. This diagram remained in the
room where it was so strangely out of place till the destruction of
the jail. His dress and deportment at the gallows (October 1, 1788)
displayed a mind at ease, and gave some countenance to the popular
notion that he had made certain mechanical arrangements for saving his
life. Brodie was the first who proved the excellence of an improvement
he had formerly made on the apparatus of the gibbet. This was the
substitution of what is called the _drop_ for the ancient practice
of the double ladder. He inspected the thing with a professional
air, and seemed to view the result of his ingenuity with a smile of
satisfaction. When placed on that insecure pedestal, and while the rope
was adjusted round his neck by the executioner, his courage did not
forsake him. On the contrary, even there he exhibited a sort of levity;
he shuffled about, looked gaily around, and finally went out of the
world with his hand stuck carelessly into the open front of his vest.
[Illustration: Brodie’s Close.]
As its infirmities increased with old age, the Tolbooth showed itself
incapable of retaining prisoners of even ordinary rank. Within the
recollection of people living not long ago, a youth named Hay, the son
of a stabler in the Grassmarket, and who was under sentence of death
for burglary, effected his escape in a way highly characteristic of the
Heart of Mid-Lothian, and of the simple and unprecise system upon which
all public affairs were managed before the present age.
A few days before that appointed for the execution, the father went
up to the condemned room, apparently to condole with his unhappy son.
The irons had been previously got quit of by files. At nightfall, when
most visitors had left the jail, old Hay invited the inner turnkey, or
man who kept the hall-door, to come into the room and partake of some
liquor which he had brought with him. The man took a few glasses, and
became mellow just about the time when the bottle was exhausted and
when the time of locking up the jail (ten o’clock at that period) was
approaching. Hay expressed unwillingness to part at the moment when
they were just beginning to enjoy their liquor; a sentiment in which
the turnkey heartily sympathised. Hay took a crown from his pocket,
and proposed that his friend should go out and purchase a bottle of
good rum at a neighbouring shop. The man consented, and staggering away
downstairs, neglected to lock the inner door behind him. Young Hay
followed close, as had been concerted, and after the man had gone out,
and the outer turnkey had closed the outer door, stood in the stair
just within that dread portal, ready to spring into the street. Old Hay
then put his head to the great window of the hall, and cried: ‘Turn
your hand!’—the usual drawling cry which brought the outer turnkey to
open the door. The turnkey came mechanically at the cry, and unclosed
the outer door, when the young criminal sprang out, and ran as fast as
he could down Beth’s Wynd, a lane opposite the jail. According to the
plan which had been previously concerted, he repaired to a particular
part of the wall of the Greyfriars Churchyard, near the lower gate,
where it was possible for an agile person to climb up and spring over;
and so well had every stage of the business been planned that a large
stone had been thrown down at this place to facilitate the leap.
The youth had been provided with a key which could open Sir George
Mackenzie’s mausoleum—a place of peculiar horror, as it was supposed
to be haunted by the spirit of the bloody persecutor; but what will
not be submitted to for dear life? Having been brought up in Heriot’s
Hospital, in the immediate neighbourhood of the churchyard, Hay had
many boyish acquaintances still residing in that establishment. Some
of these he contrived to inform of his situation, enjoining them to
be secret, and beseeching them to assist him in his distress. The
Herioters of those days had a very clannish spirit—insomuch that
to have neglected the interests or safety of any individual of the
community, however unworthy he might be of their friendship, would
have been looked upon by them as a sin of the deepest dye. Hay’s
confidants, therefore, considered themselves bound to assist him by
all means in their power. They kept his secret faithfully, spared from
their own meals as much food as supported him, and ran the risk of
severe punishment, as well as of seeing eldritch sights, by visiting
him every night in his dismal abode. About six weeks after his escape
from jail, when the hue and cry had in a great measure subsided, he
ventured to leave the tomb, and it was afterwards known that he escaped
abroad.
[Illustration: Sir George Mackenzie’s Mausoleum.]
So ends our gossip respecting a building which has witnessed and
contained the meetings of the Scottish parliament in the romantic days
of the Jameses—which held the first fixed court of law established
in the country—which was looked to by the citizens in a rude age as
a fortified place for defence against external danger to their lives
and goods—which has immured in its gloomy walls persons of all kinds
liable to law, from the gallant Montrose and the faithful Guthrie
and Argyll down to the humblest malefactor in the modern style of
crime—and which, finally, has been embalmed in the imperishable pages
of the greatest writer of fiction our country has produced.
FOOTNOTES
[62] These verses are to be found in a curious volume, which appeared
in London in 1618, under the title of _Essayes and Characters of
a Prison and Prisoners_, by Geffray Mynshul, of Grayes Inn, Gent.
Reprinted, 1821, by W. & C. Tait, Edinburgh. The lines were applied
specially to the King’s Bench Prison.
[63] A large white house near the Castle, on the north side of the
street, and now (1868) no more.
[64] Katherine Nairne was the niece of Sir William Nairne, later a
judge under the title of Lord Dunsinnane, and it was currently reported
that her escape from the Tolbooth was effected through his connivance.
Sir William’s clerk accompanied the lady to Dover, and had great
difficulty in preventing her recognition and arrest through her levity
on the journey.
SOME MEMORIES OF THE LUCKENBOOTHS.
LORD COALSTOUN AND HIS WIG—COMMENDATOR BOTHWELL’S HOUSE—LADY
ANNE BOTHWELL—MAHOGANY LANDS AND FORE-STAIRS—THE
KRAMES—CREECH’S SHOP.
A portion of the High Street facing St Giles’s Church was called the
_Luckenbooths_, and the appellation was shared with a middle row of
buildings which once burdened the street at that spot. The name is
supposed to have been conferred on the shops in that situation as being
_close shops_, to distinguish them from the open booths which then
lined our great street on both sides; _lucken_ signifying closed. This
would seem to imply a certain superiority in the ancient merchants of
the Luckenbooths; and it is somewhat remarkable that amidst all the
changes of the Old Town there is still in this limited locality an
unusual proportion of mercers and clothiers of old standing and reputed
substantiality.
[Illustration: Tolbooth and Luckenbooths—looking East.]
Previous to 1811, there remained unchanged in this place two tall
massive houses, about two centuries old, one of which contained the
town mansion of Sir John Byres of Coates, a gentleman of figure in
Edinburgh in the reign of James VI., and whose faded tombstone may
yet be deciphered in the west wall of the Greyfriars Churchyard. The
Byreses of the Coates died out towards the end of the last century, and
their estate has since become a site for streets, as our city spread
westwards. The name alone survives in connection with an alley beneath
their town mansion—_Byres’s Close_.
LORD COALSTOUN AND HIS WIG.
The _fourth floor_, constituting the Byres mansion, after being
occupied by such persons as Lord Coupar, Lord Lindores, and Sir James
Johnston of Westerhall, fell into the possession of Mr Brown of
Coalstoun, a judge under the designation of Lord Coalstoun, and the
father of the late Countess of Dalhousie. His lordship lived here in
1757, but then removed to a more spacious mansion on the Castle-hill.
A strange accident one morning befell Lord Coalstoun while residing
in this house. It was at that time the custom for advocates, and no
less for judges, to dress themselves in gown, wig, and cravat at their
own houses, and to walk in a sort of state, thus rigged out, with
their cocked hats in their hands, to the Parliament House.[65] They
usually breakfasted early, and when dressed would occasionally lean
over their parlour windows, for a few minutes before St Giles’s bell
sounded the starting peal of a quarter to nine, enjoying the morning
air, such as it was, and perhaps discussing the news of the day, or
the convivialities of the preceding evening, with a neighbouring
advocate on the opposite side of the alley. It so happened that one
morning, while Lord Coalstoun was preparing to enjoy his matutinal
treat, two girls, who lived in the second floor above, were amusing
themselves with a kitten, which, in thoughtless sport, they had swung
over the window by a cord tied round its middle, and hoisted for some
time up and down, till the creature was getting rather desperate with
its exertions. In this crisis his lordship popped his head out of
the window directly below that from which the kitten swung, little
suspecting, good easy man, what a danger impended, like the sword of
Damocles, over his head, hung, too, by a single—not _hair_, ’tis true,
but scarcely more responsible material—_garter_, when down came the
exasperated animal at full career directly upon his senatorial wig.
No sooner did the girls perceive what sort of a landing-place their
kitten had found than, in terror and surprise, they began to draw it
up; but this measure was now too late, for along with the animal
up also came the judge’s wig, fixed full in its determined talons.
His lordship’s surprise on finding his wig lifted off his head was
much increased when, on looking up, he perceived it dangling its way
upwards, without any means visible to him by which its motions might
be accounted for. The astonishment, the dread, the almost _awe_ of the
senator below—the half mirth, half terror of the girls above—together
with the fierce and relentless energy of retention on the part of Puss
between—altogether formed a scene to which language could not easily
do justice. It was a joke soon explained and pardoned; but assuredly
the perpetrators of it did afterwards get many lengthened injunctions
from their parents never again to fish over the window, with such a
bait, for honest men’s wigs.
COMMENDATOR BOTHWELL’S HOUSE.
The eastern of the tenements, which has only been renovated by a
new front, formerly was the lodging of Adam Bothwell, Commendator
of Holyrood, who is remarkable for having performed the Protestant
marriage ceremony for Mary and the Earl of Bothwell. This ecclesiastic,
who belonged to an old Edinburgh family of note, and was the uncle
of the inventor of logarithms,[66] is celebrated in his epitaph
in Holyrood Chapel as a judge, and the son and father of judges.
His son was raised to the peerage in 1607, under the title of Lord
Holyroodhouse, the lands of that abbacy, with some others, being
erected into a temporal lordship in his favour. The title, however,
sunk in the second generation. The circumstance which now gives most
interest to the family is one which they themselves would probably have
regarded as its greatest disgrace. Among the old Scottish songs is one
which breaks upon the ear with the wail of wronged womanhood, mingled
with the breathings of its indestructible affections:
‘Baloo, my boy, lie still and sleep,
It grieves me sair to see thee weep.
If thou’lt be silent, I’ll be glad;
Thy mourning makes my heart full sad....
Baloo, my boy, weep not for me,
Whose greatest grief’s for wranging thee,
Nor pity her deserved smart,
Who can blame none but her fond heart.
Baloo, my boy, thy father’s fled,
When he the thriftless son hath played;
Of vows and oaths forgetful, he
Preferred the wars to thee and me:
But now perhaps thy curse and mine
Makes him eat acorns with the swine.
Nay, curse not him; perhaps now he,
Stung with remorse, is blessing thee;
Perhaps at death, for who can tell
But the great Judge of heaven and hell
By some proud foe has struck the blow,
And laid the dear deceiver low,’ &c.
Great doubt has long rested on the history of this piteous ditty; but
it is now ascertained to have been a contemporary effusion on the sad
love-tale of Anne Bothwell, a sister of the first Lord Holyroodhouse.
The only error in the setting down of the song was in calling it
_Lady_ Anne Bothwell’s Lament, as the heroine had no pretension to a
term implying noble rank. Her lover was a youth of uncommon elegance
of person, the Honourable Alexander Erskine, brother of the Earl of
Mar, of the first Earl of Buchan, and of Lord Cardross. A portrait of
him, which belonged to his mother (the countess mentioned a few pages
back), and which is now in the possession of James Erskine, Esq. of
Cambo, Lady Mar’s descendant, represents him as strikingly handsome,
with much vivacity of countenance, dark-blue eyes, a peaked beard,
and moustaches. The lovers were cousins. The song is an evidence of
the public interest excited by the affair: a fragment of it found its
way into an English play of the day, Broom’s comedy of _The Northern
Lass_ (1632). This is somewhat different from any of the stanzas in the
common versions of the ballad:
‘Peace, wayward bairn. Oh cease thy moan!
Thy far more wayward daddy’s gone,
And never will recallèd be,
By cries of either thee or me;
For should we cry,
Until we die,
We could not scant his cruelty.
Baloo, baloo, &c.
He needs might in himself foresee
What thou successively mightst be;
And could he then (though me forego)
His infant leave, ere he did know
How like the dad
Would prove the lad,
In time to make fond maidens glad.
Baloo, baloo,’ &c.
The fate of the deceiver proved a remarkable echo of some of the verses
of the ballad. Having carried his military experience and the influence
of his rank into the party of the Covenanters, he was stationed (1640)
with his brother-in-law, the Earl of Haddington, at Dunglass Castle,
on the way to Berwick, actively engaged in bringing up levies for the
army, then newly advanced across the Tweed; when, by the revenge of
an offended page, who applied a hot poker to the powder magazine, the
place was blown up. Erskine, with his brother-in-law and many other
persons, perished. A branch of the Mar family retained, till no remote
time, the awe-mingled feeling which had been produced by this event,
which they had been led to regard as a punishment inflicted for the
wrongs of Anne Bothwell.
[Illustration: Byres’s Close, Back of Commendator Bothwell’s House.]
At the back of the Commendator’s house there is a projection,[67] on
the top of which is a bartisan or flat roof, faced with three lettered
stones. There is a tradition that Oliver Cromwell lived in this
house,[68] and used to come out and sit here to view his navy on the
Forth, of which, together with the whole coast, it commands a view. As
this commander is said to have had his guard-house in the neighbouring
alley called Dunbar’s Close, there is some reason to give credit to the
story, though it is in no shape authenticated by historical record. The
same house was, for certain, the residence of Sir William Dick, the
hapless son of Crœsus spoken of in a preceding article.
These houses preserved, until their recent renovation, all the
characteristics of that ancient mode of architecture which has procured
for the edifices constructed upon it the dignified appellative of
_Mahogany Lands_. Below were the booths or piazzas, once prevalent
throughout the whole town, in which the merchants of the laigh shops,
or cellars, were permitted to exhibit their goods to the passengers.
The merchant himself took his seat at the head of the stair to attend
to the wants of passing customers. By the ancient laws of the burgh,
it was required that each should be provided with ‘lang wappinis, sick
as a spear or a Jeddart staff,’ with which he was to sally forth and
assist the magistrates in time of need; for example, when a _tulzie_
took place between the retainers of rival noblemen meeting in the
street.
[Illustration]
This house could also boast of that distinguished feature in all
ancient wooden structures, a _fore-stair_, an antiquated convenience,
or inconvenience, now almost extinct, consisting of a flight of steps,
ascending from the pavement to the first floor of the mansion, and
protruding a considerable way into the street. Nuisances as they still
are, they were once infinitely worse. What will my readers think when
they are informed that under these projections our ancestors kept their
swine? Yes; _outside stairs_ was formerly but a term of outward respect
for what were as frequently denominated _swine’s cruives_; and the rude
inhabitants of these narrow mansions were permitted, through the day,
to stroll about the ‘High Gait,’ seeking what they might devour among
the heaps of filth which then encumbered the street,[69] as barn-door
fowls are at the present day suffered to go abroad in country towns;
and, like them (or like the town-geese of Musselburgh, which to
this day are privileged to feed upon the race-ground), the sullen
porkers were regularly called home in the evening by their respective
proprietors.
These circumstances will be held as sufficient evidence,
notwithstanding all the enactments for the ‘policy of bigginis’ and
‘decoring the tounes,’ that the stranger’s constant reproach of the
Scots for want of cleanliness was not unmerited. Yet, to show that
our countrymen did not lack a taste for decent appearances, let it be
recollected that on every occasion of a public procession, entry of
a sovereign, or other ceremonial, these fore-stairs were hung with
carpets, tapestry, or arras, and were the principal places for the
display of rank and fashion; while the windows, like the galleries of
a theatre compared with the boxes, were chiefly occupied by spectators
of a lower degree.[70] The strictest proclamations were always issued,
before any such occasion, ordaining the ‘middinis’ and the ‘swine’ to
be removed, and the stairs to be decorated in the manner mentioned.
Beneath the stair of the house now under review there abode in later
times an old man named Bryce, in whose life and circumstances there
was something characteristic of a pent-up city like Edinburgh, where
every foot of space was valuable. A stock of small hardwares and
trinkets was piled up around him, leaving scarcely sufficient room
for the accommodation of his own person, which completely filled the
vacant space, as a hermit-crab fills its shell. There was not room
for the admission of a customer; but he had a _half-door_, over which
he sold any article that was demanded; and there he sat from morning
till night, with his face turned to this door, looking up the eternal
Lawnmarket. The place was so confined that he could not stand upright
in it; nor could he stretch out his legs. Even while he sat, there
was an uneasy obliquity of the stair, which compelled him to shrink a
little aside; and by accustoming himself to this posture for a long
series of years, he had insensibly acquired a twist in his shoulders,
nearly approaching to a humpback, and his head swung a little to one
side. This was _l’air boutiquier_ in a most distressing sense.
In the description of this old tenement given in the title-deeds, it is
called ‘All and haill that Lodging or Timber Land lying in the burgh
of Edinburgh, on the north side of the High Street thereof, forgainst
the place of the Tolbooth, commonly called the Poor Folks’ Purses.’ The
latter place was a part of the northern wall of the prison, deriving
its name from a curious circumstance. It was formerly the custom for
the privileged beggars, called _Blue-gowns_, to assemble in the palace
yard, where a small donation from the king, consisting of as many
pennies as he was years old, was conferred on each of them; after which
they moved in procession up the High Street, till they came to this
spot, where the magistrates gave each a _leathern purse_ and a small
sum of money; the ceremony concluding by their proceeding to the High
Church to hear a sermon from one of the king’s chaplains.[71]
THE KRAMES.
The central row of buildings—the _Luckenbooths proper_—was not wholly
taken away till 1817. The narrow passage left between it and the
church will ever be memorable to all who knew Edinburgh in those days,
on account of the strange scene of traffic which it presented—each
recess, angle, and coign of vantage in the wall of the church being
occupied by little shops, of the nature of Bryce’s, devoted to the sale
of gloves, toys, lollipops, &c. These were the _Krames_, so famous at
Edinburgh firesides. Singular places of business they assuredly were;
often not presenting more space than a good church-pew, yet supporting
by their commerce respectable citizenly families, from which would
occasionally come men of some consequence in society. At the same spot
the constable (Earl of Errol) was wont to sit upon a chair at the
ridings of the parliament, when ceremonially receiving the members as
they alighted.
I am told that one such place, not more than seven feet by three, had
been occupied by a glover named Kennedy, who with his gentle dame
stood there retailing their wares for a time sufficient to witness the
rise and fall of dynasties, never enjoying all that time the comfort
of a fire, even in the coldest weather! This was a specimen of the
life led by these patient creatures; many of whom, upon the demolition
of their lath and plaster tenements, retired from business with
little competencies. Their rents were from £3 to £6 per annum; and it
appears that, huddled as the town then was around them, they had no
inconsiderable custom. At the end of the row, under the angle of the
church, was a brief stair, called _The Lady’s Steps_, thought to be a
corruption of _Our Lady’s Steps_, with reference to a statue of the
Virgin, the niche for which was seen in the east wall of the church
till the renovation of the building in 1830. Sir George Mackenzie,
however, in his _Observations on the Statutes_, states that the Lady’s
Steps were so called from the infamous Lady March (wife of the Earl
of Arran, James VI.’s profligate chancellor), from whom also the nine
o’clock evening-bell, being ordered by her to an hour later, came to be
called _The Lady’s Bell_. When men made bargains at the Cross, it was
customary for them to go up to the Lady’s Steps, and there consummate
the negotiation by wetting thumbs or paying _arles_.
CREECH’S SHOP.
The building at the east end of the Luckenbooths proper had a front
facing down the High Street, and commanding not only a view of the busy
scene there presented, but a prospect of Aberlady Bay, Gosford House,
and other objects in Haddingtonshire. The shop in the east front was
that of Mr Creech, a bookseller of facete memory, who had published
many books by the principal literary men of his day, to all of whom he
was known as a friend and equal. From this place had issued works by
Kames, Smith, Hume, Mackenzie, and finally the poems of Burns. It might
have been called the Lounger’s Observatory, for seldom was the doorway
free of some group of idlers, engaged in surveying and commenting on
the crowd in front; Creech himself, with his black silk breeches and
powdered head, being ever a conspicuous member of the corps. The flat
above had been the shop of Allan Ramsay, and the place where, in 1725,
he set up the first example of a circulating library known in Scotland.
FOOTNOTES
[65] Up to the year 1830, when George IV. Bridge gave easy access to
Parliament House, this quaint custom was followed by Lord Glenlee, who
walked from his house in Brown Square, down Crombie’s Close, across the
Cowgate, and up the Back Stairs.
[66] Napier of Merchiston.
[67] This projection is still a notable architectural feature in the
open space at the back of the tenement referred to. The original
windows have been built up. One of the lettered stones bearing the
words, ‘Blessit be God for all his giftis’—a favourite motto with old
Edinburgh builders—was removed to Easter Coates house, where it may
still be seen in that now old building adjoining St Mary’s Cathedral.
[68] From this tradition it was known as ‘The Cromwell Bartizan.’
Dunbar’s Close did not get its name from its supposed association with
Cromwell’s soldiers, but from a family that lived in it. At an earlier
period it was known as Ireland’s Close.
[69] Edinburgh was not in this respect worse than other European
cities. Paris, at least, was equally disgusting. Rigord, who wrote
in the twelfth century, tells us that the king, standing one day at
the window of his palace near the Seine, and observing that the dirt
thrown up by the carriages produced a most offensive stench, resolved
to remedy this intolerable nuisance by causing the streets to be paved.
For a long time swine were permitted to wallow in them; till the young
Philip being killed by a fall from his horse, from a sow running
between its legs, an order was issued that no swine should in future
run about the street. The monks of the Abbey of St Anthony remonstrated
fiercely against this order, alleging that the prevention of the
saint’s swine from enjoying the liberty of going where they pleased was
a want of respect to their patron. It was therefore found necessary to
grant them the privilege of wallowing in the dirt without molestation,
requiring the monks only to turn them out with bells about their necks.
[70]
‘To recreat hir hie renoun,
Of curious things thair wes all sort,
The stairs and houses of the toun
With tapestries were spread athort:
Quhair histories men micht behould,
With images and anticks auld.
THE DESCRIPTION OF THE QVEEN’S MAIESTIES MAIST
HONORABLE ENTRY INTO THE TOWN OF EDINBVRGH, VPON THE
19. DAY OF MAII, 1590. BY JOHN BVREL.’—_Watson’s
Collection of Scots Poems_ (1709).
[71] In the early times these privileged beggars were called
‘Bedesmen,’ from telling their beads as they walked from Holyrood to St
Giles’. From the erection of the Canongate Church in 1690 the ceremony
took place there, until it was discontinued in the first years of Queen
Victoria’s reign. A well-known worthy of this community was reputed in
1837 to possess property which yielded an annual income of £120.
SOME MEMORANDA OF THE OLD KIRK OF ST GILES.
[Illustration: ST GILES, WEST WINDOW.
PAGE 105.]
The central portion or transept of St Giles’s Church, opening from the
south, formed a distinct place of worship, under the name of the Old
Church, and this seems to have been the first arranged for Protestant
worship after the Reformation. It was the scene of the prelections of
John Knox (who, it will be remembered, was the first minister of the
city under the reformed religion), until a month before his death, when
it appears that another portion of the building—styled the Tolbooth
Kirk—was fitted up for his use.
[Illustration: John Knox’s Pulpit.]
It also happened to be in the Old Kirk that the celebrated riot of the
23rd of July 1637 took place, when, on the opening of the new Episcopal
service-book, Jenny Geddes, of worthy memory, threw her cutty-stool at
the dean who read it—the first weapon, and a formidable one it was,
employed in the great civil war.[72]
[Illustration: Jenny Geddes’s Stool.]
Jenny Geddes was an herbwoman—_Scottice, a greenwife_—at the Tron
Church, where, in former as well as in recent times, that class of
merchants kept their stalls. It seems that, in the midst of the hubbub,
Jenny, hearing the bishop call upon the dean to read the _collect_ of
the day, cried out, with unintentional wit: ‘Deil colic the wame o’
ye!’[73] and threw at the dean’s head the small stool on which she sat;
‘a ticket of remembrance,’ as a Presbyterian annalist merrily terms it,
so well aimed that the clergyman only escaped it by jouking;[74] that
is, by [ducking or] suddenly bending his person.
Jenny, like the originators of many other insurrections, appears to
have afterwards repented of her exertions on this occasion. We learn
from the simple diarist, Andrew Nichol, that when Charles II. was
known, in June 1650, to have arrived in the north of Scotland, amidst
other rejoicings, ‘the pure [_q.d._ poor] kaill-wyves at the Trone
[Jenny Geddes, no doubt, among the number] war sae overjoyed, that they
sacrificed their standis and creellis, yea, the verie _stoollis_ they
sat on, in ane fyre.’ What will give, however, a still more unequivocal
proof of the repentance of honest Jenny (after whom, by the way, Burns
named a favourite mare), is the conduct expressly attributed to herself
on the occasion of the king’s coronation in 1661 by the _Mercurius
Caledonius_:
‘But among all our bontados and caprices,’ says that curious register
of events,[75] ‘that of the immortal Jenet Geddis, Princesse of the
Trone adventurers, was most pleasant; for she was not only content to
assemble all her Creels, Basquets, _Creepies_,[76] Furmes, and other
ingredients that composed the Shope of her Sallets, Radishes, Turnips,
Carrots, Spinage, Cabbage, with all other sorts of Pot Merchandise
that belongs to the garden, but even her Leather Chair of State, where
she used to dispense Justice to the rest of her Langkale Vassals, were
all very orderly burned; she herself countenancing the action with a
high-flown flourish and vermilion majesty.’
The Scottish Society of Antiquaries nevertheless exhibit in their
museum a clasp-stool, for which there is good evidence that it was the
actual stool thrown by Mrs Geddes at the dean.
In the southern aisle of this church, the Regent Murray, three weeks
after his assassination at Linlithgow, February 14, 1569-70, was
interred: ‘his head placed south, contrair the ordour usit; the
sepulchre laid with hewin wark maist curiously, and on the head ane
plate of brass.’ John Knox preached a funeral-sermon over the remains
of his friend, and drew tears from the eyes of all present. In the
Tolbooth Church, immediately adjoining to the west, sat the convention
which chose the Earl of Lennox as his successor in the regency.
Murray’s monument was not inelegant for the time; and its inscription,
written by Buchanan, is remarkable for emphatic brevity.
[Illustration: Modern Monument to the Marquis of Montrose (see p. 108).]
This part of the church appears to have formerly been an open lounge.
French Paris, Queen Mary’s servant, in his confession respecting the
murder of Darnley, mentions that, during the communings which took
place before that deed was determined on, he one day ‘took his mantle
and sword, and went to walk (_promener_) in the High Church.’ Probably,
in consequence of the veneration entertained for the memory of ‘the
Good Regent,’ or else, perhaps, from some simple motive of conveniency,
the Earl of Murray’s tomb was a place frequently assigned in bills for
the payment of the money. It also appears to have been the subject of
a similar jest to that respecting the tomb of Duke Humphrey. Robert
Sempill, in his _Banishment of Poverty_, a poem referring to the year
1680 or 1681, thus expresses himself:
‘Then I knew no way how to fen’;
My guts rumbled like a _hurle-barrow_;
I dined with saints and noblemen,
Even sweet Saint Giles and Earl of Murray.’
In the immediate neighbourhood of the Earl of Murray’s tomb, to the
east, is the sepulchre of the Marquis of Montrose, executed in 1650,
and here interred most sumptuously, June 1661, after the various
parts of his body had been dispersed for eleven years in different
directions, according to his sentence.[77]
FOOTNOTES
[72] We learn from Crawford’s _History of the University_ (MS. Adv.
Lib.) that the service was read that day in the Old Kirk on account of
the more dignified place of worship towards the east being then under
the process of alteration for the erection of the altar, ‘and other
pendicles of that idolatrous worship.’
[73] _Notes upon the Phœnix edition of the Pastoral Letter_, by S.
Johnson, 1694.
[74] Wodrow, in his _Diary_, makes a statement apparently at issue with
that in the text, both in respect of locality and person:
‘It is the constantly believed tradition that it was Mrs Mean, wife to
John Mean, merchant in Edinburgh, who threw the first stool when the
service-book was read in the New Kirk, Edinburgh, 1637, and that many
of the lasses that carried on the fray were preachers in disguise, for
they threw stools to a great length.’
[75] A newspaper commenced after the Restoration, and continued through
eleven numbers.
[76] Small stools.
[77] See _St Giles’, Edinburgh: Church, College, and Cathedral_, by the
Rev. Sir J. Cameron Lees, D.D.; also _Historical Sketch of St Giles’
Cathedral_, by William Chambers, by whom the cathedral was restored in
1872-83. Regarding the reinterment of Montrose, there is a narrative,
with some fresh light on the subject, in the paper, ‘The Embalming of
Montrose,’ in the first volume of _The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club_.
The monuments to Knox, the Earl of Murray, and the Marquises of Argyll
and Montrose are quite modern.
THE PARLIAMENT CLOSE.
ANCIENT CHURCHYARD—BOOTHS ATTACHED TO THE HIGH
CHURCH—GOLDSMITHS—GEORGE HERIOT—THE DEID-CHACK.
Previous to the seventeenth century, the ground now occupied by the
Parliament House, and the buildings adjacent to the south and west,
was the churchyard of St Giles’s, from the south side of which edifice
it extended down a steep declivity to the Cowgate. This might formerly
be considered the metropolitan cemetery of Scotland; as, together with
the internal space of the church, it contained the ashes of many noble
and remarkable personages, John Knox amongst the number. After the
Reformation, when Queen Mary conferred the gardens of the Greyfriars
upon the town, the churchyard of St Giles’s ceased to be much used as
a burying-ground; and that extensive and more appropriate place of
sepulture succeeded to this in being made _the Westminster Abbey of
Scotland_.
The west side of the cemetery of St Giles’s was bounded by the house
of the provost of the church, who, in 1469, granted part of the same
to the citizens for the augmentation of the burying-ground. From the
charter accompanying the grant, it appears that the provost’s house
then also contained the public school of Edinburgh.
In the lower part of the churchyard[78] there was a small place of
worship denominated the _Chapel of Holyrood_. Walter Chapman, the first
printer in Edinburgh, in 1528 endowed an altar in this chapel with his
tenement in the Cowgate; and, by the tenor of the charter, I am enabled
to point out very nearly the residence of this interesting person, who,
besides being a printer, was a respectable merchant in Edinburgh, and,
it would appear, a very pious man. The tenement is thus described: ‘All
and haill this tenement of land, back and foir, with houses, biggings,
yards, and well[79] thereof, lying in the Cowgate of Edinburgh, on the
south side thereof, near the said chapel, betwixt the lands of James
Lamb on the east, and the lands of John Aber on the west, the arable
lands called Wairam’s Croft on the south, and the said street on the
north part.’
BOOTHS.
The precincts of St Giles’s being now secularised, the church itself
was, in 1628, degraded by numerous wooden booths being stuck up around
it. Yet, to show that some reverence was still paid to the sanctity
of the place, the Town-council decreed that no tradesmen should be
admitted to these shops except bookbinders, mortmakers (watchmakers),
jewellers, and goldsmiths. _Bookbinders_ must here be meant to signify
booksellers, the latter term not being then known in Scotland. Of
mortmakers there could not be many, for watches were imported from
Germany till about the conclusion of the seventeenth century. The
goldsmiths were a much more numerous tribe than either of their
companions; for at that time there prevailed in Scotland, amongst the
aristocracy, a sort of rude magnificence and taste for show extremely
favourable to these tradesmen.
[Illustration: Old St Giles’s.]
In 1632, the present great hall of the Parliament House was founded
upon the site of the houses formerly occupied by the ministers of St
Giles’s. It was finished in 1639, at an expense of £11,630 sterling,
and devoted to the use of parliament.
It does not appear to have been till after the Restoration that the
Parliament Close was formed, by the erection of a line of private
buildings, forming a square with the church. These houses, standing
on a declivity, were higher on one side than the other; one is said
to have been fifteen stories altogether in height. All, however,
were burned down in a great fire which happened in 1700, after which
buildings of twelve stories in height were substituted.[80]
Among the noble inhabitants of the Parliament Close at an early period,
the noble family of Wemyss were not the least considerable. At the time
of Porteous’s affair, when Francis, the fifth earl, was a boy, his
sisters persuaded him to act the part of Captain Porteous in a sort of
drama which they got up in imitation of that strange scene. The foolish
romps actually went the length of tucking up their brother, the heir of
the family, by the neck, over a door; and their sports had well-nigh
ended in a real tragedy, for the helpless representative of Porteous
was black in the face before they saw the necessity of cutting him
down.[81]
The small booths around St Giles’s continued, till 1817, to deform the
outward appearance of the church. Long before their destruction, the
booksellers at least had found the space of six or seven feet too small
for the accommodation of their fast-increasing wares, and removed to
larger shops in the elegant tenements of the square. One of the largest
of the booths, adjacent to the south side of the New or High Church,
and having a second story, was occupied, during a great part of the
last century, by Messrs Kerr and Dempster, goldsmiths. The first of
these gentlemen had been member of parliament for the city, and was the
last citizen who ever held that office [in the Scottish parliament].
Such was the humility of people’s wishes in those days respecting their
houses, that this respectable person actually lived, and had a great
number of children, in the small space of the flat over the shop and
the cellar under it, which was lighted by a grating in the pavement of
the square. The subterraneous part of his house was chiefly devoted
to the purposes of a nursery, and proved so insalubrious that all his
children died successively at a particular age, with the exception of
his son Robert, who, being born much more weakly than the rest, had the
good luck to be sent to the country to be nursed, and afterwards grew
up to be the author of a work entitled _The Life of Robert Bruce_, and
the editor of a large collection of voyages and travels.
GOLDSMITHS.
The goldsmiths of those days were considered a superior class of
tradesmen; they appeared in public with scarlet cloak, cocked hat,
and cane, as men of some consideration. Yet in their shops every one
of them would have been found working with his own hands at some
light labour, in a little recess near the window, generally in a very
plain dress, but ready to come forth at a moment’s notice to serve a
customer. Perhaps, down to 1780, there was not a goldsmith in Edinburgh
who did not condescend to manual labour.
As the whole trade was collected in the Parliament Close, this was of
course the place to which country couples resorted, during the last
century, in order to make the purchase of silver tea-spoons, which
always preceded their nuptials. It was then as customary a thing in the
country for the intending bridegroom to take a journey, a few weeks
before his marriage, to the Parliament Close, in order to buy the
_silver spoons_, as it was for the bride to have all her clothes and
stock of bed-furniture inspected by a committee of matrons upon the
wedding eve. And this important transaction occasioned two journeys:
one, in order to select the spoons, and prescribe the initials which
were to be marked upon them; the other, to receive and pay for them. It
must be understood that the goldsmiths of Edinburgh then kept scarcely
any goods on hand in their shops, and that the smallest article had
to be bespoken from them some time before it was wanted. A goldsmith,
who entered as an apprentice about the beginning of the reign of
George III., informed me that they were beginning only at that time to
keep a few trifling articles on hand. Previously another old custom
had been abolished. It had been usual, upon both the occasions above
mentioned, for the goldsmith to adjourn with his customer to John’s
Coffee-house,[82] or to the Baijen-hole,[83] and to receive the order
or the payment, in a comfortable manner, over a dram and a _caup_ of
small ale; which were upon the first occasion paid for by the customer,
and upon the second by the trader; and the goldsmith then was perhaps
let into the whole secret counsels of the rustic, including a history
of his courtship—in return for which he would take pains to amuse his
customer with a sketch of the city news. In time, as the views and
capitals of the Parliament Close goldsmiths became extended, all these
pleasant customs were abandoned.[84]
GEORGE HERIOT.
[Illustration: HERIOT’S HOSPITAL
from Greyfriars’ Churchyard.
PAGE 113.]
The shop and workshop of George Heriot existed in this neighbourhood
till 1809, when the extension of the Advocates’ Library occasioned the
destruction of some interesting old _closes_ to the west of St Giles’s
Kirk, and altered all the features of this part of the town. There was
a line of three small shops, with wooden superstructures above them,
extending between the door of the Old Tolbooth and that of the _Laigh
Council-house_, which occupied the site of the present lobby of the
Signet Library. A narrow passage led between these shops and the west
end of St Giles’s; and George Heriot’s shop, being in the centre of the
three, was situated exactly opposite to the south window of the Little
Kirk. The back windows looked into an alley behind, called Beith’s or
Bess Wynd. In confirmation of this tradition, George Heriot’s name
was discovered upon the architrave of the door, being carved in the
stone, and apparently having served as his _sign_. Besides this curious
memorial, the booth was also found to contain his forge and bellows,
with a hollow stone, fitted with a stone cover or lid, which had been
used as a receptacle for and a means of extinguishing the living embers
of the furnace, upon closing the shop at night. All these curiosities
were bought by the late Mr E. Robertson of the Commercial Bank, who
had been educated in Heriot’s Hospital, and by him presented to the
governors, who ordered them to be carefully deposited and preserved
in the house, where they now remain. George Heriot’s shop was only
about seven feet square! Yet his master, King James, is said to have
sometimes visited him and been treated by him here. There is a story
that one day, when the goldsmith visited His Majesty at Holyrood, he
found him sitting beside a fire, which, being composed of perfumed
wood, cast an agreeable smell through the room. Upon George Heriot
remarking its pleasantness, the king told him that it was quite as
costly as it was fine. Heriot said that if His Majesty would come and
pay him a visit at his shop, he would show him a still more costly fire.
‘Indeed!’ said the king; ‘and I will.’ He accordingly paid the
goldsmith a visit, but was surprised to find only an ordinary fire. ‘Is
this, then, your fine fire?’ said he.
‘Wait a little,’ said George, ‘till I get my fuel.’ So saying, he took
from his bureau a bond for two thousand pounds which he had lent to the
king, and laying it in the fire, added: ‘Now, whether is your Majesty’s
fire or mine most expensive?’
‘Yours most certainly, Master Heriot,’ said the king.
Adjacent to George Heriot’s shop, and contiguous to the Laigh
Council-house, there was a tavern, in which a great deal of small legal
business used to be transacted in bygone times. Peter Williamson, an
original and singular person, who had long been in North America, and
therefore designated himself ‘from the other world,’ kept this house
for many years.[85] It served also as a sort of vestry to the Tolbooth
Church, and was the place where the magistrates took what was called
the _Deid-chack_—that is, a refreshment or dinner, of which those
dignitaries always partook after having attended an execution. The
_Deid-chack_ is now abjured, like many other of those fashions which
formerly rendered the office of a magistrate so much more comfortable
than it now is.[86]
The various kirks which compose St Giles’s had all different characters
in former times. The High Kirk had a sort of dignified aristocratic
character, approaching somewhat to prelacy, and was frequented only by
sound church-and-state men, who did not care so much for the sermon as
for the gratification of sitting in the same place with His Majesty’s
Lords of Council and Session and the magistrates of Edinburgh, and
who desired to be thought men of sufficient liberality and taste to
appreciate the prelections of Blair. The Old Kirk, in the centre of the
whole, was frequented by people who wished to have a sermon of good
divinity, about three-quarters of an hour long, and who did not care
for the darkness and dreariness of their temple. The Tolbooth Kirk was
the peculiar resort of a set of rigid Calvinists from the Lawnmarket
and the head of the Bow, termed the _Towbuith-Whigs_, who loved nothing
but _extempore_ evangelical sermons, and would have considered it
sufficient to bring the house down about their ears if the precentor
had ceased, for one verse, the old hillside fashion of reciting the
lines of the psalm before singing them. Dr Webster, of convivial
memory, was long one of the clergymen of this church, and deservedly
admired as a pulpit orator; though his social habits often ran nigh to
scandalise his devout and self-denying congregation.
The inhabitants and shopkeepers of the Parliament Square were in former
times very sociable and friendly as neighbours, and formed themselves
into a sort of society, which was long known by the name of _The
Parliament-Close Council_. Of this association there were from fifty to
a hundred members, who met once or twice a year at a dinner, when they
usually spent the evening, as the newspaper phrase goes, ‘in the utmost
harmony.’ The whim of this club consisted in each person assuming a
titular dignity at the dinner, and being so called all the year after
by his fellow-members. One was Lord Provost of Edinburgh, another
was Dean of Guild, some were bailies, others deacons, and a great
proportion state-officers. Sir William Forbes, who, with the kindness
of heart which characterised him, condescended to hold a place in this
assemblage of mummers, was for a long time _Member for the City_.
Previous to the institution of the police-court, a bailie of Edinburgh
used to sit, every Monday, at that part of the Outer Parliament House
where the statue of Lord Melville now stands, to hear and decide upon
small causes—such as prosecutions for scandals and defamation, or
cases of quarrels among the vulgar and the infamous. This judicature,
commonly called the _Dirt Court_, was chiefly resorted to by
washerwomen from Canonmills and the drunken ale-wives of the Canongate.
A list of Dirt-Court processes used always to be hung up on a board
every Monday morning at one of the pillars in the piazza at the outside
of the Parliament Square; and that part of the piazza, being the lounge
of two or three low pettifoggers who managed such pleas, was popularly
called the _Scoundrels’ Walk_. Early on Monday, it was usual to see one
or two threadbare personages, with prodigiously clean linen, bustling
about with an air of importance, and occasionally accosted by viragoes
with long-eared caps flying behind their heads. These were the agents
of the Dirt Court, undergoing conference with their clients.
There was something lofty and august about the Parliament Close, which
we shall scarcely ever see revived in any modern part of the town; so
dark and majestic were the buildings all round, and so finely did the
whole harmonise with the ancient cathedral which formed one of its
sides! Even the echoes of the Parliament Square had something grand in
them. Such, perhaps, were the feelings of William Julius Mickle when he
wrote a poem on passing through the Parliament Close of Edinburgh at
midnight,[87] of which the following is one of the best passages:
‘In the pale air sublime,
St Giles’s column rears its ancient head,
Whose builders many a century ago
Were mouldered into dust. Now, O my soul,
Be filled with sacred awe—I tread
Above our brave forgotten ancestors. Here lie
Those who in ancient days the kingdom ruled,
The counsellors and favourites of kings,
High lords and courtly dames, and valiant chiefs,
Mingling their dust with those of lowest rank
And basest deeds, and now unknown as they.’
FOOTNOTES
[78] St Giles’ churchyard was divided into two terraces by the old city
wall (1450), which was built half-way down the sloping ground on the
south side of the High Street. A part of this wall was exposed in 1832
when excavations were made for additional buildings at the Advocates’
Library.
[79] Previous to 1681 the inhabitants of Edinburgh were supplied with
water from pump-wells in the south side of the Cowgate.
[80] Which also were destroyed in the fires of 1824.
[81] The Wemysses’ footman was one of the few arrested on suspicion of
being a ringleader in the Porteous riot.
[82] John’s Coffee-house was then situated in the north-east corner of
Parliament Close.
[83] Baijen-hole, see note, p. 155.
[84] In the early times above referred to, £100 was accounted a
sufficient capital for a young goldsmith—being just so much as
purchased his furnace, tools, &c., served to fit up his shop, and
enabled him to enter the Incorporation, which alone required £40 out
of the £100. The stock with which George Heriot commenced business
at a much earlier period (1580)—said to have been about £200—must
therefore be considered a proof of the wealth of that celebrated
person’s family.
[85] Peter had, in early life, been kidnapped and sold to the
plantations. After spending some time among the North American Indians,
he came back to Scotland, and began business in Edinburgh as a vintner.
Robert Fergusson, in his poem entitled _The Rising of the Session_,
thus alludes to a little tavern he kept within the Parliament House:
‘This vacance is a heavy doom
On Indian Peter’s coffee-room,
For a’ his china pigs are toom;
Nor do we see
In wine the soukar biskets soom
As light’s a flee.’
Peter afterwards established a penny-post in Edinburgh, which became
so profitable in his hands that the General Post-office gave him a
handsome compensation for it. He was also the first to print a street
directory in Edinburgh. He died January 19, 1799.
[86] Provost Creech was the first who had the good taste to abandon the
practice.
[87] See _Collection of Original Poems by Scotch Gentlemen_, vol. ii.
137 (1762).
MEMORIALS OF THE NOR’ LOCH.
[Illustration: A SUGGESTION OF THE NORTH LOCH AND ST CUTHBERT’S
from Allan Ramsay’s Garden.
PAGE 117.]
He who now sees the wide hollow space between the Old and New Towns,
occupied by beautiful gardens, having their continuity only somewhat
curiously broken up by a transverse earthen mound and a line of
railway, must be at a loss to realise the idea of the same space
presenting in former times a lake, which was regarded as a portion of
the physical defences of the city. Yet many, in common with myself,
must remember the by no means distant time when the remains of this
sheet of water, consisting of a few pools, served as excellent sliding
and skating ground in winter, while their neglected grass-green
precincts too frequently formed an arena whereon the high and mighty
quarrels of Old and New Town _cowlies_[88] [etymology of the word
unknown] were brought to a lapidarian arbitration.
The lake, it after all appears, was artificial, being fed by
springs under the Castle Rock, and retained by a dam at the foot of
Halkerston’s Wynd;[89] which dam was a passable way from the city to
the fields on the north. Bower, the continuator of Fordun, speaks of
a tournament held on the ground, _ubi nunc est lacus_, in 1396, by
order of the queen [of Robert III.], at which her eldest son, Prince
David, then in his twentieth year, presided. At the beginning of the
sixteenth century a ford upon the North Loch is mentioned. Archbishop
Beatoun escaped across that ford in 1517, when flying from the unlucky
street-skirmish called _Cleanse the Causeway_. In those early times
the town corporation kept ducks and swans upon the loch for ornament’s
sake, and various acts occur in their register for preserving those
birds. An act, passed in council between the years 1589 and 1594,
ordained ‘a boll of oats to be bought for feeding the swans in the
North Loch;’ and a person was unlawed at the same time for shooting a
swan in the said loch, and obliged to find another in its place. The
lake seems to have been a favourite scene for boating. Various houses
in the neighbourhood had servitudes of the use of a boat upon it; and
these, in later times, used to be employed to no little purpose in
smuggling whisky into the town.
The North Loch was the place in which our pious ancestors used to dip
and drown offenders against morality, especially of the female sex.
The Reformers, therefore, conceived that they had not only done a very
proper, but also a very witty thing, when they threw into this lake, in
1558, the statue of St Giles, which formerly adorned their High Church,
and which they had contrived to abstract.
It was also the frequent scene of suicide, and on this point one or
two droll anecdotes are related. A man was deliberately proceeding
to drown himself in the North Loch, when a crowd of the townspeople
rushed down to the water-side, venting cries of horror and alarm at the
spectacle, yet without actually venturing into the water to prevent him
from accomplishing the rash act. Hearing the tumult, the father of the
late Lord Henderland threw up his window in James’s Court, and leaning
out, cried down the brae to the people: ‘What’s all the noise about?
Can’t ye e’en let the honest man gang to the de’il his ain gate?’
Whereupon the honest man quietly walked out of the loch, to the no
small amusement of his lately appalled neighbours. It is also said that
a poor woman, having resolved to put an end to her existence, waded a
considerable way into the water, designing to take the fatal plunge
when she should reach a place where the lake was sufficiently deep.
Before she could satisfy herself on that point, her hoop caught the
water, and lifted her off her feet. At the same time the wind caught
her figure, and blew her, whether she would or not, into the centre
of the pool, as if she had been sailing upon an inverted tub. She now
became _alarmed_, screamed for help, and waved her arms distractedly;
all of which signs brought a crowd to the shore she had just left, who
were unable, however, to render her any assistance, before she had
landed on the other side—fairly cured, it appeared, of all desire of
quitting the uneasy coil of mortal life.
FOOTNOTES
[88] An Edinburgh term applied to a class of rogues. Probably a corrupt
pronunciation of the English word _cully_—to fool, to cheat.
[89] Where the North Bridge now stands.
THE PARLIAMENT HOUSE.
OLD ARRANGEMENTS OF THE HOUSE—JUSTICE IN BYGONE TIMES—COURT
OF SESSION GARLAND—PARLIAMENT HOUSE WORTHIES.
The Parliament House, a spacious hall with an oaken arched roof,
finished in 1639 for the meetings of the Estates or native parliament,
and used for that purpose till the Union, has since then, as is
well known, served exclusively as a material portion of the suite
of buildings required for the supreme civil judicatory—the Court
of Session. This hall, usually styled the _Outer House_, is now a
nearly empty space, but it was in a very different state within the
recollection of aged practitioners. So lately as 1779, it retained
the divisions, furnishings, and other features which it had borne in
the days when we had a national legislature—excepting only that the
portraits of sovereigns which then adorned the walls had been removed
by the Earl of Mar, to whom Queen Anne had given them as a present when
the Union was accomplished.
The divisions and furniture, it may be remarked, were understood to
be precisely those which had been used for the Court of Session from
an early time; but it appears that such changes were made when the
parliament was to sit as left the room one free vacant space. The
southern portion, separated from the rest by a screen, accommodated
the Court of Session. The northern portion, comprising a sub-section
used for the Sheriff-court, was chiefly a kind of lobby of irregular
form, surrounded by little booths, which were occupied as taverns,
booksellers’ shops, and toy-shops, all of very flimsy materials.[90]
These _krames_, or boxes, seem to have been established at an early
period, the idea being no doubt taken from the former condition of
Westminster Hall. John Spottiswoode of Spottiswoode, who, in 1718,
published the _Forms of Process before the Court of Session_, mentions
that there were ‘two keepers of the session-house, who had small
salaries to do all the menial offices in the house, and that no small
part of their annual perquisites came from the _kramers_ in the outer
hall.’
JUSTICE IN BYGONE TIMES.
The memories which have been preserved of the administration of justice
by the Court of Session in its earlier days are not such as to increase
our love for past times.[91] This court is described by Buchanan as
extremely arbitrary, and by a nearly contemporary historian (Johnston)
as infamous for its dishonesty. An advocate or barrister is spoken of
by the latter writer as taking money from his clients, and dividing it
among the judges for their votes. At this time we find the chancellor
(Lord Fyvie) superintending the lawsuits of a friend, and writing to
him the way and manner in which he proposed they should be conducted.
But the strongest evidence of the corruption of ‘the lords’ is afforded
by an act of 1579, prohibiting them ‘be thame selffis or be their
wiffis or servandes, to tak in ony time cuming, _buddis_, _bribes_,
_gudes_, _or geir_, fra quhatever persone or persons presentlie havand,
or that heirefter sall happyne to have, _any actionis or caussis
pursewit befoir thame_, aither fra the persewer or defender,’ under
pain of confiscation. Had not bribery been common amongst the judges,
such an act as this could never have been passed.
In the curious history of the family of Somerville there is a very
remarkable anecdote illustrative of the course of justice at that
period. Lord Somerville and his kinsman, Somerville of Cambusnethan,
had long carried on a litigation. The former was at length advised to
use certain means for the advancement of his cause with the Regent
Morton, it being then customary for the sovereign to preside in the
court. Accordingly, having one evening caused his agents to prepare
all the required papers, he went next morning to the palace, and being
admitted to the regent, informed him of the cause, and entreated him
to order it to be called that forenoon. He then took out his purse,
as if to give a few pieces to the pages or servants, and slipping it
down upon the table, hurriedly left the presence-chamber. The earl
cried several times after him: ‘My lord, you have left your purse;’
but he had no wish to stop. At length, when he was at the outer
porch, a servant overtook him with a request that he would go back to
breakfast with the regent. He did so, was kindly treated, and soon
after was taken by Morton in his coach to the court-room in the city.
‘Cambusnethan, by accident, as the coach passed, was standing at
Niddry’s Wynd head, and having inquired who was in it with the regent,
he was answered: “None but Lord Somerville and Lord Boyd;” upon which
he struck his breast, and said: “This day my cause is lost!” and indeed
it proved so.’ By twelve o’clock that day, Lord Somerville had gained a
cause which had been hanging in suspense for years.
In those days both civil and criminal procedure was conducted in
much the same spirit as a suit at war. When a great noble was to be
tried for some monstrous murder or treason, he appeared at the bar
with as many of his retainers, and as many of his friends and their
retainers, as he could muster, and justice only had its course if
the government chanced to be the strongest, which often was not the
case. It was considered dishonourable not to countenance a friend in
troubles of this kind, however black might be his moral guilt. The
trial of Bothwell for the assassination of Darnley is a noted example
of a criminal outbraving his judges and jury. Relationship, friendly
connection, solicitation of friends, and direct bribes were admitted
and recognised influences to which the civil judge was expected to
give way. If a difficulty were found in inducing a judge to vote
against his conscience, he might at least perhaps be induced by some
of those considerations to absent himself, so as to allow the case to
go in the desired way. The story of the abduction of Gibson of Durie
by Christie’s Will, and his immurement in a Border tower for some
weeks, that his voice might be absent in the decision of a case—as
given in the _Border Minstrelsy_ by Scott—is only incorrect in some
particulars. (As the real case is reported in Pitcairn’s _Criminal
Trials_, it appears that, in September 1601, Gibson was carried off
from the neighbourhood of St Andrews by George Meldrum, younger of
Dumbreck, and hastily transported to the castle of Harbottle in
Northumberland, and kept there for eight days.) But, after all,
Scotland was not singular among European nations in these respects. In
Molière’s _Misanthrope_, produced in 1666, we find the good-natured
Philinte coolly remonstrating with Alceste on his unreasonable
resolution to let his lawsuit depend only on right and equity.
‘Qui voulez-vous donc, qui pour vous sollicite?’ says Philinte. ‘Aucun
juge par vous ne sera visité?’
‘Je ne remuerai point,’ returns the misanthrope.
_Philinte._ Votre partie est forte, et peut par sa cabale entrainer....
_Alceste._ Il n’importe....
_Philinte._ Quel homme!... On se riroit de vous, Alceste, si on vous
entendoit parler de la façon. (_People would laugh at you if they heard
you talk in this manner._)
It is a general tradition in Scotland that the English judges whom
Cromwell sent down to administer the law in Scotland, for the first
time made the people acquainted with impartiality of judgment. It is
added that, after the Restoration, when native lords were again put
upon the bench, some one, in presence of the President Gilmour, lauding
the late English judges for the equity of their proceedings, his
lordship angrily remarked: ‘De’il thank them; a wheen kinless loons!’
That is, no thanks to them; a set of fellows without relations in the
country, and who, consequently, had no one to please by their decisions.
After the Restoration there was no longer direct bribing, but other
abuses still flourished. The judges were tampered with by private
solicitation. Decisions went in favour of the man of most personal or
family influence. The following anecdote of the reign of Charles II.
rests on excellent authority: ‘A Scotch gentleman having entreated
the Earl of Rochester to speak to the Duke of Lauderdale upon the
account of a business that seemed to be supported by a clear and
undoubted right, his lordship very obligingly promised to do his utmost
endeavours to engage the duke to stand his friend in a concern so just
and reasonable as his was; and accordingly, having conferred with his
grace about the matter, the duke made him this very odd return, that
though he questioned not the right of the gentleman he recommended to
him, yet he could not promise him a helping hand, and far less success
in business, if he knew not first the man, whom perhaps his lordship
had some reason to conceal; “because,” said he to the earl, “if your
lordship were as well acquainted with the customs of Scotland as I am,
you had undoubtedly known this among others—_Show me the man, and I’ll
show you the law_;” giving him to understand that the law in Scotland
could protect no man if either his purse were empty or his adversaries
great men, or supported by great ones.’[92]
One peculiar means of favouring a particular party was then in the
power of the presiding judge: he could call a cause when he pleased.
Thus he would watch till one or more judges who took the opposite
view to his own were out of the way—either in attendance on other
duties or from illness—and then calling the cause, would decide it
according to his predilection. Even the first President Dalrymple,
afterwards Viscount Stair, one of the most eminent men whom the
Scottish law-courts have ever produced, condescended to favour a party
in this way. An act enjoining the calling of causes according to their
place in a regular roll was passed in the reign of Charles II.; but
the practice was not enforced till the days of President Forbes, sixty
years later. We have a remarkable illustration of the partiality of
the bench in a circumstance which took place about the time of the
Revolution. During the pleadings in a case between Mr Pitilloch, an
advocate, and Mr Aytoun of Inchdairnie, the former applied the term
_briber_ to Lord Harcarse, a judge seated at the moment on the bench,
and who was father-in-law to the opposite party. The man was imprisoned
for contempt; but this is not the point. Not long after, in this same
cause, Lord Harcarse went down to the bar in his gown, and pleaded for
his son-in-law Aytoun!
About that period a curious indirect means of influencing the judges
began to be notorious. Each lord had a dependant or favourite,
generally some young relative, practising in the court, through whom
it was understood that he could be prepossessed with a favourable
view of any cause. This functionary was called a _Peat_ or _Pate_,
from a circumstance thus related in Wilkes’s _North Briton_: ‘One of
the former judges of the Court of Session, of the first character,
knowledge, and application to business, had a son at the bar whose
name was Patrick; and when the suitors came about, soliciting his
favour, his question was: “Have you consulted _Pat_?” If the answer
was affirmative, the usual reply of his lordship was: “I’ll inquire of
_Pat_ about it; I’ll take care of your cause; go home and mind your
business.” The judge in that case was even as good as his word, for
while his brother-judges were robing, he would tell them what pains
his son had taken, and what trouble he had put himself to, by his
directions, in order to find out the real circumstances of the dispute;
and as no one on the bench would be so unmannerly as to question the
veracity of the son or the judgment of the father, the decree always
went according to the information of _Pat_. At the present era, in case
a judge has no son at the bar, his nearest relation (and he is sure
to have one there) officiates in that station. But, as it frequently
happens, if there are _Pats_ employed on each side, the judges differ,
and the greatest interest—that is, the longest purse—is sure to carry
it.’
I bring the subject to a conclusion by a quotation from the _Court
of Session Garland_: ‘Even so far down as 1737 traces of the ancient
evil may be found. Thus, in some very curious letters which passed
between William Foulis, Esq. of Woodhall, and his agent, Thomas Gibson
of Durie, there is evidence that private influence could even then be
resorted to. The agent writes to his client, in reference to a pending
lawsuit (23rd November 1735): “I have spoken to Strachan and several
of the lords, who are all surprised Sir F[rancis Kinloch] should
stand that plea. By Lord St Clair’s advice, Mrs Kinloch is to wait on
Lady Cairnie to-morrow, to cause her ask the favour of Lady St Clair
to solicit Lady Betty Elphingston and Lady Dun. My lord promises to
back his lady, and to ply both their lords, also Leven and his cousin
Murkle.[93] He is your good friend, and wishes success; he is jealous
Mrs Mackie will side with her cousin Beatie. St Clair says _Leven[94]
has only once gone wrong upon his hand since he was a Lord of Session_.
Mrs Kinloch has been with Miss Pringle, Newhall. Young Dr Pringle is _a
good agent there_, and discourses Lord Newhall[95] _strongly on the law
of nature_,” &c.
‘Again, upon the 23rd of January 1737, he writes: “I can assure you
that when Lord Primrose left this town, he stayed all that day with
Lord J[ustice] C[lerk],[96] and went to Andrew Broomfield at night,
and went off post next morning; and what made him despair of getting
anything done was, that it has been so long delayed, after promising so
frankly, when he knew the one could cause the other trot to him like
a penny-dog when he pleased. But there’s another hindrance: I suspect
much Penty[97] has not been in town as yet, and I fancy it’s by him the
other must be managed. The Ld. J[ustice] C[lerk] is frank enough, but
the other two are —— clippies. I met with Bavelaw and Mr William on
Tuesday last. I could not persuade the last to go to a wine-house, so
away we went to an aquavity-house, where I told Mr Wm. what had passed,
as I had done before that to Bavelaw. They seemed to agree nothing
could be done just now, but to know why Lord Drummore[98] dissuaded
bringing in the plea last winter. _I have desired Lord Haining to
speak_, but only expect his answer against Tuesday or Wednesday.”
‘It is not our intention to pursue these remarks further, although we
believe that judicial corruption continued long after the Union. We
might adduce Lord President Forbes as a witness on this point, who, one
of the most upright lawyers himself, did not take any pains to conceal
his contempt for many of his brethren. A favourite toast of his is
said to have been: “Here’s to such of the judges as don’t deserve the
gallows.” Latterly, the complaint against the judges was not so much
for corrupt dealing, with the view of enriching themselves or their
“pet” lawyer, but for weak prejudices and feelings, which but ill
accorded with the high office they filled.
‘These abuses, the recapitulation of which may amuse and instruct, are
now only matter of history—the spots that once sullied the garments of
justice are effaced, and the old compend, “Show me the man, and I’ll
show you the law,” is out of date.’
COURT OF SESSION GARLAND.
A curious characteristic view of the Scottish bench about the year
1771 is presented in a doggerel ballad, supposed to have been a joint
composition of James Boswell and John Maclaurin,[99] advocates, and
professedly the history of a process regarding a bill containing a
clause of penalty in case of failure. This _Court of Session Garland_,
as it is called, is here subjoined, with such notes on persons and
things as the reader may be supposed to require or care for.
PART FIRST.
The bill charged on was payable at sight,
And decree was craved by Alexander Wight;[100]
But because it bore a penalty in case of failzie,
It therefore was null, contended Willie Baillie.[101]
The Ordinary, not choosing to judge it at random,
Did with the minutes make _avisandum_;
And as the pleadings were vague and windy,
His lordship ordered memorials _hinc inde_.
We, setting a stout heart to a stay brae,
Took into the cause Mr David Rae.[102]
Lord Auchinleck,[103] however, repelled our defence,
And, over and above, decerned for expense.
However, of our cause not being ashamed,
Unto the whole lords we straightway reclaimed;
And our Petition was appointed to be seen,
Because it was drawn by Robbie Macqueen.[104]
The Answer by Lockhart[105] himself it was wrote,
And in it no argument nor fact was forgot.
He is the lawyer that from no cause will flinch,
And on this occasion divided the bench.
Alemore[106] the judgment as illegal blames;
‘’Tis equity, you bitch,’ replies my Lord Kames.[107]
‘This cause,’ cries Hailes,[108] ‘to judge I can’t pretend,
For _justice_, I perceive, wants an _e_ at the end.’
Lord Coalstoun[109] expressed his doubts and his fears;
And Strichen[110] threw in his _weel-weels_ and _oh dears_.
‘This cause much resembles the case of Mac-Harg,
And should go the same way,’ says Lordie Barjarg.[111]
‘Let me tell you, my lords, this cause is no joke!’
Says, with a horse-laugh, my Lord Elliock.[112]
‘To have read all the papers I pretend not to brag!’
Says my Lord Gardenstone[113] with a snuff and a wag.
Up rose the President,[114] and an angry man was he—
‘To alter the judgment I can never agree!’
The east wing cried ‘YES,’ and the west wing cried ‘NOT;’
And it was carried ‘ADHERE’[115] by my lord’s casting vote.
The cause being somewhat knotty and perplext,
Their lordships did not know how they’d determine next;
And as the session was to rise so soon,
They superseded extract till the 12th of June.[116]
PART SECOND.
Having lost it so nigh, we prepare for the summer,
And on the 12th of June presented a reclaimer;
But dreading a refuse, we gave Dundas[117] a fee,
And though it run nigh, it was carried ‘TO SEE.’[118]
In order to bring aid from usage bygone,
The Answers were drawn by _quondam_ Mess John.[119]
He united with such art our law with the civil,
That the counsel on both sides wished him to the devil.
The cause being called, my Lord Justice-clerk,[120]
With all due respect, began a loud bark:
He appealed to his conscience, his heart, and from thence
Concluded—‘TO ALTER,’ but to give no expense.
Lord Stonefield,[121] unwilling his judgment to pother,
Or to be _anticipate_, agreed with his brother:
But Monboddo[122] was clear the bill to enforce
Because, he observed, it was the price of a horse.
Says Pitfour,[123] with a wink, and his hat all a-jee,
‘I remember a case in the year twenty-three—
The Magistrates of Banff _contra_ Robert Carr;
I remember weel—I was then at the bar.
Likewise, my lords, in the case of Peter Caw,
_Superflua non nocent_ was found to be law.’
Lord Kennet[124] also quoted the case of one Lithgow,
Where a penalty in a bill was held _pro non scripto_.
The Lord President brought his chair to the plumb,
Laid hold of the bench, and brought forward his bum;
‘In these Answers, my lords, some freedoms are used,
Which I could point out, provided I choosed.
I was for the interlocutor, my lords, I admit,
But am open to conviction as long’s I here do sit.
To oppose your precedents, I quote a few cases;’
And Tait[125] _à priori_, hurried up the causes.
He proved it as clear as the sun in the sky,
That their maxims of law could not here apply;
That the writing in question was neither bill nor band,
But something unknown in the law of the land.
The question—‘Adhere,’ or ‘Alter,’ being put,
It was carried—‘To Alter,’ by a casting vote;
Baillie then moved—‘In the bill there’s a raze;’
But by this time their lordships had called a new cause.
A few additions to the notes, in a more liberal space, will complete
what I have to set down regarding the lawyers of the last age.
[Illustration: THE PARLIAMENT HOUSE.
PAGE 128.]
LOCKHART OF COVINGTON.[126]
Lockhart used to be spoken of by all old men about the Court of Session
as a paragon. He had been at the bar from 1722, and had attained the
highest eminence long before going upon the bench, which he did at
an unusually late period of life; yet so different were those times
from the present that, according to the report of Sir William Macleod
Bannatyne to myself in 1833, Lockhart realised only about a thousand a
year by his exertions, then thought a magnificent income. The first man
at the Scottish bar in our day is believed to gain at least six times
this sum annually. Lockhart had an isolated house behind the Parliament
Close, which was afterwards used as the Post-office.[127] It was
removed some years ago to make way for the extension of the buildings
connected with the court; leaving only its coach-house surviving, now
occupied as a broker’s shop in the Cowgate.
Mr Lockhart and Mr Fergusson (afterwards Lord Pitfour) were rival
barristers—agreeing, however, in their politics, which were of a
Jacobite complexion. While the trials of the poor _forty-five_ men were
going on at Carlisle, these Scottish lawyers heard with indignation
of the unscrupulous measures adopted to procure convictions. They
immediately set off for Carlisle, arranging with each other that
Lockhart should examine evidence, while Fergusson pleaded and addressed
the jury; and offering their services, they were gladly accepted as
counsel by the unfortunates whose trials were yet to take place. Each
exerted his abilities, in his respective duties, with the greatest
solicitude, but with very little effect. The jurors of Carlisle had
been so frightened by the Highland army that they thought everything
in the shape or hue of tartan a damning proof of guilt; and, in truth,
there seemed to be no discrimination whatever exerted in inquiring
into the merits of any particular criminal; and it might have been
just as fair, and much more convenient, to try them by wholesale or
in companies. At length one of our barristers fell upon an ingenious
expedient, which had a better effect than all the eloquence he had
expended. He directed his man-servant to dress himself in some tartan
habiliments, to skulk about for a short time in the neighbourhood of
the town, and then permit himself to be taken. The man did so, and was
soon brought into court, and accused of the crime of high treason,
and would have been condemned to death had not his master stood up,
claimed him as his servant, and proved beyond dispute that the supposed
criminal had been in immediate attendance upon his person during the
whole time of the Rebellion. This staggered the jury, and, with the
aid of a little amplification from the mouth of the young advocate,
served to make them more cautious afterwards in the delivery of their
important fiat.
To show the estimation in which Lockhart of Covington was held as an
advocate, the late Lord Newton, when at the bar, wore his gown till it
was in tatters, and at last had a new one made, with a fragment of the
neck of the original sewed into it, whereby he could still make it his
boast that he wore ‘Covington’s gown.’
LORD KAMES.
This able judge and philosopher in advance of his time—for such he
was—is described by his biographer, Lord Woodhouselee, as indulging
in a certain humorous playfulness, which, to those who knew him
intimately, detracted nothing from the feeling of respect due to his
eminent talents and virtues. To strangers, his lordship admits, it
might convey ‘the idea of lightness.’ The simple fact here shadowed
forth is that Lord Kames had a roughly playful manner, and used
phrases of an ultra-eccentric character. Among these was a word only
legitimately applicable to the female of the canine species. The writer
of the _Garland_ introduces this characteristic phrase. When his
lordship found his end approaching very near, he took a public farewell
of his brethren. I was informed by an ear-and-eye witness, who is
certain that he could not be mistaken, that, after addressing them in
a solemn speech and shaking their hands all round, in going out at the
door of the court-room he turned about, and casting them a last look,
cried in his usual familiar tone: ‘Fare ye a’ weel, ye bitches!’ He
died eight days after.
It was remarked that a person called _Sinkum the Cawdy_, who had a
short and a long leg and was excessively addicted to swearing, used to
lie in wait for Lord Kames almost every morning, and walk alongside
of him up the street to the Parliament House. The mystery of Sterne’s
little, flattering Frenchman, who begged so successfully from the
ladies, was scarcely more wonderful than this intimacy, which arose
entirely from Lord Kames’s love of the gossip which Sinkum made it his
business to cater for him.
These are not follies of the wise. They are only the tribute which
great genius pays to simple nature. The serenity which marked the
close of the existence of Kames was most creditable to him, though
it appeared, perhaps, in somewhat whimsical forms to his immediate
friends. For three or four days before his death, he was in a state of
great debility. Some one coming in, and finding him, notwithstanding
his weakness, engaged in dictating to an amanuensis, expressed
surprise. ‘How, man,’ said the declining philosopher, ‘would you ha’e
me stay wi’ my tongue in my cheek till death comes to fetch me?’
LORD HAILES.
When Lord Hailes died, it was a long time before any will could be
found. The heir-male was about to take possession of his estates, to
the exclusion of his eldest daughter. Some months after his lordship’s
death, when it was thought that all further search was vain, Miss
Dalrymple prepared to retire from New Hailes, and also from the
mansion-house in New Street, having lost all hope of a will being
discovered in her favour. Some of her domestics, however, were sent to
lock up the house in New Street, and in closing the window-shutters,
Lord Hailes’s will dropped out upon the floor from behind a panel, and
was found to secure her in the possession of his estates, which she
enjoyed for upwards of forty years.
The literary habits of Lord Hailes were hardly those which would
have been expected from his extreme nicety of phrase. The late Miss
Dalrymple once did me the honour to show me the place where he wrote
the most of his works—not the fine room which contained, and still
contains, his books—no secluded boudoir, or den, where he could
shut out the world, but the parlour fireside, where sat his wife and
children.
[1868.—Now that the grave has for thirty years closed over Miss
Dalrymple, it may be allowable to tell that she was of dwarfish and
deformed figure, while amiable and judicious above the average of her
sex. Taking into view her beautiful place of residence and her large
wealth, she remarked to a friend one day: ‘I can say, for the honour of
man, that I never got an offer in my life.’]
LORD GARDENSTONE.
This judge had a predilection for pigs. One, in its juvenile years,
took a particular fancy for his lordship, and followed him wherever
he went, like a dog, reposing in the same bed. When it attained the
mature years and size of swinehood, this of course was inconvenient.
However, his lordship, unwilling to part with his friend, continued
to let it sleep at least in the same room, and, when he undressed,
laid his clothes upon the floor as a bed to it. He said that he liked
it, for it kept his clothes warm till the morning. In his mode of
living he was full of strange, eccentric fancies, which he seemed to
adopt chiefly with a view to his health, which was always that of a
valetudinarian.[128]
LORD PRESIDENT DUNDAS.
This distinguished judge was, in his latter years, extremely subject to
gout, and used to fall backwards and forwards in his chair—whence the
ungracious expression in the _Garland_. He used to characterise his six
clerks thus: ‘Two of them cannot _read_, two of them cannot _write_,
and the other two can neither _read_ nor _write_!’ The eccentric Sir
James Colquhoun was one of those who could not _read_. In former times
it was the practice of the Lord President to have a sand-glass before
him on the bench, with which he used to measure out the utmost time
that could be allowed to a judge for the delivery of his opinion. Lord
President Dundas would never allow a single moment after the expiration
of the sand, and he has often been seen to shake his old-fashioned
chronometer ominously in the faces of his brethren when their ‘ideas
upon the subject’ began, in the words of the _Garland_, to get vague
and windy.
LORD MONBODDO.
Lord Monboddo’s motion for the enforcement of the bill, on account of
its representing the value of a horse, is partly an allusion to his
Gulliverlike admiration of that animal, but more particularly to his
having once embroiled himself in an action respecting a horse which
belonged to himself. His lordship had committed the animal, when sick,
to the charge of a farrier, with directions for the administration of
a certain medicine. The farrier gave the medicine, but went beyond
his commission, in as far as he mixed it in a liberal _menstruum_ of
treacle in order to make it palatable. The horse dying next morning,
Lord Monboddo raised a prosecution for its value, and actually pleaded
his own cause at the bar. He lost the case, however; and is said to
have been so enraged in consequence at his brethren that he never
afterwards sat with them upon the bench, but underneath amongst the
clerks. The report of this action is exceedingly amusing, on account of
the great quantity of Roman law quoted by the judges, and the strange
circumstances under which the case appeared before them.
Lord Monboddo, with all his oddities, and though generally hated or
despised by his brethren, was by far the most learned and not the
least upright judge of his time. His attainments in classical learning
and in the study of the ancient philosophers were singular in his
time in Scotland, and might have qualified him to shine anywhere. He
was the earliest patron of one of the best scholars of his age, the
late Professor John Hunter of St Andrews, who was for many years his
secretary, and who chiefly wrote the first and best volume of his
lordship’s _Treatise on the Origin of Languages_.
The manners of Lord Monboddo were not more odd than his personal
appearance. He looked rather like an old stuffed monkey dressed in a
judge’s robes than anything else. His face, however, ‘sicklied o’er’
with the pale cast of thought, bore traces of high intellect. So
convinced is he said to have been of the truth of his fantastic theory
of human tails, that whenever a child happened to be born in his house,
he would watch at the chamber-door in order to see it in its first
state, having a notion that the midwives pinched off the infant tails.
There is a tradition that Lord Monboddo attended and witnessed the
catastrophe of Captain Porteous in 1736. He had just that day returned
from completing his law education at Leyden, and taken lodgings near
the foot of the West Bow, where at that time many of the greatest
lawyers resided. When the rioters came down the Bow with their hapless
victim, Mr Burnet was roused from bed by the noise, came down in his
night-gown with a candle in his hand, and stood in a sort of stupor,
looking on, till the tragedy was concluded.
PARLIAMENT HOUSE WORTHIES.
Scott has sketched in _Peter Peebles_ the type of a class of crazy
and half-crazy litigants who at all times haunt the Parliament House.
Usually they are rustic men possessing small properties, such as
a house and garden, which they are constantly talking of as their
‘subject.’ Sometimes a faded shawl and bonnet is associated with the
case—objects to be dreaded by every good-natured member of the bar.
But most frequently it is simple countrymen who become pests of this
kind. That is to say, simple men of difficult and captious tempers,
cursed with an overstrong sense of right or an overstrong sense of
wrong, under which they would, by many degrees, prefer utter ruin to
making the slightest concession to a neighbour. Ruined these men often
are; and yet it seems ruin well bought, since they have all along had
the pleasure of seeing themselves and their little affairs the subject
of consideration amongst men so much above themselves in rank.
Peebles was, as we are assured by the novelist himself, a real person,
who frequented the Edinburgh courts of justice about the year 1792,
and ‘whose voluminous course of litigation served as a sort of essay
piece to most young men who were called to the bar.’[129] Many persons
recollect him as a tall, thin, slouching man, of homely outworn attire,
understood to be a native of Linlithgow. Having got into law about a
small house, he became deranged by the cause going against him, and
then peace was no more for him on earth. He used to tell his friends
that he had at present thirteen causes in hand, but was only going to
‘move in’ seven of them this session. When anxious for a consultation
on any of his affairs, he would set out from his native burgh at the
time when other people were going to bed, and reaching Edinburgh at
four in the morning, would go about the town ringing the bells of the
principal advocates, in the vain hope of getting one to rise and listen
to him, to the infinite annoyance of many a poor serving-girl, and no
less of the Town-guard, into whose hands he generally fell.
Another specimen of the class was Campbell of Laguine, who had perhaps
been longer at law than any man of modern times. He was a store-farmer
in Caithness, and had immense tracts of land under lease. When he sold
his wool, he put the price in his pocket (no petty sum), and came down
to waste it in the Court of Session. His custom—an amusing example of
method in madness—was to pay every meal which he made at the inns on
the road _double_, that he might have a _gratis_ meal on his return,
knowing he would not bring a cross away in his pocket from the courts
of justice. Laguine’s figure was very extraordinary. His legs were
like two circumflexes, both curving outward in the same direction; so
that, relative to his body, they took the direction of the blade of a
reaping-hook, supposing the trunk of his person to be the handle. These
extraordinary legs were always attired in Highland trews, as his body
was generally in a gray or tartan jacket, with a bonnet on his head;
and duly appeared he at the door of the Parliament House, bearing a
tin case, fully as big as himself, containing a plan of his farms. He
paid his lawyers highly, but took up a great deal of their time. One
gentleman, afterwards high in official situation, observed him coming
up to ring his bell, and not wishing that he himself should throw
away his time or Laguine his fee, directed that he should be denied.
Laguine, however, made his way to the lady of the learned counsel, and
sitting down in the drawing-room, went at great length into the merits
of his cause, and exhibited his plans; and when he had expatiated for
a couple of hours, he departed, but not without leaving a handsome
fee, observing that he had as much satisfaction as if he had seen the
learned counsel himself. He once told a legal friend of the writer
that his laird and he were nearly agreed now—there was only about
_ten miles of country_ contested betwixt them! When finally this great
cause was adjusted, his agent said: ‘Well, Laguine, what will ye do
now?’ rashly judging that one who had, in a manner, lived upon law for
a series of years would be at a loss how to dispose of himself now. ‘No
difficulty there,’ answered Laguine; ‘I’ll dispute your account, and
go to law with _you_!’ Possessed as he was by a demon of litigation,
Campbell is said to have been, apart from his disputes, a shrewd and
sensible, and, moreover, an honourable and worthy man. He was one of
the first who introduced sheep-farming into Ross-shire and Caithness,
where he had farms as large as some whole Lowland or English counties;
and but for litigation, he had the opportunity of making much money.
A person usually called, from his trade, the Heckler was another
Parliament House worthy. He used to work the whole night at his
trade; then put on a black suit, curled his hair behind and powdered
it, so as to resemble a clergyman, and came forth to attend to the
great business of the day at the Parliament House. He imagined that
he was deputed by Divine Providence as a sort of controller of the
Court of Session; but as if that had not been sufficient, he thought
the charge of the General Assembly was also committed to him; and he
used to complain that that venerable body was ‘much worse to keep in
good order’ than the lawyers. He was a little, smart, well-brushed,
neat-looking man, and used to talk to himself, smile, and nod with much
vivacity. Part of his lunacy was to believe himself a clergyman; and it
was chiefly the Teind Court which he haunted, his object there being to
obtain an augmentation of his stipend. The appearance and conversation
of the man were so plausible that he once succeeded in imposing himself
upon Dr Blair as a preacher, and obtained permission to hold forth in
the High Church on the ensuing Sunday. He was fortunately recognised
when about to mount the pulpit. Some idle boys about the Parliament
House, where he was a constant attendant, persuaded him that, as he
held two such dignified offices as his imagination shaped out, there
must be some salary attached to them, payable, like others upon the
Establishment, in the Exchequer. This very nearly brought about a
serious catastrophe; for the poor madman, finding his applications
slighted at the Exchequer, came there one day with a pistol heavily
loaded to shoot Mr Baird, a very worthy man, an officer of that court.
This occasioned the Heckler being confined in durance vile for a long
time; though, I think, he was at length emancipated.
Other insane fishers in the troubled waters of the law were the
following:
Macduff of Ballenloan, who had two cases before the court at once.
His success in the one depended upon his showing that he had capacity
to manage his own affairs; and in the other, upon his proving himself
incapable of doing so. He used to complain, with some apparent reason,
that he lost them both!
Andrew Nicol, who was at law thirty years about a _midden-stead_—_Anglicé_,
the situation of a dunghill. This person was a native of Kinross, a
sensible-looking countryman, with a large, flat, blue bonnet, in which
guise Kay has a very good portrait of him, displaying, with chuckling
pride, a plan of his precious midden-stead. He used to frequent the
Register House as well as the courts of law, and was encouraged in his
foolish pursuits by the roguish clerks of that establishment, by whom
he was denominated _Muck Andrew_, in allusion to the object of his
litigation. This wretched being, after losing property and credit and
his own senses in following a valueless phantom, died at last (1817) in
Cupar jail, where he was placed by one of his legal creditors.
FOOTNOTES
[90] A full description of the old Parliament Hall, with a plan showing
the divisions and the arrangements of the ‘booths,’ is given in
_Reekiana_; _or, Minor Antiquities of Edinburgh_. It is not now called
the Outer House.
[91] Several of the illustrations in the present section are
immediately derived from a curious volume, full of entertainment for
a denizen of the Parliament House—_The Court of Session Garland_.
Edinburgh: Thomas Stevenson. 1839.
[92] _A Moral Discourse on the Power of Interest._ By David Abercromby,
M.D. London, 1691. P. 60.
[93] John Sinclair of Murkle, appointed a Lord of Session in 1733.
[94] Alexander Leslie, advocate, succeeded his nephew as fifth Earl of
Leven, and fourth Earl of Melville, in 1729. He was named a Lord of
Session, and took his seat on the bench on the 11th of July 1734. He
died 2nd February 1754.
[95] Sir Walter Pringle of Newhall, raised to the bench in 1718.
[96] Andrew Fletcher of Milton was appointed, on the resignation of
James Erskine of Grange, Lord Justice-clerk, and took his seat on the
bench 21st June 1735.
[97] Probably Gibson of Pentland.
[98] Hew Dalrymple of Drummore, appointed a Lord of Session in 1726.
[99] Afterwards Lord Dreghorn.
[100] Author of a Treatise on Election Laws, and Solicitor-general
during the Coalition Ministry in 1783.
[101] Afterwards Lord Polkemmet.
[102] Afterwards Lord Eskgrove and Lord Justice-clerk.
[103] Alexander Boswell, Esq., of Auchinleck, the author’s
father—appointed to the bench in 1754; died 1782. This gentleman was
a precise old Presbyterian, and therefore the most opposite creature
in the world to his son, who was a cavalier in politics and an
Episcopalian.
[104] Afterwards Lord Braxfield—appointed 1776; died 1800, while
holding the office of Lord Justice-clerk. Lord Braxfield is the
prototype of Stevenson’s _Weir of Hermiston_.
[105] Alexander Lockhart, Esq., decidedly the greatest lawyer at the
Scottish bar in his day—appointed to the bench in 1774; died in 1782.
[106] Andrew Pringle, Esq.—appointed a judge in 1759; died 1776. This
gentleman was remarkable for his fine oratory, which was praised highly
by Sheridan the lecturer (father of R. B. Sheridan) in his _Discourses
on English Oratory_.
[107] Henry Home, Esq.—raised to the bench 1752; died 1783. This
great man, so remarkable for his metaphysical subtlety and literary
abilities, was strangely addicted to the use of the coarse word in the
text.
[108] Sir David Dalrymple—appointed a judge in 1766; died 1792. A
story is told of Lord Hailes once making a serious objection to a
law-paper, and, in consequence, to the whole suit to which it belonged,
on account of the word _justice_ being spelt in the manner mentioned in
the text. Perhaps no author ever affected so much critical accuracy as
Lord Hailes, and yet there never was a book published with so large an
array of _corrigenda et addenda_ as the first edition of the _Annals of
Scotland_.
[109] George Brown, Esq., of Coalstoun—appointed 1756; died 1776.
[110] Alexander Fraser of Strichen—appointed 1730; died 1774.
[111] James Erskine, Esq., subsequently titled Lord Alva—appointed
1761; died 1796. He was of exceedingly small stature, and upon that
account denominated ‘Lordie.’
[112] James Veitch, Esq.—appointed 1761; died 1793.
[113] Francis Garden, Esq.—appointed 1764; died 1793—author of
several respectable literary productions.
[114] Robert Dundas, Esq., of Arniston—appointed 1760; died 1787.
[115] The bench being semicircular, and the President sitting in the
centre, the seven judges on his right hand formed the _east_ wing,
those on his left formed the _west_. The decisions were generally
announced by the words ‘Adhere’ and ‘Alter’—the former meaning an
affirmance, the latter a reversal, of the judgment of the Lord Ordinary.
[116] The term of the summer session was then from the 12th of June to
the 12th of August.
[117] Henry, first Viscount Melville, then coming forward as an
advocate at the Scottish bar. When this great man passed advocate, he
was so low in cash that, after going through the necessary forms, he
had only one guinea left in his pocket. Upon coming home, he gave this
to his sister (who lived with him), in order that she might purchase
him a gown; after which he had not a penny. However, his talents soon
filled his coffers. The gown is yet preserved by the family.
[118] ‘To See’ is to appoint the petition against the judgment
pronounced to be answered.
[119] John Erskine of Carnock, author of the _Institute of the Law of
Scotland_.
[120] Thomas Miller, Esq., of Glenlee—appointed to this office in
1766, upon the death of Lord Minto. He filled this situation till
the death of Robert Dundas, in 1787, when (January 1788) he was made
President of the Court of Session, and created a baronet, in requital
for his long service as a judge. Being then far advanced in life, he
did not live long to enjoy his new accession of honours, but died in
September 1789.
[121] John Campbell, Esq., of Stonefield.
[122] James Burnet, Esq.—appointed 1767; died 1799.
[123] James Fergusson, Esq.—appointed 1761; died 1777. He always wore
his hat on the bench, on account of sore eyes.
[124] Robert Bruce, Esq.—appointed 1764; died 1785.
[125] Alexander Tait, Clerk of Session.
[126] He was the grandson of Lord President Lockhart, who was shot by
Chiesly of Dalry (see p. 75).
[127] Within the memory of an old citizen, who was living in 1833, the
Post-office was in the first floor of a house near the Cross, above
an alley which still bears the name of the Post-office Close. Thence
it was removed to a floor in the south side of the Parliament Square,
which was fitted up like a shop, and the letters were dealt across an
ordinary counter, like other goods. At this time all the out-of-door
business of delivery was managed by one letter-carrier. About 1745
the London bag brought on one occasion no more than a single letter,
addressed to the British Linen Company. From the Parliament Square the
office was removed to Lord Covington’s house, above described; thence,
after some years, to a house in North Bridge Street; thence to Waterloo
Place; and finally, to a new and handsome structure on the North Bridge.
[128] Lord Gardenstone erected the building (in the form of a Grecian
temple) which encloses St Bernard’s Well, on the Water of Leith,
between the Dean Bridge and Stockbridge. He also founded the town of
Laurencekirk in Kincardineshire, which he hoped to make a manufacturing
centre.
[129] Notes to _Redgauntlet_.
CONVIVIALIA.
‘Auld Reekie! wale o’ ilka toon
That Scotland kens beneath the moon;
Where coothy chields at e’enin’ meet,
Their bizzin’ craigs and mous to weet,
And blithely gar auld care gae by,
Wi’ blinkin’ and wi’ bleerin’ eye.’
ROBERT FERGUSSON.
[Illustration]
Tavern dissipation, now so rare amongst the respectable classes of the
community, formerly prevailed in Edinburgh to an incredible extent, and
engrossed the leisure hours of all professional men, scarcely excepting
even the most stern and dignified. No rank, class, or profession,
indeed, formed an exception to this rule. Nothing was so common in
the morning as to meet men of high rank and official dignity reeling
home from a close in the High Street, where they had spent the night
in drinking. Nor was it unusual to find two or three of His Majesty’s
most honourable Lords of Council and Session mounting the bench in the
forenoon in a crapulous state. A gentleman one night stepping into
Johnnie Dowie’s, opened a side-door, and looking into the room, saw a
sort of _agger_ or heap of snoring lads upon the floor, illumined by
the gleams of an expiring candle. ‘Wha may thae be, Mr Dowie?’ inquired
the visitor. ‘Oh,’ quoth John in his usual quiet way, ‘just twa-three
o’ Sir Willie’s drucken clerks!’—meaning the young gentlemen employed
in Sir William Forbes’s banking-house, whom of all earthly mortals one
would have expected to be observers of the decencies.
[Illustration: Johnnie Dowie.]
To this testimony may be added that of all published works descriptive
of Edinburgh during the last century. Even in the preceding century, if
we are to believe Taylor the Water-poet, there was no superabundance
of sobriety in the town. ‘The worst thing,’ says that sly humorist in
his _Journey_ (1623), ‘was, that wine and ale were so scarce, and the
people such misers of it, that every night, before I went to bed, if
any man had asked me a civil question, all the wit in my head could not
have made him a sober answer.’
The _diurnal_ of a Scottish judge[130] of the beginning of the last
century, which I have perused, presents a striking picture of the
habits of men of business in that age. Hardly a night passes without
some expense being incurred at taverns, not always of very good fame,
where his lordship’s associates on the bench were his boon-companions
in the debauch. One is at a loss to understand how men who drugged
their understandings so habitually could possess any share of vital
faculty for the consideration or transaction of business, or how they
contrived to make a decent appearance in the hours of duty. But,
however difficult to be accounted for, there seems no room to doubt
that deep drinking was compatible in many instances with good business
talents, and even application. Many living men connected with the
Court of Session can yet look back to a juvenile period of their lives
when some of the ablest advocates and most esteemed judges were noted
for their convivial habits. For example, a famous counsel named Hay,
who became a judge under the designation of Lord Newton, was equally
remarkable as a bacchanal and as a lawyer.[131] He considered himself
as only the better fitted for business that he had previously imbibed
six bottles of claret; and one of his clerks afterwards declared that
the best paper he ever knew his lordship dictate was done after a
debauch where that amount of liquor had fallen to his share. It was
of him that the famous story is told of a client calling for him one
day at four o’clock, and being surprised to find him at dinner; when,
on the client saying to the servant that he had understood five to
be Mr Hay’s dinner-hour—‘Oh, but, sir,’ said the man, ‘it is his
_yesterday’s dinner_!’ M. Simond, who, in 1811, published a _Tour
in Scotland_, mentions his surprise, on stepping one morning into
the Parliament House, to find in the dignified capacity of a judge,
and displaying all the gravity suitable to the character, the very
gentleman with whom he had spent most of the preceding night in a
fierce debauch. This judge was Lord Newton.
Contemporary with this learned lord was another of marvellous powers
of drollery, of whom it is told, as a fact too notorious at the time
to be concealed, that he was one Sunday morning, not long before
church-time, found asleep among the paraphernalia of the sweeps, in
a shed appropriated to the keeping of these articles at the end of
the Town Guard-house in the High Street. His lordship, in staggering
homeward alone from a tavern during the night, had tumbled into this
place, where consciousness did not revisit him till next day. Of
another group of clever but over-convivial lawyers of that age, it is
related that, having set to wine and cards on a Saturday evening, they
were so cheated out of all sense of time that the night passed before
they thought of separating. Unless they are greatly belied, the people
passing along Picardy Place next forenoon, on their way to church, were
perplexed by seeing a door open, and three gentlemen issue forth, in
all the disorder to be expected after a night of drunken vigils, while
a fourth, in his dressing-gown, held the door in one hand and a lighted
candle in the other, by way of showing them out![132]
The _High Jinks_ of Counsellor Pleydell, in _Guy Mannering_, must have
prepared many for these curious traits of a bypast age; and Scott has
further illustrated the subject by telling, in his notes to that novel,
an anecdote, which he appears to have had upon excellent authority,
respecting the elder President Dundas of Arniston, father of Lord
Melville. ‘It had been thought very desirable, while that distinguished
lawyer was king’s counsel, that his assistance should be obtained in
drawing up an appeal case, which, as occasion for such writings then
rarely occurred, was held to be a matter of great nicety. The solicitor
employed for the appellant, attended by my informant, acting as his
clerk, went to the Lord Advocate’s chambers in the Fishmarket Close,
as I think. It was Saturday at noon, the court was just dismissed, the
Lord Advocate had changed his dress and booted himself, and his servant
and horses were at the foot of the close to carry him to Arniston.
It was scarcely possible to get him to listen to a word respecting
business. The wily agent, however, on pretence of asking one or two
questions, which would not detain him half-an-hour, drew his lordship,
who was no less an eminent _bon-vivant_ than a lawyer of unequalled
talent, to take a whet at a celebrated tavern, when the learned counsel
became gradually involved in a spirited discussion of the law points of
the case. At length it occurred to him that he might as well ride to
Arniston in the cool of the evening. The horses were directed to be put
into the stable, but not to be unsaddled. Dinner was ordered, the law
was laid aside for a time, and the bottle circulated very freely. At
nine o’clock at night, after he had been honouring Bacchus for so many
hours, the Lord Advocate ordered his horses to be unsaddled—paper,
pen, and ink were brought—he began to dictate the appeal case, and
continued at his task till four o’clock the next morning. By next day’s
post the solicitor sent the case to London—a _chef-d’œuvre_ of its
kind; and in which, my informant assured me, it was not necessary, on
revisal, to correct five words.’
It was not always that business and pleasure were so successfully
united. It is related that an eminent lawyer, who was confined to
his room by indisposition, having occasion for the attendance of his
clerk at a late hour, in order to draw up a paper required on an
emergency next morning, sent for and found him at his usual tavern.
The man, though remarkable for the preservation of his faculties under
severe application to the bottle, was on this night further gone than
usual. He was able, however, to proceed to his master’s bedroom, and
there take his seat at the desk with the appearance of a sufficiently
collected mind, so that the learned counsel, imagining nothing more
wrong than usual, began to dictate from his couch. This went on for two
or three hours, till, the business being finished, the barrister drew
his curtain—to behold _Jamie_ lost in a profound sleep upon the table,
with the paper still in virgin whiteness before him!
One of the most notable jolly fellows of the last age was James
Balfour, an accountant, usually called _Singing Jamie Balfour_, on
account of his fascinating qualities as a vocalist. There used to be
a portrait of him in the Leith Golf-house, representing him in the
act of commencing the favourite song of _When I ha’e a saxpence under
my thoom_, with the suitable attitude and a merriness of countenance
justifying the traditionary account of the man. Of Jacobite leanings,
he is said to have sung _The wee German lairdie_, _Awa, Whigs, awa_,
and _The sow’s tail to Geordie_ with a degree of zest which there was
no resisting.
Report speaks of this person as an amiable, upright, and able man; so
clever in business matters that he could do as much in one hour as
another man in three; always eager to quench and arrest litigation
rather than to promote it; and consequently so much esteemed
professionally that he could get business whenever he chose to
undertake it, which, however, he only did when he felt himself in need
of money. Nature had given him a robust constitution, which enabled him
to see out three sets of boon-companions, but, after all, gave way
before he reached sixty. His custom, when anxious to repair the effects
of intemperance, was to wash his head and hands in cold water; this, it
is said, made him quite cool and collected almost immediately. Pleasure
being so predominant an object in his life, it was thought surprising
that at his death he was found in possession of some little money.
The powers of Balfour as a singer of the Scotch songs of all kinds,
tender and humorous, are declared to have been marvellous; and he had
a happy gift of suiting them to occasions. Being a great peacemaker,
he would often accomplish his purpose by introducing some ditty pat
to the purpose, and thus dissolving all rancour in a hearty laugh.
Like too many of our countrymen, he had a contempt for foreign music.
One evening, in a company where an Italian vocalist of eminence was
present, he professed to give a song in the manner of that country.
Forth came a ridiculous cantata to the tune of _Aiken Drum_, beginning:
‘There was a wife in Peebles,’ which the wag executed with all the
proper graces, shakes, and appoggiaturas, making his friends almost
expire with suppressed laughter at the contrast between the style of
singing and the ideas conveyed in the song. At the conclusion, their
mirth was doubled by the foreigner saying very simply: ‘De music be
very fine, but I no understand de words.’ A lady, who lived in the
Parliament Close, told a friend of mine that she was wakened from her
sleep one summer morning by a noise as of singing, when, going to the
window to learn what was the matter, guess her surprise at seeing
Jamie Balfour and some of his boon-companions (evidently fresh from
their wonted orgies), singing _The king shall enjoy his own again_, on
their knees, around King Charles’s statue! One of Balfour’s favourite
haunts was a humble kind of tavern called _Jenny Ha’s_, opposite to
Queensberry House, where, it is said, Gay had boosed during his short
stay in Edinburgh, and to which it was customary for gentlemen to
adjourn from dinner-parties, in order to indulge in claret from the
butt, free from the usual domestic restraints. Jamie’s potations here
were principally of what was called _cappie ale_—that is, ale in
little wooden bowls—with wee thochts of brandy in it. But, indeed,
no one could be less exclusive than he as to liquors. When he heard a
bottle drawn in any house he happened to be in, and observed the cork
to give an unusually smart report, he would call out: ‘Lassie, gi’e me
a glass o’ _that_;’ as knowing that, whatever it was, it must be good
of its kind.
Sir Walter Scott says, in one of his droll little missives to his
printer Ballantyne: ‘When the press does not follow me, I get on slowly
and ill, and put myself in mind of Jamie Balfour, who could run, when
he could not stand still.’ He here alludes to a matter of fact, which
the following anecdote will illustrate: Jamie, in going home late from
a debauch, happened to tumble into the pit formed for the foundation of
a house in James’s Square. A gentleman passing heard his complaint, and
going up to the spot, was entreated by our hero to help him out. ‘What
would be the use of helping you out,’ said the passer-by, ‘when you
could not stand though you _were_ out?’ ‘Very true, perhaps; yet if you
help me up, I’ll _run_ you to the Tron Kirk for a bottle of claret.’
Pleased with his humour, the gentleman placed him upon his feet, when
instantly he set off for the Tron Church at a pace distancing all
ordinary competition; and accordingly he won the race, though, at
the conclusion, he had to sit down on the steps of the church, being
quite unable to stand. After taking a minute or two to recover his
breath—‘Well, another race to Fortune’s for another bottle of claret!’
Off he went to the tavern in question, in the Stamp-office Close, and
this bet he gained also. The claret, probably with continuations, was
discussed in Fortune’s; and the end of the story is, Balfour sent his
new friend home in a chair, utterly done up, at an early hour in the
morning.
[Illustration: Stamp-office Close.]
It is hardly surprising that habits carried to such an extravagance
amongst gentlemen should have in some small degree affected the fairer
and purer part of creation also. It is an old story in Edinburgh that
three ladies had one night a merry-meeting in a tavern near the Cross,
where they sat till a very late hour. Ascending at length to the
street, they scarcely remembered where they were; but as it was good
moonlight, they found little difficulty in walking along till they came
to the Tron Church. Here, however, an obstacle occurred. The moon,
shining high in the south, threw the shadow of the steeple directly
across the street from the one side to the other; and the ladies,
being no more clear-sighted than they were clear-headed, mistook this
for a broad and rapid river, which they would require to cross before
making further way. In this delusion, they sat down upon the brink of
the imaginary stream, deliberately took off their shoes and stockings,
_kilted_ their lower garments, and proceeded to wade through to the
opposite side; after which, resuming their shoes and stockings, they
went on their way rejoicing, as before! Another anecdote (from an aged
nobleman) exhibits the bacchanalian powers of our ancestresses in a
different light. During the rising of 1715, the officers of the crown
in Edinburgh, having procured some important intelligence respecting
the motions and intentions of the Jacobites, resolved upon despatching
the same to London by a faithful courier. Of this the party whose
interests would have been so materially affected got notice; and that
evening, as the messenger (a man of rank) was going down the High
Street, with the intention of mounting his horse in the Canongate and
immediately setting off, he met two tall, handsome ladies, in full
dress, and wearing black velvet masks, who accosted him with a very
easy demeanour and a winning sweetness of voice. Without hesitating as
to the quality of these damsels, he instantly proposed to treat them
with a pint of claret at a neighbouring tavern; but they said that,
instead of accepting his kindness, they were quite willing to treat
_him_ to his heart’s content. They then adjourned to the tavern, and
sitting down, the whole three drank plenteously, merrily, and long, so
that the courier seemed at last to forget entirely the mission upon
which he was sent, and the danger of the papers which he had about his
person. After a pertinacious debauch of several hours, the luckless
messenger was at length fairly drunk under the table; and it is
needless to add that the fair nymphs then proceeded to strip him of his
papers, decamped, and were no more heard of; though it is but justice
to the Scottish ladies of that period to say that the robbers were
generally believed at the time to be young men disguised in women’s
clothes.[133]
The custom which prevailed among ladies, as well as gentlemen, of
resorting to what were called _oyster-cellars_, is in itself a striking
indication of the state of manners during the last century. In winter,
when the evening had set in, a party of the most fashionable people
in town, collected by appointment, would adjourn in carriages to one
of those abysses of darkness and comfort, called in Edinburgh _laigh
shops_, where they proceeded to regale themselves with raw oysters and
porter, arranged in huge dishes upon a coarse table, in a dingy room,
lighted by tallow candles. The rudeness of the feast, and the vulgarity
of the circumstances under which it took place, seem to have given
a zest to its enjoyment, with which more refined banquets could not
have been accompanied. One of the chief features of an oyster-cellar
entertainment was that full scope was given to the conversational
powers of the company. Both ladies and gentlemen indulged, without
restraint, in sallies the merriest and the wittiest; and a thousand
remarks and jokes, which elsewhere would have been suppressed as
improper, were here sanctified by the oddity of the scene, and
appreciated by the most dignified and refined. After the table was
cleared of the oysters and porter, it was customary to introduce brandy
or rum-punch—according to the pleasure of the ladies—after which
dancing took place; and when the female part of the assemblage thought
proper to retire, the gentlemen again sat down, or adjourned to another
tavern to crown the pleasures of the evening with unlimited debauch. It
is not (1824) more than thirty years since the late Lord Melville, the
Duchess of Gordon, and some other persons of distinction, who happened
to meet in town after many years of absence, made up an oyster-cellar
party, by way of a frolic, and devoted one winter evening to the
revival of this almost forgotten entertainment of their youth.[134]
It seems difficult to reconcile all these things with the staid and
somewhat square-toed character which our country has obtained amongst
her neighbours. The fact seems to be that a kind of Laodicean principle
is observable in Scotland, and we oscillate between a rigour of manners
on the one hand, and a laxity on the other, which alternately acquire
an apparent paramouncy. In the early part of the last century, rigour
was in the ascendant; but not to the prevention of a respectable
minority of the free-and-easy, who kept alive the flame of conviviality
with no small degree of success. In the latter half of the century—a
dissolute era all over civilised Europe—the minority became the
majority, and the characteristic sobriety of the nation’s manners was
only traceable in certain portions of society. Now we are in a sober,
perhaps tending to a rigorous stage once more. In Edinburgh, seventy
years ago (1847), intemperance was the rule to such an degree that
exception could hardly be said to exist. Men appeared little in the
drawing-room in those days; when they did, not infrequently their
company had better have been dispensed with. When a gentleman gave an
entertainment, it was thought necessary that he should press the bottle
as far as it could be made to go. A particularly good fellow would lock
his outer door to prevent any guest of dyspeptic tendencies or sober
inclinations from escaping. Some were so considerate as to provide
shake-down beds for a general bivouac in a neighbouring apartment.
When gentlemen were obliged to appear at assemblies where decency was
enforced, they of course wore their best attire. This it was customary
to change for something less liable to receive damage, ere going, as
they usually did, to conclude the evening by a scene of conviviality.
Drinking entered into everything. As Sir Alexander Boswell has observed:
‘O’er draughts of wine the beau would moan his love,
O’er draughts of wine the cit his bargain drove,
O’er draughts of wine the writer penned the will,
And legal wisdom counselled o’er a gill.’
Then was the time when men, despising and neglecting the company of
women, always so civilising in its influence, would yet half-kill
themselves with bumpers in order, as the phrase went, to _save
them_. Drinking to save the ladies is said to have originated with a
catch-club, which issued tickets for gratuitous concerts. Many tickets
with the names of ladies being prepared, one was taken up and the name
announced. Any member present was at liberty to toast the health of
this lady in a bumper, and this ensured her ticket being reserved for
her use. If no one came forward to honour her name in this manner,
the lady was said to be damned, and her ticket was thrown under the
table. Whether from this origin or not, the practice is said to have
ultimately had the following form. One gentleman would give out the
name of some lady as the most beautiful object in creation, and, by
way of attesting what he said, drink one bumper. Another champion
would then enter the field, and offer to prove that a certain other
lady, whom he named, was a great deal more beautiful than she just
mentioned—supporting his assertion by drinking two bumpers. Then the
other would rise up, declare this to be false, and in proof of his
original statement, as well as by way of turning the scale upon his
opponent, drink four bumpers. Not deterred or repressed by this, the
second man would reiterate, and conclude by drinking as much as the
challenger, who would again start up and drink eight bumpers; and so
on, in geometrical progression, till one or other of the heroes fell
under the table; when of course the fair Delia of the survivor was
declared the queen supreme of beauty by all present. I have seen a
sonnet addressed on the morning after such a scene of contention to the
lady concerned by the unsuccessful hero, whose brains appear to have
been woefully muddled by the claret he had drunk in her behalf.
It was not merely in the evenings that taverns were then resorted to.
There was a petty treat, called a ‘meridian,’ which no man of that day
thought himself able to dispense with; and this was generally indulged
in at a tavern. ‘A cauld cock and a feather’ was the metaphorical mode
of calling for a glass of brandy and a bunch of raisins, which was
the favourite regale of many. Others took a glass of whisky, some few
a lunch. Scott very amusingly describes, from his own observation,
the manner in which the affair of the meridian was gone about by
the writers and clerks belonging to the Parliament House. ‘If their
proceedings were watched, they might be seen to turn fidgety about the
hour of noon, and exchange looks with each other from their separate
desks, till at length some one of formal and dignified presence
assumed the honour of leading the band; when away they went, threading
the crowd like a string of wild-fowl, crossed the square or close,
and following each other into the [John’s] coffee-house, drank the
meridian, which was placed ready at the bar. This they did day by day;
and though they did not speak to each other, they seemed to attach a
certain degree of sociability to performing the ceremony in company.’
It was in the evening, of course, that the tavern debaucheries assumed
their proper character of unpalliated fierceness and destructive
duration. In the words of Robert Fergusson:
‘Now night, that’s cunzied chief for fun,
Is with her usual rites begun.
* * * * *
Some to porter, some to punch,
Retire; while noisy ten-hours’ drum
Gars a’ the trades gang danderin’ hame.
Now, mony a club, jocose and free,
Gi’e a’ to merriment and glee;
Wi’ sang and glass they fley the power
O’ care, that wad harass the hour.
* * * * *
Chief, O CAPE! we crave thy aid,
To get our cares and poortith laid.
Sincerity and genius true,
O’ knights have ever been the due.
Mirth, music, porter deepest-dyed,
Are never here to worth denied.’
All the shops in the town were then shut at eight o’clock; and from
that hour till ten—when the drum of the Town-guard announced at once
a sort of license for the deluging of the streets with nuisances,[135]
and a warning of the inhabitants home to their beds—unrestrained scope
was given to the delights of the table. No tradesman thought of going
home to his family till after he had spent an hour or two at his club.
This was universal and unfailing. So lately as 1824, I knew something
of an old-fashioned tradesman who nightly shut his shop at eight
o’clock, and then adjourned with two old friends, who called upon him
at that hour, to a quiet old public-house on the opposite side of the
way, where they each drank precisely one bottle of Edinburgh ale, ate
precisely one halfpenny roll, and got upon their legs precisely at the
first stroke of ten o’clock.
The CAPE CLUB alluded to by Fergusson aspired to a refined and
classical character, comprising amongst its numerous members many
men of talents, as well as of private worth. Fergusson himself was
a member; as were Mr Thomas Sommers, his friend and biographer; Mr
Woods, a player of eminence on the humble boards of Edinburgh, and
an intimate companion of the poet; and Mr Runciman the painter. The
name of the club had its foundation in one of those weak jokes such
as ‘gentle dullness ever loves.’ A person who lived in the Calton was
in the custom of spending an hour or two every evening with one or
two city friends, and being sometimes detained till after the regular
period when the Netherbow Port was shut, it occasionally happened
that he had either to remain in the city all night, or was under the
necessity of bribing the porter who attended the gate. This difficult
_pass_—partly on account of the rectangular corner which he turned
immediately on getting out of the Port, as he went homewards down Leith
Wynd—the Calton burgher facetiously called _doubling the Cape_; and as
it was customary with his friends every evening when they assembled to
inquire ‘how he turned the Cape last night,’ and indeed to make that
circumstance and that phrase, night after night, the subject of their
conversation and amusement, ‘the Cape’ in time became so assimilated
with their very existence that they adopted it as a title; and it
was retained as such by the organised club into which shortly after
they thought proper to form themselves. The Cape Club owned a regular
institution from 1763. It will scarcely be credited in the present day
that a jest of the above nature could keep an assemblage of rational
citizens, and, we may add, professed wits, merry after a thousand
repetitions. Yet it really is true that the patron-jests of many a
numerous and enlightened association were no better than this, and the
greater part of them worse. As instance the following:
There was the ANTEMANUM CLUB, of which the members used to boast of the
state of their hands, _before-hand_, in playing at ‘Brag.’ The members
were all men of respectability, some of them gentlemen of fortune.
They met every Saturday and dined. It was at first a purely convivial
club; but latterly, the Whig party gaining a sort of preponderance, it
degenerated into a political association.
The PIOUS CLUB was composed of decent, orderly citizens, who met every
night, Sundays not excepted, in a _pie-house_, and whose joke was the
_équivoque_ of these expressions—similar in sound, but different in
signification. The agreeable uncertainty as to whether their name
arose from their _piety_, or the circumstance of their eating _pies_,
kept the club hearty for many years. At their Sunday meetings the
conversation usually took a serious turn—perhaps upon the sermons
which they had respectively heard during the day: this they considered
as rendering their title of _Pious_ not altogether undeserved.
Moreover, they were all, as the saying was, _ten o’clock men_, and of
good character. Fifteen persons were considered as constituting a full
night. The whole allowable debauch was a gill of toddy to each person,
which was drunk, like wine, out of a common decanter. One of the
members of the Pious Club was a Mr Lind, a man of at least twenty-five
stone weight, immoderately fond of good eating and drinking. It was
generally believed of him that were all the oxen he had devoured ranged
in a line, they would reach from the Watergate to the Castle-hill,
and that the wine he had drunk would swim a seventy-four. His most
favourite viand was a very strange one—salmon skins. When dining
anywhere, with salmon on the table, he made no scruple of raking all
the skins off the plates of the rest of the guests. He had only one
toast, from which he never varied: ‘Merry days to honest fellows.’ A Mr
Drummond was esteemed poet-laureate to this club. He was a facetious,
clever man. Of his poetical talents, take a specimen in the following
lines on Lind:
‘In going to dinner, he ne’er lost his way,
Though often, when done, he was carted away.’
He made the following impromptu on an associate of small figure and
equally small understanding, who had been successful in the world:
‘O thou of genius slow,
Weak by nature;
A rich fellow,
But a poor creature.’
[Illustration: The Watergate.]
The SPENDTHRIFT CLUB took its name from the extravagance of the members
in spending no less a sum than fourpence halfpenny each night! It
consisted of respectable citizens of the middle class, and continued in
1824 to exist in a modified state. Its meetings, originally nightly,
were then reduced to four a week. The men used to play at whist for a
halfpenny—one, two, three—no rubbers; but latterly they had, with
their characteristic extravagance, doubled the stake! Supper originally
cost no less than twopence; and half a bottle of strong ale, with a
dram, stood every member twopence halfpenny; to all which sumptuous
profusion might be added still another halfpenny, which was given
to the maid-servant—in all, fivepence! Latterly the dram had been
disused; but such had been the general increase, either in the cost
or the quantity of the indulgences, that the usual nightly expense
was ultimately from a shilling to one and fourpence. The winnings at
whist were always thrown into the reckoning. A large two-quart bottle
or tappit-hen was introduced by the landlady, with a small measure,
out of which the company helped themselves; and the members made up
their own bill with chalk upon the table. In 1824, in the recollection
of the senior members, some of whom were of fifty years’ standing,
the house was kept by the widow of a Lieutenant Hamilton of the army,
who recollected having attended the theatre in the Tennis Court at
Holyroodhouse, when the play was the _Spanish Friar_, and when many of
the members of the _Union Parliament_ were present in the house.
[Illustration: Tappit-hen.]
The BOAR CLUB was an association of a different sort, consisting
chiefly of wild, fashionable young men; and the place of meeting was
not in any of the snug profundities of the Old Town, but in a modern
tavern in Shakspeare Square, kept by one Daniel Hogg. The _joke_ of
this club consisted in the supposition that all the members were
_boars_, that their room was a _sty_, that their talk was _grunting_,
and in the _double-entendre_ of the small piece of stone-ware which
served as a repository of all the fines being a _pig_. Upon this they
lived twenty years. I have, at some expense of eyesight and with no
small exertion of patience, perused the soiled and blotted records of
the club, which in 1824 were preserved by an old vintner, whose house
was their last place of meeting; and the result has been the following
memorabilia. The Boar Club commenced its meetings in 1787, and the
original members were J. G. C. Schetky, a German musician; David Shaw;
Archibald Crawfuird; Patrick Robertson; Robert Aldridge, a famed
pantomimist and dancing-master; James Neilson; and Luke Cross. Some of
these were remarkable men, in particular Mr Schetky. He had come to
Edinburgh about the beginning of the reign of George III. He used to
tell that on alighting at Ramsay’s inn, opposite the Cowgate Port, his
first impression of the city was so unfavourable that he was on the
point of leaving it again without further acquaintance, and was only
prevented from doing so by the solicitations of his fellow-traveller,
who was not so much alarmed at the dingy and squalid appearance of
this part of Auld Reekie.[136] He was first employed at St Cecilia’s
Hall, where the concerts were attended by all the ‘rank, beauty, and
fashion’ of which Edinburgh could then boast, and where, besides the
professional performers, many amateurs of great musical skill and
enthusiasm, such as Mr Tytler of Woodhouselee,[137] were pleased to
exhibit themselves for the entertainment of their friends, who alone
were admitted by tickets. Mr Schetky composed the march of a body of
volunteers called the Edinburgh Defensive Band, which was raised out
of the citizens of Edinburgh at the time of the American war, and was
commanded by the eminent advocate Crosbie. One of the verses to which
the march was set may be given as an admirable specimen of _militia
poetry_:
‘Colonel Crosbie takes the field;
To France and Spain he will not yield;
But still maintains his high command
At the head of the noble Defensive Band.’[138]
[Illustration: ‘AULD REEKIE’
from Largo.
PAGE 152.]
Mr Schetky was primarily concerned in the founding of the Boar Club.
He was in the habit of meeting every night with Mr Aldridge and one
or two other professional men, or gentlemen who affected the society
of such persons, in Hogg’s tavern; and it was the host’s name that
suggested the idea of calling their society the ‘_Boar_ Club.’ Their
laws were first written down in proper form in 1790. They were to
meet every evening at seven o’clock; each _boar_, on his entry, to
contribute a halfpenny to the _pig_. Mr Aldridge was to be perpetual
_Grand-boar_, with Mr Schetky for his deputy; and there were other
officers, entitled Secretary, Treasurer, and Procurator-fiscal. A fine
of one halfpenny was imposed upon every person who called one of his
brother-boars by his proper out-of-club name—the term ‘sir’ being only
allowed. The entry-moneys, fines, and other pecuniary acquisitions were
hoarded for a grand annual dinner. The laws were revised in 1799, when
some new officials were constituted, such as Poet-laureate, Champion,
Archbishop, and Chief-grunter. The fines were then rendered exceedingly
severe, and in their exaction no one met with any mercy, as it was the
interest of all the rest that the _pig_ should bring forth as plenteous
a _farrow_ as possible at the grand dinner-day. This practice at length
occasioning a violent insurrection in the _sty_, the whole fraternity
was broken up, and never again returned to ‘wallow in the mire.’
The HELL-FIRE CLUB, a terrible and infamous association of wild young
men about the beginning of the last century, met in various profound
places throughout Edinburgh, where they practised orgies not more fit
for seeing the light than the Eleusinian Mysteries. I have conversed
with old people who had seen the last worn-out members of the Hell-fire
Club, which in the country is to this day believed to have been an
association in compact with the Prince of Darkness.
Many years afterwards, a set of persons associated for the purpose of
purchasing goods condemned by the Court of Exchequer. For what reason
I cannot tell, they called themselves the Hell-fire Club, and their
president was named the Devil. My old friend, Henry Mackenzie, whose
profession was that of an attorney before the Court of Exchequer,
wrote me a note on this subject, in which he says very naïvely: ‘In my
youngest days, I knew the Devil.’
The SWEATING CLUB flourished about the middle of the last century. They
resembled the Mohocks mentioned in the _Spectator_. After intoxicating
themselves, it was their custom to sally forth at midnight, and attack
whomsoever they met upon the streets. Any luckless wight who happened
to fall into their hands was chased, jostled, pinched, and pulled
about, till he not only perspired, but was ready to drop down and die
with exhaustion. Even so late as the early years of this century, it
was unsafe to walk the streets of Edinburgh at night on account of the
numerous drunken parties of young men who then reeled about, bent on
mischief, at all hours, and from whom the Town-guard were unable to
protect the sober citizen.
A club called the INDUSTRIOUS COMPANY may serve to show how far the
system of drinking was carried by our fathers. It was a sort of
joint-stock company, formed by a numerous set of porter-drinkers,
who thought fit to club towards the formation of a stock of that
liquor, which they might partly profit by retailing, and partly by
the opportunity thus afforded them of drinking their own particular
tipple at the wholesale price. Their cellars were in the Royal Bank
Close, where they met every night at eight o’clock. Each member paid at
his entry £5, and took his turn monthly of the duty of superintending
the general business of the company. But the curse of joint-stock
companies—negligence on the part of the managers—ultimately
occasioned the ruin of the Industrious Company.
About 1790, a club of first-rate citizens used to meet each Saturday
afternoon for a _country dinner_, in a tavern which still exists in the
village of Canonmills, a place now involved within the limits of the
New Town. To quote a brief memoir on the subject, handed to me many
years ago by a veteran friend, who was a good deal of the _laudator
temporis acti_: ‘The club was pointedly attended; it was too good a
thing to miss being present at. They kept their own claret, and managed
all matters as to living perfectly well.’ Originally the fraternity
were contented with a very humble room; but in time they got an
addition built to the house for their accommodation, comprehending one
good-sized room with two windows, in one of which is a pane containing
an olive-dove; in the other, one containing a wheat-sheaf, both
engraved with a diamond. ‘This,’ continues Mr Johnston, ‘was the doing
of William Ramsay [banker], then residing at Warriston—the tongue of
the trump to the club. Here he took great delight to drink claret on
the Saturdays, though he had such a paradise near at hand to retire to;
but then there were Jamie Torry, Jamie Dickson, Gilbert Laurie, and
other good old council friends with whom to crack [that is, chat]; and
the said cracks were of more value in this dark, unseemly place than
the enjoyments of home. I never pass these two engraved panes of glass
but I venerate them, and wonder that, in the course of fifty years,
they have not been destroyed, either from drunkenness within or from
misrule without.’[139]
Edinburgh boasted of many other associations of the like nature, which
it were perhaps best merely to enumerate in a tabular form, with the
appropriate joke opposite each, as
THE DIRTY CLUB No gentleman to appear in clean linen.
THE BLACK WIGS Members wore black wigs.
THE ODD FELLOWS Members wrote their names upside down.
THE BONNET LAIRDS Members wore blue bonnets.
THE DOCTORS OF FACULTY CLUB { Members regarded as Physicians, and so
{ styled; wearing, moreover, gowns and
{ wigs.
And so forth. There were the CALEDONIAN CLUB and the UNION CLUB, of
whose foundation history speaketh not. There was the WIG CLUB, the
president of which wore a wig of extraordinary materials, which had
belonged to the Moray family for three generations, and each new
_entrant_ of which drank to the fraternity in a quart of claret without
pulling bit. The Wigs usually drank twopenny ale, on which it was
possible to get satisfactorily drunk for a groat; and with this they
ate souters’ clods,[140] a coarse, lumpish kind of loaf.[141] There
was also the BROWNONIAN SYSTEM CLUB, which, oddly enough, bore no
reference to the license which that system had given for a phlogistic
regimen—for it was a douce citizenly fraternity, venerating ten
o’clock as a sacred principle—but in honour of the founder of that
system, who had been a constituent member.
The LAWNMARKET CLUB was composed chiefly of the woollen-traders of
that street, a set of whom met every morning about seven o’clock, and
walked down to the Post-office, where they made themselves acquainted
with the news of the morning. After a plentiful discussion of the
news, they adjourned to a public-house and got a dram of brandy. As
a sort of ironical and self-inflicted satire upon the strength of
their potations, they sometimes called themselves the _Whey Club_.
They were always the first persons in the town to have a thorough
knowledge of the foreign news; and on Wednesday mornings, when there
was no post from London, it was their wont to meet as usual, and, in
the absence of real news, amuse themselves by the invention of what
was imaginary; and this they made it their business to circulate among
their uninitiated acquaintances in the course of the forenoon. Any such
unfounded articles of intelligence, on being suspected or discovered,
were usually called _Lawnmarket Gazettes_, in allusion to their roguish
originators.
In the year 1705, when the Duke of Argyll was commissioner in the
Scottish parliament, a singular kind of fashionable club, or coterie of
ladies and gentlemen, was instituted, chiefly by the exertions of the
Earl of Selkirk, who was the distinguished beau of that age. This was
called the HORN ORDER, a name which, as usual, had its origin in the
whim of a moment. A horn-spoon having been used at some merry-meeting,
it occurred to the club, which was then in embryo, that this homely
implement would be a good badge for the projected society; and this
being proposed, it was instantly agreed by all the party that the
‘Order of the Horn’ would be a good caricature of the more ancient and
better-sanctioned honorary dignities. The phrase was adopted; and the
members of the _Horn Order_ met and caroused for many a day under this
strange designation, which, however, the common people believed to mean
more than met the ear. Indeed, if all accounts of it be true, it must
have been a species of masquerade, in which the sexes were mixed and
all ranks confounded.[142]
FOOTNOTES
[130] Lord Grange, whose _Diary of a Senator of the College of Justice_
was published in 1833.
[131] Lord Newton was known as ‘The Mighty.’ Lord Cockburn says it
was not uncommon for judges on the bench to provide themselves with a
bottle of port, which they consumed while listening to the case being
tried before them.
[132] This story is told of John Clerk, who afterwards sat on the bench
as Lord Eldin.
[133] It was very common for Scotch ladies of rank, even till the
middle of the last century, to wear black masks in walking abroad
or airing in a carriage; and for some gentlemen, too, who were vain
of their complexion. They were kept close to the face by means of a
string, having a button of glass or precious stone at the end, which
the lady held in her mouth. This practice, I understand, did not in the
least interrupt the flow of tittle-tattle and scandal among the fair
wearers.
We are told, in a curious paper in the _Edinburgh Magazine_ for August
1817, that at the period above mentioned, ‘though it was a disgrace for
ladies to be seen drunk, yet it was none to be a little intoxicated in
good company.’
[134] The principal oyster-parties, in old times, took place in Lucky
Middlemass’s tavern in the Cowgate (where the south pier of the
[South] bridge now stands), which was the resort of Fergusson and his
fellow-wits—as witness his own verse:
‘When big as burns the gutters rin,
If ye ha’e catched a droukit skin,
To Luckie Middlemist’s loup in,
And sit fu’ snug,
Owre oysters and a dram o’ gin,
Or haddock lug.’
At these fashionable parties, the ladies would sometimes have the
oyster-women to dance in the ball-room, though they were known to be of
the worst character. This went under the convenient name of _frolic_.
[135] The cry of ‘Gardy loo!’ at this hour was supposed to warn
pedestrians; but, as Sir Walter Scott says, ‘it was sometimes like the
shriek of the water-kelpie, rather the elegy than the warning of the
overwhelmed passenger.’
[136] This highly appropriate popular _sobriquet_ cannot be traced
beyond the reign of Charles II. Tradition assigns the following as the
origin of the phrase: An old gentleman in Fife, designated Durham of
Largo, was in the habit, at the period mentioned, of regulating the
time of evening worship by the appearance of the smoke of Edinburgh,
which he could easily see, through the clear summer twilight, from
his own door. When he observed the smoke increase in density, in
consequence of the good folk of the city preparing their supper, he
would call all the family into the house, saying: ‘It’s time now,
bairns, to tak’ the beuks, and gang to our beds, for yonder’s Auld
Reekie, I see, putting on her nicht-cap!’
[137] This gentleman, the ‘revered defender of beauteous Stuart,’ and
the surviving friend of Allan Ramsay, had an unaccountable aversion
to cheese, and not only forbade the appearance of that article upon
his table, but also its introduction into his house. His family, who
did not partake in this antipathy, sometimes smuggled a small quantity
of cheese into the house, and ate it in secret; but he almost always
discovered it by the _smell_, which was the sense it chiefly offended.
Upon scenting the object of his disgust, he would start up and run
distractedly through the house in search of it, and not compose himself
again to his studies till it was thrown out of doors. Some of his
ingenious children, by way of a joke, once got into their possession
the coat with which he usually went to the court, and ripping up the
sutures of one of its wide, old-fashioned skirts, sewed up therein a
considerable slice of double Gloster. Mr Tytler was next day surprised
when, sitting near the bar, he perceived the smell of cheese rising
around him. ‘Cheese here too!’ cried the querulous old gentleman;
‘nay, then, the whole world must be conspiring against me!’ So saying,
he rose, and ran home to tell his piteous case to Mrs Tytler and the
children, who became convinced from this that he really possessed the
singular delicacy and fastidiousness in respect of the effluvia arising
from cheese which they formerly thought to be fanciful.
[138] The dress of the Edinburgh Defensive Band was as follows: a
cocked hat, black stock, hair tied and highly powdered; dark-blue
long-tailed coat, with orange facings in honour of the Revolution,
and full lapels sloped away to show the white dimity vest; nankeen
small-clothes; white thread stockings, ribbed or plain; and short
nankeen spatterdashes. Kay has some ingenious caricatures, in
miniature, of these redoubted Bruntsfield Links and Heriot’s Green
warriors. The last two survivors were Mr John M’Niven, stationer, and
Robert Stevenson, painter, who died in 1832.
[139] One of the panes is now (1847) destroyed, the other cracked. [The
tavern is now out of existence.]
[140] Souters’ clods and other forms of bread fascinating to
youngsters, as well as penny pies of high reputation, were to be had
at a shop which all old Edinburgh people speak of with extreme regard
and affection—the _Baijen Hole_—situated immediately to the east of
Forrester’s Wynd and opposite to the Old Tolbooth. The name—a mystery
to later generations—seems to bear reference to the Baijens or Baijen
Class, a term bestowed in former days upon the junior students in the
college. _Bajan_ or _bejan_ is the French _bejaune_, ‘_bec jaune_,’
‘greenbill,’ ‘greenhorn,’ ‘freshman.’
[141] The fullest account yet published of this extraordinary coterie
is that of Mr H. A. Cockburn in _The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club_,
vol. iii. Creech refers to it in ironical terms as ‘the virtuous, the
venerable and dignified Wig who so much to their own honour and kind
attention always inform the public of their meetings.’ The reputation
of the club was very different.
[142] The following were other eighteenth century Edinburgh clubs:
THE POKER CLUB originated in a combination of gentlemen favourable to
the establishment of militia in Scotland, and its name, happily hit
on by Professor Adam Ferguson, was selected to avoid giving offence
to the Government. A history of the club is given in Dugald Stewart’s
Life, and also in Carlyle’s _Autobiography_, where he says: ‘Dinner was
on the table soon after two o’clock, at one shilling a head, the wine
to be confined to sherry and claret, and the reckoning called at six
o’clock.’ The minutes of this interesting club are preserved in the
University Library.
THE MIRROR CLUB, formed by the contributors to the periodical of that
name. It had really existed before under the name of ‘The Tabernacle.’
‘The Tabernacle,’ or ‘The Feast of Tabernacles,’ as Ramsay of
Ochtertyre calls it, was a company of friends and admirers of Henry
Dundas, first Viscount Melville.
THE EASY CLUB, founded by Allan Ramsay the poet, consisted of twelve
members, each of whom was required to assume the name of some Scottish
poet. Ramsay took that of Gawin Douglas.
THE CAPILLAIRE CLUB was ‘composed of all who were inclined to be witty
and joyous.’
THE FACER CLUB, which met in Lucky Wood’s tavern in the Canongate, was
perhaps not of a high order. If a member did not drain his measure of
liquor, he had to throw it at his own face.
THE GRISKIN CLUB also met in the Canongate. Dr Carlyle and those
who took part with him in the production of Home’s _Douglas_ at the
Canongate playhouse formed this club, and gave it its name from the
pork griskins which was their favourite supper dish.
THE RUFFIAN CLUB, ‘composed of men whose hearts were milder than their
manners, and their principles more correct than their habits of life.’
THE WAGERING CLUB, instituted in 1775, still meets annually. An account
of this club is given in _The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club_, vol. ii.
Others may be mentioned by name only: THE DIVERSORIUM, THE HAVERAL, THE
WHIN BUSH, THE SKULL, THE SIX FOOT, THE ASSEMBLY OF BIRDS, THE CARD,
THE BORACHED, THE HUMDRUM, THE APICIAN, THE BLAST AND QUAFF, THE OCEAN,
THE PIPE, THE KNIGHTS OF THE CAP AND FEATHER, THE REVOLUTIONARY, THE
STOIC, and THE CLUB, referred to in Lockhart’s _Life of Scott_.
Of a later period than those mentioned above were THE GOWKS CLUB; THE
RIGHT AND WRONG, of which James Hogg gives a short account; and THE
FRIDAY CLUB, instituted by Lord Cockburn, who also wrote an interesting
history of it, recently printed by Mr H. A. Cockburn, in vol. iii. of
_The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club_.
TAVERNS OF OLD TIMES.
When the worship of Bacchus held such sway in our city, his peculiar
temples—the taverns—must, one would suppose, have been places of
some importance. And so they were, comparatively speaking; and yet,
absolutely, an Edinburgh tavern of the last century was no very fine
or inviting place. Usually these receptacles were situated in obscure
places—in courts or closes, away from the public thoroughfares; and
often they presented such narrow and stifling accommodations as might
have been expected to repel rather than attract visitors. The truth
was, however, that a coarse and darksome snugness was courted by the
worshippers. Large, well-lighted rooms, with a look-out to a street,
would not have suited them. But allow them to dive through some Erebean
alley, into a cavern-like house, and there settle themselves in a
cell unvisited of Phœbus, with some dingy flamen of either sex to act
as minister, and their views as to circumstances and properties were
fulfilled.
The city traditions do not go far back into the eighteenth century
with respect to taverns; but we obtain some notion of the principal
houses in Queen Anne’s time from the Latin lyrics of Dr Pitcairn, which
Ruddiman published, in order to prove that the Italian muse had not
become extinct in our land since the days of Buchanan. In an address
_To Strangers_, the wit tells those who would acquire some notion of
our national manners to avoid the triple church of St Giles’s:
‘Tres ubi Cyclopes fanda nefanda boant’—
where three horrible monsters bellow forth sacred and profane
discourse—and seek the requisite knowledge in the sanctuaries of the
rosy god, whose worship is conducted by night and by day. ‘At one
time,’ says he, ‘you may be delighted with the bowls of Steil of the
_Cross Keys_; then other heroes, at the _Ship_, will show you the huge
cups which belonged to mighty bibbers of yore. Or you may seek out the
sweet-spoken Katy at _Buchanan’s_, or _Tennant’s_ commodious house,
where scalloped oysters will be brought in with your wine. But _Hay_
calls us, than whom no woman of milder disposition or better-stored
cellar can be named in the whole town. Now it will gratify you to
make your way into the Avernian grottoes and caves never seen of
the sun; but remember to make friends with the dog which guards the
threshold. Straightway Mistress Anne will bring the native liquor.
Seek the innermost rooms and the snug seats: these know the sun, at
least, when Anne enters. What souls joying in the Lethæan flood you
may there see! what frolics, God willing, you may partake of! Mindless
of all that goes on in the outer world, joys not to be told to mortal
do they there imbibe. But perhaps you may wish by-and-by to get back
into the world—which is indeed no easy matter. I recommend you, when
about to descend, to take with you a trusty Achates [a caddy]: say
to Anne, “Be sure you give him no drink.” By such means it was that
Castor and Pollux were able to issue forth from Pluto’s domain into
the heavenly spaces. Here you may be both merry and wise; but beware
how you toast kings and their French retreats,’ &c. The sites of
these merry places of yore are not handed down to us; but respecting
another, which Pitcairn shadows forth under the mysterious appellation
of _Greppa_, it chances that we possess some knowledge. It was a suite
of dark underground apartments in the Parliament Close, opening by
a descending stair opposite the oriel of St Giles’s, in a mass of
building called the Pillars. By the wits who frequented it, it was
called the _Greping-office_, because one could only make way through
its dark passages by groping. It is curious to see how Pitcairn works
this homely Scottish idea into his Sapphics, talking, for example, by
way of a good case of bane and antidote, of
‘Fraudes Egidii, venena Greppæ.’
A venerable person has given me an anecdote of this singular mixture
of learning, wit, and professional skill in connection with the
Greping-office. Here, it seems, according to a custom which lasted
even in London till a later day, the clever physician used to receive
visits from his patients. On one occasion a woman from the country
called to consult him respecting the health of her daughter, when he
gave a shrewd hygienic advice in a pithy metaphor not be mentioned
to ears polite. When, in consequence of following the prescription,
the young woman had recovered her health, the mother came back
to the Greping-office to thank Dr Pitcairn and give him a small
present. Seeing him in precisely the same place and circumstances,
and surrounded by the same companions as on the former occasion, she
lingered with an expression of surprise. On interrogation, she said she
had only one thing to speer at him (ask after), and she hoped he would
not be angry.
‘Oh no, my good woman.’
‘Well, sir, have you been sitting here ever since I saw you last?’
According to the same authority, small claret was then sold at
twentypence the Scottish pint, equivalent to tenpence a bottle.
Pitcairn once or twice sent his servant for a regale of this liquor
on the Sunday forenoon, and suffered the disappointment of having it
intercepted by the _seizers_, whose duty it was to make capture of all
persons found abroad in time of service, and appropriate whatever they
were engaged in carrying that smelled of the common enjoyments of life.
To secure his claret for the future from this interference, the wit
caused the wine on one occasion to be drugged in such a manner as to
produce consequences more ludicrous than dangerous to those drinking
it. The triumph he thus attained over a power which there was no
reaching by any appeal to common-sense or justice must have been deeply
relished in the Greping-office.
Pitcairn was professedly an Episcopalian, but he allowed himself a
latitude in wit which his contemporaries found some difficulty in
reconciling with any form of religion. Among the popular charges
against him was that he did not believe in the existence of such a
place as hell; a point of heterodoxy likely to be sadly disrelished
in Scotland. Being at a book-sale, where a copy of Philostratus sold
at a good price and a copy of the Bible was not bidden for, Pitcairn
said to some one who remarked the circumstance: ‘Not at all wonderful;
for is it not written, “_Verbum Dei manet in eternum_”?’ For this,
one of the _Cyclopes_, a famous Mr Webster, called him publicly an
atheist. The story goes on to state that Pitcairn prosecuted Webster
for defamation in consequence, but failed in the action from the
following circumstance: The defender, much puzzled what to do in the
case, consulted a shrewd-witted friend of his, a Mr Pettigrew, minister
of Govan, near Glasgow. Pettigrew came to Edinburgh to endeavour to get
him out of the scrape. ‘Strange,’ he said, ‘since he has caught so much
at your mouth, if we can catch nothing at his.’ Having laid his plan,
he came bustling up to the physician at the Cross, and tapping him on
the shoulder, said: ‘Are you Dr Pitcairn the atheist?’
The doctor, in his haste, overlooking the latter part of the query,
answered: ‘Yes.’
‘Very good,’ said Pettigrew; ‘I take you all to witness that he has
confessed it himself.’
Pitcairn, seeing how he had been outwitted, said bitterly to the
minister of Govan, whom he well knew: ‘Oh, Pettigrew, that skull of
yours is as deep as hell.’
‘Oh, man,’ replied Pettigrew, ‘I’m glad to find you have come to
believe there is a hell.’ The prosecutor’s counsel, who stood by at the
time, recommended a compromise, which accordingly took place.
A son of Pitcairn was minister of Dysart; a very good kind of man,
who was sometimes consulted in a medical way by his parishioners. He
seems to have had a little of the paternal humour, if we may judge from
the following circumstance: A lady came to ask what her maid-servant
should do for sore or tender eyes. The minister, seeing that no active
treatment could be recommended, said: ‘She must do naething wi’ them,
but just rub them wi’ her elbucks [elbows].’
Allan Ramsay mentions, of Edinburgh taverns in his day,
‘Cumin’s, Don’s, and Steil’s,’
as places where one may be as well served as at _The Devil_ in London.
‘’Tis strange, though true, he who would shun all evil,
Cannot do better than go to the Devil.’
JOHN MACLAURIN.
One is disposed to pause a moment on Steil’s name, as it is honourably
connected with the history of music in Scotland. Being a zealous lover
of the divine science and a good singer of the native melodies, he had
rendered his house a favourite resort of all who possessed a similar
taste, and here actually was formed (1728) the first regular society of
amateur musicians known in our country. It numbered seventy persons,
and met once a week, the usual entertainments consisting in playing
on the harpsichord and violin the concertos and sonatas of Handel,
then newly published. Apparently, however, this fraternity did not
long continue to use Steil’s house, if I am right in supposing his
retirement from business as announced in an advertisement of February
1729, regarding ‘a sale by auction, of the haill pictures, prints,
music-books, and musical instruments, belonging to Mr John Steill’
(_Caledonian Mercury_).
Coming down to a later time—1760-1770—we find the tavern in highest
vogue to have been _Fortune’s_, in the house which the Earl of
Eglintoune had once occupied in the Stamp-office Close. The gay men
of rank, the scholarly and philosophical, the common citizens, all
flocked hither; and the royal commissioner for the General Assembly
held his levees here, and hence proceeded to church with his cortège,
then additionally splendid from having ladies walking in it in their
court-dresses as well as gentlemen.[143] Perhaps the most remarkable
set of men who met here was the POKER CLUB,[144] consisting of Hume,
Robertson, Blair, Fergusson, and many others of that brilliant galaxy,
but whose potations were comparatively of a moderate kind.
The _Star and Garter_, in Writers’ Court, kept by one Clerihugh (the
_Clerihugh’s_ alluded to in _Guy Mannering_), was another tavern
of good consideration, the favourite haunt of the magistrates and
Town-council, who in those days mixed much more of private enjoyments
with public duties than would now be considered fitting.[145] Here the
Rev. Dr Webster used to meet them at dinner, in order to give them the
benefit of his extensive knowledge and great powers of calculation when
they were scheming out the New Town.
A favourite house for many of the last years of the bygone century
was _Douglas’s_, in the Anchor Close, near the Cross, a good specimen
of those profound retreats which have been spoken of as valued in the
inverse ratio of the amount of daylight which visited them. You went
a few yards down the dark, narrow alley, passing on the left hand the
entry to a scale stair, decorated with ‘THE LORD IS ONLY MY SVPORT;’
then passed another door, bearing the still more antique legend: ‘O
LORD, IN THE IS AL MY TRAIST;’ immediately beyond, under an architrave
calling out ‘BE MERCIFVL TO ME,’ you entered the hospitable mansion
of Dawney Douglas, the scene of the daily and nightly orgies of the
Pleydells and Fairfords, the Hays, Erskines, and Crosbies, of the time
of our fathers. Alas! how fallen off is now that temple of Momus and
the Bacchanals! You find it divided into a multitude of small lodgings,
where, instead of the merry party, vociferous with toasts and catches,
you are most likely to be struck by the spectacle of some poor lone
female, pining under a parochial allowance, or a poverty-struck family
group, one-half of whom are disposed on sick-beds of straw mingled with
rags—the terrible exponents of our peculiar phasis of civilisation.
The frequenter of Douglas’s, after ascending a few steps, found himself
in a pretty large kitchen—a dark, fiery Pandemonium, through which
numerous ineffable ministers of flame were continually flying about,
while beside the door sat the landlady, a large, fat woman, in a
towering head-dress and large-flowered silk gown, who bowed to every
one passing. Most likely on emerging from this igneous region, the
party would fall into the hands of Dawney himself, and so be conducted
to an apartment. A perfect contrast was he to his wife: a thin, weak,
submissive man, who spoke in a whisper, never but in the way of answer,
and then, if possible, only in monosyllables. He had a habit of using
the word ‘quietly’ very frequently, without much regard to its being
appropriate to the sense; and it is told that he one day made the
remark that ‘the Castle had been firing to-day—_quietly_;’ which, it
may well be believed, was not soon forgotten by his customers. Another
trait of Dawney was that some one lent him a volume of Clarendon’s
history to read, and daily frequenting the room where it lay, used
regularly, for some time, to put back the reader’s mark to the same
place; whereupon, being by-and-by asked how he liked the book, Dawney
answered: ‘Oh, very weel; but dinna ye think it’s gay mickle the same
thing o’er again?’ The house was noted for suppers of tripe, rizzared
haddocks, mince collops, and _hashes_, which never cost more than
sixpence a head. On charges of this moderate kind the honest couple
grew extremely rich before they died.
The principal room in this house was a handsome one of good size,
having a separate access by the second of the entries which have been
described, and only used for large companies, or for guests of the
first importance. It was called _the Crown Room_, or _the Crown_—so
did the guests find it distinguished on the tops of their bills—and
this name it was said to have acquired in consequence of its having
once been used by Queen Mary as a council-room, on which occasions
the emblem of sovereignty was disposed in a niche in the wall, still
existing. How the queen should have had any occasion to hold councils
in this place tradition does not undertake to explain; but assuredly,
when we consider the nature of all public accommodations in that time,
we cannot say there is any decided improbability in the matter. The
house appears of sufficient age for the hypothesis. Perhaps we catch a
hint on the general possibility from a very ancient house farther down
the close, of whose original purpose or owners we know nothing, but
which is adumbrated by this legend:
ANGVSTA AD VSVM AVGVSTA[M]
W F B G
The Crown Room, however, is elegant enough to have graced even the
presence of Queen Mary, so that she only had not had to reach it by the
Anchor Close. It is handsomely panelled, with a decorated fireplace,
and two tall windows towards the alley. At present this supposed seat
of royal councils, and certain seat of the social enjoyments of many
men of noted talents, forms a back-shop to Mr Ford, grocer, High
Street, and, all dingy and out of countenance, serves only to store
hams, firkins of butter, packages of groceries, and bundles of dried
cod.[146]
The gentle Dawney had an old Gaelic song called Crochallan, which he
occasionally sang to his customers. This led to the establishment of
a club at his house, which, with a reference to the militia regiments
then raising, was called the Crochallan Corps, or Crochallan Fencibles,
and to which belonged, amongst other men of original character and
talent, the well-known William Smellie, author of the _Philosophy of
Natural History_. Each member bore a military title, and some were
endowed with ideal offices of a ludicrous character: for example, a
lately surviving associate had been _depute-hangman_ to the corps.
Individuals committing a fault were subjected to a mock trial, in which
such members as were barristers could display their forensic talents
to the infinite amusement of the brethren. Much mirth and not a little
horse-play prevailed. Smellie, while engaged professionally in printing
the Edinburgh edition of the poems of Burns, introduced that genius
to the Crochallans, when a scene of rough banter took place between
him and certain privileged old hands, and the bard declared at the
conclusion that he had ‘never been so abominably thrashed in his life.’
There was one predominant wit, Willie Dunbar by name, of whom the poet
has left a characteristic picture:
‘As I came by Crochallan,
I cannily keekit ben—
Rattling roaring Willie
Was sitting at yon board en’—
Sitting at yon board en’,
Amang gude companie;
Rattling roaring Willie,
Ye’re welcome hame to me!’
He has also described Smellie as coming to Crochallan with his old
cocked hat, gray surtout, and beard rising in its might:
‘Yet though his caustic wit was biting, rude,
His heart was warm, benevolent, and good.’
The printing-office of this strange genius being at the bottom of the
close, the transition from the correction of proofs to the roaring
scenes at Crochallan must have been sufficiently easy for Burns.
[Illustration: UPPER BAXTER’S CLOSE.
Where Burns first resided in Edinburgh.
PAGE 164.]
I am indebted to a privately printed memoir on the Anchor Close for
the following anecdote of Crochallan: ‘A comical gentleman, one of the
members of the corps [old Williamson of Cardrona, in Peeblesshire], got
rather tipsy one evening after a severe _field-day_. When he came to
the head of the Anchor Close, it occurred to him that it was necessary
that he should take possession of the Castle. He accordingly set off
for this purpose. When he got to the outer gate, he demanded immediate
possession of the garrison, to which he said he was entitled. The
sentinel, for a considerable time, laughed at him; he, however, became
so extremely clamorous that the man found it necessary to apprise the
commanding officer, who immediately came down to inquire into the
meaning of such impertinent conduct. He at once recognised his friend
Cardrona, whom he had left at the festive board of the Crochallan Corps
only a few hours before. Accordingly, humouring him in the conceit,
he said: ‘Certainly you have every right to the command of this
garrison; if you please, I will conduct you to your proper apartment.’
He accordingly conveyed him to a bedroom in his house. Cardrona took
formal possession of the place, and immediately afterwards went to
bed. His feelings were indescribable when he looked out of his bedroom
window next morning, and found himself surrounded with soldiers and
great guns. Some time afterwards this story came to the ears of the
Crochallans; and Cardrona said he never afterwards had the life of a
dog, so much did they tease and harass him about his strange adventure.’
There is a story connected with the air and song of Crochallan which
will tell strangely after these anecdotes. The title is properly _Cro
Chalien_—that is, ‘Colin’s Cattle.’ According to Highland tradition,
Colin’s wife, dying at an early age, _came back_, some months after she
had been buried, and was seen occasionally in the evenings milking her
cow as formerly, and singing this plaintive air. It is curious thus to
find Highland superstition associated with a snug tavern in the Anchor
Close and the convivialities of such men as Burns and Smellie.
[Illustration: Dowie’s Tavern.]
_John Dowie’s_, in Liberton’s Wynd, a still more perfect specimen of
those taverns which Pitcairn eulogises—
‘Antraque Cocyto penè propinqua’—
enjoyed the highest celebrity during the latter years of the past and
early years of the present century. A great portion of this house was
literally without light, consisting of a series of windowless chambers,
decreasing in size till the last was a mere box, of irregular oblong
figure, jocularly, but not inappropriately, designated _the Coffin_.
Besides these, there were but two rooms possessing light, and as that
came from a deep, narrow alley, it was light little more than in name.
Hither, nevertheless, did many of the Parliament House men come daily
for their meridian. Here nightly assembled companies of cits, as
well as of men of wit and of fashion, to spend hours in what may, by
comparison, be described as gentle conviviality. The place is said to
have been a howff of Fergusson and Burns in succession. Christopher
North somewhere alludes to meetings of his own with Tom Campbell in
that couthy mansion. David Herd, the editor of the Scottish songs, Mr
Cumming of the Lyon Office, and George Paton the antiquary were regular
customers, each seldom allowing a night to pass without a symposium
at Johnie Dowie’s. Now, these men are all gone; their very habits
are becoming matters of history; while, as for their evening haunt,
the place which knew it once knows it no more, the new access to the
Lawnmarket, by George IV. Bridge, passing over the area where it stood.
_Johnie Dowie’s_ was chiefly celebrated for ale—_Younger’s Edinburgh
ale_—a potent fluid which almost glued the lips of the drinker
together, and of which few, therefore, could despatch more than a
bottle. John, a sleek, quiet-looking man, in a last-century style of
attire, always brought in the liquor himself, decanted it carefully,
drank a glass to the health of the company, and then retired. His neat,
careful management of the bottle must have entirely met the views of
old William Coke, the Leith bookseller, of whom it is told that if he
saw a greenhorn of a waiter acting in a different manner, he would
rush indignantly up to him, take the ale out of his hands, caress it
tenderly, as if to soothe and put it to rights again, and then proceed
to the business of decanting it himself, saying: ‘You rascal, is that
the way you attend to your business? Sirrah, you ought to handle a
bottle of ale as you would do a new-born babe!’
_Dowie’s_ was also famed for its _petits soupers_, as one of its
customers has recorded:
‘’Deed, gif ye please,
Ye may get a bit toasted cheese,
A crumb o’ tripe, ham, dish o’ peas,
The season fitting;
An egg, or, cauler frae the seas,
A fleuk or whiting.’
When the reckoning came to be paid, John’s duty usually consisted
simply in counting the empty bottles which stood on a little shelf
where he had placed them above the heads of his customers, and
multiplying these by the price of the liquor—usually threepence.
Studious of decency, he was rigorous as to hours, and, when pressed
for additional supplies of liquor at a particular time, would say: ‘No,
no, gentlemen; it’s past twelve o’clock, and time to go home.’
Of John’s conscientiousness as to money matters there is some
illustration in the following otherwise trivial anecdote: David Herd,
being one night prevented by slight indisposition from joining in the
malt potations of his friends, called for first one and then another
glass of spirits, which he dissolved, _more Scotico_, in warm water and
sugar. When the reckoning came to be paid, the antiquary was surprised
to find the second glass charged a fraction higher than the first—as
if John had been resolved to impose a tax upon excess. On inquiring the
reason, however, honest John explained it thus: ‘Whe, sir, ye see, the
first glass was out o’ the auld barrel, and the second was out o’ the
new; and as the whisky in the new barrel cost me mair than the other,
whe, sir, I’ve just charged a wee mair for ’t.’ An ordinary host would
have doubtless equalised the price by raising that of the first glass
to a level with the second. It is gratifying, but, after this anecdote,
not surprising, that John eventually retired with a fortune said to
have amounted to six thousand pounds. He had a son in the army, who
attained the rank of major, and was a respectable officer.
We get an idea of a class of taverns, humbler in their appointments,
but equally comfortable perhaps in their entertainments, from the
description which has been preserved of _Mrs Flockhart’s_—otherwise
_Lucky Fykie’s_—in the Potterrow. This was a remarkably small, as well
as obscure mansion, bearing externally the appearance of a huckstry
shop. The lady was a neat, little, thin, elderly woman, usually habited
in a plain striped blue gown, and apron of the same stuff, with a
black ribbon round her head and lappets tied under her chin. She was
far from being poor in circumstances, as her husband, the umquhile
John Flucker, or Flockhart, had left her some ready money, together
with his whole stock-in-trade, consisting of a multifarious variety of
articles—as ropes, tea, sugar, whip-shafts, porter, ale, beer, yellow
sand, _calm-stane_, herrings, nails, cotton-wicks, stationery, thread,
needles, tapes, potatoes, lollipops, onions, matches, &c., constituting
her a very respectable _merchant_, as the phrase was understood in
Scotland. On Sundays, too, Mrs Flockhart’s little visage might have
been seen in a front-gallery seat in Mr Pattieson’s chapel in the
Potterrow. Her abode, situated opposite to Chalmers’s Entry in that
suburban thoroughfare, was a square of about fifteen feet each way,
divided agreeably to the following diagram:
[Illustration: Potterrow.]
Each forenoon was this place, or at least all in front of the screen,
put into the neatest order; at the same time three bottles, severally
containing brandy, rum, and whisky, were placed on a bunker-seat in
the window of the ‘hotel,’ flanked by a few glasses and a salver of
gingerbread biscuits. About noon any one watching the place from an
opposite window would have observed an elderly gentleman entering the
humble shop, where he saluted the lady with a ‘Hoo d’ye do, mem?’
and then passed into the side space to indulge himself with a glass
from one or other of the bottles. After him came another, who went
through the same ceremonial; after him another again; and so on.
Strange to say, these were men of importance in society—some of them
lawyers in good employment, some bankers, and so forth, and all of
them inhabitants of good houses in George Square. It was in passing to
or from forenoon business in town that they thus regaled themselves.
On special occasions Lucky could furnish forth a _soss_—that is,
stew—which the votary might partake of upon a clean napkin in the
closet, a place which only admitted of one chair being placed in it.
Such were amongst the habits of the fathers of some of our present
(1824) most distinguished citizens!
This may be the proper place for introducing the few notices which I
have collected respecting Edinburgh inns of a past date.
The oldest house known to have been used in the character of an inn is
one situated in what is called Davidson’s or the White Horse Close, at
the bottom of the Canongate. A sort of _porte-cochère_ gives access to
a court having mean buildings on either hand, but facing us a goodly
structure of antique fashion, having two outside stairs curiously
arranged, and the whole reminding us much of certain houses still
numerous in the Netherlands. A date, deficient in the decimal figure
(16-3), gives us assurance of the seventeenth century, and, judging
from the style of the building, I would say the house belongs to an
early portion of that age. The whole of the ground-floor, accessible
from the street called North Back of Canongate, has been used as
stables, thus reminding us of the absence of nicety in a former age,
when human beings were content to sit with only a wooden floor between
themselves and their horses.
This house, supposed to have been styled _The White Horse Inn_ or
_White Horse Stables_ (for the latter was the more common word),
would be conveniently situated for persons travelling to or arriving
from London, as it is close to the ancient exit of the town in that
direction. The adjacent Water-gate took its name from a horse-pond,
which probably was an appendage of this mansion. The manner of
procedure for a gentleman going to London in the days of the _White
Horse_ was to come booted to this house with saddle-bags, and here
engage and mount a suitable roadster, which was to serve all the way.
In 1639, when Charles I. had made his first pacification with the
Covenanters, and had come temporarily to Berwick, he sent messages to
the chief lords of that party, desiring some conversation with them.
They were unsuspectingly mounting their horses at this inn, in order to
ride to Berwick, when a mob, taught by the clergy to suspect that the
king wished only to wile over the nobles to his side, came and forcibly
prevented them from commencing their designed journey. Montrose alone
broke through this restraint; and assuredly the result in his instance
was such as to give some countenance to the suspicion, as thenceforward
he was a royalist in his heart.
[Illustration: WHITE HORSE INN.
PAGE 170.]
The _White Horse_ has ceased to be an inn from a time which no ‘oldest
inhabitant’ of my era could pretend to have any recollection of. The
only remaining fact of interest connected with it is one concerning Dr
Alexander Rose, the last Bishop of Edinburgh, and the last survivor
of the established Episcopacy of Scotland. Bishop Keith, who had been
one of his presbyters, and describes him as a sweet-natured man,
of a venerable aspect, states that he died March 20, 1720, ‘in his
own sister’s house in the Canongate, in which street he also lived.’
Tradition points to the floor immediately above the _porte-cochère_ by
which the stable-yard is entered from the street as the humble mansion
in which the bishop breathed his last. I know at least one person who
never goes past the place without an emotion of respect, remembering
the self-abandoning devotion of the Scottish prelates to their
engagements at the Revolution:[147]
‘Amongst the faithless, faithful only found.’
To the elegant accommodations of the best New Town establishments of
the present day, the inns of the last century present a contrast which
it is difficult by the greatest stretch of imagination to realise.
For the west road, there was the _White Hart_ in the Grassmarket; for
the east, the _White Horse Inn_ in Boyd’s Close, Canongate; for the
south, and partly also the east, Peter Ramsay’s, at the bottom of St
Mary’s Wynd. Arnot, writing in 1779, describes them as ‘mean buildings;
their apartments dirty and dismal; and if the waiters happen to be
out of the way, a stranger will perhaps be shocked with the novelty
of being shown into a room by a dirty, sunburnt wench, without shoes
or stockings.’ The fact is, however, these houses were mainly used
as places for keeping horses. Guests, unless of a very temporary
character, were usually relegated to lodging-houses, of which there
were several on a considerable scale—as Mrs Thomson’s at the Cross,
who advertises, in 1754, that persons not bringing ‘their silver plate,
tea china, table china, and tea linen, can be served in them all;’ also
in wines and spirits; likewise that persons boarding with her ‘may
expect everything in a very genteel manner.’ But hear the unflattering
Arnot on these houses. ‘He [the stranger] is probably conducted to
the third or fourth floor, up dark and dirty stairs, and there shown
into apartments meanly fitted up and poorly furnished.... In Edinburgh,
letting of lodgings is a business by itself, and thereby the prices
are very extravagant; and every article of furniture, far from wearing
the appearance of having been purchased for a happy owner, seems to
be scraped together with a penurious hand, to pass muster before a
stranger who will never wish to return!’
_Ramsay’s_ was almost solely a place of stables. General Paoli,[148]
on visiting Edinburgh in 1771, came to this house, but was immediately
taken home by his friend Boswell to James’s Court, where he lived
during his stay in our city; his companion, the Polish ambassador,
being accommodated with a bed by Dr John Gregory, in a neighbouring
floor. An old gentleman of my acquaintance used to talk of having
seen the Duke of Hamilton one day lounging in front of Ramsay’s inn,
occasionally chatting with any gay or noble friend who passed. To
one knowing the Edinburgh of the present day, nothing could seem
more extravagant than the idea of such company at such places. I
nevertheless find Ramsay, in 1776, advertising that, exclusive of some
part of his premises recently offered for sale, he is ‘possessed of a
good house of entertainment, good stables for above one hundred horses,
and sheds for above twenty carriages.’ He retired from business about
1790 with £10,000.[149]
The modern _White Horse_ was a place of larger and somewhat better
accommodations, though still far from an equality with even the
second-rate houses of the present day. Here also the rooms were
directly over the stables.
It was almost a matter of course that Dr Johnson, on arriving in
Edinburgh, August 17, 1773, should have come to the _White Horse_,
which was then kept by a person of the name of Boyd. His note to
Boswell informing him of this fact was as follows:
‘_Saturday night._
‘Mr Johnson sends his compliments to Mr Boswell, being just
arrived at Boyd’s.’
When Boswell came, he found his illustrious friend in a violent passion
at the waiter for having sweetened his lemonade without the ceremony
of a pair of sugar-tongs. Mr William Scott, afterwards Lord Stowell,
accompanied Johnson on this occasion; and he informs us, in a note
to Croker’s edition of Boswell, that when he heard the mistress of
the house styled, in Scotch fashion, _Lucky_, which he did not then
understand, he thought she should rather have been styled _Unlucky_,
for the doctor seemed as if he would destroy the house.[150]
James Boyd, the keeper of this inn, was addicted to horse-racing, and
his victories on the turf, or rather on Leith sands, are frequently
chronicled in the journals of that day. It is said that he was at one
time on the brink of ruin, when he was saved by a lucky run with a
white horse, which, in gratitude, he kept idle all the rest of its
days, besides setting up its portrait as his sign. He eventually
retired from this ‘dirty and dismal’ inn with a fortune of several
thousand pounds; and, as a curious note upon the impression which its
slovenliness conveyed to Dr Johnson, it may be stated as a fact, well
authenticated, that at the time of his giving up the house he possessed
_napery_ to the value of five hundred pounds!
A large room in the _White Horse_ was the frequent scene of
the marriages of runaway English couples, at a time when these
irregularities were permitted in Edinburgh. On one of the windows were
scratched the words:
‘JEREMIAH and SARAH BENTHAM, 1768.’
Could this be the distinguished jurist and codificator, on a journey to
Scotland in company with a female relation?[151]
FOOTNOTES
[143] The Scottish peers on occasions of election of representatives
to the House of Lords frequently brought their meetings to a close by
dining at Fortune’s Tavern.
[144] See note, p. 157.
[145] ‘The wags of the eighteenth century used to tell of a certain
city treasurer who, on being applied to for a new rope to the Tron Kirk
bell, summoned the Council to deliberate on the demand; an adjournment
to Clerihugh’s Tavern, it was hoped, might facilitate the settlement
of so weighty a matter, but one dinner proved insufficient, and it was
not till their third banquet that the application was referred to a
committee, who spliced the old rope, and settled the bill!’—Wilson’s
_Memorials of Old Edinburgh_.
[146] Since this was written, the whole group of buildings has been
taken down, and new ones substituted (1868).
[147] The ‘White Horse’ is introduced in _The Abbot_—it was the scene
of Roland Græme’s encounter with young Seton.
[148] The Corsican patriot whose acquaintance Boswell made on his tour
abroad. Johnson characterised him as having ‘the loftiest port of any
man he had ever seen.’
[149] Peter Ramsay was a brother of William Ramsay of Barnton, the
well-known sporting character of the early part of the nineteenth
century.
[150] A punning friend, remarking on the old Scottish practice of
styling elderly landladies by the term _Lucky_, said: ‘Why not?—_Felix
qui pot_——’
[151] The following curious advertisement, connected with an inn in
the Canongate, appeared in the _Edinburgh Evening Courant_ for July
1, 1754. The advertisement is surmounted by a woodcut representing
the stage-coach, a towering vehicle, protruding at top—the coachman
a stiff-looking, antique little figure, who holds the reins with both
hands, as if he were afraid of the horses running away—a long whip
streaming over his head and over the top of the coach, and falling down
behind—six horses, like starved rats in appearance—a postillion upon
one of the leaders, with a whip:
‘The Edinburgh Stage-Coach, for the better accommodation of Passengers,
will be altered to a new genteel two-end Glass Machine, hung on Steel
Springs, exceeding light and easy, to go in ten days in summer and
twelve in winter; to set out the first Tuesday in March, and continue
it from Hosea Eastgate’s, the _Coach and Horses_ in Dean Street, Soho,
London, and from John Somerville’s in the Canongate, Edinburgh, every
other Tuesday, and meet at Burrowbridge on Saturday night, and set
out from thence on Monday morning, and get to London and Edinburgh on
Friday. In the winter to set out from London and Edinburgh every other
[alternate] Monday morning, and to go to Burrowbridge on Saturday
night; and to set out from thence on Monday morning, and get to London
and Edinburgh on Saturday night. Passengers to pay as usual. Performed,
if God permits, by your dutiful servant,
HOSEA EASTGATE.
‘Care is taken of small parcels _according to their value_.’
THE CROSS—CADDIES.
The Cross, a handsome octagonal building in the High Street, surmounted
by a pillar bearing the Scottish unicorn, was the great centre of
gossip in former days. The principal coffee-houses and booksellers’
shops were close to this spot. The chief merchants, the leading
official persons, the men of learning and talents, the laird, the
noble, the clergyman, were constantly clustering hereabouts during
certain hours of the day. It was the very centre and cynosure of the
old city.
During the reigns of the first and second Georges, it was customary
for the magistrates of Edinburgh to drink the king’s health on his
birthday on a stage erected at the Cross—loyalty being a virtue which
always becomes peculiarly ostentatious when it is under any suspicion
of weakness. On one of these occasions the ceremony was interrupted by
a shower of rain, so heavy that the company, with one consent, suddenly
dispersed, leaving their entertainment half-finished. When they
returned, the glasses were found full of water, which gave a Jacobite
lady occasion for the following epigram, reported to me by a venerable
bishop of the Scottish Episcopal Church:
‘In Cana once Heaven’s king was pleased
With some gay bridal folks to dine,
And then, in honour of the feast,
He changed the water into wine.
But when, to honour Brunswick’s birth,
Our tribunes mounted the Theâtre,
He would not countenance their mirth,
But turned their claret into water!’
[Illustration: FORENOON AT THE CROSS.
PAGE 174.]
As the place where state proclamations were always made, where the
execution of noted state criminals took place, and where many important
public ceremonials were enacted, the Cross of Edinburgh is invested
with numberless associations of a most interesting kind, extending
over several centuries. Here took place the mysterious midnight
proclamation, summoning the Flodden lords to the domains of Pluto, as
described so strikingly in _Marmion_; the witness being ‘Mr Richard
Lawson, ill-disposed, ganging in his gallery fore-stair.’ Here did
King James VI. bring together his barbarous nobles, and make them shake
hands over a feast partaken of before the eyes of the people. Here did
the Covenanting lords read their protests against Charles’s feeble
proclamations. Here fell Montrose, Huntly, the Argylls, Warriston,
and many others of note, victims of political dissension. Here were
fountains set a-flowing with the blood-red wine, to celebrate the
passing of kings along the causeway. And here, as a last notable
fact, were Prince Charles and his father proclaimed by their devoted
Highlanders, amidst screams of pipe and blare of trumpet, while the
beautiful Mrs Murray of Broughton sat beside the party on horseback,
adorned with white ribbons, and with a drawn sword in her hand! How
strange it seems that a time should at length have come when a set of
magistrates thought this structure an encumbrance to the street, and
had it removed. This event took place in 1756—the ornamental stones
dispersed, the pillar taken to the park at Drum.[152]
The Cross was the peculiar citadel and rallying-point of a species
of lazzaroni called _Caddies_ or _Cawdies_, which formerly existed
in Edinburgh, employing themselves chiefly as street-messengers and
_valets de place_. A ragged, half-blackguard-looking set they were, but
allowed to be amazingly acute and intelligent, and also faithful to
any duty entrusted to them. A stranger coming to reside temporarily in
Edinburgh got a caddy attached to his service to conduct him from one
part of the town to another, to run errands for him; in short, to be
wholly at his bidding.
‘Omnia novit,
Græculus esuriens, in cœlum, jusseris, ibit.’
A caddy _did_ literally know everything—of Edinburgh; even to that
kind of knowledge which we now only expect in a street directory. And
it was equally true that he could hardly be asked to go anywhere,
or upon any mission, that he would not go. On the other hand, the
stranger would probably be astonished to find that, in a few hours,
his caddy was acquainted with every particular regarding himself,
where he was from, what was his purpose in Edinburgh, his family
connections, and his own tastes and dispositions. Of course for every
particle of scandal floating about Edinburgh, the caddy was a ready
book of reference. We sometimes wonder how our ancestors did without
newspapers. We do not reflect on the living vehicles of news which then
existed: the privileged beggar for the country people; for townsfolk,
the caddies.
The caddy is alluded to as a useful kind of blackguard in Burt’s
_Letters from the North of Scotland_, written about 1740. He says that
although they are mere wretches in rags, lying upon stairs and in the
streets at night, they are often considerably trusted, and seldom or
never prove unfaithful. The story told by tradition is that they formed
a society under a chief called their constable, with a common fund or
box; that when they committed any misdemeanour, such as incivility
or lying, they were punished by this officer by fines, or sometimes
corporeally; and if by any chance money entrusted to them should not
be forthcoming, it was made up out of the common treasury. Mr Burt
says: ‘Whether it be true or not I cannot say, but I have been told
by several that one of the judges formerly abandoned two of his sons
for a time to this way of life, as believing it would create in them
a sharpness which might be of use to them in the future course of
their lives.’ Major Topham, describing Edinburgh in 1774, says of the
caddies: ‘In short, they are the tutelary guardians of the city; and
it is entirely owing to them that there are fewer robberies and less
housebreaking in Edinburgh than anywhere else.’
Another conspicuous set of public servants characteristic of Edinburgh
in past times were the _Chairmen_, or carriers of sedans, who also
formed a society among themselves, but were of superior respectability,
in as far as none but steady, considerate persons of so humble an order
could become possessed of the means to buy the vehicle by which they
made their bread. In former times, when Edinburgh was so much more
limited than now, and rather an assemblage of alleys than of streets,
sedans were in comparatively great request. They were especially in
requisition amongst the ladies—indeed, almost exclusively so. From
time immemorial the sons of the Gael have monopolised this branch of
service; and as far as the business of a sedan-carrier can yet be said
to exist amongst us, it is in the possession of Highlanders.
The reader must not be in too great haste to smile when I claim his
regard for an historical person among the chairmen of Edinburgh. This
was Edward Burke, the immediate attendant of Prince Charles Edward
during the earlier portion of his wanderings in the Highlands. Honest
Ned had been a chairman in our city, but attaching himself as a servant
to Mr Alexander Macleod of Muiravonside, aide-de-camp to the Prince,
it was his fortune to be present at the battle of Culloden, and to fly
from the field in his Royal Highness’s company. He attended the Prince
for several weeks, sharing cheerfully in all his hardships, and doing
his best to promote his escape. Thus has his name been inseparably
associated with this remarkable chapter of history. After parting
with Charles, this poor man underwent some dreadful hardships while
under hiding, his fears of being taken having reference chiefly to the
Prince, as he was apprehensive that the enemy might torture him to
gain intelligence of his late master’s movements. At length the Act of
Indemnity placed him at his ease; and the humble creature who, by a
word of his mouth, might have gained thirty thousand pounds, quietly
returned to his duty as a chairman on the streets of Edinburgh! Which
of the venal train of Walpole, which even of the admirers of Pulteney,
is more entitled to admiration than Ned Burke? A man, too, who could
neither read nor write—for such was actually his case.[153]
One cannot but feel it to be in some small degree a consolatory
circumstance, and not without a certain air of the romance of an
earlier day, that a bacchanal company came with a bowl of punch, the
night before the demolition, and in that mood of mind when men shed
‘smiles that might as well be tears,’ drank the Dredgie of the Cross
upon its doomed battlements.
‘Oh! be his tomb as lead to lead,
Upon its dull destroyer’s head!
A minstrel’s malison is said.’[154]
FOOTNOTES
[152] The pillar was restored to Edinburgh, and for some years stood
within an enclosed recess on the north side of St Giles’. When Mr
W. E. Gladstone rebuilt the Cross in 1885, a little to the south of
its former site, between St Giles’ Church and the Police Office, the
original pillar was replaced in its old position.
[153] Bishop Forbes inserts in his manuscript (which I possess) a
panegyrical epitaph for Ned Burke, stating that he died in Edinburgh
in November 1751. He also gives the following particulars from Burke’s
conversation:
‘One of the soles of Ned’s shoes happening to come off, Ned cursed the
day upon which he should be forced to go without shoes. The Prince,
hearing him, called to him and said: “Ned, look at me”—when (said Ned)
I saw him holding up one of his feet at me, where there was de’il a
sole upon the shoe; and then I said: “Oh, my dear! I have nothing more
to say. You have stopped my mouth indeed.”
‘When Ned was talking of seeing the Prince again, he spoke these words:
“If the Prince do not come and see me soon, good faith I will go and
see my daughter [Charles having taken the name of Betty Burke when
in a female disguise], and crave her; for she has not yet paid her
christening money, and as little has she paid the coat I ga’e her in
her greatest need.”’
[154] ‘Upon the 26th of February [1617], the Cross of Edinburgh was
taken down. The old long stone, about forty footes or thereby in
length, was to be translated, by the devise of certain mariners in
Leith, from the place where it had stood past the memory of man, to
a place beneath in the High Street, without any harm to the stone;
and the body of the old Cross was demolished, and another builded,
whereupon the long stone or obelisk was erected and set up, on the 25th
day of March.’—Calderwood’s _Church History_.
THE TOWN-GUARD.
[Illustration: THE TOWN-GUARD.
PAGE 179.]
One of the characteristic features of Edinburgh in old times was its
Town-guard, a body of military in the service of the magistrates for
the purposes of a police, but dressed and armed in all respects as
soldiers. Composed for the most part of old Highlanders, of uncouth
aspect and speech, dressed in a dingy red uniform with cocked hats, and
often exchanging the musket for an antique native weapon called the
Lochaber axe, these men were (at least in latter times) an unfailing
subject of mirth to the citizens, particularly the younger ones. In
my recollection they had a sort of Patmos in the ground-floor of the
Old Tolbooth, where a few of them might constantly be seen on duty,
endeavouring to look as formidable as possible to the little boys who
might be passing by. On such occasions as executions, or races at
Leith, or the meeting of the General Assembly, they rose into a certain
degree of consequence; but in general they could hardly be considered
as of any practical utility. Their numbers were at that time much
reduced—only twenty-five privates, two sergeants, two corporals, and
a couple of drummers. Every night did their drum beat through the Old
Town at eight o’clock, as a kind of curfew. No other drum, it seems,
was allowed to sound on the High Street between the Luckenbooths and
Netherbow. They also had an old practice of giving a _charivari_ on the
drum on the night of a marriage before the lodgings of the bridegroom;
of course not without the expectation of something wherewithal to
drink the health of the young couple. A strange remnant of old
times altogether were the _Town Rats_, as the poor old fellows were
disrespectfully called by the boys, in allusion to the hue of their
uniform.
Previous to 1805, when an unarmed police was established for the
protection of the streets, the Town-guard had consisted of three
equally large companies, each with a lieutenant (complimentarily called
captain) at its head. Then it was a somewhat more respectable body,
not only as being larger, but invested with a really useful purpose.
The unruly and the vicious stood in some awe of a troop of men bearing
lethal weapons, and generally somewhat frank in the use of them. If
sometimes roughly handled on kings’ birthdays and other exciting
occasions, they in their turn did not fail to treat cavalierly enough
any unfortunate roisterer whom they might find breaking the peace. They
had, previous to 1785, a guard-house in the middle of the High Street,
the ‘black hole’ of which had rather a bad character among the bucks
and the frail ladies. One of their sergeants in those days, by name
John Dhu, is commemorated by Scott as the fiercest-looking fellow he
ever saw. If we might judge from poor Robert Fergusson, they were truly
formidable in his time. He says:
‘And thou, great god o’ aquavitæ,
Wha sway’st the empire o’ this city; ...
Be thou prepared
To hedge us frae that _black banditti_,
The City-guard.’
He adds, apostrophising the irascible veterans:
‘Oh, soldiers, for your ain dear sakes,
For Scotland’s love—the land o’ cakes—
Gi’e not her bairns sae deadly paiks,
Nor be sae rude,
Wi’ firelock and Lochaber axe,
As spill their blude!’
The affair at the execution of Wilson the smuggler in 1736, when, under
command of Porteous, they fired upon and killed many of the mob, may be
regarded as a peculiarly impressive example of the stern relation in
which they stood to the populace of a former age.
The great bulk of the corps was drawn either from the Highlands
directly or from the Highland regiments. A humble Highlander considered
it as getting a _berth_ when he was enlisted into the Edinburgh Guard.
Of this feeling we have a remarkable illustration in an anecdote
which I was told by the late Mr Alexander Campbell regarding the
Highland bard, Duncan Macintyre, usually called _Donacha Bhan_. This
man, really an exquisite poet to those understanding his language,
became the object of a kind interest to many educated persons in
Perthshire, his native county. The Earl of Breadalbane sent to let
him know that he wished to befriend him, and was anxious to procure
him some situation that might put him comparatively at his ease. Poor
Duncan returned his thanks, and asked his lordship’s interest—to get
him into the Edinburgh Town-guard—pay, sixpence a day! What sort of
material these men would have proved in the hands of the magistrates
if Provost Stewart had attempted by their means and the other forces at
his command to hold out the city against Prince Charlie seems hardly
to be matter of doubt. I was told the following anecdote of a member
of the corps, on good authority. Robert Stewart, a descendant of the
Stewarts of Bonskeid in Athole, was then a private in the City-guard.
When General Hawley left Edinburgh to meet the Highland army in
the west country, Stewart had just been relieved from duty for the
customary period of two days. Instantly forming his plan of action,
he set off with his gun, passed through the English troops on their
march, and joined those of the Prince. Stewart fought next day like a
hero in the battle of Falkirk, where the Prince had the best of it;
and next morning our Town-guardsman was back to Edinburgh in time to
go upon duty at the proper hour. The captain of his company suspected
what business Robert and his gun had been engaged in, but preserved a
friendly silence.
The _Gutter-blood_ people of Edinburgh had an extravagant idea of
the antiquity of the Guard, led probably by a fallacy arising from
the antiquity of the individual men. They used to have a strange
story—too ridiculous, one would have thought, for a moment’s credence
anywhere—that the Town-guard existed before the Christian era. When
the Romans invaded Britain, some of the Town-guard joined them; and
three were actually present in Pilate’s guard at the Crucifixion! In
reality, the corps took its rise in the difficulties brought on by bad
government in 1682, when, at the instigation of the Duke of York, it
was found necessary to raise a body of 108 armed men, under a trusty
commander, simply to keep the people in check.[155]
Fifty years ago (1824) the so-called captaincies of the Guard were snug
appointments, in great request among respectable old citizens who had
not succeeded in business. Kay has given us some illustrations of these
extraordinary specimens of soldier-craft, one of whom was nineteen
stone. Captain Gordon of Gordonstown, representative of one of the
oldest families in Scotland, found himself obliged by fortune to accept
of one of these situations.
Scott, writing his _Heart of Mid-Lothian_ in 1817, says: ‘Of late, the
gradual diminution of these civic soldiers reminds one of the abatement
of King Lear’s hundred knights. The edicts of each set of succeeding
magistrates have, like those of Goneril and Regan, diminished
this venerable band with similar question—“What need have we of
five-and-twenty?—ten?—five?” and now it is nearly come to: “What
need we one?” A spectre may indeed here and there still be seen of an
old gray-headed and gray-bearded Highlander, with war-worn features,
but bent double by age; dressed in an old-fashioned cocked-hat, bound
with white tape instead of silver lace, and in coat, waistcoat, and
breeches of a muddy-coloured red; bearing in his withered hand an
ancient weapon, called a Lochaber axe—a long pole, namely, with an
axe at the extremity, and a hook at the back of the hatchet. Such a
phantom of former days still creeps, I have been informed, round the
statue of Charles II. in the Parliament Square, as if the image of a
Stuart were the last refuge for any memorial of our ancient manners,’
&c. At the close of this very year, the ‘What need we one?’ was asked,
and answered in the negative; and the corps was accordingly dissolved.
‘Their last march to do duty at Hallow Fair had something in it
affecting. Their drums and fifes had been wont, in better days, to play
on this joyous occasion the lively tune of
“Jockey to the fair;”
but on this final occasion the afflicted veterans moved slowly to the
dirge of
“The last time I came owre the muir.”’[156]
The half-serious pathos of Scott regarding this corps becomes wholly
so when we learn that a couple of members survived to make an actual
last public appearance in the procession which consecrated his richly
deserved monument, August 15, 1846.
FOOTNOTES
[155] See _Domestic Annals of Scotland_, ii. 436.
[156] _Waverley Annotations_, i. 435.
EDINBURGH MOBS.
THE BLUE BLANKET—MOBS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY—BOWED JOSEPH.
The Edinburgh populace was noted, during many ages, for its readiness
to rise in tumultuary fashion, whether under the prompting of religious
zeal or from inferior motives. At an early time they became an
impromptu army, each citizen possessing weapons which he was ready
and willing to use. Thus they are understood to have risen in 1482 to
redeem James III. from restraint in the Castle; for which service,
besides certain privileges, ‘he granted them,’ says Maitland, ‘a banner
or standard, with a power to display the same in defence of their
king, country, and their own right.’ The historian adds: ‘This flag,
at present denominated the BLUE BLANKET, is kept by the Convener of
the Trades; at whose appearance therewith, ’tis said that not only
the artificers of Edinburgh are obliged to repair to it, but all the
artisans or craftsmen within Scotland are bound to follow it, and fight
under the Convener of Edinburgh, as aforesaid.’ The Blue Blanket, I may
mention, has become a sort of myth in Edinburgh, being magnified by the
popular imagination into a banner which the citizens carried with them
to the Holy Land in one of the Crusades—expeditions which took place
before Edinburgh had become a town fit to furnish any distinct corps of
armed men.[157]
When the Protestant faith came to stir up men’s minds, the lower order
of citizens became a formidable body indeed. James VI., who had more
than once experienced their violence, and consequently knew them well,
says very naïvely in his _Basilicon Doron_, or ‘Book of Instruction’ to
his son: ‘They think we should be content with their work, how bad and
dear soever it be; and if they be in anything controuled, up goeth the
_Blue Blanket_!’
The tumults at the introduction of the Service-book, in 1637, need
only be alluded to. So late as the Revolution there appears a military
spirit of great boldness in the Edinburgh populace, reminding us of
that of Paris in our own times: witness the bloody contests which took
place in accomplishing the destruction of the papistical arrangements
at the Abbey, December 1688. The Union mobs were of unexampled
violence; and Edinburgh was only kept in some degree of quiet, during
the greater part of that crisis, by a great assemblage of troops.
Finally, in the Porteous mob we have a singular example of popular
vengeance, wreaked out in the most cool but determined manner. Men seem
to have been habitually under an impression in those days that the
law was at once an imperfect and a partial power. They seem to have
felt themselves constantly liable to be called upon to supplement its
energy, or control or compensate for its errors. The mob had at that
time a part in the state.
[Illustration: ‘General’ Joe Smith laying down the Law to the
Magistrates.]
In this ‘fierce democracy’ there once arose a mighty Pyrrhus, who
contrived, by dint of popular qualifications, to subject the rabble to
his command, and to get himself elected, by acclamation, dictator of
all its motions and exploits. How he acquired his wonderful power is
not recorded; but it is to be supposed that his activity on occasions
of mobbing, his boldness and sagacity, his strong voice and uncommonly
powerful whistle, together with the mere whim or humour of the thing,
conspired to his promotion. His trade was that of a cobbler, and he
resided in some obscure den in the Cowgate. His person was low and
deformed, with the sole good property of great muscular strength in the
arms. Yet this wretch, miserable and contemptible as he appeared, might
be said to have had at one time the command of the Scottish metropolis.
The magistrates, it is true, assembled every Wednesday forenoon to
manage the affairs and deliberate upon the improvements of the city;
but their power was merely that of a viceroyalty. _Bowed Joseph_,
otherwise called General Joseph Smith, was the only true potentate;
and their resolutions could only be carried into effect when not
inconsistent with his views of policy.
In exercising the functions of his perilous office, it does not appear
that he ever drew down the vengeance of the more lawfully constituted
authorities of the land. On the contrary, he was in some degree
countenanced by the magistracy, who, however, patronised him rather
from fear than respect. They frequently sent for him in emergencies,
in order to consult with him regarding the best means of appeasing
and dispersing the mob. On such occasions nothing could equal the
consequential air which he assumed. With one hand stuck carelessly into
his side, and another slapped resolutely down upon the table—with a
majestic toss of the head, and as much fierceness in his little gray
eye as if he were himself a mob—he would stand before the anxious and
feeble council, pleading the cause of his compeers, and suggesting the
best means of assuaging their just fury. He was generally despatched
with a promise of amendment and a hogshead of good ale, with which
he could easily succeed in appeasing his men, whose dismissal, after
a speech from himself and a libation from the barrel, was usually
accomplished by the simple words: ‘_Now disperse, my lads!_’
Joseph was not only employed in directing and managing the mobs, but
frequently performed exploits without the co-operation of his greasy
friends, though always for their amusement and in their behalf. Thus,
for instance, when Wilkes by his celebrated Number 45 incensed the
Scottish nation so generally and so bitterly, Joseph got a cart, fitted
up with a high gallows, from which depended a straw-stuffed effigy of
North Britain’s arch-enemy, with the devil perched upon his shoulder;
and this he paraded through the streets, followed by the multitude,
till he came to the Gallow Lee in Leith Walk, where two criminals were
then hanging in chains, beside whom he exposed the figures of Wilkes
and his companion. Thus also, when the Douglas cause was decided
against the popular opinion in the Court of Session, Joseph went up to
the chair of the Lord President as he was going home to his house, and
called him to account for the injustice of his decision. After the said
decision was reversed by the House of Lords, Joseph, by way of triumph
over the Scottish court, dressed up fifteen figures in rags and wigs,
resembling the judicial attire, mounted them on asses, and led them
through the streets, telling the populace that they saw the fifteen
senators of the College of Justice!
When the craft of shoemakers used, in former times, to parade the High
Street, West Bow, and Grassmarket, with inverted tin kettles on their
heads and schoolboys’ rulers in their hands, Joseph—who, though a
leader and commander on every other public occasion, was not admitted
into this procession on account of his being only a cobbler—dressed
himself in his best clothes, with a royal crown painted and gilt and a
wooden truncheon, and marched pompously through the city till he came
to the Netherbow, where he planted himself in the middle of the street
to await the approach of the procession, which he, as a citizen of
Edinburgh, proposed to welcome into the town. When the royal shoemaker
came to the Netherbow Port, Joseph stood forth, removed the truncheon
from his haunch, flourished it in the air, and pointing it to the
ground, with much dignity of manner, addressed his paste-work majesty
in these words: ‘O great King Crispianus! what are we in thy sight but
a parcel of puir slaister-kytes—creeshy cobblers—sons of bitches?’
And I have been assured that this ceremony was performed in a style of
burlesque exhibiting no small artistic power.
Joseph had a wife, whom he would never permit to walk beside him, it
being his opinion that women are inferior to the male part of creation,
and not entitled to the same privileges. He compelled his spouse to
walk a few paces behind him; and when he turned, she was obliged to
make a circuit so as to maintain the precise distance from his person
which he assigned to her. When he wished to say anything to her, he
whistled as upon a dog, upon which she came up to him submissively and
heard what he had to say; after which she respectfully resumed her
station in the rear.
After he had figured for a few years as an active partisan of the
people, his name waxed of such account with them that it is said he
could in the course of an hour collect a crowd of not fewer than ten
thousand persons, all ready to obey his high behests, or to disperse
at his bidding. In collecting his troops he employed a drum, which,
though a general, he did not disdain to beat with his own hands; and
never, surely, had the fiery cross of the Highland chief such an effect
upon the warlike devotion of his clan as Bowed Joseph’s drum had upon
the spirit of the Edinburgh rabble. As he strode along, the street was
cleared of its loungers, every close pouring forth an addition to his
train, like the populous glens adjacent to a large Highland strath
giving forth their accessions to the general force collected by the
aforesaid cross. The Town Rats, who might peep forth like old cautious
snails on hearing his drum, would draw in their horns with a Gaelic
execration, and shut their door, as he approached; while the _Lazy
Corner_ was, at sight of him, a lazy corner no longer; and the West Bow
ceased to resound as he descended.
It would appear, after all, that there was a moral foundation for
Joseph’s power, as there must be for that of all governments of a more
regular nature that would wish to thrive or be lasting. The little man
was never known to act in a bad cause, or in any way to go against the
principles of natural justice. He employed his power in the redress
of such grievances as the law of the land does not or cannot easily
reach; and it was apparent that almost everything he did was for the
sake of what he himself designated _fair-play_. Fair-play, indeed, was
his constant object, whether in clearing room with his brawny arms for
a boxing-match, insulting the constituted authorities, sacking the
granary of a monopolist, or besieging the Town-council in their chamber.
An anecdote which proves this strong love of fair-play deserves to be
recorded. A poor man in the Pleasance having been a little deficient
in his rent, and in the country on business, his landlord seized and
rouped his household furniture, turning out the family to the street.
On the poor man’s return, finding the house desolate and his family in
misery, he went to a neighbouring stable and hanged himself.[158] Bowed
Joseph did not long remain ignorant of the case; and as soon as it
was generally known in the city, he shouldered on his drum, and after
beating it through the streets for half-an-hour, found himself followed
by several thousand persons, inflamed with resentment at the landlord’s
cruelty. With this army he marched to an open space of ground now
covered by Adam Street, Roxburgh Street, &c., named in former times
Thomson’s Park, where, mounted upon the shoulders of six of his
lieutenant-generals, he proceeded to harangue them, in Cambyses’s vein,
concerning the flagrant oppression which they were about to revenge.
He concluded by directing his men to sack the premises of the cruel
landlord, who by this time had wisely made his escape; and this order
was instantly obeyed. Every article which the house contained was
brought out to the street, where, being piled up in a heap, the general
set fire to them with his own hand, while the crowd rent the air with
their acclamations. Some money and bank-notes perished in the blaze,
besides an eight-day clock, which, sensible to the last, calmly struck
ten just as it was consigned to the flames.
On another occasion, during a scarcity, the mob, headed by Joseph, had
compelled all the meal-dealers to sell their meal at a certain price
per peck, under penalty of being obliged to shut up their shops. One of
them, whose place of business was in the Grassmarket, agreed to sell
his meal at the price fixed by the general, for the good of the poor,
as he said; and he did so under the superintendence of Joseph, who
stationed a party at the shop-door to preserve peace and good order
till the whole stock was disposed of, when, by their leader’s command,
the mob gave three hearty cheers, and quietly dispersed. Next day, the
unlucky victualler let his friends know that he had not suffered so
much by this compulsory trade as might be supposed; because, though the
price was below that of the market, he had taken care to use a measure
which gave only about three-fourths instead of the whole. It was not
long ere this intelligence came to the ears of our tribune, who,
immediately collecting a party of his troops, beset the meal-dealer
before he was aware, and compelled him to pay back a fourth of the
price of every peck of meal sold; then giving their victim a hearty
drubbing, they sacked his shop, and quietly dispersed as before.
Some foreign princes happening to visit Edinburgh during Joseph’s
administration, at a period of the year when the mob of Edinburgh
was wont to amuse itself with an annual burning of the pope, the
magistrates felt anxious that this ceremony should for once be
dispensed with, as it might hurt the feelings of their distinguished
visitors. The provost, in this emergency, resolved not to employ his
own authority, but that of Joseph, to whom, accordingly, he despatched
his compliments, with half a guinea, begging his kind offices in
dissuading the mob from the performance of their accustomed sport.
Joseph received the message with the respect due to the commission of
‘his friend the Lord Provost,’ and pocketed the half-guinea with a
complacent smile; but standing up to his full height, and resolutely
shaking his rough head, he gave for answer that ‘he was highly
gratified by his lordship’s message; but, everything considered, the
pope _must be burnt_!’ And so the pope, honest man, _was_ burnt with
all the honours accordingly.
Joseph was at last killed by a fall from the top of a Leith
stage-coach, in returning from the races, while in a state of
intoxication, about the year 1780. It is to be hoped, for the good of
society, that ‘we ne’er shall look upon his like again.’[159]
FOOTNOTES
[157] What is said to be the original Blue Blanket is still preserved
in the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland.
[158] _Scots Magazine_, June 1767.
[159] The skeleton of this singular being exists entire in the
class-room of the professor of anatomy in the College.
BICKERS.
Amongst the social features of a bygone age in Edinburgh were the
_bickers_ in which the boys were wont to indulge—that is, street
conflicts, conducted chiefly with stones, though occasionally with
sticks also, and even more formidable weapons. One cannot but wonder
that, so lately as the period when elderly men now living were boys,
the powers for preserving peace in the city should have been so weak as
to allow of such battles taking place once or twice almost every week.
The practice was, however, only of a piece with the general rudeness of
those old days; and, after all, there was more appearance than reality
of danger attending it. It was truly, as one who had borne a part in it
has remarked, ‘only a rough kind of play.’[160]
The most likely time for a bicker was Saturday afternoon, when the
schools and hospitals held no restraint over their tenants. Then it
was almost certain that either the Old Town and New Town boys, the
George Square and Potterrow boys, the Herioters and the Watsoners, or
some other parties accustomed to regard themselves as natural enemies,
would meet on some common ground, and fall a-pelting each other. There
were hardly anywhere two adjoining streets but the boys respectively
belonging to them would occasionally hold encounters of this kind; and
the animosity assumed a darker tinge if there was any discrepancy of
rank or condition between the parties, as was apt to be the case when,
for instance, the Old Town lads met the children of the aristocratic
streets to the north. Older people looked on with anxiety, and wondered
what the Town-guard was about, and occasionally reports were heard that
such a boy had got a wound in the head, while another had lost a couple
of his front teeth; it was even said that fatal cases had occurred in
the memory of aged citizens. Yet, to the best of my recollection—for I
do remember something of bickers—there was little likelihood of severe
damage. The parties somehow always kept at a good distance from each
other, and there was a perpetual running in one direction or another;
certainly nothing like hand-to-hand fighting. Occasionally attempts
were made to put down the riot, but seldom with much success; for it
was one of the most ludicrous features of these contests that whenever
the Town-guard made its appearance on the ground, the belligerent
powers instantly coalesced against the common foe. Besides, they could
quickly make their way to other ground, and there continue the war.
Bickers must have had a foundation in human nature: from no temporary
effervescence of the boy-mind did they spring; pleasant, though
wrong, had they been from all time. Witness the following act of the
Town-council so long ago as 1529: ‘_Bikkyrringis betwix Barnis_.—It
is statut and ordainit be the prouest ballies and counsall Forsamekle
as ther has bene gret bikkyrringis betwix barnis and followis in tymes
past and diuerse thar throw hurt in perell of ther lyffis and gif
sik thingis be usit thar man diuerse barnis and innocentis be slane
and diuisione ryse amangis nychtbouris theirfor we charge straitlie
and commandis in our Souerane Lord the Kingis name the prouest and
ballies of this burgh that na sic bykkyrringis be usit in tymes to
cum. Certifing that and ony persone be fund bykkyrrand that faderis
and moderis sall ansuer and be accusit for thar deidis and gif thai be
vagabondis thai to be scurgit and bannist the toune.’
An anecdote which Scott has told of his share in the bickers which took
place in his youth between the George Square youth and the plebeian
fry of the neighbouring streets is so pat to this occasion that its
reproduction may be excusable. ‘It followed,’ he says, ‘from our
frequent opposition to each other, that, though not knowing the names
of our enemies, we were yet well acquainted with their appearance, and
had nicknames for the most remarkable of them. One very active and
spirited boy might be considered as the principal leader in the cohort
of the suburbs. He was, I suppose, thirteen or fourteen years old,
finely made, tall, blue-eyed, with long fair hair, the very picture of
a youthful Goth. This lad was always first in the charge and last in
the retreat—the Achilles, at once, and Ajax, of the Crosscauseway. He
was too formidable to us not to have a cognomen, and, like that of a
knight of old, it was taken from the most remarkable part of his dress,
being a pair of old green livery breeches, which was the principal
part of his clothing; for, like Pentapolin, according to Don Quixote’s
account, Green Breeks, as we called him, always entered the battle with
bare arms, legs, and feet.
‘It fell that, once upon a time, when the combat was at the thickest,
this plebeian champion headed a sudden charge, so rapid and furious
that all fled before him. He was several paces before his comrades,
and had actually laid his hands on the patrician standard, when one of
our party, whom some misjudging friend had entrusted with a _couteau de
chasse_, or hanger, inspired with a zeal for the honour of the corps
worthy of Major Sturgeon himself, struck poor Green Breeks over the
head with strength sufficient to cut him down. When this was seen,
the casualty was so far beyond what had ever taken place before that
both parties fled different ways, leaving poor Green Breeks, with his
bright hair plentifully dabbled in blood, to the care of the watchman,
who (honest man) took care not to know who had done the mischief. The
bloody hanger was flung into one of the Meadow ditches, and solemn
secrecy was sworn on all hands; but the remorse and terror of the actor
were beyond all bounds, and his apprehensions of the most dreadful
character. The wounded hero was for a few days in the Infirmary,
the case being only a trifling one. But though inquiry was strongly
pressed on him, no argument could make him indicate the person from
whom he had received the wound, though he must have been perfectly
well known to him. When he recovered, and was dismissed, the author
and his brother opened a communication with him, through the medium
of a popular gingerbread baker, of whom both parties were customers,
in order to tender a subsidy in name of smart-money. The sum would
excite ridicule were I to name it; but sure I am that the pockets of
the noted Green Breeks never held as much money of his own. He declined
the remittance, saying that he would not sell his blood; but at the
same time reprobated the idea of being an informer, which he said was
_clam_—that is, base or mean. With much urgency he accepted a pound
of snuff for the use of some old woman—aunt, grandmother, or the
like—with whom he lived. We did not become friends, for the bickers
were more agreeable to both parties than any more pacific amusement;
but we conducted them ever after under mutual assurances of the highest
consideration for each other.’[161]
FOOTNOTES
[160] Notes to _Waverley_.
[161] _Waverley Annotations_, i. 70.
SUSANNA, COUNTESS OF EGLINTOUNE.
The house on the west side of the Old Stamp-office Close, High Street,
formerly Fortune’s Tavern, was, in the early part of the last century,
the family mansion of Alexander, Earl of Eglintoune. It is a building
of considerable height and extent, accessible by a broad scale
stair. The alley in which it is situated bears great marks of former
respectability, and contained, till the year 1821, the Stamp-office,
then removed to the Waterloo Buildings.[162]
The ninth Earl of Eglintoune[163] was one of those patriarchal peers
who live to an advanced age—indefatigable in the frequency of their
marriages and the number of their children—who linger on and on, with
an unfailing succession of young countesses, and die at last leaving a
progeny interspersed throughout the whole of Douglas’s _Peerage_, two
volumes, folio, re-edited by Wood. His lordship, in early life, married
a sister of Lady Dundee, who brought him a large family, and died just
about that happy period when she could not have greatly increased it.
His next wife was a daughter of Chancellor Aberdeen, who only added one
daughter to his stock, and then paused, in a fit of ill-health, to the
great vexation of his lordship, who, on account of his two sons by the
first countess having died young, was anxious for an heir. This was a
consummation to his nuptial happiness which Countess Anne did not seem
at all likely to bring about, and the chagrin of his lordship must
have been increased by the longevity which her very ill-health seemed
to confer upon her; for her ladyship was one of those valetudinarians
who are too well acquainted with death, being always just at his door,
ever to come to closer quarters with him. At this juncture the blooming
Miss Kennedy was brought to Edinburgh by her father, Sir Archibald,
the rough old cavalier, who made himself so conspicuous in _the
Persecution_ and in Dundee’s wars.
Susanna Kennedy, though the daughter of a lady considerably under the
middle size—one of the three co-heiresses of the Covenanting general,
David Leslie (Lord Newark), whom Cromwell overthrew at Dunbar—was
six feet high, extremely handsome, elegant in her carriage, and had a
face and complexion of most bewitching loveliness. Her relations and
nurses always anticipated that she was to marry the Earl of Eglintoune,
in spite of their disparity of age;[164] for, while walking one day
in her father’s garden at Culzean, there alighted upon her shoulder a
hawk, with his lordship’s name upon its bells, which was considered
an infallible omen of her fate. Her appearance in Edinburgh, which
took place about the time of the Union, gained her a vast accession of
lovers among the nobility and gentry, and set all the rhyming fancies
of the period agog. Among her swains was Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, a
man of learning and talent in days when such qualities were not common.
As Miss Kennedy was understood to be fond of music, he sent her a flute
as a love-gift; from which it may be surmised that this instrument was
played by females in that age, while as yet the pianoforte was not.
When the young lady attempted to blow the instrument, something was
found to interrupt the sound, which turned out to be a copy of verses
in her praise:
‘Harmonious pipe, I languish for thy bliss,
When pressed to Silvia’s lips with gentle kiss!
And when her tender fingers round thee move
In soft embrace, I listen and approve
Those melting notes which soothe my soul in love.
Embalmed with odours from her breath that flow,
You yield your music when she’s pleased to blow;
And thus at once the charming lovely fair
Delights with sounds, with sweets perfumes the air.
Go, happy pipe, and ever mindful be
To court bewitching Silvia for me;
Tell all I feel—you cannot tell too much—
Repeat my love at each soft melting touch—
Since I to her my liberty resign,
Take thou the care to tune her heart to mine.’
Unhappily for this accomplished and poetical lover, Lord Eglintoune’s
sickly wife happened just about this time to die, and set his lordship
again at large among the spinsters of Scotland. Admirers of a youthful,
impassioned, and sonnet-making cast might have trembled at his approach
to the shrine of their divinity; for his lordship was one of those
titled suitors who, however old and horrible, are never rejected,
except in novels and romances. It appears that poor Clerk had actually
made a declaration of his passion for Miss Kennedy, which her father
was taking into consideration, a short while before the death of Lady
Eglintoune. As an old friend and neighbour, Sir Archibald thought he
would consult the earl upon the subject, and he accordingly proceeded
to do so. Short but decisive was the conference. ‘Bide a wee, Sir
Archy,’ said his lordship; ‘my wife’s very sickly.’ With Sir Archibald,
as with Mrs Slipslop, the least hint sufficed: the case was at once
settled against the elegant baronet of Penicuik. The lovely Susanna
accordingly became in due time the Countess of Eglintoune.
Even after this attainment of one of the greatest blessings that life
has to bestow,[165] the old peer’s happiness was like to have been
destroyed by another untoward circumstance. It was true that he had the
handsomest wife in the kingdom, and she brought him as many children as
he could desire. One after another came no fewer than seven daughters.
But then his lordship wanted a male heir; and every one knows how
poor a consolation a train of daughters, however long, proves in such
a case. He was so grieved at the want of a son that he threatened to
divorce his lady. The countess replied that he need not do that, for
she would readily agree to a separation, provided he would give back
what he had with her. His lordship, supposing she alluded only to
pecuniary matters, assured her she should have her fortune to the last
penny. ‘Na, na, my lord,’ said she, ‘that winna do: return me my youth,
beauty, and virginity, and dismiss me when you please.’ His lordship,
not being able to comply with this demand, willingly let the matter
drop; and before the year was out her ladyship brought him a son, who
established the affection of his parents on an enduring basis. Two
other male children succeeded. The countess was remarkable for a manner
quite peculiar to herself, and which was remembered as the _Eglintoune
air_, or the _Eglintoune manner_, long after her death. A Scottish
gentleman, writing from London in 1730, says: ‘Lady Eglintoune has set
out for Scotland, much satisfied with the honour and civilities shown
her ladyship by the queen and all the royal family: she has done her
country more honour than any lady I have seen here, both by a genteel
and a prudent behaviour.’[166] Her daughters were also handsome women.
It was a goodly sight, a century ago, to see the long procession of
sedans, containing Lady Eglintoune and her daughters, devolve from
the close and proceed to the Assembly Rooms, where there was sure to
be a crowd of plebeian admirers congregated to behold their lofty and
graceful figures step from the chairs on the pavement. It could not
fail to be a remarkable sight—eight beautiful women, conspicuous for
their stature and carriage, all dressed in the splendid though formal
fashions of that period, and inspired at once with dignity of birth and
consciousness of beauty! Alas! such _visions_ no longer illuminate the
dark tortuosities of Auld Reekie!
Many of the young ladies found good matches, and were the mothers of
men more or less distinguished for intellectual attainments. Sir James
Macdonald, the Marcellus of the Hebrides, and his two more fortunate
brothers, were the progeny of Lady Margaret; and in various other
branches of the family talent seems to be hereditary.
The countess was herself a blue-stocking—at that time a sort of
prodigy—and gave encouragement to the humble literati of her time.
The unfortunate Boyse dedicated a volume of poems to her; and I need
scarcely remind the Scottish reader that the _Gentle Shepherd_ was laid
at her ladyship’s feet. The dedication prefixed to that pastoral drama
contains what appears the usual amount of extravagant praise; yet it
was perhaps little beyond the truth. For the ‘penetration, superior
wit, and profound judgment’ which Allan attributes to her ladyship,
she was perhaps indebted in some degree to the lucky accident of her
having exercised it in the bard’s favour; but he assuredly overstrained
his conscience very little when he said she was ‘possessed of every
outward charm in the most perfect degree.’ Neither was it too much to
speak of ‘the unfading beauties of wisdom and piety’ which adorned
her ladyship’s mind.’[167] Hamilton of Bangour’s prefatory verses,
which are equally laudatory and well bestowed, contain the following
beautiful character of the lady, with a just compliment to her
daughters:
‘In virtues rich, in goodness unconfined,
Thou shin’st a fair example to thy kind;
Sincere, and equal to thy neighbours’ fame,
How swift to praise, how obstinate to blame!
Bold in thy presence bashfulness appears,
And backward merit loses all its fears.
Supremely blest by Heaven, Heaven’s richest grace
Confest is thine—an early blooming race;
Whose pleasing smiles shall guardian wisdom arm—
Divine instruction!—taught of thee to charm,
What transports shall they to thy soul impart
(The conscious transports of a parent’s heart),
When thou behold’st them of each grace possessed,
And sighing youths imploring to be blest
After thy image formed, with charms like thine,
Or in the visit or the dance[168] to shine:
Thrice happy who succeed their mother’s praise,
The lovely Eglintounes of other days!’
It may be remarked that her ladyship’s thorough-paced Jacobitism, which
she had inherited from her father, tended much to make her the friend
of Ramsay, Hamilton, and other Cavalier bards. She was, it is believed,
little given to patronising Whig poets.
The patriarchal peer who made Susanna so happy a mother died in 1729,
leaving her a dowager of forty, with a good jointure. Retiring to the
country, she employed her widowhood in the education of her children,
and was considered a perfect example to all mothers in this useful
employment. In our days of freer manners, her conduct might appear too
reserved. The young were taught to address her by the phrase ‘Your
ladyship;’ and she spoke to them in the same ceremonious style. Though
her eldest son was a mere boy when he succeeded to the title, she
constantly called him Lord Eglintoune; and she enjoined all the rest of
the children to address him in the same manner. When the earl grew up,
they were upon no less formal terms; and every day in the world he took
his mother by the hand at the dinner-hour, and led her downstairs to
her chair at the head of his table, where she sat in state, a perfect
specimen of the stately and ostentatious politeness of the last age.
All this ceremony was accompanied with so much affection that the
countess was never known to refuse her son a request but one—to walk
as a peeress at the coronation of King George III. Lord Eglintoune,
then a gentleman of the bedchamber, was proud of his mother, and wished
to display her noble figure on that occasion. But she jestingly excused
herself by saying that it was not worth while for so old a woman to buy
new robes.
The unhappy fate of her eldest and favourite son—shot by a man of
violent passions, whom he was rashly treating as a poacher (1769)—gave
her ladyship a dreadful shock in her old age. The earl, after receiving
the fatal wound, was brought to Eglintoune Castle, when his mother was
immediately sent for from Auchans. What her feelings must have been
when she saw one so dear to her thus suddenly struck down in the prime
of his days may be imagined. The tenderness he displayed towards her
and others in his last hours is said to have been to the last degree
noble and affecting.
When Johnson and Boswell returned from their tour to the Hebrides,
they visited Lady Eglintoune at Auchans. She was so well pleased with
the doctor, his politics, and his conversation that she embraced and
kissed him at parting, an honour of which the gifted tourist was ever
afterwards extremely proud. Boswell’s account of the interview is
interesting. ‘Lady Eglintoune,’ says he, ‘though she was now in her
eighty-fifth year, and had lived in the country almost half a century,
was still a very agreeable woman. Her figure was majestic, her manners
high-bred, her reading extensive, and her conversation elegant. She had
been the admiration of the gay circles, and the patroness of poets. Dr
Johnson was delighted with his reception here. Her principles in church
and state were congenial with his. In the course of conversation, it
came out that Lady Eglintoune was married the year before Dr Johnson
was born; upon which she graciously said to him that she might have
been his mother, and she now adopted him.’
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
This venerable woman amused herself latterly in taming and patronising
rats. She kept a vast number of these animals in her pay at Auchans,
and they succeeded in her affections to the poets and artists whom she
had loved in early life. It does not reflect much credit upon the
latter that her ladyship used to complain of never having met with
true gratitude except from four-footed animals. She had a panel in
the oak wainscot of her dining-room, which she tapped upon and opened
at meal-times, when ten or twelve jolly rats came tripping forth and
joined her at table. At the word of command, or a signal from her
ladyship, they retired again obediently to their native obscurity—a
trait of good sense in the character and habits of the animals which,
it is hardly necessary to remark, patrons do not always find in
two-legged protégés.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Her ladyship died in 1780, at the age of ninety-one, having preserved
her stately mien and beautiful complexion to the last. The latter was
a mystery of fineness to many ladies not the third of her age. As her
secret may be of service to modern beauties, I shall, in kindness
to the sex, divulge it. _She never used paint, but washed her face
periodically with SOW’S MILK!_ I have seen a portrait, taken in her
eighty-first year, in which it is observable that her skin is of
exquisite delicacy and tint. Altogether, the countess was a woman of
ten thousand!
The jointure-house of this fine old country-gentlewoman—Auchans
Castle, a capital specimen of the Scottish manor-house of the
seventeenth century, situated near Irvine—is now uninhabited, and the
handsome wainscoted rooms in which she entertained Johnson and Boswell
are fast hastening to decay. One last trait may now be recorded; in her
ladyship’s bedroom at this place was hung a portrait of her sovereign
_de jure_, the ill-starred Charles Edward, so situated as to be _the
first object which met her sight on awaking in the morning_.
FOOTNOTES
[162] The buildings in this alley are now demolished.
[163] He is said to have been a nobleman of considerable talent, and
a great underhand supporter of the exiled family; see the _Lockhart
Papers_. George Lockhart had married his daughter Euphemia, or _Lady
Effie_, as she was commonly called. In the _Edinburgh Annual Register_
there is preserved a letter from Lord Eglintoune to his son, replete
with good sense as well as paternal affection.
[164] The earl was forty-nine and Miss Kennedy twenty.
[165] The anecdote which follows is chiefly taken from _The Tell-tale_,
a rare collection, published in 1762.
[166] Notes by C. K. Sharpe in Stenhouse’s edition of the _Scots
Musical Museum_, ii. 200.
[167] As a specimen of the complimentary intercourse of the poet with
Lady Eglintoune, an anecdote is told of her having once sent him a
basket of fine fruit; to which he returned this stanza:
‘Now, Priam’s son, ye may be mute,
For I can bauldly brag wi’ thee;
Thou to the fairest gave the fruit—
The fairest gave the fruit to me.’
The love of raillery has recorded that on this being communicated by
Ramsay to his friend Eustace Budgell, the following comment was soon
after received from the English wit:
‘As Juno fair, as Venus kind,
She may have been who gave the fruit;
But had she had Minerva’s mind,
She’d ne’er have given ’t to such a brute.’
[168] An old gentleman told our informant that he never saw so
beautiful a figure in his life as Lady Eglintoune at a Hunters’ Ball in
Holyrood House, dancing a minuet in a large hoop, and a suit of black
velvet, trimmed with gold.
FEMALE DRESSES OF LAST CENTURY.
Ladies in the last century wore dresses and decorations many of which
were of an inconvenient nature; yet no one can deny them the merit of
a certain dignity and grace. How fine it must have been to see, as an
old gentleman told me he had seen, two hooped ladies moving along the
Lawnmarket in a summer evening, and filling up the whole footway with
their stately and voluminous persons!
Amongst female articles of attire in those days were calashes,
bongraces, capuchins, negligées, stomachers, stays, hoops, lappets,
pinners, plaids, fans, busks, rumple-knots, &c., all of them now
forgotten.
The calash was a species of hood, constructed of silk upon a framework
of cane, and was used as a protection to a cap or head-dress in walking
out or riding in a carriage. It could be folded back like the hood of a
carriage, so as to lie gathered together behind the neck.
The bongrace was a bonnet of silk and cane, in shape somewhat like a
modern bonnet.
The capuchin was a short cloak, reaching not below the elbows. It was
of silk, edged with lace, or of velvet. Gentlemen also wore capuchins.
The first Sir William Forbes frequently appeared at the Cross in one. A
lady’s _mode tippet_ was nearly the same piece of dress.
The negligée was a gown, projecting in loose and ample folds from the
back. It could only be worn with stays. It was entirely open in front,
so as to show the stomacher, across which it was laced with flat silk
cords, while below it opened more widely and showed the petticoat. This
latter, though shorter, was sometimes more splendid than the gown,
and had a deep flounce. Ladies in walking generally carried the skirt
of the gown over the arm, and exhibited the petticoat; but when they
entered a room, they always came sailing in, with the train sweeping
full and majestically behind them.
The stomacher was a triangular piece of rich silk, one corner pointing
downwards and joining the fine black lace-bordered apron, while the
other two angles pointed to the shoulders. Great pains were usually
discovered in the adornment of this beautiful and most attractive
piece of dress. Many wore jewels upon it; and a lady would have thought
herself poor indeed if she could not bedizen it with strings of bugles
or tinsel.
Stays were made so long as to touch the chair, both in front and rear,
when a lady sat. They were calculated to fit so tightly that the
wearers had to hold by the bedpost while the maid was lacing them.
There is a story told of a lady of high rank in Scotland, about 1720,
which gives us a strange idea of the rigours and inconvenience of this
fashion. She stinted her daughters as to diet, with a view to the
improvement of their shapes; but the young ladies, having the cook in
their interest, used to unlace their stays at night, after her ladyship
went to bed, and make a hearty meal. They were at last discovered, by
the smell of a roast goose, carried upstairs to their bedchamber; as
unluckily their lady-mother did not take snuff,[169] and was not asleep.
The hoop was contemporary with, and a necessary appendage of, the
stays. There were different species of hoops, being of various shapes
and uses. The pocket-hoop, worn in the morning, was like a pair of
small panniers, such as one sees on an ass. The bell-hoop was a sort of
petticoat, shaped like a bell and made with cane or rope for framework.
This was not quite full-dress. There was also a straw petticoat, a
species of hoop such as is so common in French prints. The full-sized
evening hoop was so monstrous that people saw one-half of it enter
the room before the wearer. This was very inconvenient in the Old
Town, where doorways and closes were narrow. In going down a close or
a turnpike stair, ladies tilted them up and carried them under their
arms. In case of this happening, there was a _show petticoat_ below;
and such care was taken of appearances that even the _garters_ were
worn fine, being either embroidered or having gold and silver fringes
and tassels.
The French silks worn during the last century were beautiful, the
patterns were so well drawn and the stuff of such excellent quality.
The dearest common brocade was about a guinea a yard; if with gold or
silver, considerably more.
The lappet was a piece of Brussels or point lace, hanging in two pieces
from the crown of the head and streaming gracefully behind.
Pinners, such as the celebrated Egyptian Sphinx wears, were pinned down
the stomacher.
Plaids were worn by ladies to cover their heads and muffle their faces
when they went into the street. The council records of Edinburgh abound
in edicts against the use of this piece of dress, which, they said,
confounded decent women with those who were the contrary.
Fans were large, the sticks curiously carved, and if of leather,
generally very well painted—being imported from Italy or Holland. In
later times these have been sometimes framed like pictures and hung on
the walls.
All women, high and low, wore enormous busks, generally with a heart
carved at the upper end. In low life this was a common present to
sweethearts; if from carpenters, they were artificially veneered.
The rumple-knot was a large bunch of ribbons worn at the peak of the
waist behind. Knots of ribbons were then numerous over the whole body.
There were the breast-knots, two hainch-knots (at which there were
also buttons for looping up the gown behind), a knot at the tying of
the beads behind the neck, one in front and another at the back of the
head-gear, and knots upon the shoes. It took about twelve yards or
upwards to make a full suit of ribbons.[170]
Other minor articles of dress and adornment were the _befong_
handkerchief (spelt at random), of a stuff similar to what is now
called _net_, crossed upon the breast; paste ear-rings and necklace;
broad black bracelets at the wrists; a _pong pong_—a jewel fixed to a
wire with a long pin at the end, worn in front of the cap, and which
shook as the wearer moved. It was generally stuck in the cushion over
which the hair was turned in front. Several were frequently worn at
once. A song in the _Charmer_, 1751, alludes to this bijou:
‘Come all ye young ladies whose business and care
Is contriving new dresses, and curling your hair;
Who flirt and coquet with each coxcomb who comes
To toy at your toilets, and strut in your rooms;
While you’re placing a patch, _or adjusting pong pong_,
Ye may listen and learn by the truth of my song.’
Fly-caps, encircling the head, worn by young matrons, and mob-caps,
falling down over the ears, used only by old ones; pockets of silk or
satin, of which young girls wore one above their other attire; silk
or linen stockings—never of cotton, which is a modern stuff—slashed
with pieces of a colour in strong contrast with the rest, or gold or
silver clocks, wove in. The silk stockings were very thick, and could
not be washed on account of the gold or silver. They were frequently of
scarlet silk, and (1733) worn both by ladies and gentlemen. High-heeled
shoes, set off with fine lace or sewed work, and sharply pointed in
front.
To give the reader a more picturesque idea of the former dresses of the
ladies of Edinburgh, I cite a couple of songs, the first wholly old,
the second a revivification:
‘I’ll gar our guidman trow that I’ll sell the ladle,
If he winna buy to me a new side-saddle—
To ride to the kirk, and frae the kirk, and round about the toun—
Stand about, ye fisher jades, and gi’e my goun room!
I’ll gar our guidman trow that I’ll tak the fling-strings,
If he winna buy to me twelve bonnie goud rings,
Ane for ilka finger, and twa for ilka thumb—
Stand about, ye fisher jades, and gi’e my goun room!
I’ll gar our guidman trow that I’m gaun to dee,
If he winna fee to me twa valets or three,
To beir my tail up frae the dirt and ush me through the toun—
Stand about, ye fisher jades, and gi’e my goun room!’
* * * * *
‘As Mally Lee cam’ down the street, her _capuchin_ did flee;
She coost a look behind her, to see her _negligee_.
And we’re a’ gaun east and wast, we’re a’ gaun agee,
We’re a’ gaun east and wast, courtin’ Mally Lee.[171]
She had twa _lappets_ at her head, that flaunted gallantlie,
And _ribbon knots_ at back and breast of bonnie Mally Lee.
And we’re a’ gaun, &c.
A’ down alang the Canongate were beaux o’ ilk degree;
And mony are turned round to look at bonnie Mally Lee.
And we’re a’ gaun, &c.
And ilka bab her _pong pong_ gi’ed, ilk lad thought that’s to me;
But feint a ane was in the thought of bonnie Mally Lee.
And we’re a’ gaun, &c.
Frae Seton’s Land a countess fair looked owre a window hie,
And pined to see the genty shape of bonnie Mally Lee.
And we’re a’ gaun, &c.
And when she reached the palace porch, there lounged erls three;
And ilk ane thought his Kate or Meg a drab to Mally Lee.
And we’re a’ gaun, &c.
The dance gaed through the palace ha’, a comely sight to see;
But nane was there sae bright or braw as bonnie Mally Lee.
And we’re a’ gaun, &c.
Though some had jewels in their hair, like stars ’mang cluds did shine,
Yet Mally did surpass them a’ wi’ but her glancin’ eyne.
And we’re a’ gaun, &c.
A prince cam’ out frae ’mang them a’, wi’ garter at his knee,
And danced a stately minuet wi’ bonnie Mally Lee.
And we’re a’ gaun, &c.’
FOOTNOTES
[169] Snuff-taking was prevalent among young women in our grandmothers’
time. Their flirts used to present them with pretty snuff-boxes. In one
of the monthly numbers of the _Scots Magazine_ for the year 1745 there
is a satirical poem by a swain upon the practice of snuff-taking; to
which a lady replies next month, defending the fashion as elegant and
of some account in coquetry. Almost all the old ladies who survived the
commencement of this century took snuff. Some kept it in pouches, and
abandoned, for its sake, the wearing of white ruffles and handkerchiefs.
[170] A gown then required ten yards of stuff.
[171] This verse appears in a manuscript subsequent to 1760. The name,
however, is Sleigh, not Lee. Mrs Mally Sleigh was married in 1725 to
the Lord Lyon Brodie of Brodie. Allan Ramsay celebrates her.
THE LORD JUSTICE-CLERK ALVA.[172]
LADIES SUTHERLAND AND GLENORCHY—THE PIN OR RISP.
[Illustration: Mylne’s Court, where some of the Mylne family resided.]
This eminent person—a cadet of the ancient house of Mar (born 1680,
died 1763)—had his town mansion in an obscure recess of the High
Street called Mylne Square,[173] the first place bearing such a
designation in our northern capital: it was, I may remark, built by
one of a family of Mylnes, who are said to have been master-masons to
the Scottish monarchs for eight generations, and some of whom are at
this day architects by profession.[174] Lord Alva’s residence was in
the second and third floors of the large building on the west side
of the square. Of the same structure, an Earl of Northesk occupied
another _flat_. And, to mark the character of Lord Alva’s abode,
part of it was afterwards, in the hands of a Mrs Reynolds, used as a
lodging-house of the highest grade. The Earl of Hopetoun, while acting
as Commissioner to the General Assembly, there held viceregal state.
But to return to Lord Alva: it gives a curious idea of the habits of
such a dignitary before the rise of the New Town that we should find
him content with this dwelling while in immediate attendance upon the
court, and happy during the summer vacation to withdraw to the shades
of his little villa at Drumsheugh, standing on a spot now surrounded
by _town_. Lord Lovat, who, on account of his numerous law-pleas, was
a great intimate of Lord Alva’s, frequently visited him here; and Mrs
Campbell of Monzie, Lord Alva’s daughter, used to tell that when she
met Lord Lovat on the stair he always took her up in his arms and
kissed her, to her great annoyance and horror—_he was so ugly_. During
one of his law-pleas, he went to a dancing-school ball, which Misses
Jean and Susanna, Lord Alva’s daughters, attended. He had his pocket
full of _sweeties_, as Mrs Campbell expressed it; and so far did he
carry his exquisitely refined system of cunning, that—in order no
doubt to find favour with their father—he devoted the greater share
of his attentions and the whole of his comfits to them alone. Those
who knew this singular man used to say that, with all his duplicity,
faithlessness, and cruelty, his character exhibited no redeeming trait
whatever: nobody ever knew any good of him.
In his Mylne Square mansion Lord Alva’s two step-daughters were
married; one to become Countess of Sutherland, the other Lady
Glenorchy. There was something very striking in the fate of Lady
Sutherland and of the earl, her husband—a couple distinguished as
much by personal elegance and amiable character as by lofty rank. Lady
Sutherland was blessed with a temper of extraordinary sweetness, which
shone in a face of so much beauty as to have occasioned admiration
where many were beautiful—the coronation of George III. and his queen.
The happiness of the young pair had been increased by the birth of a
daughter. One unlucky day his lordship, coming after dinner into the
drawing-room at Dunrobin a little flushed with wine, lifted up the
infant above his head by way of frolic, when, sad to tell, he dropped
her by accident on the floor, and she received injuries from which she
never recovered. This incident had such an effect upon his lordship’s
spirits that his health became seriously affected, so as finally to
require a journey to Bath, where he was seized with an infectious
fever. For twenty-one successive days and nights he was attended by his
wife, then pregnant, till she herself caught the fatal distemper. The
countess’s death was concealed from his lordship; nevertheless, when
his delirium left him, the day before he died, he frequently said: ‘I
am going to join my dear wife;’ appearing to know that she had ‘already
reached the goal with mended pace!’ Can it be that we are sometimes
able to penetrate the veil which hangs, in thick and gloomy folds,
between this world and the next; or does the ‘mortal coil’ in which
the light of mind is enveloped become thinner and more transparent by
the wearing of deadly sickness? The bodies of the earl and countess
were brought to Holyrood House, where they had usually resided when in
town, and lay in state for some time previous to their interment in
one grave in the Abbey Chapel. The death of a pair so young, so good,
and who had stood in so distinguished a position in society—leaving
one female infant to a disputed title—made a deep impression on the
public, and was sincerely lamented in their own immediate circle. Of
much poetry written on the occasion, a specimen may be seen in Evans’s
_Old Ballads_. Another appears in Brydges’s _Censura Literaria_, being
the composition of Sir Gilbert Elliot of Minto:
‘In pity, Heaven bestowed
An early doom: lo, on the self-same bier,
A fairer form, cold by her husband’s side,
And faded every charm. She died for thee,
For thee, her only love. In beauty’s prime,
In youth’s triumphant hour, she died for thee.
Bring water from the brook, and roses spread
O’er their pale limbs; for ne’er did wedded love
To one sad grave consign a lovelier pair,
Of manners gentler, or of purer heart!’
Lady Glenorchy, the younger sister of Lady Sutherland, was remarkable
for her pious disposition. Exceedingly unfortunate in her marriage, she
was early taught to seek consolation from things ‘not of this world.’
I have been told that nothing could have been more striking than to
hear this young and beautiful creature pouring forth her melodious
notes and hymns, while most of her sex and age at that time exercised
their voices only upon the wretched lyrics imported from Vauxhall and
Ranelagh, or the questionable verses of Ramsay and his contemporaries.
She met with her rich reward, even in this world; for she enjoyed
the applause of the wealthy and the blessings of the poor, with that
supreme of all pleasures—the conviction that the eternal welfare of
those in whose fate she was chiefly interested was forwarded, if not
perfected, by her precepts and example.[175]
[Illustration: Old Risps.]
It is not unworthy of notice, in this record of all that is old and
quaint in our city, that the Lord Justice-clerk’s house was provided
with a _pin_ or _risp_, instead of the more modern convenience—a
knocker. The Scottish ballads, in numberless passages, make reference
to this article: no hero in those compositions ever comes to his
mistress’s door but he _tirles at the pin_. What, then, was a pin? It
was a small slip or bar of iron, starting out from the door vertically,
serrated on the side towards the door, and provided with a small ring,
which, being drawn roughly along the serrations or nicks, produced a
harsh and grating sound, to summon the servant to open. Another term
for the article was a _crow_. In the fourth eclogue of Edward Fairfax,
a production of the reign of James VI. and I., quoted in the _Muses’
Library_, is this passage:
‘Now, farewell Eglon! for the sun stoops low,
And calling guests before my sheep-cot’s door;
Now _clad in white, I see my porter-crow_;
Great kings oft want these blessings of the poor;’
with the following note: ‘The ring of the door, called a _crow_, and
when covered with white linen, denoted the mistress of the house was
in travel.’ It is quite appropriate to this explanation that a small
Latin vocabulary, published by Andrew Simpson in 1702, places among
the parts of a house, ‘_Corvex—a clapper or ringle_.’ Hardly one
specimen of the pin, crow, or ringle now survives in the Old Town. They
were almost all disused many years ago, when knockers were generally
substituted as more stylish. Knockers at that time did not long remain
in repute, though they have never been altogether superseded, even by
bells, in the Old Town. The comparative merit of knockers and pins was
for a long time a controversial point, and many knockers got their
heads twisted off in the course of the dispute. Pins were, upon the
whole, considered very inoffensive, decent, old-fashioned things, being
made of a modest metal, and making little show upon a door; knockers
were thought upstart, prominent, brazen-faced articles, and received
the full share of odium always conferred by Scotsmen of the old school
upon tasteful improvements. Every drunken fellow, in reeling home at
night, thought it good sport to carry off all the knockers that came
in his way; and as drunken gentlemen were very numerous, many acts
of violence were committed, and sometimes a whole stair was found
stripped of its knockers in the morning; when the voice of lamentation
raised by the servants of the sufferers might have reminded one of the
wailings of the Lennox dairy-women after a _creagh_ in the days of
old. Knockers were frequently used as missile weapons by the bucks of
that day against the Town-guard; and the morning sun sometimes saw the
High Street strewed with them. The aforesaid Mrs Campbell remembered
residing in an Old Town house, which was one night disturbed in the
most intolerable manner by a drunken party at the knocker. In the
morning the greater part of it was found to be gone; and it was besides
discovered, to the horror of the inmates, that part of a finger was
left sticking in the fragments, with the appearance of having been
forcibly wrenched from the hand.
FOOTNOTES
[172] James Erskine on ascending the bench first took the title of Lord
Tinwald, from his estate in Dumfriesshire. That of Lord Alva he assumed
when he purchased the family estate of Alva, in Clackmannanshire, from
his eldest brother, Sir Charles Erskine.
[173] The site of Mylne Square is now occupied by the block of
buildings directly opposite the north front of the Tron Church.
[174] The first of this name was made ‘master-mason’ to the king in
1481, and the position descended in regular succession in the family
till 1710, when they adopted the style of architect.
[175] Lady Glenorchy built a chapel, which was named after her, on the
low ground to the south of the Calton Hill. The chapel was swept away,
along with that of the fine Gothic building Trinity College Church, for
the convenience of the North British Railway. The lady’s name is still
preserved in Lady Glenorchy’s Established Church in Roxburgh Place and
Lady Glenorchy’s United Free Church in Greenside.
MARLIN’S AND NIDDRY’S WYNDS.
TRADITION OF MARLIN THE PAVIER—HOUSE OF PROVOST EDWARD—STORY
OF LADY GRANGE.
Where South Bridge Street now stands, there formerly existed two wynds,
or alleys, of the better class, named Marlin’s and Niddry’s Wynds. Many
persons of importance lived in these obscurities. Marlin’s Wynd, which
extended from behind the Tron Church, and contained several bookshops
and stalls, the favourite lounge of the lovers of old literature, was
connected with a curious tradition, which existed at the time when
Maitland wrote his _History of Edinburgh_ (1753). It was said that the
High Street was first paved or _causewayed_ by one Marlin, a Frenchman,
who, thinking that specimen of his ingenuity the best monument he could
have, desired to be buried under it, and was accordingly interred at
the head of this wynd, which derived its name from him. The tradition
is so far countenanced by there having formerly been a space in the
pavement at this spot, marked by six flat stones, in the shape of a
grave. According, however, to more authentic information, the High
Street was first paved in 1532[176] by John and Bartoulme Foliot, who
appear to have had nothing in common with this legendary Marlin, except
country. The grave of at least Bartoulme Foliot is distinctly marked by
a flat monument in the Chapel-Royal at Holyrood House. It is possible,
nevertheless, that Marlin may have been the more immediate executor or
superintendent of the work.
Niddry’s Wynd abounded in curious antique houses, many of which had
been the residences of remarkable persons. The most interesting _bit_
was a paved court, about half-way down, on the west side, called
Lockhart’s Court, from its having latterly been the residence of
the family of Lockhart of Carnwath.[177] This was, in reality, a
quadrangular palace, the whole being of elegant old architecture in one
design, and accessible by a deep arched gateway. It was built by Nicol
Edward, or Udward, who was provost of Edinburgh in 1591; a wealthy
citizen, and styled in his _writts_, ‘of old descent in the burgh.’
On a mantelpiece within the house his arms were carved, along with an
anagram upon his name:
VA D’UN VOL À CHRIST—
_Go with one flight to Christ_; which, the reader will find, can only
be made out by Latinising his name into NICHOLAUS EDUARTUS. We learn
from Moyses’s _Memoirs_ that, in January 1591, this house was the
temporary residence of James VI. and his queen, then recently arrived
from Denmark; and that, on the 7th of February, the Earl of Huntly
passed hence, out of the immediate royal presence, when he went to
murder the Bonny Earl of Moray at Donibrissle; which caused a suspicion
that His Majesty was concerned in that horrid outburst of feudal
hate. Lockhart’s Court was latterly divided into several distinct
habitations, one of which, on the north side of the quadrangle, was
occupied by the family of Bruce of Kinnaird, the celebrated traveller.
In the part on the south side, occupied by the Carnwath family, there
was a mantelpiece in the drawing-room of magnificent workmanship, and
reaching to the ceiling. The whole mansion, even in its reduced state,
bore an appearance of security and strength which spoke of other times;
and there was, moreover, a profound dungeon underground, which was only
accessible by a secret trap-door, opening through the floor of a small
closet, the most remote of a suite of rooms extending along the south
and west sides of the court. Perhaps, at a time when to be rich was
neither so common nor so safe as now, Provost Edward might conceal his
hoards in this _massy more_.
Alexander Black of Balbirney, who was provost of Edinburgh from 1579 to
1583, had a house at the head of the wynd. King James lodged in this
house on the 18th of August 1584, and walked from it in state next day
to hold a parliament in the Tolbooth. Here also lodged the Chancellor
Thirlstain, in January 1591, while the king and queen were the guests
of Nicol Edward.[178] It must be understood that these visits of
royalty were less considered in the light of an honour than of a tax.
The king in those times went to live at the board of a wealthy subject
when his own table happened to be scantily furnished; which was too
often the case with poor King James.
On the east side of the wynd, nearly opposite to Lockhart’s Court, was
a good house,[179] which, early in the last century, was possessed
by James Erskine of Grange, best known by his judicial title of Lord
Grange, and the brother of John, Earl of Mar. This gentleman has
acquired an unhappy notoriety in consequence of his treatment of his
wife. He was externally a professor of ultra-evangelical views of
religion, and a patron of the clergy on that side, yet in his private
life is understood to have been far from exemplary. The story of Lady
Grange, as Mrs Erskine was called, had a character of romance about it
which has prevented it from being forgotten. It also reflects a curious
light upon the state of manners in Scotland in the early part of the
eighteenth century. The lady was a daughter of that Chiesly of Dalry
whom we have already seen led by an insane violence of temper to commit
one of the most atrocious of murders.
STORY OF LADY GRANGE.[180]
Lord and Lady Grange had been married upwards of twenty years, and
had had several children, when, in 1730, a separation was determined
on between them. It is usually difficult in such cases to say in what
degree the parties are respectively blamable; how far there have been
positive faults on one side, and want of forbearance on the other, and
so forth. If we were to believe the lady in this instance, there had
been love and peace for twenty years, when at length Lord Grange took a
sudden dislike to his wife, and would no longer live with her. He, on
the other hand, speaks of having suffered long from her ‘unsubduable
rage and madness,’ and of having failed in all his efforts to bring her
to a reasonable conduct. There is too much reason to believe that the
latter statement is in the main true; although, were it more so, it
would still leave Lord Grange unjustifiable in the measures which he
took with respect to his wife. It is traditionally stated that in their
unhappy quarrels the lady did not scruple to remind her husband whose
daughter she was—thus hinting at what she was capable of doing if she
thought herself deeply aggrieved. However all this might be, in the
year 1730 a separation was agreed to (with great reluctance on the part
of the lady), his lordship consenting to give her a hundred a year for
her maintenance so long as she should continue to live apart from him.
After spending some months in the country, Lady Grange returned to
Edinburgh, and took a lodging near her husband’s house, for the
purpose, as she tells us, of endeavouring to induce him to take her
back, and that she might occasionally see her children. According to
Lord Grange, she began to torment him by following him and the children
on the street ‘in a scandalous and shameful manner,’ and coming to
his house, and calling reproaches to him through the windows,[181]
especially when there was company with him. He thus writes: ‘In his
house, at the bottom of Niddry’s Wynd, where there is a court through
which one enters the house, one time among others, when it was full of
chairs, chairmen, and footmen, who attended the company that were with
himself, or his sister Lady Jane Paterson, then keeping house together,
she came into this court, and among that mob shamelessly cried up
to the windows injurious reproaches, and would not go away, though
entreated, till, hearing the late Lord Lovat’s voice, who was visiting
Mr E——, and seeing two of his servants among the other footmen, “Oh,”
said she, “is your master here?” and instantly ran off.’ He speaks of
her having attacked him one day in church; at another time she forced
him to take refuge with his son in a tavern for two hours. She even
threatened to assault him on the bench, ‘which he every day expected;
for she professed that she had no shame.’
The traditionary account of Lady Grange represents her fate as having
been at last decided by her threatening to expose her husband to the
government for certain treasonable practices. It would now appear that
this was partially true. In his statement, Lord Grange tells us that
he had some time before gone to London to arrange the private affairs
of the Countess of Mar, then become unable to conduct them herself,
and he had sent an account of his procedure to his wife, including
some reflections on a certain great minister (doubtless Walpole), who
had thwarted him much, and been of serious detriment to the interests
of his family in this matter. This document she retained, and she
now threatened to take it to London and use it for her husband’s
disadvantage, being supported in the design by several persons with
whom she associated. While denying that he had been concerned in
anything treasonable, Lord Grange says, ‘he had already too great a
load of that great minister’s wrath on his back to stand still and
see more of it fall upon him by the treachery and madness of such a
wife and such worthy confederates.’ The lady had taken a seat in a
stage-coach for London.[182] Lord Grange caused a friend to go and make
interest to get her money returned, and the seat let to another person;
in which odd proceeding he was successful. Thus was the journey stayed
for the meantime; but the lady declared her resolution to go as soon as
possible. ‘What,’ says Lord Grange, ‘could a man do with such a wife?
There was great reason to think she would daily go on to do mischief to
her family, and to affront and bring a blot on her children, especially
her daughters. There were things that could not be redressed in a court
of justice, and we had not then a madhouse to lock such unhappy people
up in.’
The result of his lordship’s deliberations was a plan for what he calls
‘sequestrating’ his wife. It appears to have been concerted between
himself and a number of Highland chiefs, including, above all, the
notorious Lord Lovat.[183] We now turn to the lady’s narrative, which
proceeds to tell that, on the evening of the 22nd of January 1732, a
party of Highlandmen, wearing the livery of Lord Lovat, made their
way into her lodgings, and forcibly seized her, throwing her down and
gagging her, then tying a cloth over her head, and carrying her off
as if she had been a corpse. At the bottom of the stair was a chair
containing a man, who took the hapless lady upon his knees, and held
her fast in his arms till they had got to a place in the outskirts of
the town. Then they took her from the chair, removed the cloth from her
head, and mounted her upon a horse behind a man, to whom she was tied;
after which the party rode off ‘by the lee light of the moon,’ to quote
the language of the old ballads, whose incidents the present resembles
in character.
The treatment of the lady by the way was, if we can believe her own
account, by no means gentle. The leader, although a gentleman (Mr
Forster of Corsebonny), disregarded her entreaties to be allowed to
stop on account of cramp in her side, and only answered by ordering a
servant to renew the bandages over her mouth. She observed that they
rode along the Long Way (where Princes Street now stands), past the
Castle, and so to the Linlithgow road. After a ride of nearly twenty
miles, they stopped at Muiravonside, the house of Mr John Macleod,
advocate, where servants appeared waiting to receive the lady—and
thus showed that the master of the house had been engaged to aid in
her abduction. She was taken upstairs to a comfortable bedroom; but a
man being posted in the room as a guard, she could not go to bed nor
take any repose. Thus she spent the ensuing day, and when it was night,
she was taken out and remounted in the same fashion as before; and the
party then rode along through the Torwood, and so to the place called
Wester Polmaise, belonging to a gentleman of the name of Stewart,
whose steward or factor was one of the cavalcade. Here was an old
tower, having one little room on each floor, as is usually the case in
such buildings; and into one of these rooms, the window of which was
boarded over, the lady was conducted. She continued here for thirteen
or fourteen weeks, supplied with a sufficiency of the comforts of life,
but never allowed to go into the open air; till at length her health
gave way, and the factor began to fear being concerned in her death. By
his intercession with Mr Forster, she was then permitted to go into the
court, under a guard; but such was the rigour of her keepers that the
garden was still denied to her.
[Illustration: THE CASTLE
from Princes Street.
PAGE 214.]
Thus time passed drearily on until the month of August, during all
which time the prisoner had no communication with the external world.
At length, by an arrangement made between Lord Lovat and Mr Forster,
at the house of the latter, near Stirling, Lady Grange was one night
forcibly brought out, and mounted again as formerly, and carried off
amidst a guard of horsemen. She recognised several of Lovat’s people
in this troop, and found Forster once more in command. They passed
by Stirling Bridge, and thence onward to the Highlands; but she no
longer knew the way they were going. Before daylight they stopped at
a house, where she was lodged during the day, and at night the march
was resumed. Thus they journeyed for several days into the Highlands,
never allowing the unfortunate lady to speak, and taking the most rigid
care to prevent any one from becoming aware of her situation. During
this time she never had off her clothes: one day she slept in a barn,
another in an open enclosure. Regard to delicacy in such a case was
impossible. After a fortnight spent at a house on Lord Lovat’s ground
(probably in Stratherrick, Inverness-shire), the journey was renewed in
the same style as before; only Mr Forster had retired from the party,
and the lady found herself entirely in the hands of Frasers.
They now crossed a loch into Glengarry’s land, where they lodged
several nights in cow-houses or in the open air, making progress all
the time to the westward, where the country becomes extremely wild. At
Lochourn, an arm of the sea on the west coast, the unfortunate lady was
transferred to a small vessel which was in waiting for her. Bitterly
did she weep, and pitifully implore compassion; but the Highlanders
understood not her language; and though they had done so, a departure
from the orders which had been given them was not to be expected from
men of their character. In the vessel, she found that she was in the
custody of one Alexander Macdonald, a tenant of one of the Western
Islands named Heskir, belonging to Sir Alexander Macdonald of Sleat;
and here we have a curious indication of the spirit in which the
Highlanders conducted such transactions. ‘I told him,’ says the lady,
‘that I was stolen at Edinburgh, and brought there by force, and that
it was contrary to the laws what they were doing. He answered that
he would not keep me, or any other, against their will, _except Sir
Alexander Macdonald were in the affair_.’ While they lay in Lochourn,
waiting for a wind, the brother and son of Macdonald of Scothouse came
to see but not to relieve her. Other persons visited the sloop, and
among these one William Tolmy, a tenant of the chief of Macleod, and
who had once been a merchant at Inverness. This was the first person
she had seen who expressed any sympathy with her. He undertook to bear
information of her retreat to her friend and ‘man of business,’ Mr Hope
of Rankeillor, in Edinburgh; but it does not appear that he fulfilled
his promise.
Lady Grange remained in Macdonald’s charge at Heskir nearly two
years—during the first year without once seeing bread, and with no
supply of clothing; obliged, in fact, to live in the same miserable
way as the rest of the family; afterwards some little indulgence was
shown to her. This island was of desolate aspect, and had no inhabitant
besides Macdonald and his wife. The wretchedness of such a situation
for a lady who had been all her life accustomed to the refined society
of a capital may of course be imagined. Macdonald would never allow
her to write to any one; but he went to his landlord, Sir Alexander,
to plead for the indulgences she required. On one of these occasions,
Sir Alexander expressed his regret at having been concerned in such
an affair, and wished he were quit of it. The wonder is how Erskine
should have induced all these men to interest themselves in the
‘sequestration’ of his wife. One thing is here remarkable: they were
all of them friends of the Stuart family, as was Macleod of Macleod,
into whose hands the lady subsequently fell. It therefore becomes
probable that Erskine had at least convinced them that her seclusion
from the world was necessary in some way for the preservation of
political secrets important to them.
In June 1734 a sloop came to Heskir to take away the lady; it was
commanded by a Macleod, and in it she was conveyed to the remotest spot
of ground connected with the British Islands—namely, the isle of St
Kilda, the property of the chief of Macleod, and remarkable for the
simple character of the poor peasantry who occupy it. There cannot, of
course, be a doubt that those who had an interest in the seclusion of
Lady Grange regarded this as a more eligible place than Heskir, in as
far as it was more out of the way, and promised better for her complete
and permanent confinement. In some respects it was an advantageous
change for the lady: the place was not uninhabited, as Heskir very
nearly was; and her domestic accommodation was better. In St Kilda, she
was placed in a house or cottage of two small apartments, tolerably
well furnished, with a girl to wait upon her, and provided with a
sufficiency of good food and clothing. Of educated persons the island
contained not one, except for a short time a Highland Presbyterian
clergyman, named Roderick Maclennan. There was hardly even a person
capable of speaking or understanding the English language within reach.
No books, no intelligence from the world in which she had once lived.
Only once a year did a steward come to collect the rent paid in kind
by the poor people; and by him was the lady regularly furnished with a
store of such articles, foreign to the place, as she needed—usually
a stone of sugar, a pound of tea, six pecks of wheat, and an anker of
spirits.[184] Thus she had no lack of the common necessaries of life;
she only wanted society and freedom. In this way she spent seven dreary
years in St Kilda. How she contrived to pass her time is not known.
We learn, however, some particulars of her history during this period
from the testimony of those who had a charge over her. If this is to be
believed, she made incessant efforts, though without effect, to bribe
the islanders to assist in liberating her. Once a stray vessel sent a
boat ashore for water; she no sooner heard of it than she despatched
the minister’s wife to apprise the sailors of her situation, and
entreat them to rescue her; but Mrs Maclennan did not reach the spot
till after they had departed. She was kind to the peasantry, giving
them from her own stores, and sometimes had the women to come and
dance before her; but her temper and habits were not such as to gain
their esteem. Often she drank too much; and whenever any one near her
committed the slightest mistake, she would fly into a furious passion,
and even resort to violence. Once she was detected in an attempt,
during the night, to obtain a pistol from above the steward’s bed,
in the room next to her own. On his awaking and seeing her, she ran
off to her own bed. One is disposed, of course, to make all possible
allowances for a person in her wretched circumstances; yet there can be
little doubt, from the evidence before us, that it was a natural and
habitual violence of temper which displayed itself during her residence
in St Kilda.
Meanwhile it was known in Edinburgh that Lady Grange had been forcibly
carried away and placed in seclusion by orders of her husband; but
her whereabouts was a mystery to all besides a few who were concerned
to keep it secret. During the years which had elapsed since her
abduction, Mr Erskine had given up his seat on the bench, and entered
into political life as a friend of the Prince of Wales and opponent
of Sir Robert Walpole. The world had wondered at the events of his
domestic life, and several persons denounced the singular means he
had adopted for obtaining domestic peace. But, in the main, he stood
as well with society as he had ever done. At length, in the winter of
1740-41, a communication from Lady Grange for the first time reached
her friends. It was brought by the minister Maclennan and his wife, who
had left the island in discontent, after quarrelling with Macleod’s
steward. The idea of a lady by birth and education being immured for a
series of years in an outlandish place where only the most illiterate
peasantry resided, and this by the command of a husband who could only
complain of her irritable temper, struck forcibly upon public feeling,
and particularly upon the mind of Lady Grange’s legal agent, Mr Hope
of Rankeillor, who had all along felt a keen interest in her fate. Of
Mr Hope it may be remarked that he was also a zealous Jacobite; yet,
though all the persons engaged in the lady’s abduction were of that
party, he hesitated not to take active measures on the contrary side.
He immediately applied to the Lord Justice-clerk (supreme criminal
judge) for a warrant to search for and liberate Lady Grange. This
application was opposed by the friends of Mr Erskine, and eventually
it was defeated; yet he was not on that account deterred from hiring
a vessel, and sending it with armed men to secure the freedom of the
lady—a step which, as it was illegal and dangerous, obviously implied
no small risk on his own part. This ship proceeded no farther than the
harbour called the Horse-shoe, in Lorn (opposite to the modern town of
Oban), where the master quarrelled with and set on shore Mrs Maclennan,
his guide. Apparently the voyage was not prosecuted in consequence of
intelligence being received that the lady had been removed to another
place, where she was kept in more humane circumstances. If so, its
object might be considered as in part at least, though indirectly,
accomplished.
I have seen a warrant, signed in the holograph of Normand Macleod—the
same insular chief who, a few years after, lost public respect in
consequence of his desertion of the Jacobite cause, and showing an
active hostility to Prince Charles when in hiding. The document is
dated at Dunvegan, February 17, 1741, and proceeds upon a rumour which
has reached the writer that a certain gentlewoman, called Lady Grange,
was carried to his isle of St Kilda in 1734, and has ever since been
confined there under cruel circumstances. Regarding this as a scandal
which he is bound to inquire into (as if it could have hitherto been a
secret to him), he orders his baron-bailie of Harris, Donald Macleod of
Bernera (this was a gallant fellow who went out in the ’Forty-five), to
proceed to that island and make the necessary investigations. I have
also seen the original precognition taken by honest Donald six days
thereafter, when the various persons who had been about Lady Grange
gave evidence respecting her. The general bearing of this testimony,
besides establishing the fact of her confinement as a prisoner, is to
the effect that she was treated well in all other respects, having
a house forty feet long, with an inner room and a chimney to it, a
curtained bed, arm-chair, table, and other articles; ample store of
good provisions, including spirits; and plenty of good clothes; but
that she was addicted to liquor, and liable to dreadful outbreaks of
anger. Evidence was at the same time taken regarding the character of
the Maclennans, upon whose reports Mr Hope had proceeded. It was Mr
Erskine’s interest to establish that they were worthless persons, and
to this effect strong testimony was given by several of the islanders,
though it would be difficult to say with what degree of verity. The
whole purpose of these precognitions was to meet the clamours raised by
Mr Hope as to the barbarities to which Lady Grange had been subjected.
They had the effect of stopping for a time the legal proceedings
threatened by that gentleman; but he afterwards raised an action in the
Court of Session for payment of the arrears of aliment or allowance due
to the lady, amounting to £1150, and obtained decreet or judgment in
the year 1743 against the defender in absence, though he did not choose
to put it in force.
The unfortunate cause of all these proceedings ceased to be a trouble
to any one in May 1745. Erskine, writing from Westminster, June 1, in
answer to an intimation of her death, says: ‘I most heartily thank
you, my dear friend, for the timely notice you gave me of the death
of _that person_. It would be a ridiculous untruth to pretend grief
for it; but as it brings to my mind a train of various things for many
years back, it gives me concern. Her retaining wit and facetiousness to
the last surprises me. These qualities none found in her, no more than
common-sense or good-nature, before she went to these parts; and of the
reverse of all which, if she had not been irrecoverably possest, in
an extraordinary and insufferable degree, after many years’ fruitless
endeavours to reclaim her, she had never seen these parts. I long for
the particulars of her death, which, you are pleased to tell me, I am
to have by next post.’
Mr Hope’s wife and daughters being left as heirs of Lady Grange, an
action was raised in their name for the £1150 formerly awarded, and
for three years additional of her annuity; and for this compound sum
decreet was obtained, which was followed by steps for forcing payment.
The Hopes were aware, however, of the dubious character of this claim,
seeing that Mr Erskine, from whatever causes, had substituted an actual
subsistence since 1732. They accordingly intimated that they aimed
at no personal benefit from Lady Grange’s bequest; and the affair
terminated in Mr Erskine reimbursing Mr Hope for all the expenses he
had incurred on behalf of the lady, including that for the sloop which
he had hired to proceed to St Kilda for her rescue.
It is humbly thought that this story casts a curious and faithful
light upon the age of our grandfathers, showing things in a kind of
transition from the sanguinary violence of an earlier age to the
humanity of the present times. Erskine, not to speak of his office of a
judge in Scotland, moved in English society of the highest character.
He must have been the friend of Lyttelton, Pope, Thomson, and other
ornaments of Frederick’s court; and as the brother-in-law of the
Countess of Mar, who was sister of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, he would
figure in the brilliant circle which surrounded that star of the age of
the second George. Yet he does not appear to have ever felt a moment’s
compunction at leaving the mother of his children to pine and fret
herself to death in a half-savage wilderness—
‘Placed far amidst the melancholy main;’
for in a paper which expresses his feelings on the subject pretty
freely, he justifies the ‘sequestration’ as a step required by prudence
and decency; and in showing that the gross necessaries of life were
afforded to his wife, seems to have considered that his whole duty
towards her was discharged. Such an insensibility could not be peculiar
to one man: it indicates the temper of a class and of an age. While
congratulating ourselves on the improved humanity of our own times,
we may glance with satisfaction to the means which it places in our
power for the proper treatment of patients like Mrs Erskine. Such a
woman would now be regarded as the unfortunate victim of disease, and
instead of being forcibly carried off under cloud of night by a band
of Highlanders, and committed to confinement on the outskirts of the
world, she would, with proper precautions, be remitted to an asylum,
where, by gentle and rational management, it might be hoped that she
would be restored to mental health, or, at the worst, enabled to
spend the remainder of her days in the utmost comfort which her state
admitted of.
* * * * *
[1868.—About the middle of Cant’s Close,[185] on the west side,
there exists a remarkable edifice, different from all others in the
neighbourhood. It is two stories in height, the second story being
reached by an outside stone stair within a small courtyard, which had
originally been shut in by a gate. The stone pillars of the gateway are
decorated with balls at the top, as was the fashion of entrances to the
grounds of a country mansion. The building is picturesque in character,
in the style of the sixteenth century in Scotland. As it resembles a
neat, old-fashioned country-house, one wonders to find it jammed up
amidst tall edifices in this confined alley. Ascending the stair, we
find that the interior consists of three or four apartments, with
handsome panelled walls and elaborately carved stucco ceilings. The
principal room has a double window on the west to Dickson’s Close.[186]
[Illustration: Old Mansion, Cant’s Close.]
Daniel Wilson, in his _Memorials of Edinburgh_, speaks of this building
in reference to Dickson’s Close. He says: ‘A little lower down the
close on the same side, an old and curious stone tenement bears on
its lower crow-step the Haliburton arms, impaled with another coat,
on one shield. It is a singularly antique and time-worn edifice,
evidently of considerable antiquity. A curious double window projects
on a corbelled base into the close, while the whole stone-work is so
much decayed as greatly to add to its picturesque character. In the
earliest deed which exists, bearing date 1582, its first proprietor,
Master James Halyburton—a title then of some meaning—is spoken of in
indefinite terms as _umq^{le}_, or deceased; so that it is a building
probably of the early part of the sixteenth century.’ It is known that
the adjoining properties on the north once pertained to the collegiate
church of Crichton; while those on the east, in Strichen’s Close,
comprehended the town residence of the Abbot of Melrose, 1526.
The adjoining woodcut [p. 221] will give some idea of this strange
old mansion in Cant’s Close, with its gateway and flight of steps. In
looking over the titles, we find that the tenement was conveyed in
1735 from Robert Geddes of Scotstoun, Peeblesshire, to George Wight, a
burgess of Edinburgh, since which period it has gradually deteriorated;
every apartment, from the ground to the garret, is now a dwelling for
a separate family; and the whole surroundings are most wretched. The
edifice formed one of the properties removed under the Improvement Act
of 1867.]
FOOTNOTES
[176] The Canongate seems to have been paved about the same time. In
1535 the king granted to the Abbot of Holyrood a duty of one penny upon
every loaded cart, and a halfpenny upon every empty one, to repair and
maintain the causeway.
[177] George Lockhart of Carnwath lived here in 1753. Afterwards he
resided in Ross House, a suburban mansion, which afterwards was used as
a lying-in hospital. The park connected with this house is now occupied
by George Square. While in Mr Lockhart’s possession Ross House was the
scene of many gay routs and balls.
The Lords Ross, the original proprietors of this mansion, died out in
1754. One of the last persons in Scotland supposed to be possessed
by an evil spirit was a daughter of George, the second last lord. A
correspondent says: ‘A person alive in 1824 told me that, when a child,
he saw her clamber up to the top of an old-fashioned four-post bed
like a cat. In her fits it was almost impossible to hold her. About
the same time, a daughter of Lord Kinnaird was supposed to have the
second-sight. One day, during divine worship in the High Church, she
fainted away; on her recovery, she declared that when Lady Janet Dundas
(a daughter of Lord Lauderdale) entered the pew with Miss Dundas, who
was a beautiful young girl, she saw the latter as it were in a shroud
gathered round her neck, and upon her head. Miss Dundas died a short
time after.’
[178] Both facts from Moyses’s _Memoirs_.
[179] In the house to the north of this was a shop kept by an eccentric
personage, who exhibited a sign bearing this singular inscription:
ORRA THINGS BOUGHT AND SOLD—
which signified that he dealt in odd articles, such as a single
shoe-buckle, one of a pair of skates, a teapot wanting a lid, or
perhaps, as often, a lid _minus_ a teapot; in short, any unpaired
article which was not to be got in the shops where only new things were
sold, and which, nevertheless, was now and then as indispensably wanted
by householders as anything else.
[180] The present article is almost wholly from original sources, a
fact probably unknown to a contemporary novelist, who has made it the
groundwork of a fiction without any acknowledgment. Some additional
particulars may be found in _Tales of the Century_, by John Sobieski
Stuart (Edinburgh, 1846). In the _Spalding Miscellany_, vol. iii., are
several letters of Lord Grange, containing allusions to his wife; and a
production of his, which has been printed under the title of _Diary of
a Senator of the College of Justice_ (Stevenson, Edinburgh, 1833), is
worthy of perusal.
[181] Here and elsewhere a paper in Lord Grange’s own hand is quoted.
[182] ‘Then, and some time before and after, there was a stage-coach
from hence to England.’ So says his lordship; implying that in 1751,
when he was writing, there was no such public conveniency! It had been
tried, and had failed.
[183] If we could believe Lord Lovat, however, he personally was
innocent, and regretted he was innocent, of any association with the
abduction of Lady Grange. ‘They said it was all my contrivance, and
that it was my servants that took her away; but I defyed them then, as
I do now, and do declare to you upon honour, that I do not know what
has become of that woman, where she is or who takes care of her, but if
I had contrived and assisted, and saved my Lord Grange from that devil,
who threatened every day to murder him and his children, I would not
think shame of it before God or man.’—Letter of Lord Lovat’s quoted in
_Genealogie of the Hayes of Tweeddale_.
[184] About four gallons.
[185] Named after John Cant, a pious citizen of the sixteenth century,
who, with his wife, Agnes Kerkettle, was a contributor to the
foundation of the Convent of St Catherine of Siena on the south side of
the Meadows. The district is now known as Sciennes—pronounced _Sheens_.
[186] Only fragments of the ancient buildings remain in Cant’s and
Dickson’s Closes.
ABBOT OF MELROSE’S LODGING.
SIR GEORGE MACKENZIE—LADY ANNE DICK.
In Catholic times several of the great dignitaries of the Church had
houses in Edinburgh, as the Archbishop of St Andrews at the foot
of Blackfriars Wynd, the Bishop of Dunkeld in the Cowgate, and the
Abbot of Cambuskenneth in the Lawnmarket.[187] The Abbot of Melrose’s
‘lodging’ appears from public documents to have been in what is now
called Strichen’s Close, in the High Street, immediately to the west of
Blackfriars Wynd. It had a garden extending down to the Cowgate and up
part of the opposite slope.
[Illustration: Strichen’s Close.]
A successor of the abbot in this possession was Sir George Mackenzie
of Rosehaugh, king’s advocate in the reigns of Charles II. and James
II., and author of several able works in Scottish law, as well as a
successful cultivator of miscellaneous literature. He got a charter
of the property from the magistrates in 1677. The house occupied by
Sir George still exists,[188] and appears to have been a goodly enough
mansion for its time. It is now, however, possessed by a brass-founder
as a place of business. From Sir George the alley was called
Rosehaugh’s Close, till, this house falling by marriage connection into
the possession of Lord Strichen, it got the name of Strichen’s Close,
which it still bears. Lord Strichen was a judge of the Court of Session
for forty-five years subsequent to 1730. He was the direct ancestor of
the present Lord Lovat of the British peerage.
[Illustration: Back of Mackenzie’s House, looking into Cant’s House.]
Mackenzie has still a place in the popular imagination in Edinburgh as
the _Bluidy Mackingie_, his office having been to prosecute the unruly
Covenanters. It therefore happens that the founder of our greatest
national library,[189] one whom Dryden regarded as a friend, and who
was the very first writer of classic English prose in Scotland, is
a sort of Raw-head and Bloody-bones by the firesides of his native
capital. He lies in a beautiful mausoleum, which forms a conspicuous
object in the Greyfriars Churchyard, and which describes him as
an ornament to his age, and a man who was kind to all, ‘except a
rebellious crew, from whose violence, with tongue and pen, he defended
his country and king, whose virulence he stayed by the sword of
justice, and whose ferocity he, by the force of reason, blunted, and
only did not subdue.’ This monument was an object of horror to the good
people of Edinburgh, as it was almost universally believed that the
spirit of the persecutor could get no rest in its superb but gloomy
tenement. It used to be ‘a feat’ for a set of boys, in a still summer
evening, to march up to the ponderous doors, bedropt with white tears
upon a black ground, and cry in at the keyhole:—
‘Bluidy Mackingie, come out if ye daur,
Lift the sneck, and draw the bar!’
after which they would run away as if some hobgoblin were in chase of
them, probably not looking round till they were out of the churchyard.
Sir George Mackenzie had a country-house called Shank, about ten miles
to the south of Edinburgh,[190] now a ruin. One day the Marquis of
Tweeddale, having occasion to consult him about some law business, rode
across the country, and arrived at so early an hour in the morning that
the lawyer was not yet out of bed. Soliciting an immediate audience,
he was admitted to the bedroom, where he sat down and detailed the
case to Sir George, who gave him all necessary counsel from behind the
curtains. When the marquis advanced to present a fee, he was startled
at the apparition of a female hand through the curtains, in an attitude
expressive of a readiness to receive, while no hand appeared on the
part of Sir George. The explanation was that Sir George’s lady, as
has been the case with many a weaker man, took entire charge of his
purse.[191]
Several of the descendants of this great lawyer have been remarkable
for their talents. None, perhaps, possessed more of the _vivida vis
animi_ than his granddaughter, Lady Anne Dick of Corstorphine (also
granddaughter, by the father’s side, to the clever but unscrupulous
‘Tarbat Register,’ the first Earl of Cromarty).[192] This lady excited
much attention in Edinburgh society by her eccentric manners and her
droll pasquinade verses: one of those beings she was who astonish,
perplex, and fidget their fellow-creatures, till at last the world
feels a sort of relief when they are removed from the stage. She made
many enemies by her lampoons; and her personal conduct only afforded
them too good room for revenge. Sometimes she would dress herself in
men’s clothes, and go about the town in search of adventures. One
of her frolics ended rather disgracefully, for she and her maid,
being apprehended in their disguise, were lodged all night in the
Town Guard-house. It may be readily imagined that by those whom her
wit had exasperated such follies would be deeply relished and made
the most of. We must not, therefore, be surprised at Scandal telling
that Lady Anne had at one period lain a whole year in bed, in a vain
endeavour—to baffle _himself_.
Through private channels have oozed out at this late day a few
specimens of Lady Anne’s poetical abilities; less brilliant than might
be expected from the above character of her, yet having a certain air
of dash and _espièglerie_ which looks appropriate. They are partly
devoted to bewailing the coldness of a certain Sir Peter Murray of
Balmanno, towards whom she chose to act as a sort of she-Petrarch,
but apparently in the mere pursuit of whim. One runs in the following
tender strain:
‘Oh, when he dances at a ball,
He’s rarely worth the seeing;
So light he trips, you would him take
For some aërial being!
While pinky-winky go his een,
How blest is each bystander!
How gracefully he leads the fair,
When to her seat he hands her!
But when in accents saft and sweet,
He chants forth _Lizzie Baillie_,
His dying looks and attitude
Enchant, they cannot fail ye.
The loveliest widow in the land,
When she could scarce disarm him,
Alas! the belles in Roxburghshire
Must never hope to charm him!
O happy, happy, happy she,
Could make him change his plan, sir,
And of this rigid bachelor,
Convert the married man, sir:
O happy, and thrice happy she,
Could make him change his plan, sir,
And to the gentle Benedick
Convert the single man, sir,’ &c.
In another, tired, apparently, of the apathy of this sweet youth, she
breaks out as follows:
‘Oh, wherefore did I cross the Forth,
And leave my love behind me?
Why did I venture to the north,
With one that did not mind me?
Had I but visited Carin!
It would have been much better,
Than pique the prudes, and make a din
For careless, cold Sir Peter!
I’m sure I’ve seen a better limb,
And twenty better faces;
But still my mind it ran on him,
When I was at the races.
At night, when we went to the ball,
Were many there discreeter;
The well-bred duke, and lively Maule,
Panmure behaved much better.
They kindly showed their courtesy,
And looked on me much sweeter;
Yet easy could I never be,
For thinking on Sir Peter.
I fain would wear an easy air,
But, oh, it looked affected,
And e’en the fine ambassador
Could see he was neglected.
Though Powrie left for me the spleen,
My temper grew no sweeter;
I think I’m mad—what do I mean,
To follow cold Sir Peter!’
Her ladyship died, without issue, in 1741.
FOOTNOTES
[187] At the head of the Old Bank Close, to the westward; burned down
in 1771.
[188] Only a small portion of this building now remains.
[189] The Advocates’ Library.
[190] In the parish of Borthwick.
[191] This anecdote was related to me by the first Lord Wharncliffe,
grandson’s grandson to Sir George, about 1828.
[192] Cromarty, at seventy, contrived to marry ‘a young and beautiful
countess in her own right, a widow, wealthy, and in universal
estimation. The following distich was composed on the occasion:
Thou sonsie auld carl, the world has not thy like,
For ladies fa’ in love with thee, though thou be ane auld tyke.’
C. K. Sharpe, Notes to _Law’s Memorials_, p. xlvii.
BLACKFRIARS WYND.
PALACE OF ARCHBISHOP BETHUNE—BOARDING-SCHOOLS OF THE LAST
CENTURY—THE LAST OF THE LORIMERS—LADY LOVAT.
Those who now look into Blackfriars Wynd—passing through it is out of
the question—will be surprised to learn that, all dismal and wretched
as it is in all respects, it was once a place of some respectability
and even dignity. On several of its tall old _lands_ may be seen
inscriptions implying piety on the part of the founder—one, for
example:
PAX INTRANTIBUS,
SALUS EXEUNTIBUS;
another:
MISERERE MEI, DEUS;
this last containing in its _upper floor_ all that the adherents of
Rome had forty years ago as a place of worship in Edinburgh—the
chapel to which, therefore, as a matter of course, the late Charles X.
resorted with his suite, when residing as Comte d’Artois in Holyrood
House. The alley gets its name from having been the access to the
Blackfriars’ Monastery on the opposite slope, and being built on their
land.
[Illustration: BLACKFRIARS’ WYND.
PAGE 228.]
PALACE OF ARCHBISHOP BETHUNE [OR BEATON].
At the foot of the wynd, on the east side, is a large mansion of
antique appearance, forming two sides of a quadrangle, with a
_porte-cochère_ giving access to a court behind, and a picturesque
overhanging turret at the exterior angle.[193] This house was built by
James Bethune, Archbishop of Glasgow (1508-1524), chancellor of the
kingdom, and one of the Lords Regent under the Duke of Albany during
the minority of James V. Lyndsay, in his _Chronicles_, speaks of it
as ‘his owen ludging quhilk he biggit in the Freiris Wynd.’ Keith, at
a later period, says: ‘Over the entry of which the arms of the family
of Bethune are to be seen to this day.’ Common report represents it as
the house of Cardinal Bethune, who was the nephew of the Archbishop
of Glasgow; and it is not improbable that the one prelate bequeathed
it to the other, and that it thus became what Maitland calls it, ‘the
archiepiscopal palace belonging to the see of St Andrews.’
[Illustration: Cardinal Bethune’s House.]
The ground-floor of this extensive building is arched over with strong
stone-work, after the fashion of those houses of defence of the same
period which are still scattered over the country. Some years ago, when
one of the arches was removed to make way for a common ceiling, a thick
layer of sand, firmly beaten down, was found between the surface of
the vault and the floor above. Ground-floors thus formed were applied
in former times to inferior domestic uses, and to the storing of
articles of value. The chief apartments for living in were on the floor
above—that is, the so-called _first floor_. And such is the case in
all the best houses of an old fashion in the city of St Andrews at this
day.
I shall afterwards have something to say of an event of the year 1517,
with which Archbishop Bethune’s house was connected. It appears to have
been occupied by James V. in 1528, while he was deliberating on the
propriety of calling a parliament.[194]
The Bethune palace is now, like its confrères, abandoned to the
humblest class of tenants. Eighty years ago, however, it must still
have been a tolerably good house, as it was then the residence of
Bishop Abernethy Drummond, of the Scottish Episcopal communion, the
husband of the heiress of Hawthornden. This worthy divine occupied
some space in the public eye in his day, and was particularly active
in obtaining the repeal of the penal statutes against his church. Some
wag, figuring the surprise in high places at a stir arising from a
quarter so obscure, penned this epigram:
‘Lord Sydney, to the privy-council summoned,
By testy majesty was questioned quick:
“Eh, eh! who, who’s this Abernethy Drummond,
And where, in Heaven’s name, is his bishopric?”’
BOARDING-SCHOOLS OF THE LAST CENTURY.
When the reader hears such things of the Freir Wynd, he must not be
surprised overmuch on perusing the following advertisement from the
_Edinburgh Gazette_ of April 19, 1703: ‘There is a Boarding-school to
be set up in Blackfriars Wynd, in Robinson’s Land, upon the west side
of the wynd, near the middle thereof, in the first door of the stair
leading to the said land, against the latter end of May, or first of
June next, where young Ladies and Gentlewomen may have all sorts of
breeding that is to be had in any part of Britain, and great care taken
of their conversation.’
I know not whether this was the same seminary which, towards the
middle of the century, was kept by a distinguished lady named Mrs
Euphame or Effie Sinclair, who was descended from the ancient family
of Longformacus, in Berwickshire, being the granddaughter of Sir
Robert Sinclair, first baronet of Longformacus, upon whom that dignity
was conferred by King Charles II., in consideration of his services
and losses during the civil war. Mrs Effie was allied to many of
the best families in Scotland, who made it a duty to place their
children under her charge; and her school was thus one of the most
respectable in Edinburgh. By her were educated the beautiful Miss Duff,
afterwards Countess of Dumfries and Stair, and, by a second marriage,
lady of the Honourable Alexander Gordon (Lord Rockville); the late
amiable and excellently well informed Mrs Keith, sister of Sir Robert
Keith, commonly called, from his diplomatic services, _Ambassador
Keith_;[195] the two Misses Hume of Linthill; and Miss Rutherford,
the mother of Sir Walter Scott. All these ladies were Scottish cousins
to Mrs Effie. To judge by the proficiency of her scholars, although
much of what is called accomplishment might be then left untaught, she
must have been possessed of uncommon talents for education; for all
the ladies before mentioned had well-cultivated minds, were fond of
reading, wrote and spelled admirably, were well acquainted with history
and with _belles-lettres_, without neglecting the more homely duties of
the needle and the account-book; and, while two of them were women of
extraordinary talents, all of them were perfectly well-bred in society.
[Illustration]
It may be added that many of these young ladies were sent to reside
with and be _finished off_ by the Honourable Mrs Ogilvie, lady of the
Honourable Patrick Ogilvie of Longmay and Inchmartin, who was supposed
to be the _best-bred_ woman of her time in Scotland (ob. 1753). Her
system was very rigorous, according to the spirit of the times. The
young ladies were taught to sit quite upright; and the mother of
my informant (Sir Walter Scott), even when advanced to nearly her
eightieth year, never permitted her back to touch the chair in sitting.
There is a remarkably good and characteristic anecdote told of the
husband of this rigorous preceptress, a younger brother of the Earl of
Findlater, whose exertions, while Lord High-chancellor of Scotland,
in favour of the Union were so conspicuous. The younger brother, it
appears, had condescended to trade a little in cattle, which was not
considered derogatory to the dignity of a Scottish gentleman at that
time, and was by no means an uncommon practice among them. However,
the earl was offended at the measure, and upbraided his brother for
it. ‘Haud your tongue, man!’ said the cattle-dealer; ‘better sell
nowte than sell nations,’ pronouncing the last word with peculiar and
emphatic breadth.
I am tempted, by the curious and valuable document appended, to suspect
that the female accomplishments of the last century were little behind
those of the present in point of useless elaboration.
‘_Thursday, December 9, 1703._—Near Dundee, at Dudhope, there is
to be taught, by a gentlewoman from London, the following works,
viz.—1. Wax-work of all sorts, as any one’s picture to the life,
figures in shadow glasses, fruits upon trees or in dishes, all manner
of confections, fish, flesh, fowl, or anything that can be made of
wax.—2. Philligrim-work of any sort, whether hollow or flat.—3.
Japan-work upon timber or glass.—4. Painting upon glass.—5. Sashes
for windows, upon sarsnet or transparent paper.—6. Straw-work of any
sort, as houses, birds, or beasts.—7. Shell-work, in sconces, rocks,
or flowers.—8. Quill-work.—9. Gum-work.—10. Transparent-work.—11.
Puff-work.—12. Paper-work.—13. Plate-work on timber, brass,
or glass.—14. Tortoise-shell-work.—15. Mould-work, boxes and
baskets.—16. Silver landskips.—17. Gimp-work.—18. Bugle-work.—19.
A sort of work in imitation of japan, very cheap.—20. Embroidering,
stitching, and quilting.—21. True point or tape lace.—22. Cutting
glass.—23. Washing gauzes, or Flanders lace and point.—24.
Pastry of all sorts, with the finest cuts and shapes that’s now
used in London.—25. Boning fowls, without cutting the back.—26.
Butter-work.—27. Preserving, conserving, and candying.—28. Pickling
and colouring.—29. All sorts of English wines.—30. Writing and
arithmetic.—31. Music, and the great end of dancing, which is a good
carriage; and several other things too tedious here to be mentioned.
Any who are desirous to learn the above works may board with herself at
a reasonable rate, or may board themselves in Dundee, and may come to
her quarterly.’—Advertisement in _Edinburgh Gazette_, 1703.
[Illustration: ‘The great end of dancing.’]
Another distinguished Edinburgh boarding-school of the last century was
kept by two ladies, of Jacobite predilections, named the Misses Ged, in
Paterson’s Court, Lawnmarket. They were remarkable at least for their
family connections, for it was a brother of theirs who, under the name
of Don Patricio Ged, rendered such kindly and effective service to
Commodore Byron, as gratefully recorded in the well-known _Narrative_,
and gracefully touched on by Campbell in the _Pleasures of Hope_:
‘He found a warmer world, a milder clime,
A home to rest, a shelter to defend,
Peace and repose, _a Briton and a friend_.’
Another member of the family, William Ged, originally a goldsmith in
Edinburgh, was the inventor of stereotype printing. The Misses Ged
were described by their friends as of the Geds of Baldridge, near
Dunfermline; thorough Fife Jacobites every one of them. The old ladies
kept a portrait of the Chevalier in their parlour, and looked chiefly
to partisans of the Stuarts for support. They had another relative of
less dignity, who, accepting a situation in the Town-guard, became
liable to satiric reference from Robert Fergusson:
‘Nunc est bibendum, et bendere bickerum magnum,
Cavete Town-guardum, _Dougal Geddum_, atque Campbellum.’
Dougal had been a silversmith, but in his own conceit his red coat as a
Town-guard officer made him completely military. Seeing a lady without
a beau at the door of the Assembly Room, he offered his services, ‘if
the arm of an old soldier could be of any use.’ ‘Hoot awa, Dougal,’
said the lady, accepting his assistance, however; ‘an auld tinkler, you
mean.’
THE LAST OF THE LORIMERS.
To return for a moment to the archiepiscopal palace. It contained,
about eighty years ago, a person calling himself a LORIMER—an
appellative once familiar in Edinburgh, being applied to those who deal
in the ironwork used in saddlery.[196]
LADY LOVAT.
The widow of the rebel Lord Lovat spent a great portion of a long
widowhood and died (1796) in a house at the head of Blackfriars Wynd.
Her ladyship was a niece of the first Duke of Argyll, and born, as
she herself expressed it, in the year _Ten_—that is, 1710. The
politic _Mac Shemus_[197] marked her out as a suitable second wife, in
consideration of the value of the Argyll connection. As he was above
thirty years her senior, and not famed for the tenderest treatment of
his former spouse, or for any other amiable trait of disposition, she
endeavoured, by all gentle means, to avoid the match; but it was at
length effected through the intervention of her relations, and she was
carried north to take her place in the semi-barbarous state which her
husband held at Castle Downie.
Nothing but misery could have been expected from such an alliance. The
poor young lady, while treated with external decorum, was in private
subjected to such usage as might have tried the spirit of a Griselda.
She was occasionally kept confined in a room by herself, from which she
was not allowed to come forth even at meals, only a scanty supply of
coarse food being sent to her from his lordship’s table. When pregnant,
her husband coolly told her that if she brought forth a girl he would
put it on the back of the fire. His eldest son by the former marriage
was a sickly child. Lovat therefore deemed it necessary to raise a
strong motive in the step-mother for the child being taken due care
of during his absence in the Lowlands. On going from home, he would
calmly inform her that any harm befalling _the boys_ in his absence
would be attended with the penalty of her own death, for in that event
he would undoubtedly shoot her through the head. It is added that she
did, from this in addition to other motives, take an unusual degree of
care of her step-son, who ever after felt towards her the tenderest
love and gratitude. One is disposed to believe that there must be some
exaggeration in these stories; and yet when we consider that it is an
historical fact that Lovat applied to Prince Charles for a warrant to
take President Forbes _dead or alive_ (Forbes being his friend and
daily intimate), it seems no extravagance that he should have acted in
this manner to his wife. Sir Walter Scott tells an additional story,
which helps out the picture. ‘A lady, the intimate friend of her youth,
was instructed to visit Lady Lovat, as if by accident, to ascertain
the truth of those rumours concerning her husband’s conduct which had
reached the ears of her family. She was received by Lord Lovat with
an extravagant affectation of welcome, and with many assurances of
the happiness his lady would receive from seeing her. The chief then
went to the lonely tower in which Lady Lovat was secluded, without
decent clothes, and even without sufficient nourishment. He laid a
dress before her becoming her rank, commanded her to put it on, to
appear, and to receive her friend as if she were the mistress of the
house; in which she was, in fact, a naked and half-starved prisoner.
And such was the strict watch which he maintained, and the terror
which his character inspired, that the visitor durst not ask, nor
Lady Lovat communicate, anything respecting her real situation.’[198]
Afterwards, by a letter rolled up in a clew of yarn and dropped over
a window to a confidential person, she was enabled to let her friends
know how matters actually stood; and steps were then taken to obtain
her separation from her husband. When, some years later, his political
perfidy had brought him to the Tower—forgetting all past injuries,
and thinking only of her duty as a wife, Lady Lovat offered to come to
London to attend him. He returned an answer, declining the proposal,
and containing the only expressions of kindness and regard which she
had ever received from him since her marriage.
The singular character of Lord Lovat makes almost every particular
regarding him worth collecting.
[Illustration]
Previous to 1745, when the late Mr Alexander Baillie of Dochfour
was a student at the grammar-school of Inverness, cock-fights were
very common among the boys. This detestable sport, by the way, was
encouraged by the schoolmasters of those days, who derived a profit
from the beaten cocks, or, as they were called, _fugies_, which became,
at the end of every game, their appropriated perquisite. In pursuit of
cocks, Mr Baillie went to visit his friends in the Aird, and in the
course of his researches was introduced to Lord Lovat, whose policy
it was, on all occasions, to show great attentions to his neighbours
and their children. The situation in which his lordship was found by
the schoolboy was, if not quite unprecedented, nevertheless rather
surprising. He was stretched out in bed between two Highland lasses,
who, on being seen, affected out of modesty to hide their faces under
the bedclothes. The old lord accounted for this strange scene by saying
that his blood had become cold, and he was obliged to supply the want
of heat by the application of animal warmth.
It is said that he lay in bed for the most part of the two years
preceding the Rebellion; till, hearing of Prince Charles’s arrival
in Arisaig, he roused himself with sudden vehemence, crying to an
attendant: ‘Lassie, bring me my brogues—I’ll rise _noo_!’
One of his odd fancies was to send a retainer every day to Loch Ness, a
distance of eight miles, for the water he drank.
His intimacy with his neighbour President Forbes is an amusing affair,
for the men must have secretly known full well what each other was, and
yet policy made them keep on decent terms for a long course of years.
Lovat’s son by the subject of this notice—the Honourable Archibald
Campbell Fraser—was a boy at Petty school in 1745. The President
sometimes invited him to dinner. One day, pulling a handful of foreign
gold pieces out of his pocket, he carelessly asked the boy if he had
ever seen such coins before. Here was a stroke worthy of Lovat himself,
for undoubtedly he meant thus to be informed whether the lord of Castle
Downie was accustomed to get remittances for the Chevalier’s cause from
abroad.
After the death of Lord Lovat, there arose some demur about his lady’s
jointure, which was only £190 per annum. It was not paid to her for
several years, during which, being destitute of other resources, she
lived with one of her sisters. Some of her numerous friends—among
the rest, Lord Strichen—offered her the loan of money to purchase
a house and suffice for present maintenance. But she did not choose
to encumber herself with debts which she had no certain prospect of
repaying. At length the dispute about her jointure was settled in a
favourable manner, and her ladyship received in a lump the amount of
past dues, out of which she expended £500 in purchasing a house at the
head of Blackfriars Wynd,[199] and a further sum upon a suite of plain
substantial furniture.
It would surprise a modern dowager to know how much good Lady Lovat
contrived to do amongst her fellow-creatures with this small allowance.
It is said that the succeeding Lady of Lovat, with a jointure of
£4000, was less distinguished for her benefactions. In Lady Lovat’s
dusky mansion, with a waiting-maid, cook, and footboy, she not only
maintained herself in the style of a gentlewoman, but could welcome
every kind of Highland cousin to a plain but hospitable board, and even
afford permanent shelter to several unfortunate friends. A certain
Lady Dorothy Primrose, who was her niece, lived with her for several
years, using the best portion of her house, namely, the rooms fronting
the High Street, while she herself was contented with the duller
apartments towards the _wynd_. There was another desolate old person,
styled Mistress of Elphinstone, whom Lady Lovat supported as a friend
and equal for many years. Not by habit a card-player herself, she would
make up a whist-party every week for the benefit of _the Mistress_.
At length the poor Mistress came to a sad fate. A wicked, perhaps
half-crazy boy, grandson to her ladyship, having taken an antipathy to
his venerable relative, put poison into the oatmeal porridge which she
was accustomed to take at supper. Feeling unwell that night, she did
not eat any, and the Mistress took the porridge instead, of which she
died. The boy was sent away, and died in obscurity.
An unostentatious but sincere piety marked the character of Lady
Lovat. Perhaps her notions of Providence were carried to the verge of
a kind of fatalism; for not merely did she receive all crosses and
troubles as trials arranged for her benefit by a Higher Hand, but when
a neighbouring house on one occasion took fire, she sat unmoved in her
own mansion, notwithstanding the entreaties of the magistrates, who
ordered a sedan to be brought for her removal. She said if her hour
was come, it would be vain to try to elude her fate; and if it was not
come, she would be safe where she was. She had a conscientiousness
almost ludicrously nice. If detained from church on any occasion,
she always doubled her usual oblation at the _plate_ next time. When
her chimney took fire, she sent her fine to the Town-guard before
they knew the circumstance. Even the tax-collector experienced her
ultra-rectitude. When he came to examine her windows, she took him to a
closet lighted by a single pane, looking into a narrow passage between
two houses. He hesitated about charging for such a small modicum of
light, but her ladyship insisted on his taking note of it.[200]
Lady Lovat was of small stature, had been thought a beauty, and
retained in advanced old age much of her youthful delicacy of features
and complexion. Her countenance bore a remarkably sweet and pleasing
expression. When at home, her dress was a red silk gown, with ruffled
cuffs, and sleeves puckered like a man’s shirt; a fly-cap, encircling
the head, with a mob-cap laid across it, falling down over the cheeks,
and tied under the chin; her hair dressed and powdered; a double muslin
handkerchief round the neck and bosom; _lammer-beads_; a white lawn
apron, edged with lace; black stockings with red gushets; high-heeled
shoes.[201] She usually went abroad in a chair, as I have been informed
by the daughter of a lady who was one of the first inhabitants of the
New Town, and whom Lady Lovat regularly visited there once every three
months. As her chair emerged from the head of Blackfriars Wynd, any
one who saw her sitting in it, so neat and fresh and clean, would have
taken her for a queen in waxwork, pasted up in a glass-case.
Lady Lovat was intimate with Lady Jane Douglas; and one of the
strongest evidences in favour of Lord Douglas being the son of that
lady[202] was the following remarkable circumstance: Lady Lovat,
passing by a house in the High Street, saw a child at a window, and
remarked to a friend who was with her: ‘If I thought Lady Jane Douglas
could be in Edinburgh, I would say that was her child—he is so like
her!’ Upon returning home, she found a note from Lady Jane, informing
her that she had just arrived in Edinburgh, and had taken lodgings
in —— Land, which proved to be the house in which Lady Lovat had
observed the child, and that child was young Archibald Douglas. Lady
Lovat was a person of such strict integrity that no consideration
could have tempted her to say what she did not think; and at the time
she saw the child, she had no reason to suppose that Lady Jane was in
Scotland.
Such was the generosity of her disposition that when her grandson
Simon was studying law, she at various times presented him with £50,
and when he was to pass as an advocate she sent him £100. It was
wonderful how she could spare such sums from her small jointure. Whole
tribes of grand-nephews and grand-nieces experienced the goodness of
her heart, and loved her with almost filial affection. She frequently
spoke to them of her misfortunes, and was accustomed to say: ‘I dare
say, bairns, the events of my life would make a good _novelle_; but
they have been of so strange a nature that nobody would believe
them’—meaning that they wanted the _vraisemblance_ necessary in
fiction. She contemplated the approach of death with fortitude, and
in anticipation of her obsequies, had her grave-clothes ready and
the stair whitewashed. Yet the disposal of her poor remains little
troubled her. When asked by her son if she wished to be placed in the
burial-vault at Beaufort, she said: ‘’Deed, Archie, ye needna put
yoursel’ to ony fash about me, for I dinna care though ye lay me aneath
that hearthstane!’ After all, it chanced, from some misarrangements,
that her funeral was not very promptly executed; whereupon a Miss
Hepburn of Humbie, living in a floor above, remarked, ’she wondered
what they were keeping her sae lang for—stinkin’ a’ the stair.’ This
gives some idea of circumstances connected with Old Town life.
The conduct of her ladyship’s son in life was distinguished by a degree
of eccentricity which, in connection with that of his son already
stated, tends to raise a question as to the character of Lord Lovat,
and make us suspect that wickedness so great as his could only result
from a certain unsoundness of mind. It is admitted, however, that the
eldest son, Simon, who rose to be a major-general in the army, was a
man of respectable character. He retained nothing of his father but a
genius for making fine speeches.[203] The late Mrs Murray of Henderland
told me she was present at a supper-party given by some gentleman in
the Horse Wynd, where General Fraser, eating his egg, said to the
hostess: ‘Mrs ——, other people’s eggs overflow with _milk_; but yours
run over with _cream_!’
FOOTNOTES
[193] This historic building was demolished many years ago. Its main
front faced the Cowgate, and to the north and east were extensive
gardens.
[194] In this house, too, Queen Mary was entertained at a banquet given
by the citizens. ‘Upon the nynt day of Februar at evin the Queen’s
grace come up in ane honourable manner fra the palice of Holyrudhouse
to the Cardinal’s ludging in Blackfriars Wynd, ... and efter supper the
honest young men in the town come with ane convoy to her,’ and escorted
her back to Holyrood.—_Diurnal of Occurrents._
Before the opening of the original High School in the grounds of the
Blackfriars’ Monastery the pupils were temporarily accommodated in
Beaton’s palace.
[195] The title ‘Ambassador Keith’ is usually applied to Sir Robert’s
father, who, after several minor diplomatic appointments on the
Continent, was the representative of Great Britain at the court of St
Petersburg. An interesting sketch of him, under the title of ‘Felix,’
by Mrs Cockburn, is appended to the volume of that lady’s _Letters_,
edited by Mr T. Craig Brown. Miss Keith, known to Edinburgh society as
‘Sister Anne,’ was Scott’s ‘Mrs Bethune Balliol’ of the _Chronicles
of the Canongate_. This gentleman was absent from Edinburgh about
twenty-two years, and returned at a time when it was supposed that
manners were beginning to exhibit symptoms of great improvement. He,
however, complained that they were degenerated. In his early time, he
said, every Scottish gentleman of £300 a year travelled abroad when
young, and brought home to the bosom of domestic life, and to the
profession in which it might be his fate to engage, a vast fund of
literary information, knowledge of the world, and genuine good manners,
which dignified his character through life. But towards the year 1770
this practice had been entirely given up, and in consequence a sensible
change was discoverable upon the face of good society. (See the _Life
of John Home_, by Henry Mackenzie, Esq.).
[196] It is curious to observe how, in correspondence with the change
in our manners and customs, one trade has become extinct, while
another succeeded in its place. At the end of the sixteenth century
the manufacture of offensive weapons predominated over all other
trades in Edinburgh. We had then cutlers, whose _essay-piece_, on
being admitted of the corporation, was ‘ane plain finished quhanzear’
or sword; gaird-makers, whose business consisted in fashioning
sword-handles; Dalmascars, who gilded the said weapon; and belt-makers,
who wrought the girdles that bound it to the wearer’s body. There were
also dag-makers, who made hackbuts (short-guns) and dags (pistols).
These various professions all became associated in the general one
of armourers, or gunsmiths, when the wearing of weapons went into
desuetude—there being then no further necessity for the expedition
and expediency of the modern political economist’s boasted ‘division
of labour.’ As the above arts gave way, those which tended to provide
the comforts and luxuries of civilised life gradually arose. About
1586 we find the first notice of locksmiths in Edinburgh, and there
was then only one of the trade, whose essay was simply ‘a kist lock.’
In 1609, however, as the security of property increased, the essay
was ‘a kist lock and a hingand bois lock, with an double plate lock;’
and in 1644 ‘a key and sprent band’ were added to the essay. In 1682
‘a cruik and cruik band’ were further added; and in 1728, for the
safety of the lieges, the locksmith’s essay was appointed to be ‘a
cruik and cruik band, a pass lock with a round filled bridge, not
cut or broke in the backside, with nobs and jamb bound.’ In 1595 we
find the first notice of shearsmiths. In 1609 a heckle-maker was
admitted into the Corporation of Hammermen. In 1613 a tinkler makes
his appearance; Thomas Duncan, the first tinkler, was then admitted.
Pewterers are mentioned so far back as 1588. In 1647 we find the first
knock-maker (_clock-maker_), but so limited was his business that he
was also a locksmith. In 1664 the first white-iron man was admitted;
also the first harness-maker, though lorimers had previously existed.
Paul Martin, a distressed French Protestant, in 1691, was the first
manufacturer of surgical instruments in Edinburgh. In 1720 we find the
first pin-maker; in 1764, the first edge-tool maker and first fish-hook
maker.
[197] The Highland appellative of Lord Lovat, expressing _the son of
Simon_.
[198] _Quarterly Review_, vol. xiv. p. 326.
[199] First door up the stair at the head of the wynd, on the west
side. The house was burnt down in 1824, but rebuilt in its former
arrangement.
[200] [The window-tax was first imposed in 1695, and repealed in 1851.]
[201] An old domestic of her ladyship’s preserved one of her shoes as a
relic for many years. The heel was three inches deep.
[202] [The view of the famous ‘Douglas Cause,’ affirmed in the House of
Lords in 1771.]
[203] Mrs Grant of Laggan held another opinion of General Simon
Fraser. A pleasing exterior covered a large share of the paternal
character—‘No heart was ever harder, no hands more rapacious than
his.’
THE COWGATE.
HOUSE OF GAVIN DOUGLAS THE POET—SKIRMISH OF
CLEANSE-THE-CAUSEWAY—COLLEGE WYND—BIRTHPLACE OF SIR WALTER
SCOTT—THE HORSE WYND—TAM O’ THE COWGATE—MAGDALEN CHAPEL.
Looking at the present state of this ancient street, it is impossible
to hear without a smile the description of it given by Alexander
Alesse about the year 1530—_Ubi nihil est humile aut rusticum, sed
omnia magnifica!_ (‘Where nothing is humble or homely, but everything
magnificent!’) The street was, he tells us, that in which the nobles
and judges resided, and where the palaces of princes were situated. The
idea usually entertained of its early history is that it rose as an
elegant suburb after the year 1460, when the existing city, consisting
of the High Street alone, was enclosed in a wall. It would appear,
however, that some part of it was built before that time, and that it
was in an advanced, if not complete, state as a street not long after.
It was to enclose this esteemed suburb that the city wall was extended
after the battle of Flodden.
HOUSE OF GAVIN DOUGLAS THE POET—SKIRMISH OF CLEANSE-THE-CAUSEWAY.
So early as 1449, Thomas Lauder, canon of Aberdeen, granted an
endowment of 40s. annually to a chaplain in St Giles’s Church, ‘out of
his own house lying in the Cowgaite, betwixt the land of the Abbot of
Melrose on the east, and of George Cochrane on the west.’ This appears
to have been the same Thomas Lauder who was preceptor to James II.,
and who ultimately became Bishop of Dunkeld. We are told that, besides
many other munificent acts, he purchased a lodging in Edinburgh _for
himself and his successors_.[204] That its situation was the same as
that above described appears from a charter of Thomas Cameron, in 1498,
referring to a house on the south side of the Cowgate, ‘betwixt _the
Bishop of Dunkeld’s land on the east_, and William Rappilowe’s on the
west, the common street on the north, and the gait that leads to the
Kirk-of-Field on the south.’
[Illustration: THE COWGATE.
‘Nothing is humble or homely, but everything magnificent!’
PAGE 240.]
From these descriptions we attain a tolerably distinct idea of the site
of the house of the bishops of Dunkeld in Edinburgh, including, of
course, one who is endeared to us from a peculiar cause—Gavin Douglas,
who succeeded to the see in 1516. This house must have stood nearly
opposite to the bottom of Niddry Street, but somewhat to the eastward.
It would have gardens behind, extending up to the line of the present
Infirmary Street.
We thus not only have the pleasure of ascertaining the Edinburgh
whereabouts of one of our most distinguished national poets, but we can
now read, with a somewhat clearer intelligence, a remarkable chapter in
the national history.
It was in April 1520 that the Hamiltons (the party of the Earl of
Arran), with Bethune, Archbishop of Glasgow, called an assembly of
the nobility in Edinburgh, in order to secure the government for the
earl. The rival magnate, the Earl of Angus, soon saw danger to himself
in the great crowds of the Hamilton party which flocked into town.
Indeed warlike courses seem to have been determined on by that side.
Angus sent his uncle, the Bishop of Dunkeld, to caution them against
any violence, and to offer that he should submit to the laws if any
offence were laid to his charge. The reverend prelate, proceeding to
the place of assembly, which was in the archbishop’s house, at the
foot of Blackfriars Wynd, found the Hamilton party obstinate. Thinking
an archbishop could not or ought not to allow strife to take place if
he could help it, he appealed to Bethune, who, however, had actually
prepared for battle by putting on armour under his rochet. ‘Upon my
conscience, my lord,’ said Bethune, ‘I know nothing of the matter,’
at the same time striking his hand upon his breast, which caused the
armour to return a rattling sound. Douglas’s remark was simply, ‘Your
conscience clatters;’ a happy pun for the occasion, clatter being
a Scotch word signifying to tell tales. Gavin then returned to his
lodging, and told his nephew that he must do his best to defend himself
with arms. ‘For me,’ he said, ‘I will go to my chamber and pray for
you.’ With our new light as to the locality of the Bishop of Dunkeld’s
lodging, we now know that Angus and his uncle held their consultations
on this occasion within fifty yards of the house in which the Hamiltons
were assembled. The houses, in fact, nearly faced each other in the
same narrow street.
Angus now put himself at the head of his followers, who, though not
numerous, stood in a compact body in the High Street. They were,
moreover, the favourites of the Edinburgh citizens, who handed spears
from their windows to such as were not armed with that useful weapon.
Presently the Hamiltons came thronging up from the Cowgate, through
narrow lanes, and entering the High Street in separate streams, armed
with swords only, were at a great disadvantage. In a short time the
Douglases had cleared the streets of them, killing many, and obliging
Arran himself and his son to make their escape through the North Loch,
mounted on a coal-horse. Archbishop Bethune, with others, took refuge
in the Blackfriars’ Monastery, where he was seized behind the altar
and in danger of his life, when Gavin Douglas, learning his perilous
situation, flew to save him, and with difficulty succeeded in his
object. Here, too, local knowledge is important. The Blackfriars’
Monastery stood where the High School latterly was, a spot not more
than a hundred yards from the houses of both Bethune and Gavin Douglas.
It would not necessarily require more than five minutes to apprise
Douglas of Bethune’s situation, and bring him to the rescue.
The popular name given to this street battle is
characteristic—_Cleanse-the-Causeway_.
COLLEGE WYND—BIRTHPLACE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT.
The old buildings of the College of Edinburgh, themselves mean, had
for their main access, in former times, only that narrow dismal alley
called the College Wynd,[205] leading up from the Cowgate. Facing
down this humble lane was the gateway, displaying a richly ornamented
architrave. The wynd itself, strange as the averment may now appear,
was the abode of many of the professors. The illustrious Joseph Black
lived at one time in a house adjacent to the College gate, on the east
side, afterwards removed to make way for North College Street.[206]
Another floor of the same building was occupied by Mr Keith, father of
the late Sir Alexander Keith of Ravelston, Bart.; and there did the
late Lord Keith reside in his student days. There was a tradition,
but of a vague nature, that Goldsmith, when studying at the Edinburgh
University, lived in the College Wynd.
[Illustration: OLD HOUSES, COLLEGE WYND.
Near here Sir Walter Scott was born.
PAGE 242.]
The one peculiar glory of this humble place remains to be
mentioned—its being the birthplace of Sir Walter Scott. In the third
floor of the house just described, accessible by an entry leading
to a common stair behind, did this distinguished person first see the
light, August 15, 1771. It was a house of plain aspect, like many of
its old neighbours yet surviving; its truest disadvantage, however,
being in the unhealthiness of the situation, to which Sir Walter
himself used to attribute the early deaths of several brothers and
sisters born before him. When the house was required to give way for
the public conveniency, the elder Scott received a fair price for his
portion of it; he had previously removed to an airier mansion, No. 25
George Square, where Sir Walter spent his boyhood and youth.
[Illustration: 25 George Square.]
In the course of a walk through this part of the town in 1825, Sir
Walter did me the honour to point out the site of the house in which
he had been born. On his mentioning that his father had got a good
price for his share of it, in order that it might be taken down for
the public convenience, I took the liberty of jocularly expressing
my belief that more money might have been made of it, and the public
certainly _much more_ gratified, if it had remained to be shown as the
birthplace of a man who had written so many popular books. ‘Ay, ay,’
said Sir Walter, ‘that is very well; but I am afraid I should have
required to be dead first, and that would not have been so comfortable,
you know.’
In the transition state of the College, from old to new buildings, the
gate at the head of the wynd was shut up by Principal Robertson, who,
however, living within the walls, found this passage convenient as an
access to the town, and used it accordingly. It became the joke of a
day, that from being the principal gate it had become only a gate for
the Principal.[207]
THE HORSE WYND.
This alley, connecting the Cowgate with the grounds on the south side
of the town within the walls, and broad enough for a carriage, is
understood to have derived its name from an inn which long ago existed
at its head, where the Gaelic Church long after stood. Although the
name is at least as old as the middle of the seventeenth century, none
of the buildings appear older than the middle of the eighteenth. They
had all been renewed by people desirous of the benefit of such air as
was to be had in an alley double the usual breadth. Very respectable
members of the bar were glad to have a flat in some of the tall _lands_
on the east side of the wynd.[208]
On the west side of the wynd, about the middle, the Earl of Galloway
had built a distinct mansion, ornamented with vases at top. They kept
a coach and six, and it was alleged that when the countess made calls,
the leaders were sometimes at the door she was going to, when she was
stepping into the carriage at her own door. This may be called a _tour
de force_ illustration of the nearness of friends to each other in Old
Edinburgh.
TAM O’ THE COWGATE.
A court of old buildings, in a massive style of architecture, existed,
previous to 1829, on a spot in the Cowgate now occupied by the southern
piers of George IV. Bridge. In the middle of the last century it was
used as the Excise-office; but even this was a kind of declension
from its original character. It is certain that the celebrated Thomas
Hamilton, first Earl of Haddington, President of the Court of Session,
and Secretary of State for Scotland, lived here at the end of the
sixteenth century, renting the house from Macgill of Rankeillour.[209]
This distinguished person, from the circumstance of his living here,
was endowed by his master, King James, with the nickname of TAM O’ THE
COWGATE, under which title he is now better remembered than by any
other.
The earl, who had risen through high legal offices to the peerage, and
who was equally noted for his penetration as a judge, his industry
as a collector of decisions, and his talent for amassing wealth,
was one evening, after a day’s hard labour in the public service,
solacing himself with a friend over a flask of wine in his house in the
Cowgate[210]—attired, for his better ease, in a nightgown, cap, and
slippers—when he was suddenly disturbed by a great hubbub which arose
under his window in the street. This soon turned out to be a _bicker_
between the High School youths and those of the College; and it also
appeared that the latter, fully victorious, were, notwithstanding a
valiant defence, in the act of driving their antagonists before them.
The Earl of Haddington’s sympathies were awakened in favour of the
retiring party, for he had been brought up at the High School, and
going thence to complete his education at Paris, had no similar reason
to affect the College. He therefore sprang up, dashed into the street,
sided with and rallied the fugitives, and took a most animated share
in the combat that ensued, so that finally the High School youths,
acquiring fresh strength and valour at seeing themselves befriended by
the prime judge and privy-councillor of their country (though not in
his most formidable habiliments), succeeded in turning the scale of
victory upon the College youths, in spite of their superior individual
ages and strength. The earl, who assumed the command of the party, and
excited their spirits by word as well as action, was not content till
he had pursued the Collegianers through the Grassmarket, and out at
the West Port, the gate of which he locked against their return, thus
compelling them to spend the night in the suburbs and the fields. He
then returned home in triumph to his castle of comfort in the Cowgate,
and resumed the enjoyment of his friend and flask. We can easily
imagine what a rare jest this must have been for King Jamie.
[Illustration: A Court of Old Buildings.]
When this monarch visited Scotland in 1617, he found the old statesman
very rich, and was informed that the people believed him to be in
possession of the Philosopher’s Stone; there being no other feasible
mode of accounting for his immense wealth, which rather seemed the
effect of supernatural agency than of worldly prudence or talent. King
James, quite tickled with the idea of the Philosopher’s Stone, and
of so enviable a talisman having fallen into the hands of a Scottish
judge, was not long in letting his friend and gossip know of the story
which he had heard respecting him. The Lord President immediately
invited the king, and the rest of the company present, to come to his
house next day, when he would both do his best to give them a good
dinner and lay open to them the mystery of the Philosopher’s Stone.
This agreeable invitation was of course accepted; and the next day
saw his Cowgate _palazzo_ thronged with king and courtiers, all of
whom the President feasted to their hearts’ content. After dinner
the king reminded him of his Philosopher’s Stone, and expressed his
anxiety to be speedily made acquainted with so rare a treasure, when
the pawky lord addressed His Majesty and the company in a short
speech, concluding with this information, that his whole secret lay
in two simple and familiar maxims—‘Never put off till to-morrow what
can be done to-day; nor ever trust to another’s hand what your own
can execute.’ He might have added, from the works of an illustrious
contemporary:
‘This is the only witchcraft I have used;’
and none could have been more effectual.
A ludicrous idea is obtained from the following anecdote of the
estimation in which the wisdom of the Earl of Haddington was held by
the king, and at the same time, perhaps, of that singular monarch’s
usual mode of speech. It must be understood, by way of prefatory
illustration, that King James, who was the author of the earl’s popular
appellation, ‘_Tam o’ the Cowgate_,’ had a custom of bestowing such
ridiculous _sobriquets_ on his principal councillors and courtiers.
Thus he conferred upon that grave and sagacious statesman, John, Earl
of Mar, the nickname _Jock o’ Sklates_—probably in allusion to some
circumstance which occurred in their young days when they were the
fellow-pupils of Buchanan. On hearing of a meditated alliance between
the Haddington and Mar families, His Majesty exclaimed, betwixt jest
and earnest: ‘The Lord hand a grup o’ me! If Tam o’ the Cowgate’s
son marry Jock o’ Sklates’s daughter, what’s to come o’ _me_?’ The
good-natured monarch probably apprehended that so close a union betwixt
two of his most subtle statesmen might make them too much for their
master—as hounds are most dangerous when they hunt in couples.
The Earl of Haddington died in 1637, full of years and honours. At
Tyningham, the seat of his family, there are two portraits of his
lordship, one a half-length, the other a head; as also his state-dress;
and it is a circumstance too characteristic to be overlooked that in
the crimson-velvet breeches there are no fewer than _nine pockets_!
Among many of the earl’s papers which remain in Tyningham House, one
contains a memorandum conveying a curious idea of the way in which
public and political affairs were then managed in Scotland. The paper
details the heads of a petition in his own handwriting to the Privy
Council, and at the end is a note ‘to _gar_ [that is, make] the
chancellor’ do something else in his behalf.
A younger son of Tam o’ the Cowgate was a person of much ingenuity, and
was popularly known, for what reason I cannot tell, by the nickname
of ‘Dear Sandie Hamilton.’ He had a foundry in the Potterrow, where
he fabricated the cannon employed in the first Covenanting war in
1639. This artillery, be it remarked, was not formed exclusively of
metal. The greater part of the composition was leather; and yet, we
are informed, they did some considerable execution at the battle of
Newburnford, above Newcastle (August 28, 1640), where the Scots drove
a large advanced party of Charles I.’s troops before them, thereby
causing the king to enter into a new treaty. The cannon, which were
commonly called ‘Dear Sandie’s Stoups,’ were carried in swivel fashion
between two horses.
The Excise-office had been removed, about 1730, from the Parliament
Square to the house occupied many years before by Tam o’ the Cowgate.
It afforded excellent accommodations for this important public office.
The principal room on the second floor, towards the Cowgate, was a very
superb one, having a stucco ceiling divided into square compartments,
each of which contained some elegant device. To the rear of the house
was a bowling-green, which the Commissioners of Excise let on lease
to a person of the name of Thomson. In those days bowling was a much
more prevalent amusement than now, being chiefly a favourite with the
graver order of the citizens. There were then no fewer than three
bowling-greens in the grounds around Heriot’s Hospital; one in the
Canongate, near the Tolbooth; another on the opposite side of the
street; another immediately behind the palace of Holyrood House, where
the Duke of York used to play when in Scotland; and perhaps several
others scattered about the outskirts of the town. The arena behind the
Excise-office was called Thomson’s Green, from the name of the man who
kept it; and it may be worth while to remind the reader that it is
alluded to in that pleasant-spirited poem by Allan Ramsay, in imitation
of the _Vides ut alta_ of Horace:
‘Driving their ba’s frae whins or tee,
There’s no ae gouffer to be seen,
Nor doucer folk wysing a-jee
The byas bowls on Tamson’s green.’
The green was latterly occupied by the relict of this Thomson; and
among the bad debts on the Excise books, all of which are yearly
brought forward and enumerated, there still stands a sum of something
more than six pounds against Widow Thomson, being the last half-year’s
rent of _the green_, which the poor woman had been unable to pay.
The north side of Brown’s Square was built upon part of this space
of ground; the rest remained a vacant area for the recreation of the
people dwelling in Merchant Street, until the erection of the bridge,
which has overrun that, as well as every other part of the scene of
this article.[211]
FOOTNOTES
[204] Myln’s _Lives of the Bishops of Dunkeld_. Edinburgh, 1831.
[205] Originally the name was the ‘Wynd of the Blessed Virgin Mary in
the Fields,’ as being the approach to the collegiate church so named
which stood on the site of the University—the ‘Kirk o’ Field’ of the
Darnley tragedy.
[206] Now Chambers Street.
[207] A small ‘bit’ of College Wynd, ending in a _cul de sac_, is all
that remains of this once leading thoroughfare between the city and the
‘Oure Tounis Colledge.’
[208] When it became an unfashionable place of residence it was dubbed
by the fops of the town ‘Cavalry Wynd.’ The northern end of Guthrie
Street is the site of the old Horse Wynd.
[209] Macgill was King’s Advocate to James VI., and is said to have
died of grief when his rival, Thomas Hamilton, was preferred for the
presidentship.
[210] Most of the traditionary anecdotes in this article were
communicated by Charles, eighth Earl of Haddington, through
conversation with Sir Walter Scott, by whom they were directly imparted
to the author.
[211] Near by is the Magdalen Chapel, a curious relic of the sixteenth
century, belonging to the Corporation of Hammermen. It was erected
immediately before the Reformation by a pious citizen, Michael
Macquhan, and Jonet Rhynd, his widow, whose tomb is shown in the floor.
The windows towards the south were anciently filled with stained glass;
and there still remain some specimens of that kind of ornament, which,
by some strange chance, had survived the Reformation. In a large
department at the top of one window are the arms of Mary of Guise,
who was queen-regent at the time the chapel was built. The arms of
Macquhan and his wife are also to be seen. In the lower panes, which
have been filled with small figures of saints, only one remains—a St
Bartholomew—who, by a rare chance, has survived the general massacre.
The whole is now very carefully preserved. When the distinguished
Reformer, John Craig, returned to Scotland at the Reformation, after
an absence of twenty-four years, he preached for some time in this
chapel, in the Latin language, to a select congregation of the learned,
being unable, by long disuse, to hold forth in his vernacular tongue.
This divine subsequently was appointed a colleague to John Knox, and
is distinguished in history for having refused to publish the banns
between Queen Mary and Bothwell, and also for having written the
National Covenant in 1589. Another circumstance in the history of this
chapel is worthy of notice. The body of the Earl of Argyll, after his
execution, June 30, 1685, was brought down and deposited in this place,
to wait till it should be conveyed to the family burying-place at
Kilmun.
ST CECILIA’S HALL.
Few persons now living (1847) recollect the elegant concerts that were
given many years ago in what is now an obscure part of our ancient
city, known by the name of St Cecilia’s Hall. They did such honour to
Edinburgh, nearly for half a century, that I feel myself called on to
make a brief record of them, and am glad to be enabled to do so by a
living authority, one of the most fervent worshippers in the temple of
the goddess. Hear, then, his last _aria parlante_ on this interesting
theme.
[Illustration: St Cecilia’s Hall.]
‘The concerts of St Cecilia’s Hall formed one of the most liberal and
attractive amusements that any city in Europe could boast of. The
hall was built on purpose at the foot of Niddry’s Wynd, by a number
of public-spirited noblemen and gentlemen; and the expense of the
concerts was defrayed by about two hundred subscribers paying two or
three guineas each annually; and so respectable was the institution
considered, that upon the death of a member there were generally
several applications for the vacancy, as is now the case with the
Caledonian Hunt. The concerts were managed by a governor and a set of
six or more directors, who engaged the performers—the principal ones
from Italy, one or two from Germany, and the rest of the orchestra
was made up of English and native artists. The concerts were given
weekly during most of the time that I attended; the instrumental
music consisting chiefly of the concertos of Corelli and Handel, and
the overtures of Bach, Abel, Stamitz, Vanhall, and latterly of Haydn
and Pleyel; for at that time, and till a good many years after, the
magnificent symphonies of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, which now
form the most attractive portions of all public concerts, had not
reached this country. Those truly grand symphonies do not seem likely
to be superseded by any similar compositions for a century to come,
transcending so immensely, as they do, all the orchestral compositions
that ever before appeared; yet I must not venture to prophesy, when I
bear in mind what a powerful influence fashion and folly exercise upon
music, as well as upon other objects of taste. When the overtures and
quartettes of Haydn first found their way into this country, I well
remember with what coldness the former were received by most of the
grave Handelians, while at the theatres they gave delight. The old
concert gentlemen said that his compositions wanted the solidity and
full harmony of Handel and Corelli; and when the celebrated leader—the
elder Cramer—visited St Cecilia’s Hall, and played a spirited charming
overture of Haydn’s, an old amateur next to whom I was seated asked me:
“Whase music is that, now?” “Haydn’s, sir,” said I. “Poor new-fangled
stuff,” he replied; “I hope I shall never hear it again!” Many years
have since rolled away, and mark what some among us now say: A friend,
calling lately on an old lady much in the fashionable circle of
society, heard her give directions to the pianist who was teaching her
nieces to bring them some new and fashionable pieces of music, but
no more of the _unfashionable_ compositions of Haydn! Alas for those
ladies whose taste in music is regulated by fashion, and who do not
know that the music of Haydn is the admiration and delight of all the
real lovers and judges of the art in Europe!
‘The vocal department of our concerts consisted chiefly of the songs of
Handel, Arne, Gluck, Sarti, Jornelli, Guglielmi, Paisiello, Scottish
songs, &c.; and every year, generally, we had an oratorio of Handel
performed, with the assistance of a principal bass and a tenor singer,
and a few chorus-singers from the English cathedrals; together with
some Edinburgh amateurs,[212] who cultivated that sacred and sublime
music; Signor and Signora Domenico Corri, the latter our _prima donna_,
singing most of the principal songs, or most interesting portions of
the music. On such occasions the hall was always crowded to excess by
a splendid assemblage, including all the beauty and fashion of our
city. A supper to the directors and their friends at Fortune’s Tavern
generally followed the oratorio, where the names of the chief beauties
who had graced the hall were honoured by their healths being drunk:
the champion of the lady whom he proposed as his toast being sometimes
challenged to maintain the pre-eminence of her personal charms by
the admirer of another lady filling a glass of double depth to her
health, and thus forcing the champion of the first lady to _say more_
by drinking a still deeper bumper in honour of her beauty; and if
this produced a rejoinder from the other, by his seizing and quaffing
the cup of _largest_ calibre, there the contest generally ended, and
the deepest drinker _saved_ his lady, as it was phrased, although he
might have had some difficulty in saving himself from a flooring while
endeavouring to regain his seat.[213] Miss Burnet of Monboddo and Miss
Betsy Home, reigning beauties of the time, were said more than once to
have been the innocent cause of the fall of man in this way. The former
was gifted with a countenance of heavenly sweetness and expression,
which Guido, had he beheld it, would have sought to perpetuate upon
canvas as that of an angel; while the other lady, quite piquant and
brilliant, might have sat to Titian for a Hebe or one of the Graces.
Miss Burnet died in the bloom of youth, universally regretted both for
her personal charms and the rare endowments of her mind. Miss Home was
happily married to Captain Brown, her ardent admirer, who had made her
his _toast_ for years, and vowed he would continue to do so till he
toasted her _Brown_. This sort of exuberant loyalty to beauty was by no
means uncommon at the convivial meetings of those days, when “time had
not thinned our flowing hair, nor bent us with his iron hand.”
‘Let me call to mind a few of those whose lovely faces at the concerts
gave us the sweetest zest for the music. Miss Cleghorn of Edinburgh,
still living in single-blessedness; Miss Chalmers of Pittencrief, who
married Sir William Miller of Glenlee, Bart.; Miss Jessie Chalmers
of Edinburgh, who was married to Mr Pringle of Haining; Miss Hay of
Hayston, who married Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo, Bart.; Miss Murray
of Lintrose, who was called the _Flower of Strathmore_, and upon whom
Burns wrote the song:
“Blithe, blithe, and merry was she,
Blithe was she but and ben;
Blithe by the banks of the Earn,
And blithe in Glenturit Glen.”
She married David Smith, Esq. of Methven, one of the Lords of
Session; Miss Jardine of Edinburgh, who married Mr Home Drummond of
Blairdrummond—their daughter, if I mistake not, is now the Duchess
of Athole; Miss Kinloch of Gilmerton, who married Sir Foster Cunliffe
of Acton, Bart.; Miss Lucy Johnston of East Lothian, who married Mr
Oswald of Auchincruive; Miss Halket of Pitferran, who became the wife
of the celebrated Count Lally-Tollendal; and Jane, Duchess of Gordon,
celebrated for her wit and spirit, as well as for her beauty. These,
with Miss Burnet and Miss Home, and many others whose names I do not
distinctly recollect, were indisputably worthy of all the honours
conferred upon them. But beauty has tempted me to digress too long from
my details relative to the hall and its concerts, to which I return.
‘The hall [built in 1762 from a design of Mr Robert Mylne, after the
model of the great opera theatre of Parma] was an exact oval, having
a concave elliptical ceiling, and was remarkable for the clear and
perfect conveyance of sounds, without responding echoes, as well as for
the judicious manner in which the seating was arranged. In this last
respect, I have seen no concert-room equal to it either in London or
Paris. The orchestra was erected at the upper end of the hall, opposite
to the door of entrance; a portion of the area, in the centre or widest
part, was without any seats, and served as a small promenade, where
friends could chat together during the intervals of performance. The
seats were all _fixed_ down on both sides of the hall, and each side
was raised by a gradual elevation from the level area, backward, the
rows of seats behind each other, till they reached a passage a few
feet broad, that was carried quite round the hall behind the last of
the elevated seats; so that when the audience was seated, each half of
it fronted the other—an arrangement much preferable to that commonly
adopted, of placing all the seats upon a _level_ behind each other,
for thus the whole company must look one way, and see each other’s
_backs_. A private staircase at the upper end of the hall, not seen by
the company, admitted the musicians into the orchestra; in the front
of which stood a harpsichord, with the singers, and the principal
violoncellist; and behind these, on a platform a little elevated, were
the violins, and other stringed and wind instruments, just behind which
stood a noble organ. The hall, when filled, contained an audience of
about four hundred. No money was taken for admission, tickets being
given gratis to the lovers of music, and to strangers. What a pity
that such a liberal and gratifying institution should have ceased to
exist! But after the New Town arose, the Old was deserted by the
upper classes: the hall was too small for the increased population,
and concerts were got up at the Assembly Rooms and Corri’s Rooms by
the professional musicians, and by Corri himself. Now a capacious
Music Hall is erected behind the Assembly Rooms, where a pretty good
subscription concert is carried on; and from the increased facility of
intercourse between Paris, London, and Edinburgh, it seems probable
that concerts by artists of the highest talents will ere long be set on
foot in Edinburgh in this fine hall, diversified sometimes by oratorios
or Italian operas.
‘Before concluding this brief memoir of St Cecilia’s Hall Concerts, I
shall mention the chief performers who gave attractions to them. These
were Signor and Signora Domenico Corri, from Rome; he with a falsetto
voice, which he managed with much skill and taste; the signora with a
fine, full-toned, flexible soprano voice. Tenducci, though not one of
the band, nor resident among us, made his appearance occasionally when
he came to visit the Hopetoun family, his liberal and steady patrons;
and while he remained he generally gave some concerts at the hall,
which made quite a sensation among the musicals. I considered it a
jubilee year whenever Tenducci arrived, as no singer I ever heard sang
with more expressive simplicity, or was more efficient, whether he sang
the classical songs of Metastasio, or those of Arne’s _Artaxerxes_, or
the simple melodies of Scotland. To the latter he gave such intensity
of interest by his impassioned manner, and by his clear enunciation of
the words, as equally surprised and delighted us. I never can forget
the pathos and touching effect of his _Gilderoy_, _Lochaber no more_,
_The Braes of Ballenden_, _I’ll never leave thee_, _Roslin Castle_,
&c. These, with the _Verdi prati_ of Handel, _Fair Aurora_ from
Arne’s _Artaxerxes_, and Gluck’s _Che faro_, were above all praise.
Miss Poole, Mr Smeaton, Mr Gilson, and Mr Urbani were also for a time
singers at the hall—chiefly of English and Scottish songs.
‘In the instrumental department we had Signor Puppo, from Rome or
Naples, as leader and violin concerto player, a most capital artist;
Mr Schetky, from Germany, the principal violoncellist, and a fine
solo concerto player; Joseph Reinagle, a very clever violoncello and
viola player; Mr Barnard, a very elegant violinist; Stephen Clarke,
an excellent organist and harpsichord player; and twelve or fifteen
violins, basses, flutes, violas, horns, and clarionets, with extra
performers often from London. Upon the resignation of Puppo, who
charmed all hearers, Stabilini succeeded him, and held the situation
till the institution was at an end: he had a good round tone, though,
to my apprehension, he did not exceed mediocrity as a performer.
‘But I should be unpardonable if I omitted to mention the most
accomplished violin-player I ever heard, Paganini only excepted—I
mean Giornovicki, who possessed in a most extraordinary degree
the various requisites of his beautiful art: execution peculiarly
brilliant, and finely articulated as possible; a tone of the richest
and most exquisite quality; expression of the utmost delicacy, grace,
and tenderness; and an animation that commanded your most intense and
eager attention. Paganini did not appear in Edinburgh till [thirty
years] after the hall was closed. There, as well as at private parties,
I heard Giornovicki often, and always with no less delight than I
listened to Paganini.[214] Both, if I may use the expression, threw
their whole hearts and souls into their Cremonas, bows, and fingers.
“Hall of sweet sounds, adieu, with all thy fascinations of langsyne,
My dearest reminiscences of music all are thine.”’
_G. T. Octogenarius Edinburgensis_, Feb. 1847.[215]
Stabilini, to whom our dear G. T. refers, and who died in 1815, much
broken down by dissipation, was obliged, against his will, to give
frequent attendance at the private concerts of one of these gentlemen
performers, where Corelli’s trios were in great vogue. There was always
a capital supper afterwards, at which Stab (so he was familiarly
called) ate and drank for any two. A waggish friend, who knew his
opinion of Edinburgh amateurs, meeting him next day, would ask: ‘Well,
Mr Stabilini, what sort of music had you the other night at ——
——’s?’
‘Vera good soaper, sir; vera good soaper!’
‘But tell us the verse you made about one of these parties.’
Stabilini, twitching up his shirt-collar, a common trick of his, would
say:
‘A piece ov toarkey for a hungree bellee
Is moatch sup_eer_ior to Corelli!’
The accent, the manner, the look with which this was delivered, is said
to have been beyond expression rich.
It is quite remarkable, when we consider the high character of the
popular melodies, how late and slow has been the introduction of a
taste for the higher class of musical compositions into Scotland. The
Earl of Kelly, a man of yesterday, was the first Scotsman who ever
composed music for an orchestra.[216] This fact seems sufficient. It
is to be feared that the beauty of the melodies is itself partly to
be blamed for the indifference to higher music. There is too great
a disposition to rest with the distinction thus conferred upon the
nation; too many are content to go no further for the enjoyments which
music has to give. It would be well if, while not forgetting those
beautiful simple airs, we were more generally to open our minds to the
still richer charms of the German and the Italian muses.
FOOTNOTES
[212] The amateurs who took the lead as choristers were Gilbert
Innes, Esq. of Stow; Alexander Wight, Esq., advocate; Mr John Hutton,
papermaker; Mr John Russel, W.S.; and Mr George Thomson. As an
instrumentalist, we could boast of our countryman the Earl of Kelly,
who also composed six overtures for an orchestra, one of which I heard
played in the hall, himself leading the band.
[213] See a different account of this custom, p. 147.
[214] [‘John M. Giornovicki, commonly known in Britain under the name
of Jarnowick, was a native of Palermo. About 1770 he went to Paris,
where he performed a concerto of his famous master Lolli, but did not
succeed. He then played one of his own concertos, that in A major, and
became quite the fashion. The style of Giornovicki was highly elegant
and finished, his intonation perfect, and his taste pure. The late
Domenico Dragonetti, one of the best judges in Europe, told me that
Giornovicki was the most elegant and graceful violin-player he had ever
heard before Paganini, but that he wanted power. He seems to have been
a dissipated and passionate man; a good swordsman too, as was common in
those days. One day, in a dispute, he struck the Chevalier St George,
then one of the greatest violin-players and best swordsmen in Europe.
St George said coolly: “I have too much regard for his musical talent
to fight him.” A noble speech, showing St George in all respects the
better man. Giornovicki died suddenly at St Petersburg in 1804.’—G. F.
G.]
[215] G. T., it may now be explained, was George Thomson, the
well-known and generally loved editor of the _Melodies of Scotland_.
He might rather have described himself as _Nonogenarius_, for at his
death, in 1851, he had reached the age of ninety-four, his violin, as
he believed, having prolonged his life much beyond the usual term.
[216] The earl was the leader of the amateur orchestra of St Cecilia’s
Hall, which included Lord Colville, Sir John Pringle, Mr Seton of
Pitmedden, General Middleton, Lord Elcho, Sir Gilbert Elliot, Mrs
Forbes of Newhall, and others of the aristocracy. General Middleton was
credited with ‘singing a song with much humour,’ which he sometimes
accompanied with a key and tongs. Sir Gilbert Elliot, who played the
German flute, was the first to introduce that instrument to a Scottish
audience. St Cecilia’s Hall has passed through many vicissitudes since
then, and is now a bookbinder’s warehouse, but its fine ceiling and the
orchestral balcony at the southern end are still preserved as memorials
of its early days.
THE MURDER OF DARNLEY.
While this event is connected with one of the most problematical points
in our own history, or that of any other nation, it chances that the
whole topography of the affair is very distinctly recorded. We know not
only the exact spot where the deed was perpetrated, but almost every
foot of the ground over which the perpetrators walked on their way to
execute it. It is chiefly by reason of the depositions and confessions
brought out by the legal proceedings against the inferior instruments
that this minute knowledge is attained.
The house in which the unfortunate victim resided at the time was one
called the Prebendaries’ Chamber, being part of the suite of domestic
buildings connected with the collegiate church of St-Mary-in-the-Fields
(usually called the _Kirk o’ Field_). Darnley was brought to lodge
here on the 30th of January 1566-7. He had contracted the smallpox
at Glasgow, and it was thought necessary, or pretended to be thought
necessary, to lodge him in this place for air, as also to guard against
infecting the infant prince, his son, who was lodged in Holyrood House.
The house, which then belonged, by gift, to a creature of the Earl
of Bothwell, has been described as so very mean as to excite general
surprise. Yet, speaking by comparison, it does not appear to have been
a bad temporary lodging for a person in Darnley’s circumstances. It
consisted of two stories, with a _turnpike_ or spiral staircase behind.
The gable adjoined to the town-wall, which there ran in a line east and
west, and the cellar had a postern opening through that wall. In the
upper floor were a chamber and closet, with a little gallery having a
window also through the town-wall.[217] Here Darnley was deposited
in an old purple travelling-bed. Underneath his room was an apartment
in which the queen slept for one or two nights before the murder took
place. On the night of Sunday, February 9, she was attending upon her
husband in his sick-room, when the servants of the Earl of Bothwell
deposited the powder in her room, immediately under the king’s bed. The
queen afterwards took her leave, in order to attend the wedding of two
of her servants at the palace.
It appears, from the confessions of the wretches executed for this
foul deed, that as they returned from depositing the powder they saw
‘the Queenes grace gangand before thame with licht torches up the
Black Frier Wynd.’ On their returning to Bothwell’s lodging at the
palace, that nobleman prepared himself for the deed by changing his
gay suit of ‘hose, stockit with black velvet, passemented with silver,
and doublett of black satin of the same maner,’ for ‘ane uther pair
of black hose,[218] and ane canvas doublet white, and tuke his syde
[long] riding-cloak about him, of sad English claith, callit the new
colour.’ He then went, attended by Paris, the queen’s servant, Powry,
his own porter, Pate Wilson, and George Dalgleish, ‘downe the turnepike
altogedder, and along the bak of the Queene’s garden, till you come to
the bak of the cunyie-house [mint], and the bak of the stabbillis, till
you come to the Canongate fornent the Abbey zett.’ After passing up
the Canongate, and gaining entry with some difficulty by the Netherbow
Port, ‘thai gaid up abone Bassentyne’s hous on the south side of
the gait,[219] and knockit at ane door beneath the sword slippers,
and callit for the laird of Ormistounes, and one within answerit he
was not thair; and thai passit down a cloiss beneath the Frier Wynd
[_apparently Toddrick’s Wynd_], and enterit in at the zett of the Black
Friers, till thay came to the back wall and dyke of the town-wall,
whair my lord and Paris past in over the wall.’ The explosion took
place soon after, about two in the morning. The earl then came back
to his attendants at this spot, and ‘thai past all away togidder out
at the Frier zett, and sinderit in the Cowgait.’ It is here evident
that the alley now called the High School Wynd was the avenue by which
the conspirators approached the scene of their atrocity. Bothwell
himself, with part of his attendants, went up the same wynd ‘be east
the Frier Wynd,’ and crossing the High Street, endeavoured to get out
of the city by leaping a broken part of the town-wall in Leith Wynd,
but finding it too high, was obliged to rouse once more the porter at
the Netherbow. They then passed—for every motion of the villains has a
strange interest—down St Mary’s Wynd, and along the south back of the
Canongate to the earl’s lodgings in the palace.
[Illustration: High School Wynd.]
The house itself, by this explosion, was destroyed, ‘_even_,’ as the
queen tells in a letter to her ambassador in France, ‘_to the very
grund-stane_.’ The bodies of the king and his servant were found next
morning in a garden or field on the outside of the town-wall. The
buildings connected with the Kirk o’ Field were afterwards converted
into the College of King James, now our Edinburgh University. The hall
of the Senatus in the new buildings occupies nearly the exact site
of the Prebendaries’ Chamber, the ruins of which are laid down in De
Witt’s map of 1648.
FOOTNOTES
[217] About seventy paces to the east of the site of the Prebendaries’
Chamber, and exactly opposite to the opening of Roxburgh Place, was a
projection in the wall, which has been long demolished and the wall
altered. Close, however, to the west of the place, and near the ground,
are some remains of an arch in the wall, which Malcolm Laing supposes
to have been a gun-port connected with the projection at this spot.
It certainly has no connection, as Arnot and (after him) Whitaker
have supposed, with the story of Darnley’s murder. [This relic of the
Flodden wall is now removed, but a portion of the wall itself still
stands behind the houses at the north-east junction of Drummond Street
and the Pleasance. Another portion was recently discovered at the east
end of Lothian Street, between that street and the Royal Scottish
Museum. Another part forms the north side of a _cul de sac_ at Lindsay
Place, and at the Vennel is the largest part of this old wall, with
one of its few towers, forming the western boundary of the grounds of
Heriot’s Hospital.]
[218] Hose in those days covered the whole of the lower part of the
person.
[219] This indicates pretty nearly the site of the house of Bassendyne,
the early printer. It must have been opposite, or nearly opposite, to
the Fountain Well.
MINT CLOSE.
THE MINT—ROBERT CULLEN—LORD CHANCELLOR LOUGHBOROUGH.
The _Cunyie House_, as the Scottish Mint used to be called, was near
Holyrood Palace in the days of Queen Mary. In the regency of Morton a
large house was erected for it in the Cowgate, where it may still be
seen,[220] with the following inscription over the door:
BE. MERCYFULL. TO. ME. O. GOD. 1574.
In the reign of Charles II. other buildings were added behind, forming
a neat quadrangle; and here was the Scottish coin produced till the
Union, when a separate coinage was given up and this establishment
abandoned; though, to gratify prejudice, the offices were still kept
up as sinecures. This court with its buildings was a sanctuary for
persons prosecuted for debt, as was the King’s Stables, a mean place at
the west end of the Grassmarket. There was, however, a small den near
the top of the oldest building, lighted by a small window looking up
the Cowgate, which was used as a jail for debtors or other delinquents
condemned by the Mint’s own officers.
In the western portion of the old building, accessible by a stair from
the court, is a handsome room with an alcove ceiling, and lighted
by two handsomely proportioned windows, which is known to have been
the council-room of the Mint, being a portion of the private mansion
of the master. Here, in May 1590, on a Sunday evening, the town of
Edinburgh entertained the Danish lords who accompanied James VI. and
his queen from her native court—namely, Peter Monk, the admiral of
Denmark; Stephen Brahe, captain of Eslinburg [perhaps a relative of
Tycho?]; Braid Ransome Maugaret; Nicholaus Theophilus, Doctor of Laws;
Henry Goolister, captain of Bocastle; William Vanderwent; and some
others. For this banquet, ‘maid in Thomas Aitchinsoune, master of the
cunyie-house lugeing,’ it was ordered ‘that the thesaurer caus by and
lay in foure punsheouns wyne; John Borthuik baxter to get four bunnis
of beir, with foure gang of aill, and to furneis breid; Henry Charteris
and Roger Macnacht to caus hing the hous with tapestrie, set the
burdis, furmis, chandleris [_candlesticks_], and get flowris; George
Carketill and Rychert Doby to provyde the cupbuirds and men to keep
thame; and my Lord Provest was content to provyde naprie and twa dozen
greit veschell, and to avance ane hunder pund or mair, as thai sall
haif a do.’
In the latter days of the Mint as an active establishment, the
coining-house was in the ground-floor of the building, on the north
side of the court; in the adjoining house, on the east side, was
the finishing-house, where the money was polished and fitted for
circulation. The chief instruments used in coining were a hammer and
steel dies, upon which the device was engraved. The metal, being
previously prepared of the proper fineness and thickness, was cut into
longitudinal slips, and a square piece being cut from the slip, it
was afterwards rounded and adjusted to the weight of the money to be
made. The blank pieces of metal were then placed between two dies, and
the upper one was struck with a hammer. After the Restoration another
method was introduced—that of the mill and screw, which, modified
by many improvements, is still in use. At the Union, the ceremony of
destroying the dies of the Scottish coinage took place in the Mint.
After being heated red-hot in a furnace, they were defaced by three
impressions of a broad-faced _punch_, which were of course visible on
the dies as long as they existed; but it must be recorded that all
these implements, which would now have been great curiosities, are
lost, and none of the machinery remains but the press, which, weighing
about half a ton, was rather too large to be readily appropriated, or
perhaps it would have followed the rest.
The floors over the coining-house—bearing the letters, C. R. II.,
surmounting a crown, and the legend, GOD SAVE THE KING, 1674,
originally the mansion of the master—were latterly occupied by the
eminent Dr Cullen, whose family were all born here, and who died here
himself in 1792.
ROBERT CULLEN.
Robert Cullen, the son of the physician, made a great impression
on Edinburgh society by his many delightful social qualities, and
particularly his powers as a mimic of the Mathews genus. He manifested
this gift in his earliest years, to the no small discomposure of his
grave old father. One evening, when Dr Cullen was going to the theatre,
Robert entreated to be taken along with him, but for some reason was
condemned to remain at home. Some time after the departure of the
doctor, Mrs Cullen heard him come along the passage, as if from his own
room, and say at her door: ‘Well, after all, you may let Robert go.’
Robert was accordingly allowed to depart for the theatre, where his
appearance gave no small surprise to his father. On the old gentleman
coming home and remonstrating with his lady for allowing the boy to go,
it was discovered that the voice which seemed to give the permission
had proceeded from the young wag himself.
In maturer years, Cullen could not only mimic any voice or mode of
speech, but enter so thoroughly into the nature of any man that
he could supply exactly the ideas which he was likely to use. His
imitations were therefore something much above mimicries—they were
artistic representations of human character. He has been known in a
social company, where another individual was expected, to stand up,
in the character of that person, and return thanks for the proposal
of his health; and this was done so happily that when the individual
did arrive and got upon his legs to speak for himself, the company
was convulsed with an almost exact repetition of what Cullen had
previously uttered, the manner also and every inflection of the voice
being precisely alike. In relating anecdotes, of which he possessed a
vast store, he usually prefaced them with a sketch of the character
of the person referred to, which greatly increased the effect, as the
story then told characteristically. These sketches were remarked to be
extremely graphic and most elegantly expressed.
When a young man, residing with his father, he was very intimate
with Dr Robertson, the Principal of the university. To show that
Robertson was not likely to be easily imitated, it may be mentioned,
from the report of a gentleman who has often heard him making public
orations, that when the students observed him pause for a word, and
would themselves mentally supply it, they invariably found that the
word which he did use was different from that which they had hit
upon. Cullen, however, could imitate him to the life, either in his
more formal speeches or in his ordinary discourse. He would often, in
entering a house which the Principal was in the habit of visiting,
assume his voice in the lobby and stair, and when arrived at the
drawing-room door, astonish the family by turning out to be—Bob
Cullen. Lord Greville, a pupil of the Principal’s, having been one
night detained at a protracted debauch, where Cullen was also present,
the latter gentleman next morning got admission to the bedroom of the
young nobleman, where, personating Dr Robertson, he sat down by the
bedside, and with all the manner of the reverend Principal, gave him
a sound lecture for having been out so late last night. Greville, who
had fully expected this visit, lay in remorseful silence, and allowed
his supposed monitor to depart without saying a word. In the course of
a quarter of an hour, however, when the real Dr Robertson entered, and
commenced a harangue exactly duplicating that just concluded, he could
not help exclaiming that it was _too bad_ to give it him twice over.
‘Oh, I see how it is,’ said Robertson, rising to depart; ‘that rogue
Bob Cullen must have been with you.’ The Principal became at length
accustomed to Bob’s tricks, which he would seem, from the following
anecdote, to have regarded in a friendly spirit. Being attended
during an illness by Dr Cullen, it was found necessary to administer
a liberal dose of laudanum. The physician, however, asked him, in the
first place, in what manner laudanum affected him. Having received his
answer, Cullen remarked, with surprise, that he had never known any one
affected in the same way by laudanum besides his son Bob. ‘Ah,’ said
Robertson, ‘_does the rascal take me off there too_?’
Mr Cullen entered at the Scottish bar in 1764, and, distinguishing
himself highly as a lawyer, was raised to the bench in 1796, when he
took the designation of Lord Cullen. He cultivated elegant literature,
and contributed some papers of acknowledged merit to the _Mirror_ and
_Lounger_; but it was in conversation that he chiefly shone.
The close adjoining to the Mint contains several old-fashioned houses
of a dignified appearance. In a floor of one bearing the date 1679,
and having a little court in front, Alexander Wedderburn, Earl of
Rosslyn and Lord Chancellor of England, resided while at the Scottish
bar. This, as is well known, was a very brief interval; for a veteran
barrister having one day used the term ‘presumptuous boy’ with
reference to him, and his own caustic reply having drawn upon him a
rebuke from the bench, he took off his gown, and making a bow, said
he would never more plead where he was subjected to insult, but would
seek a wider field for his exertions. His subsequent rapid rise at
the English bar is matter of history. It is told that, returning to
Edinburgh at the end of his life, after an absence of many years, he
wished to see the house where he had lived while a Scotch advocate. Too
infirm to walk, he was borne in a chair to the foot of the Mint Close
to see this building. One thing he was particularly anxious about.
While residing here, he had had five holes made in the little court to
play at some bowling game of which he was fond. He wished, above all
things, to see these holes once more, and when he found they were still
there, he expressed much satisfaction. Churchill himself might have
melted at such an anecdote of the old days of him who was
‘Pert at the bar, and in the senate loud.’
About midway up the close is a turreted mansion, accessible from
Hyndford’s Close, and having a tolerably good garden connected with it.
This was, in 1742, the residence of the Earl of Selkirk; subsequently
it was occupied by Dr Daniel Rutherford, professor of botany. Sir
Walter Scott, who, being a nephew of that gentleman, was often in the
house in his young days, communicated to me a curious circumstance
connected with it. It appears that the house immediately adjacent was
not furnished with a stair wide enough to allow of a coffin being
carried down in decent fashion. It had, therefore, what the Scottish
law calls a _servitude_ upon Dr Rutherford’s house, conferring the
perpetual liberty of bringing the deceased inmates through a passage
into that house and down _its_ stair into the lane.
FOOTNOTES
[220] Now removed and the site built over. There was also a Cunyie
House in Candlemaker Row, which was used as the Mint during the regency
of Mary of Guise.
MISS NICKY MURRAY.
The dancing assemblies of Edinburgh were for many years, about the
middle of the last century, under the direction and dictatorship of
the Honourable Miss Nicky Murray, one of the sisters of the Earl of
Mansfield. Much good sense, firmness, knowledge of the world and of
the histories of individuals, as well as a due share of patience and
benevolence, were required for this office of unrecognised though
real power; and it was generally admitted that Miss Murray possessed
the needful qualifications in a remarkable degree, though rather more
marked by good manners than good-nature. She and her sisters lived for
many years in a floor of a large building at the head of Bailie Fife’s
Close—a now unhallowed locality, where, I believe, Francis Jeffrey
attended his first school. In their narrow mansion, the Miss Murrays
received flights of young lady-cousins from the country, to be finished
in their manners and introduced into society. No light task must theirs
have been, all things considered. I find a highly significant note on
the subject inserted by an old gentleman in an interleaved copy of my
first edition: ‘It was from Miss Nicky Murray’s—a relation of the Gray
family—that my father ran off with my mother, then not sixteen years
old.’
The Assembly Room of that time was in the _close_ where the
Commercial Bank was afterwards established.[221] First there
was a lobby, where chairs were disburdened of their company,
and where a reduced gentleman, with pretensions to the title of
Lord Kirkcudbright—descendant of the once great Maclellans of
Galloway—might have been seen selling gloves; this being the person
alluded to in a letter written by Goldsmith while a student in
Edinburgh: ‘One day, happening to slip into Lord Kilcobry’s—don’t be
surprised, his lordship is only a glover!’ The dancing-room opened
directly from the lobby, and above stairs was a tea-room. The
former had a railed space in the centre, within which the dancers
were arranged, while the spectators sat round on the outside; and no
communication was allowed between the different sides of this sacred
pale. The lady-directress had a high chair or throne at one end. Before
Miss Nicky Murray, Lady Elliot of Minto and Mrs Brown of Coalstoun,
wives of judges, had exercised this lofty authority, which was thought
honourable on account of the charitable object of the assemblies.
The arrangements were of a rigid character, and certainly tending to
dullness. There being but one set allowed to dance at a time, it was
seldom that any person was twice on the floor in one night. The most of
the time was spent in acting the part of lookers-on, which threw great
duties in the way of conversation upon the gentlemen. These had to
settle with a partner for the year, and were upon no account permitted
to change, even for a single night. The appointment took place at the
beginning of the season, usually at some private party or ball given
by a person of distinction, where the fans of the ladies were all put
into a gentleman’s cocked hat; the gentlemen put in their hands and
took a fan, and to whomsoever the fan belonged, that was to be his
partner for the season. In the general rigours of this system, which
sometimes produced ludicrous combinations, there was, however, one
palliative—namely, the fans being all distinguishable from each other,
and the gentleman being in general as well acquainted with the fan as
the face of his mistress, and the hat being open, it was possible to
peep in, and exercise, to a certain extent, a principle of selection,
whereby he was perhaps successful in procuring an appointment to his
mind. All this is spiritedly given in a poem of Sir Alexander Boswell:
‘Then were the days of modesty of mien!
Stays for the fat, and quilting for the lean;
The ribboned stomacher, in many a plait,
Upheld the chest, and dignified the gait;
Some Venus, brightest planet of the train,
Moved in a lustering _halo_, propped with cane.
Then the _Assembly Close_ received the fair—
Order and elegance presided there—
Each gay Right Honourable had her place,
To walk a minuet with becoming grace.
No racing to the dance, with rival hurry—
Such was thy sway, O famed Miss Nicky Murray!
Each lady’s fan a chosen Damon bore,
With care selected many a day before;
For, unprovided with a favourite beau,
The nymph, chagrined, the ball must needs forego;
But, previous matters to her taste arranged,
_Certes_, the constant couple never changed;
Through a long night, to watch fair Delia’s will,
The same dull swain was at her elbow still.’
A little before Miss Nicky’s time, it was customary for gentlemen to
walk alongside the chairs of their partners, with their swords by their
sides, and so escort them home. They called next afternoon upon their
Dulcineas to inquire how they were and drink tea. The fashionable time
for seeing company in those days was the evening, when people were
all abroad upon the street, as in the forenoon now, making calls and
_shopping_. The people who attended the assemblies were very _select_.
Moreover, they were all known to each other; and the introduction of a
stranger required nice preliminaries. It is said that Miss Murray, on
hearing a young lady’s name pronounced for the first time, would say:
‘Miss ——, of what?’ If no territorial addition could be made, she
manifestly cooled. Upon one occasion, seeing a man at the assembly who
was born in a low situation and raised to wealth in some humble trade,
she went up to him, and, without the least deference to his fine-laced
coat, taxed him with presumption in coming there, and turned him out of
the room.
Major Topham praises the regularity and propriety observed at the
assemblies, though gently insinuating their heaviness. He says: ‘I was
never at an assembly where the authority of the manager was so observed
or respected. With the utmost politeness, affability, and good-humour,
Miss Murray attends to every one. All petitions are heard, and demands
granted, which appear reasonable. The company is so much the more
obliged to Miss Murray, as the task is by no means to be envied.
The crowd which immediately surrounds her on entering the room, the
impetuous applications of _chaperons_, maiden-aunts, and the earnest
entreaties of lovers to obtain a ticket in one of the first sets for
the dear object, render the fatigue of the office of lady-directress
almost intolerable.’[222]
Early hours were kept in those days, and the stinted time was never
exceeded. When the proper hour arrived for dissolving the party, and
the young people would crowd round the throne to petition for one other
set, up rose Miss Nicky in unrelenting rigidity of figure, and with one
wave of her hand silenced the musicians:
‘Quick from the summit of the grove they fell,
And left it inharmonious.’
FOOTNOTES
[221] The Assembly Room, afterwards occupied by the Commercial Bank,
was in Bell’s Wynd, to which place it was removed in 1756 from the
older room in Assembly Close. A scallop-shell above the entrance to
Bell’s Wynd long commemorated the site of the Clamshell Turnpike,
the lodging of the Earl of Home, to which Queen Mary, accompanied by
Darnley, retreated on their return from Dunbar in 1566, rather than
enter Holyrood so soon after the murder of Rizzio.
[222] It must have been after Miss Nicky Murray’s day that an Edinburgh
Writer to the Signet, describing the unruliness of an assembly, writes:
‘I saw an English lady stand up at the head of a sett with a ticket
No. 1 of that sett. By-and-bye my namesake, Miss Mary ——, came up,
hauling after her a foolish-looking young man, who did as he was bid,
and with all the ease in the world placed herself above the stranger,
No. 1. The lady politely said there must be some mistake, for she had
that place. “No,” said Miss Mary, “I can’t help your ticket, for I have
the Lady Directress’s permission to lead down the sett!” The lady had
spunk, and scolded, for which I liked her the better; only she dealt
her sarcasms about Scotch politeness, Edinburgh manners, and so forth,
rather too liberally and too loudly.’
[THE BISHOP’S LAND.
On the north side of the High Street, a hundred yards or so below the
North Bridge, there existed previous to 1813 an unusually large and
handsome old _land_ or building named the _Bishop’s Land_. It rested
upon an arcade or _piazza_, as it is called, and the entry in the first
floor bore the ordinary legend:
BLISSIT BE ZE LORD FOR ALL HIS GIFTIS,
together with the date 1578, and a shield impaled with two coats of
arms. Along the front of this floor was a balcony composed of brass,
a thing unique in the ancient city. The house had been the Edinburgh
residence of Archbishop John Spottiswood. Most unfortunately the whole
line of building towards the street was burned down in the year 1813.
In the latter part of the last century the Bishop’s Land was regarded
as a very handsome residence, and it was occupied accordingly by
persons of consideration. The dictum of an old citizen to me many years
ago was: ‘Nobody without livery-servants lived in the Bishop’s Land.’
Sir Stuart Threipland of Fingask occupied the first floor. His estate,
forfeited by his father in 1716, was purchased back by him, with money
obtained through his wife, in 1784; and the title, which was always
given to him by courtesy, was restored as a reality to his descendants
by George IV. He had himself been engaged in the affair of 1745-6, and
had accompanied ‘the Prince’ in some part of his wanderings. In the
hands of this ‘fine old _Scottish_ gentleman,’ for such he was, his
house in the Bishop’s Land was elegantly furnished, there being in
particular some well-painted portraits of royal personages—_not of
the reigning house_. These had all been sent to his father and himself
by the persons represented in them, who thus showed their gratitude
for efforts made and sufferings incurred in their behalf. There were
five windows to the street, three of them lighting the drawing-room;
the remaining two lighted the eldest son’s room. A dining-room, Sir
Stuart’s bedroom, his sister Janet’s (who kept house for him) room,
and other apartments were in the rear, some lighted from the adjacent
close—and these still exist, having been spared by the fire. The
kitchen and servants’ rooms were below.
In the next floor above lived the Hamiltons of Pencaitland; in the next
again, the Aytouns of Inchdairnie. Mrs Aytoun, who was a daughter of
Lord Rollo, would sometimes come down the stair in a winter evening,
lighting herself with a little wax-taper, to drink tea with _Mrs_
Janet Threipland, for so she called herself, though unmarried. In the
uppermost floor of all lived a reputable tailor and his family. All the
various tenants, including the tailor, were on good neighbourly terms
with each other; a pleasant thing to tell of this bit of the old world,
which has left nothing of the same kind behind it in these later days,
when we all live at a greater distance, physical and moral, from each
other.]
JOHN KNOX’S MANSE.
The lower portion of the High Street, including _the Netherbow_, was,
till a recent time, remarkable for the antiquity of the greater number
of the buildings, insomuch that no equal portion of the city was more
distinctly a memorial of the general appearance of the whole as it was
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. On the north side of the
High Street, immediately adjacent to the Netherbow, there was a nest
of tall wooden-fronted houses of one character, and the age of which
generally might be guessed from the date existing upon one—1562. This
formed a perfect example of the _High Gait_ as it appeared to Queen
Mary, excepting that the open booths below had been converted into
close shops. The _fore-stairs_—that is, outside stairs ascending to
the _first floor_ (technically so called), from which the women of
Edinburgh reviled the hapless queen as she rode along the street after
her surrender at Carberry—were unchanged in this little district.
The popular story regarding houses of this kind is that they took their
origin in an inconvenience which was felt in having the Boroughmoor
covered with wood, as it proved from that circumstance a harbour for
robbers. To banish the robbers, it was necessary to extirpate the wood.
To get this done, the magistrates granted leave to the citizens to
project their house-fronts seven feet into the street, provided they
should execute the work with timber cut from the Boroughmoor. Robert
Fergusson follows up this story in a burlesque poem by relating how,
consequently,
‘Edina’s mansions with lignarian art
Were piled and fronted. Like an ark she seemed
To lie on mountain’s top, with shapes replete,
Clean and unclean——
To Jove the Dryads prayed, nor prayed in vain,
For vengeance on her sons. At midnight drear
Black showers descend, and teeming myriads rise
Of bugs abhorrent’——
The only authentic information to be obtained on the point is presented
by Maitland, when he tells us that the clearing of the Boroughmoor
of timber took place in consequence of a charter from James IV.
in 1508. He says nothing of robbers, but attributes the permission
granted by the magistrates for the making of wooden projections merely
to their desire of getting sale for their timber. After all, I am
inclined to trace this fashion to taste. The wooden fronts appear to
have originated in open galleries—an arrangement often spoken of
in early writings. These, being closed up or formed into a range of
windows, would produce the wooden-fronted house. It is remarkable
that the wooden fronts do not in many instances bear the appearance
of afterthoughts, as the stone structure within often shows such
an arrangement of the fore wall as seems designed to connect the
projecting part with the chambers within, or to give these chambers
as much as possible of the borrowed light. At the same time, it
is somewhat puzzling to find, in the closes below the buildings,
gateways with hooks for hinges seven feet or so from the present
street-front—an arrangement which does not appear necessary on the
supposition that the houses were built designedly with a stone interior
and a wooden projection.
In the Netherbow the street receives a contraction from the advance of
the houses on the north side, thus closing a species of parallelogram,
of which the Luckenbooths formed the upper extremity—the market-place
of our ancient city. The uppermost of the prominent houses—having of
course two fronts meeting in a right angle, one fronting to the line
of street, the other looking up the High Street—is pointed to by
tradition as the residence or manse of John Knox during his incumbency
as minister of Edinburgh, from 1560 till (with few interruptions) his
death in 1572. It is a picturesque building of three above-ground
floors, constructed of substantial ashlar masonry, but on a somewhat
small scale, and terminating in curious gables and masses of chimneys.
A narrow door, right in the angle, gives access to a small room,
lighted by one long window presented to the westward, and apparently
the _hall_ of the mansion in former times. Over the window and door is
this legend, in an unusually old kind of lettering:
LVFE·GOD·ABVFE·AL·AND·YI·NYCHTBOVR·[AS·]YI·SELF·
The word ‘as’ is obliterated. The words are, in modern English,
simply the well-known scriptural command: ‘Love God above all, and
thy neighbour as thyself.’ Perched upon the corner above the door is
a small effigy of the Reformer, preaching in a pulpit, and pointing
with his right hand to a stone above his head in that direction, which
presents in rude sculpture the sun bursting from clouds, with the name
of the Deity inscribed on his disc in three languages:
ΘΕΟΣ
DEUS
GOD
Dr M’Crie, in his _Life of John Knox_, states that the Reformer, on
commencing duty in Edinburgh at the conclusion of the struggles with
the queen-regent, ‘lodged in the house of David Forrest, a burgess of
Edinburgh, from which he removed to the lodging which had belonged to
Durie, Abbot of Dunfermline.’ The magistrates acted liberally towards
their minister, giving him a salary of two hundred pounds Scottish
money, and paying his house-rent for him, at the rate of fifteen merks
yearly. In October 1561 they ordained the Dean of Guild, ‘with al
diligence, to mak ane warm studye of dailles to the minister, Johne
Knox, within his hous, aboue the hall of the same, with lyht and
wyndokis thereunto, and all uther necessaris.’ This study is generally
supposed to have been a very small wooden projection, of the kind
described a few pages back, still seen on the front of the _first
floor_. Close to it is a window in the angle of the building, from
which Knox is said by tradition to have occasionally held forth to
multitudes below.
The second floor, which is accessible by two narrow spiral stairs,
one to the south, another to the west, contains a tolerably spacious
room, with a ceiling ornamented by stucco mouldings, and a window
presented to the westward. A partition has at one time divided this
room from a narrow one towards the north, the ceiling of which is
composed of the beams and flooring of the attic flat, all curiously
painted with flower-work in an ancient taste. Two inferior rooms extend
still farther to the northward. It is to be remarked that the wooden
projection already spoken of extends up to this floor, so that there
is here likewise a small room in front; it contains a fireplace, and a
recess which might have been a cupboard or a library, besides two small
windows. That this fireplace, this recess, and also the door by which
the wooden chamber is entered from the decorated room should all be
formed in the front wall of the house, and with a necessary relation to
the wooden projection, strikes one as difficult to reconcile with the
idea of that projection being an afterthought; the appearances rather
indicate the whole having been formed at once, as parts of one design.
The attic floor exhibits strong oaken beams, but the flooring is in bad
order.
In the lower part of the house there is a small room, said by tradition
to have been used in times of difficulty for the purpose of baptising
children; there is also a well to supply the house with water, besides
a secret stair, represented as communicating subterraneously with a
neighbouring alley.
From the size of this house, and the variety of accesses to it, it
becomes tolerably certain that Knox could have occupied only a portion
of it. The question arises, which part did he occupy? Probability
seems decidedly in favour of the _first floor_—that containing the
window from which he is traditionally said to have preached, and where
his effigy appears. An authentic fact in the Reformer’s life favours
this supposition. When under danger from the hostility of the queen’s
party in the castle—in the spring of 1571—‘one evening a musket-ball
was fired in at his window, and lodged in the roof of the apartment
in which he was sitting. It happened that he sat at the time in a
different part of the room from that which he had been accustomed to
occupy, otherwise the ball, from the direction it took, must have
struck him’ (M’Crie). The second floor is too high to have admitted
of a musket being fired in at one of the windows. A ball fired in at
the ground-floor would not have struck the ceiling. The only feasible
supposition in the case is that the Reformer dwelt in the _first
floor_, which was not beyond an assassin’s aim, and yet at such a
height that a ball fired from the street would hit the ceiling.[223]
[Illustration: JOHN KNOX’S MANSE.
PAGE 274.]
FOOTNOTES
[223] [The right of this house to be called ‘John Knox’s House’ has
been strenuously disputed; several other houses in which Knox actually
lived have been identified by Robert Miller, F.S.A. Scot., Lord Dean of
Guild of Edinburgh, in _John Knox and the Town Council of Edinburgh,
with a Chapter on the so-called ‘John Knox’s House’_ (1898). For the
genuineness of the tradition, said not to be older than 1806, see Lord
Guthrie’s _John Knox and John Knox’s House_ (1898).]
HYNDFORD’S CLOSE.
At the bottom of the High Street, on the south side, there is an
uncommonly huge and dense mass of stone buildings or _lands_,
penetrated only by a few narrow closes. One of these is Hyndford’s
Close, a name indicating the noble family which once had lodgment
in it. This was a Scotch peerage not without its glories—witness
particularly the third earl, who acted as ambassador in succession to
Prussia, to Russia, and to Vienna. It is now extinct: its _bijouterie_,
its pictures, including portraits of Maria Theresa, and other royal and
imperial personages, which had been presented as friendly memorials
to the ambassador, have all been dispersed by the salesman’s hammer,
and Hyndford’s Close, on my trying to get into it lately (1868), was
inaccessible (literally) from filth.
[Illustration: Hyndford’s Close.]
The entry and stair at the head of the close on the west side was a
favourite residence, on account of the ready access to it from the
street. In the second floor of this house lived, about the beginning of
the reign of George III., Lady Maxwell of Monreith, and there brought
up her beautiful daughters, one of whom became Duchess of Gordon. The
house had a dark passage, and the kitchen door was passed in going
to the dining-room, according to an agreeable old practice in Scotch
houses, which lets the guests know on entering what they have to
expect. The fineries of Lady Maxwell’s daughters were usually hung up,
after washing, on a screen in this passage to dry; while the coarser
articles of dress, such as shifts and petticoats, were slung decently
out of sight at the window, upon a projecting contrivance similar to a
dyer’s pole, of which numerous specimens still exist at windows in the
Old Town for the convenience of the poorer inhabitants.
So easy and familiar were the manners of the great in those times,
fabled to be so stiff and decorous, that Miss Eglintoune, afterwards
Lady Wallace, used to be sent with the tea-kettle across the street
to the Fountain Well for water to make tea. Lady Maxwell’s daughters
were the wildest romps imaginable. An old gentleman, who was their
relation, told me that the first time he saw these beautiful girls was
in the High Street, where Miss Jane, afterwards Duchess of Gordon, was
riding upon a sow, which Miss Eglintoune thumped lustily behind with
a stick. It must be understood that in the middle of the eighteenth
century vagrant swine went as commonly about the streets of Edinburgh
as dogs do in our own day, and were more generally fondled as pets by
the children of the last generation.[224] It may, however, be remarked
that the sows upon which the Duchess of Gordon and her witty sister
rode, when children, were not the common vagrants of the High Street,
but belonged to Peter Ramsay, of the inn in St Mary’s Wynd, and were
among the last that were permitted to roam abroad. The two romps used
to watch the animals as they were let loose in the forenoon from the
stable-yard (where they lived among the horse-litter), and get upon
their backs the moment they issued from the close.
The extraordinary cleverness, the genuine wit, and the delightful
_abandon_ of Lady Wallace made an extraordinary impression on Scottish
society in her day. It almost seemed as if some faculty divine had
inspired her. A milliner bringing home a cap to her when she was just
about to set off to the Leith races was so unlucky as to tear it
against the buckle of a porter’s knee in the street. ‘No matter,’ said
her ladyship; and instantly putting it on, restored all to grace by a
single pin. The cap thus misarranged was found so perfectly exquisite
that ladies tore their caps on nails, and pinned them on in the hope of
imitating it. It was, however, a grace beyond the reach of art.
Of the many _bon mots_ attributed to her, one alone seems worthy, from
its being unhackneyed, of appearing here. The son of Mr Kincaid, king’s
printer—a great Macaroni, as the phrase went; that is, dandy—was
nicknamed, from his father’s lucrative patent, _Young Bibles_. This
beau entering a ballroom one evening, some of the company asked who was
that extraordinary-looking young man. ‘Only Young Bibles,’ quoth Lady
Wallace, ‘bound in calf, and gilt, but not lettered!’
[In the same stair in Hyndford’s Close lived another lady of rank,
and one who, for several reasons, filled in her time a broad space
in society. This was Anne, Countess of Balcarres, the progenitrix of
perhaps as many persons as ever any woman was in the same space of
time. Her eldest daughter, Anne, authoress of the ballad of _Auld
Robin Gray_, was, of all her eleven children, the one whose name is
most likely to continue in remembrance—yea, though another of them
put down the Maroon war in the West Indies. When in Hyndford’s Close,
Lady Balcarres had for a neighbour in the same alley Dr Rutherford,
the uncle of Sir Walter Scott; and young Walter, often at his uncle’s,
occasionally accompanied his aunt ‘Jeanie’ to Lady Balcarres’s.
Forty years after, having occasion to correspond with Lady Anne
Barnard, _née_ Lindsay, he told her: ‘I remember all the _locale_ of
Hyndford’s Close perfectly, even to the Indian screen with Harlequin
and Columbine, and the harpsichord, though I never had the pleasure of
hearing Lady Anne play upon it. I suppose the close, once too clean to
soil the hem of your ladyship’s garment, is now a resort for the lowest
mechanics—and so wears the world away.... It is, to be sure, more
picturesque to lament the desolation of towers on hills and haughs,
than the degradation of an Edinburgh close; but I cannot help thinking
on the simple and cosie retreats where worth and talent, and elegance
to boot, were often nestled, and which now are the resort of misery,
filth, poverty, and vice.’[225]
The late Mrs Meetham, a younger sister of Miss Spence Yeaman, of
Murie, in the Carse of Gowrie, had often heard her grand-aunt, Miss
Molly Yeaman, describe, from her own recollection, the tea-drinkings
of the Countess of Balcarres in Hyndford’s Close. The family was not
rich, and it still retained something of its ancient Jacobitism. The
tea-drinkings, as was not uncommon, took place in my lady’s bedroom.
At the foot of a four-posted bed, exhibiting a finely worked coverlet,
stood John, an elderly man-servant, and a _character_, in full
Balcarres livery, an immense quantity of worsted lace on his coat.
Resting with his arm round a bedpost, he was ready to hand the kettle
when required. As the ladies went chattering on, there would sometimes
occur a difficulty about a date or a point in genealogy, and then
John was appealed to to settle the question. For example, it came to
be debated how many of the Scotch baronetcies were real; for, as is
still the case, many of them were known to be fictitious, or assumed
without legal grounds. Here John was known to be not only learned, but
eloquent. He began: ‘Sir James Kinloch, Sir Stuart Threipland, Sir
John Wedderburn, Sir —— Ogilvy, Sir James Steuart of Coltness’ [all
of them forfeited baronets, be it observed]: ‘these, leddies, are the
only _real_ baronets. For the rest, I do believe, the Deil’——then a
figurative declaration not fit for modern print, but which made the
Balcarres party only laugh, and declare to John that they thought him
not far wrong.]
FOOTNOTES
[224] The following advertisement, inserted in the _Edinburgh Courant_
of August 1, 1754, illustrates the above in a striking manner: ‘If
any person has lost a LARGE SOW, let them call at the house of Robert
Fiddes, gardener to Lord Minto, over against the Earl of Galloway’s, in
the Horse Wynd, where, upon proving the property, paying expenses and
damages done by the said sow, they may have the same restored.’
[225] Lord Lindsay’s _Lives of the Lindsays_, iii. 190.
HOUSE OF THE MARQUISES OF TWEEDDALE—THE BEGBIE TRAGEDY.
[Illustration: Tweeddale Court.]
The town mansion of the Marquises of Tweeddale was one of large extent
and dimensions, in a court which still bears the title of that family,
nearly opposite to the mansion of John Knox.[226] When John, the
fourth marquis, was Secretary of State for Scotland, in the reign of
George II., this must have been a dwelling of considerable importance
in the eyes of his countrymen. It had a good garden in the rear,
with a yard and coach entry from the Cowgate. Now all the buildings
and ‘pertinents’ are in the occupation of Messrs Oliver & Boyd, the
well-known publishers.
[Illustration: Scene of the Begbie Murder.]
The passage from the street into Tweeddale Court is narrow and dark,
and about fifteen yards in length. Here, in 1806, when the mansion was
possessed as a banking-house by the British Linen Company, there took
place an extraordinary tragedy. About five o’clock of the evening of
the 13th of November, when the short midwinter day had just closed,
a child, who lived in a house accessible from the close, was sent by
her mother with a kettle to obtain a supply of water for tea from the
neighbouring well. The little girl, stepping with the kettle in her
hand out of the public stair into the close, stumbled in the dark over
something which lay there, and which proved to be the body of a man
just expiring. On an alarm being given, it was discovered that this
was William Begbie, a porter connected with the bank, in whose heart
a knife was stuck up to the haft, so that he bled to death before
uttering a word which might tend to explain the dismal transaction. He
was at the same time found to have been robbed of a package of notes to
the value of above four thousand pounds, which he had been entrusted,
in the course of his ordinary duty, to carry from the branch of the
bank at Leith to the head-office.[227] The blow had been given with an
accuracy and a calculation of consequences showing the most appalling
deliberation in the assassin; for not only was the knife directed
straight into the most vital part, but its handle had been muffled in a
bunch of soft paper, so as to prevent, as was thought, any sprinkling
of blood from reaching the person of the murderer, by which he might
have been by some chance detected. The knife was one of those with
broad thin blades and wooden handles which are used for cutting bread,
and its rounded front had been ground to a point, apparently for the
execution of this horrible deed. The unfortunate man left a wife and
four children to bewail his loss.
The singular nature and circumstances of Begbie’s murder occasioned
much excitement in the public mind, and every effort was of course
made to discover the guilty party. No house of a suspicious character
in the city was left unsearched, and parties were despatched to watch
and patrol all the various roads leading out into the country. The
bank offered a reward of five hundred pounds for such information as
might lead to the conviction of the offender or offenders; and the
government further promised the king’s pardon to any except the actual
murderer who, having been concerned in the deed, might discover their
accomplices. The sheriff of Edinburgh, Mr Clerk Rattray, displayed the
greatest zeal in his endeavours to ascertain the circumstances of the
murder, and to detect and seize the murderer, but with surprisingly
little success. All that could be ascertained was that Begbie, in
proceeding up Leith Walk on his fatal mission, had been accompanied by
‘a man;’ and that about the supposed time of the murder ‘a man’ had
been seen by some children to run out of the close into the street
and down Leith Wynd, a lane leading off from the Netherbow at a point
nearly opposite to the close. There was also reason to believe that the
knife had been bought in a shop about two o’clock on the day of the
murder, and that it had been afterwards ground upon a grinding-stone
and smoothed on a hone. A number of suspicious characters were
apprehended and examined; but all, with one exception, produced
satisfactory proofs of their innocence. The exception was a carrier
between Perth and Edinburgh, a man of dissolute and irregular habits,
of great bodily strength, and known to be a dangerous and desperate
character. He was kept in custody for a considerable time on suspicion,
having been seen in the Canongate, near the scene of the murder, a
very short time after it was committed. It has since been ascertained
that he was then going about a different business, the disclosure of
which would have subjected him to a capital punishment. It was in
consequence of the mystery he felt himself impelled to preserve on this
subject that he was kept so long in custody; but at length facts and
circumstances came out to warrant his discharge, and he was discharged
accordingly.
Months rolled on without eliciting any evidence respecting the murder,
and, like other wonders, it had ceased in a great measure to engage
public attention, when, on the 10th of August 1807, a journeyman mason,
in company with two other men, passing through the Bellevue grounds in
the neighbourhood of the city, found, in a hole in a stone enclosure
by the side of a hedge, a parcel containing a large quantity of
bank-notes, bearing the appearance of having been a good while exposed
to the weather. After consulting a little, the men carried the package
to the sheriff’s office, where it was found to contain about £3000 in
large notes, being those which had been taken from Begbie. The British
Linen Company rewarded the men with two hundred pounds for their
honesty; but the circumstance passed without throwing any light on the
murder itself.
Up to the present day the murderer of Begbie has not been discovered;
nor is it probable, after the space of time which has elapsed, that he
will ever be so. It is most likely that the grave has long closed upon
him. The only person on whom public suspicion alighted with any force
during the sixteen years ensuing upon the transaction was a medical
practitioner in Leith, a dissolute man and a gambler, who put an end to
his own existence not long after the murder. But I am not acquainted
with any particular circumstances on which this suspicion was grounded
beyond the suicide, which might spring from other causes. It was not
till 1822 that any further light was thrown on this mysterious case.
In a work then published under the title of _The Life and Trial of
James Mackoull_, there was included a paper by Mr Denovan, the Bow
Street officer, the object of which was to prove that Mackoull was the
murderer, and which contained at least one very curious statement.
Mr Denovan had discovered in Leith a man, then acting as a teacher, but
who in 1806 was a sailor-boy, and who had witnessed some circumstances
immediately connected with the murder. The man’s statement was as
follows: ‘I was at that time (November 1806) a boy of fourteen years
of age. The vessel to which I belonged had made a voyage to Lisbon,
and was then lying in Leith harbour. I had brought a small present
from Portugal for my mother and sister, who resided in the Netherbow,
Edinburgh, immediately opposite to Tweeddale’s Close, leading to the
British Linen Company’s Bank. I left the vessel late in the afternoon,
and as the articles I had brought were contraband, I put them under
my jacket, and was proceeding up Leith Walk, when I perceived a tall
man carrying a yellow-coloured parcel under his arm, and a genteel
man, dressed in a black coat, dogging him. I was a little afraid: I
conceived the man who carried the parcel to be a smuggler, and the
gentleman who followed him to be a custom-house or excise officer. In
dogging the man, the supposed officer went from one side of the Walk to
the other [the Walk is a broad street], as if afraid of being noticed,
but still kept about the same distance behind him. I was afraid of
losing what I carried, and shortened sail a little, keeping my eyes
fixed on the person I supposed to be an officer, until I came to the
head of Leith Street, when I saw the smuggler take the North Bridge,
and the custom-house officer go in front of the Register Office; here
he looked round him, and imagining he was looking for me, I hove
to, and watched him. He then looked up the North Bridge, and, as I
conceive, followed the smuggler, for he went the same way. I stood a
minute or two where I was, and then went forward, walking slowly up
the North Bridge. I did not, however, see either of the men before me;
and when I came to the south end or head of the Bridge, supposing that
they might have gone up the High Street or along the South Bridge, I
turned to the left, and reached the Netherbow, without again seeing
either the smuggler or the officer. Just, however, as I came opposite
to Tweeddale’s Close, _I saw the custom-house officer come running
out of it with something under his coat_: I think he ran down the
street. Being much alarmed, and supposing that the officer had also
seen me and knew what I carried, I deposited my little present in my
mother’s with all possible speed, and made the best of my way to Leith,
without hearing anything of the murder of Begbie until next day. On
coming on board the vessel, I told the mate what a narrow escape I
conceived I had made: he seemed somewhat alarmed (having probably, like
myself, smuggled some trifling article from Portugal), and told me
in a peremptory tone that I should not go ashore again without first
acquainting him. I certainly heard of the murder before I left Leith,
and concluded that the man I saw was the murderer; but the idea of
waiting on a magistrate and communicating what I had seen never struck
me. We sailed in a few days thereafter from Leith; and the vessel to
which I belonged having been captured by a privateer, I was carried
to a French prison, and only regained my liberty at the last peace. I
can now recollect distinctly the figure of the man I saw; he was well
dressed, had a genteel appearance, and wore a black coat. I never saw
his face properly, for he was before me the whole way up the Walk; I
think, however, he was a stout big man, but not so tall as the man I
then conceived to be a smuggler.’
This description of the supposed custom-house officer coincides exactly
with that of the appearance of Mackoull; and other circumstances are
given which almost make it certain that he was the murderer. This
Mackoull was a London rogue of unparalleled effrontery and dexterity,
who for years haunted Scotland, and effected some daring robberies.
He resided in Edinburgh from September 1805 till the close of 1806,
and during that time frequented a coffee-house in the _Ship Tavern_ at
Leith. He professed to be a merchant expelled by the threats of the
French from Hamburg, and to live by a new mode of dyeing skins, but in
reality he practised the arts of a gambler and a pickpocket. He had a
mean lodging at the bottom of New Street in the Canongate, near the
scene of the murder of Begbie, to which it is remarkable that _Leith
Wynd_ was the readiest as well as most private access from that spot.
No suspicion, however, fell upon Mackoull at this period, and he left
the country for a number of years, at the end of which time he visited
Glasgow, and there effected a robbery of one of the banks. For this
crime he did not escape the law. He was brought to trial at Edinburgh
in 1820, was condemned to be executed, but died in jail while under
reprieve from his sentence.
The most striking part of the evidence which Mr Denovan adduces against
Mackoull is the report of a conversation which he had with that person
in the condemned cell of the Edinburgh jail in July 1820, when Mackoull
was very doubtful of being reprieved. To pursue his own narrative,
which is in the third person: ‘He told Captain Sibbald [the superior of
the prison] that he intended to ask Mackoull a single question relative
to the murder of Begbie, but would first humour him by a few jokes,
so as to throw him off his guard, and prevent him from thinking he
had called for any particular purpose [it is to be observed that Mr
Denovan had a professional acquaintance with the condemned man]; but
desired Captain Sibbald to watch the features of the prisoner when he
(Denovan) put his hand to his chin, for he would then put the question
he meant. After talking some time on different topics, Mr Denovan put
this very simple question to the prisoner: “By the way, Mackoull, if
I am correct, you resided at the foot of New Street, Canongate, in
November 1806—did you not?” He stared—he rolled his eyes, and, as if
falling into a convulsion, threw himself back upon his bed. In this
condition he continued for a few moments, when, as if recollecting
himself, he started up, exclaiming wildly: “No, —— ——! I was then
in the East Indies—in the West Indies. What do you mean?” “I mean no
harm, Mackoull,” he replied; “I merely asked the question for my own
curiosity; for I think when you left these lodgings you went to Dublin.
Is it not so?” “Yes, yes, I went to Dublin,” he replied; “and I wish I
had remained there still. I won £10,000 there at the tables, and never
knew what it was to want cash, although you wished the folks here to
believe that they locked me up in Old Start (Newgate), and brought down
your friend Adkins to swear he saw me there: this was more than your
duty.” He now seemed to rave, and lose all temper, and his visitor bade
him good-night, and left him.’
It appears extremely probable, from the strong circumstantial evidence
which has been offered by Mr Denovan, that Mackoull was the murderer of
Begbie.
One remaining fact regarding the Netherbow will be listened to with
some interest. It was the home—perhaps the native spot—of William
Falconer, the author of _The Shipwreck_, whose father was a wigmaker in
this street.[228]
FOOTNOTES
[226] ‘During this peaceable time [1668-1675], he [John, Earl of
Tweeddale] built the park of Yester of stone and lime, near seven miles
about, in seven years’ time, at the expense of 20,000 pound; bought
a house in Edinburgh from Sir William Bruce for 1000 pound sterling,
and ane other house within the same court, which, being rebuilt from
the foundation, the price of it and reparations of both stood him
1000 sterling.’—Father Hay’s _Genealogie of the Hayes of Tweeddale_
(Edinburgh, 1835), p. 32.
[227] The notes are thus described in the _Hue and Cry_: £1300 in
twenty-pound notes of Sir W. Forbes and Company; £1000 in twenty-pound
notes of the Leith Banking Company; £1400 in twenty, ten, and five
pound notes of different banks; 240 guinea and 440 pound notes of
different banks—in all, £4392.
[228] It was in this part of the High Street also that Robert
Lekprevick, the Scottish printer, lived before he removed to St Andrews
in 1571.
[THE LADIES OF TRAQUAIR.
Lady Lovat was at the head of a genus of old ladies of quality, who,
during the last century, resided in third and fourth _flats_ of Old
Town houses, wore pattens when they went abroad, had miniatures of the
Pretender next their hearts, and gave tea and card parties regularly
every fortnight. Almost every generation of a Scottish family of rank,
besides throwing off its swarm of male cadets, who went abroad in
quest of fortune, used to produce a corresponding number of daughters,
who stayed at home, and for the most part became old maids. These
gentlewomen, after the death of their parents, when, of course, a
brother or nephew succeeded to the family seat and estate, were
compelled to leave home, and make room for the new laird to bring up
a new generation, destined in time to experience the same fate. Many
of these ladies, who in Catholic countries would have found protection
in nunneries, resorted to Edinburgh, where, with the moderate family
provision assigned them, they passed inoffensive and sometimes
useful lives, the peace of which was seldom broken otherwise than by
irruptions of their grand-nephews, who came with the hunger of High
School boys, or by the more stately calls of their landed cousins and
brothers, who rendered their visits the more auspicious by a pound of
hyson for the caddy, or a replenishment of rappee for the snuff-box.
The _leddies_, as they were called, were at once the terror and the
admiration of their neighbours in the stair, who looked up to them as
the patronesses of the _land_, and as shedding a light of gentility
over the flats below.
In the best days of the Old Town, people of all ranks lived very
closely and cordially together, and the whole world were in a manner
next-door neighbours. The population being dense, and the town small,
the distance between the houses of friends was seldom considerable.
When a hundred friends lived within the space of so many yards, the
company was easily collected, and consequently meetings took place
more frequently, and upon more trivial occasions, than in these latter
days of stately dinners and fantastic balls. Tea—simple tea—was then
almost the only meal to which invitations were given. Tea-parties,
assembling at four o’clock, were resorted to by all who wished for
elegant social intercourse. There was much careful ceremonial in the
dispensation of those pretty, small china cups, individualised by the
numbers marked on each of the miniature spoons which circulated with
them, and of which four or five returns were not uncommon. The spoon
in the saucer indicated a wish for more—in the cup the reverse. A few
tunes on the spinnet, a Scotch song from some young lady (solo), and
the unfailing whist-table furnished the entertainment. At eight o’clock
to a minute would arrive the sedan, or the lass with the lantern and
pattens, and the whole company would be at home before the eight
o’clock drum of the Town-guard had ceased to beat.
In a house at the head of the Canongate, but having its entrance from
St Mary’s Wynd, and several stairs up, lived two old maiden ladies of
the house of Traquair—the Ladies Barbara and Margaret Stuart. They
were twins, the children of Charles, the fourth earl, and their birth
on the 3rd of September, the anniversary of the death of Cromwell,
brought a Latin epigram from Dr Pitcairn—of course previous to 1713,
which was the year of his own death. The learned doctor anticipated for
them ‘timid wooers,’ but they nevertheless came to old age unmarried.
They drew out their innocent, retired lives in this place, where,
latterly, one of their favourite amusements was to make dolls, and
little beds for them to lie on—a practice not quite uncommon in days
long gone by, being to some degree followed by Queen Mary.[229]
I may give, in the words of a long-deceased correspondent, an anecdote
of the ladies of Traquair, referring to the days when potatoes had as
yet an equivocal reputation, and illustrative of the frugal scale by
which our ‘leddies’ were in use to measure the luxuries of their table.
‘Upon the return one day of their weekly ambassador to the market, and
the anxious investigation by the old ladies of the contents of Jenny’s
basket, the little morsel of mutton, with a portion of accompanying
off-falls, was duly approved of. “But, Jenny, what’s this in the bottom
of the basket?” “Oo, mem, just a dozen o’ ’taties that Lucky, the
green-wife, wad ha’e me to tak’—they wad eat sae fine wi’ the mutton.”
“Na, na, Jenny; tak’ back the ’taties—we need nae provocatives in this
house.”’
The latest survivor of these Traquair ladies died in 1794.]
FOOTNOTES
[229] ‘—— deliure a Jacques le tailleur deux chanteaux de damas gris
broches dor pour faire vne robbe a vne poupine;’ also ‘trois quartz
et demi de toille dargent et de soze blanche pour faire vne cotte et
aultre chose a des poupines.’—_Catalogues of the Jewels, Dresses,
Furniture, &c. of Mary Queen of Scots_, edited by Joseph Robertson.
Edinburgh, 1863, p. 139.
GREYFRIARS CHURCHYARD.
SIGNING OF THE COVENANT—HENDERSON’S MONUMENT—BOTHWELL BRIDGE
PRISONERS—A ROMANCE.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: Henderson’s Monument, Greyfriars.]
This old cemetery—the burial-place of Buchanan,[230] George Jameson
the painter, Principal Robertson, Dr Blair, Allan Ramsay, Henry
Mackenzie, and many other men of note—whose walls are a circle of
aristocratic sepulchres, will ever be memorable as the scene of the
Signing of the Covenant; the document having first been produced in the
church, after a sermon by Alexander Henderson, and signed by all the
congregation, from the Earl of Sutherland downward, after which it was
handed out to the multitudes assembled in the kirkyard, and signed on
the flat monuments, amidst tears, prayers, and aspirations which could
find no words; some writing with their blood! Near by, resting well
from all these struggles, lies the preacher under a square obelisk-like
monument; near also rests, in equal peace, the Covenant’s enemy, Sir
George Mackenzie. The inscriptions on Henderson’s stone were ordered
by Parliament to be erased at the Restoration; and small depressions
are pointed out in it as having been inflicted by bullets from the
soldiery when executing this order. With the ’88 came a new order of
things, and the inscriptions were then quietly reinstated.
[Illustration: GREYFRIARS’ CHURCHYARD.
PAGE 288.]
BOTHWELL BRIDGE PRISONERS.
As if there had been some destiny in the matter, the Greyfriars
Churchyard became connected with another remarkable event in the
religious troubles of the seventeenth century. At the south-west
angle, accessible by an old gateway bearing emblems of mortality, and
which is fitted with an iron-rail gate of very old workmanship, is a
kind of supplement to the burying-ground—an oblong space, now having
a line of sepulchral enclosures on each side, but formerly empty.
On these enclosures the visitor may remark, as he passes, certain
names venerable in the history of science and of letters; as, for
instance, Joseph Black and Alexander Tytler. On one he sees the name of
Gilbert Innes of Stow, who left a million, to take six feet of earth
here. These, however, do not form the matter in point. Every lesser
particular becomes trivial beside the extraordinary use to which the
place was put by the Government in the year 1679. Several hundred of
the prisoners taken at Bothwell Bridge were confined here in the open
air, under circumstances of privation now scarcely credible. They had
hardly anything either to lie upon or to cover them; their allowance of
provision was four ounces of bread per day, with water derived from one
of the city pipes, which passed near the place. They were guarded by
day by eight and through the night by twenty-four men; and the soldiers
were told that if any prisoner escaped, they should answer it life for
life by cast of dice. If any prisoner rose from the ground by night, he
was shot at. Women alone were permitted to commune with them, and bring
them food or clothes; but these had often to stand at the entrance
from morning till night without getting access, and were frequently
insulted and maltreated by the soldiers, without the prisoners being
able to protect them, although in many cases related by the most
endearing ties. In the course of several weeks a considerable number
of the prisoners had been liberated upon signing a bond, in which they
promised never again to take up arms against the king or without his
authority; but it appears that about four hundred, refusing mercy on
such terms, were kept in this frightful bivouac for five months, being
only allowed at the approach of winter to have shingle huts erected
over them, which was boasted of as a great mercy. Finally, on the 15th
of November, a remnant, numbering two hundred and fifty-seven, were put
on board a ship to be sent to Barbadoes. The vessel was wrecked on one
of the Orkney Islands, when only about forty came ashore alive.
From the gloom of this sad history there is shed one ray of romance.
Amongst the charitable women of Edinburgh who came to minister to
the prisoners, there was one attended by a daughter—a young and, at
least by right of romance, a fair girl. Every few days they approached
this iron gate with food and clothes, either from their own stores
or collected among neighbours. Between the young lady and one of the
juvenile prisoners an attachment sprang up. Doubtless she loved him for
the dangers he had passed in so good a cause, and he loved her because
she pitied them. In happier days, long after, when their constancy had
been well tried by an exile which he suffered in the plantations, this
pair were married, and settled in Edinburgh, where they had sons and
daughters. A respectable elderly citizen tells me he is descended from
them.[231]
FOOTNOTES
[230] A skull represented as Buchanan’s has long been shown in the
College of Edinburgh. It is extremely thin, and being long ago shown in
company with that of a known idiot, which was, on the contrary, very
thick, it seemed to form a commentary upon the popular expression which
sets forth density of bone as an invariable accompaniment of paucity of
brain. The author of a diatribe called _Scotland Characterised_, which
was published in 1701, and may be found in the _Harleian Miscellany_,
tells us that he had seen the skull in question, and that it bore ‘a
very pretty distich upon it [the composition of Principal Adamson, who
had caused the skull to be lifted]—the first line I have forgot, but
the second was:
“Et decus es tumulo jam, Buchanane, tuo.”’
[231] [Dr David Hay Fleming has shown that the contemporary evidence is
all in favour of the Covenant’s having been signed _in_ the Greyfriars’
Church, and not in the churchyard; see a chapter by him in Mr Moir
Bryce’s _Old Greyfriars’ Church, Edinburgh_ (1912). And in the same
book Mr Moir Bryce has proved that the small strip of ground long
erroneously believed to be the Covenanters’ prison was not separated
off till 1703-4, and that the Covenanters were interned on a much
larger area to the east, now built over.]
STORY OF MRS MACFARLANE.
‘Let them say I am romantic; so is every one said to be that
either admires a fine thing or does one. On my conscience, as
the world goes, ’tis hardly worth anybody’s while to do one for
the honour of it. Glory, the only pay of generous actions, is
now as ill paid as other just debts; and neither Mrs Macfarlane
for immolating her lover, nor you for constancy to your lord,
must ever hope to be compared to Lucretia or Portia.’—_Pope to
Lady Mary W. Montagu._
Pope here alludes to a tragical incident which took place in Edinburgh
on the 2nd of October 1716. The victim was a young Englishman, who had
been sent down to Scotland as a Commissioner of Customs. It appears
that Squire Cayley, or Captain Cayley, as he was alternatively called,
had become the slave of a shameful passion towards Mrs Macfarlane,
a woman of uncommon beauty, the wife of Mr John Macfarlane, Writer
to the Signet in Edinburgh. One Saturday forenoon Mrs Macfarlane was
exposed, by the treachery of Captain Cayley’s landlady, with whom she
was acquainted, to an insult of the most atrocious kind on his part, in
the house where he lodged, which seems to have been situated in a close
in the Cowgate, opposite to what were called the Back Stairs.[232]
Next Tuesday Mr Cayley waited upon Mrs Macfarlane at her own house,
and was shown into the drawing-room. According to an account given out
by his friends, he was anxious to apologise for his former rudeness.
From another account, it would appear that he had circulated reports
derogatory to the lady’s honour, which she was resolved to punish. A
third story represents him as having repeated the insult which he had
formerly offered; whereupon she went into another room, and presently
came back with a pair of pistols in her hand. On her bidding him
leave the house instantly, he said: ‘What, madam, d’ye design to act
a comedy?’ To which she answered that ‘_he would find it a tragedy if
he did not retire_.’ The infatuated man not obeying her command, she
fired one of the pistols, which, however, only wounded him slightly
in the left wrist, the bullet slanting down into the floor. The mere
instinct, probably, of self-preservation caused him to draw his sword;
but before he could use it she fired the other pistol, the shot of
which penetrated his heart. ‘This dispute,’ says a letter of the day,
‘was so close that Mr Cayley’s shirt was burnt at the sleeves with the
fire of one of the pistols, and his cravat and the breast of his shirt
with the fire of the other.’[233] Mrs Macfarlane immediately left the
room, locking the door upon the dead body, and sent a servant for her
husband, who was found at a neighbouring tavern. On his coming home
about an hour after, she took him by the sleeve, and leading him into
the room where the corpse lay, explained the circumstances which had
led to the bloody act. Mr Macfarlane said: ‘Oh, woman! what have you
done?’ But soon seeing the necessity for prompt measures, he went out
again to consult with some of his friends. ‘They all advised,’ says the
letter just quoted, ‘that he should convey his wife away privately, to
prevent her lying in jail, till a precognition should be taken of the
affair, and it should appear in its true light. Accordingly [about six
o’clock], she walked down the High Street, followed by her husband at a
little distance, and now absconds.
‘The thing continued a profound secret to all except those concerned in
the house till past ten at night, when Mr Macfarlane, having provided a
safe retreat for his wife, returned and gave orders for discovering it
to the magistrates, who went and viewed the body of the deceased, and
secured the house and maid, and all else who may become evidence of the
fact.’
Another contemporary says: ‘I saw his [Cayley’s] corpse after he
was cereclothed, and saw his blood where he lay on the floor for
twenty-four hours after he died, just as he fell; so it was a
difficulty to straight him.’
A careful investigation was made into every circumstance connected
with this fatal affair, but without demonstrating anything except the
passionate rashness or magnanimity of the fair homicide. Mr Macfarlane
was discharged upon his own affirmation that he knew nothing of the
deed till after it had taken place. A pamphlet was published by Mrs
Murray, Mr Cayley’s landlady, who seems to have kept a grocery shop
in the Cowgate, vindicating herself from the imputation which Mrs
Macfarlane’s tale had thrown upon her character; but to this there
appeared an answer, from some friend of the other party, in which the
imputation was fixed almost beyond the possibility of doubt. Mrs Murray
denied that Mrs Macfarlane had been in her house on the Saturday before
the murder; but evidence was given that she was seen issuing from
the close in which Mrs Murray resided, and, after ascending the Back
Stairs, was observed passing through the Parliament Square towards her
own house.
It will surprise every one to learn that this Scottish Lucrece was
a woman of only nineteen or twenty years of age, and some months
_enceinte_, at the time when she so boldly vindicated her honour. She
was a person of respectable connections, being a daughter of Colonel
Charles Straiton, ‘a gentleman of great honour,’ says one of the
letters already quoted, and who further appears to have been entrusted
with high negotiations by the Jacobites during the reign of Queen Anne.
By her mother, she was granddaughter to Sir Andrew Forrester.
Of the future history of Mrs Macfarlane we have but one glimpse, but
it is of a romantic nature. Margaret Swinton, who was the aunt of Sir
Walter Scott’s mother, and round whom he and his boy-brothers used
to close to listen to her tales, remembered being one Sunday left by
her parents at home in their house of Swinton in Berwickshire, while
the rest of the family attended church. Tiring of the solitude of her
little nursery, she stole quietly downstairs to the parlour, which
she entered somewhat abruptly. There, to her surprise, she beheld the
most beautiful woman she had ever seen, sitting at the breakfast-table
making tea. She believed it could be no other than one of those
enchanted queens whom she had heard of in fairy tales. The lady, after
a pause of surprise, came up to her with a sweet smile, and conversed
with her, concluding with a request that she would speak only to her
mamma of the stranger whom she had seen. Presently after, little
Margaret having turned her back for a few moments, the beautiful vision
had vanished. The whole appeared like a dream. By-and-by the family
returned, and Margaret took her mother aside that she might talk of
this wonderful apparition. Mrs Swinton applauded her for thus observing
the injunction which had been laid upon her. ‘Had you not,’ she added,
‘it might have cost that lady her life.’ Subsequent explanations made
Margaret aware that she had seen the unfortunate Mrs Macfarlane, who,
having some claim of kindred upon the Swinton family, had been received
by them, and kept in a secret room till such time as she could venture
to make her way out of the country. On Margaret looking away for a
moment, the lady had glided by a sliding panel into her Patmos behind
the wainscot, and thus unwittingly increased the child’s apprehension
of the whole being an event out of the course of nature.
FOOTNOTES
[232] The Back Stairs, built on the site of St Giles’ Churchyard, gave
direct communication between the Cowgate and Old Parliament Square. It
was by this way that Robertson the smuggler escaped from the Tolbooth
Church, where he and his accomplice Wilson had been taken, as was usual
with condemned prisoners, the Sunday before their execution. It was
Porteous’s behaviour at the execution of Wilson that led to the riot
and his own death in the Grassmarket.
[233] The pistols belonged to Mr Cayley himself, having been borrowed a
few days before by Mr Macfarlane.
THE CANONGATE.
DISTINGUISHED INHABITANTS IN FORMER TIMES—STORY OF A
BURNING—MOROCCO’S LAND—NEW STREET.
The Canongate, which takes its name from the Augustine canons of
Holyrood (who were permitted to build it by the charter of David I. in
1128, and afterwards ruled it as a burgh of regality), was formerly
the court end of the town. As the main avenue from the palace into
the city, it has borne upon its pavement the burden of all that was
beautiful, all that was gallant, all that has become historically
interesting in Scotland for the last six or seven hundred years. It
still presents an antique appearance, although many of the houses are
modernised. There is one with a date from Queen Mary’s reign,[234] and
many may be guessed, from their appearance, to be of even an earlier
era. Previously to the Union, when the palace ceased to be occasionally
inhabited, as it had formerly been, by at least the vicar of majesty in
the person of the Commissioner to the Parliament, the place was densely
inhabited by persons of distinction. Allan Ramsay, in lamenting the
death of Lucky Wood, says:
‘Oh, Canigate, puir elrich hole,
What loss, what crosses does thou thole!
London and death gars thee look droll,
And hing thy head;
Wow but thou has e’en a cauld coal
To blaw indeed;’
and mentions in a note that this place was ‘the greatest sufferer by
the loss of our members of parliament, which London now enjoys, many of
them having had their houses there;’ a fact which Maitland confirms.
Innumerable traces are to be found, in old songs and ballads, of the
elegant population of the Canongate in a former day. In the piteous
tale of Marie Hamilton—one of the Queen’s Maries—occurs this simple
but picturesque stanza:
‘As she cam’ doun the Cannogait,
The Cannogait sae free,
Mony a lady looked owre her window,
Weeping for this ladye.’
An old popular rhyme expresses the hauteur of these Canongate dames
towards their city neighbours of the male sex:
‘The lasses o’ the Canongate,
Oh they are wondrous nice;
They winna gi’e a single kiss
But for a double price.
Gar hang them, gar hang them,
Hich upon a tree;
For we’ll get better up the gate
For a bawbee!’
[Illustration: Weir’s Close, Canongate—wretchedly squalid.]
Even in times comparatively modern, this faubourg was inhabited by
persons of very great consideration.[235] Within the memory of a lady
living in 1830, it used to be a common thing to hear, among other
matters of gossip, ‘_that there was to be a braw flitting[236] in the
Canongate to-morrow_;’ and parties of young people were made up to go
and see the fine furniture brought out, sitting perhaps for hours in
the windows of some friend on the opposite side of the street, while
cart after cart was laden with magnificence.[237] Many of the houses
to this day are fit for the residence of a first-rate family in every
respect but _vicinage_ and _access_. The last grand blow was given to
the place by the opening of the road along the Calton Hill in 1817,
which rendered it no longer the avenue of approach to the city from
the east. Instead of profiting by the comparative retirement which it
acquired on that occasion, it seemed to become the more wretchedly
squalid from its being the less under notice—as a gentleman dresses
the least carefully when not expecting visitors. It is now a secluded
and, in general, meanly inhabited suburb, only accessible by ways
which, however lightly our fathers and grandfathers might regard them,
are hardly now pervious to a lady or gentleman without shocking more
of the senses than one, besides the difficulty of steering one’s way
through the herds of the idle and the wretched who encumber the street.
One of the houses near the head of the Canongate, on the north side
of the street, was indicated to me by an old lady a few years ago as
that which tradition in her young days pointed to in connection with a
wild story related in the notes to _Rokeby_. She had often heard the
tale told, nearly in the same manner as it has been given by Scott, and
the site of the house concerned in the tragedy was pointed out to her
by her seniors. Perhaps the reader will again excuse a quotation from
the writings of our late gifted fellow-townsman: if to be related at
all—and surely in a work devoted to Edinburgh popular legends it could
not rightly be overlooked—it may as well be given in the language of
the prince of modern _conteurs_:
‘About the beginning of the eighteenth century, when the large castles
of the Scottish nobles, and even the secluded hotels, like those
of the French _noblesse_, which they possessed in Edinburgh, were
sometimes the scenes of strange and mysterious transactions, a divine
of singular sanctity was called up at midnight to pray with a person
at the point of death. This was no unusual summons; but what followed
was alarming. He was put into a sedan-chair, and after he had been
transported to a remote part of the town, the bearers insisted upon
his being blindfolded. The request was enforced by a cocked pistol,
and submitted to; but in the course of the discussion, he conjectured,
from the phrases employed by the chairmen, and from some part of their
dress, not completely concealed by their cloaks, that they were greatly
above the menial station they assumed. After many turns and windings,
the chair was carried upstairs into a lodging, where his eyes were
uncovered, and he was introduced into a bedroom, where he found a
lady, newly delivered of an infant. He was commanded by his attendants
to say such prayers by her bedside as were fitting for a person not
expected to survive a mortal disorder. He ventured to remonstrate,
and observe that her safe delivery warranted better hopes. But he was
sternly commanded to obey the orders first given, and with difficulty
recollected himself sufficiently to acquit himself of the task imposed
on him. He was then again hurried into the chair; but as they conducted
him downstairs he heard the report of a pistol. He was safely conducted
home; a purse of gold was forced upon him; but he was warned, at the
same time, that the least allusion to this dark transaction would cost
him his life. He betook himself to rest, and after long and broken
musing, fell into a deep sleep. From this he was awakened by his
servant, with the dismal news that a fire of uncommon fury had broken
out in the house of ——, near the head of the Canongate, and that it
was totally consumed; with the shocking addition that the daughter of
the proprietor, a young lady eminent for beauty and accomplishments,
had perished in the flames. The clergyman had his suspicions, but to
have made them public would have availed nothing. He was timid; the
family was of the first distinction; above all, the deed was done,
and could not be amended. Time wore away, however, and with it his
terrors. He became unhappy at being the solitary depositary of this
fearful mystery, and mentioned it to some of his brethren, through
whom the anecdote acquired a sort of publicity. The divine, however,
had been long dead, and the story in some degree forgotten, when a
fire broke out again on the very same spot where the house of —— had
formerly stood, and which was now occupied by buildings of an inferior
description. When the flames were at their height, the tumult which
usually attends such a scene was suddenly suspended by an unexpected
apparition. A beautiful female, in a nightdress extremely rich, but at
least half a century old, appeared in the very midst of the fire, and
uttered these tremendous words in her vernacular idiom: “_Anes_ burned,
_twice_ burned; the _third_ time I’ll scare you all!” The belief in
this story was formerly so strong that on a fire breaking out, and
seeming to approach the fatal spot, there was a good deal of anxiety
testified, lest the apparition should make good her denunciation.’
A little way farther down the Canongate, on the same side, is an
old-fashioned house called _Morocco’s Land_, having an alley passing
under it, over which is this inscription[238]—a strange cry of the
spirit of man to be heard in a street:
MISERERE MEI, DOMINE: A PECCATO, PROBRO,
DEBITO, ET MORTE SUBITA, LIBERA ME.
From whom this exclamation proceeded I have never learned; but the
house, which is of more modern date than the legend, has a story
connected with it. It is said that a young woman belonging to
Edinburgh, having been taken upon a voyage by an African rover, was
sold to the harem of the Emperor of Morocco, with whom she became a
favourite. Mindful, like her countrymen in general, of her native land
and her relations, she held such a correspondence with home as led to
a brother of hers entering into merchandise, and conducting commercial
transactions with Morocco. He was successful, and realised a little
fortune, out of which he built this stately mansion. From gratitude,
or out of a feeling of vanity regarding his imperial brother-in-law,
he erected a statue of that personage in front of his house—a black,
naked figure, with a turban and a necklace of beads; such being the
notion which a Scottish artist of those days entertained of the
personal aspect of the chief of one of the Mohammedan states of Africa.
And this figure, perched in a little stone pulpit, still exists. As to
the name bestowed upon the house, it would most probably arise from the
man being in the first place called _Morocco_ by way of sobriquet, as
is common when any one becomes possessed by a particular subject, and
often speaks of it.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: Morocco’s Land.]
A little farther along is the opening of New Street, a modern offshoot
of the ancient city, dating from a time immediately before the rise
of the New Town. Many persons of consequence lived here: Lord Kames,
in a neat house at the top, on the east side—an edifice once thought
so fine that people used to bring their country cousins to see it;
Lord Hailes, in a house more than half-way down, afterwards occupied
by Mr Ruthven, mechanist; Sir Philip Ainslie, in another house in
the same row. The passers-by were often arrested by the sight of Sir
Philip’s preparations for a dinner-party through the open windows,
the show of plate being particularly great. Now all these mansions
are left to become workshops. _Sic transit._[239] Opposite to Kames’s
house is a small circular arrangement of causeway, indicating where St
John’s Cross formerly stood. Charles I., at his ceremonial entry into
Edinburgh in 1633, knighted the provost at St John’s Cross.[240]
FOOTNOTES
[234] A little below the church.
[235] Subjoined is a list of persons of note who lived in the Canongate
in the early days of the late Mr Chalmers Izett, whose memory extended
back to 1769:
‘DUKES.
Hamilton.
Queensberry.
EARLS.
Breadalbane.
Hyndford.
Wemyss.
Balcarras.
Moray.
Dalhousie.
Haddington.
Mar.
Srathmore.
Traquair.
Selkirk.
Dundonald.
Kintore.
Dunmore.
Seafield.
Panmure.
COUNTESSES.
Tweeddale.
Lothian.
LORDS.
Haddo.
Colvill.
Blantyre.
Nairn.
Semple.
A. Gordon.
Cranstoun.
L. OF SESSION.
Eskgrove.
Hailes.
Prestongrange.
Kames.
Milton.
Montgomery.
Bannatyne.
BARONETS.
Sir J. Grant.
Sir J. Suttie.
Sir J. Whiteford.
Sir J. Stewart.
Sir J. Stirling.
Sir J. Sinclair, Glorat.
Sir J. Halkett.
Sir James Stirling.
Sir D. Hay.
Sir B. Dunbar.
Sir J. Scott, Ancrum.
Sir R. Anstruther.
Sir J. Sinclair, Ulbster.
COMMANDERS-IN-CHIEF.
General Oughton.
General Skene.
Lord A. Gordon.
Lord Moira.
EMINENT MEN.
Adam Smith.
Dr Young.
Dugald Stewart.
Dr Gardner.
Dr Gregory.
BANK.
Douglas, Heron, and Company.
LADIES’ BOARDING-SCHOOL.
Mrs Hamilton, Chessels’s Court.
PRINCIPAL INNS.
Ramsay’s, St Mary’s Wynd.
Boyd’s, Head of Canongate.
‘Two coaches went down the Canongate to Leith—one hour in going, and
one hour in returning.’
[236] Removal.
[237] ‘At a former period, when the Canongate of Edinburgh was a more
fashionable residence than at present, a lady of rank who lived in one
of the closes, before going out to an evening-party, and at a time when
hairdressers and peruke-makers were much in demand, requested a servant
(newly come home) to tell Tam Tough the hairdresser to come to her
immediately. The servant departed in quest of Puff, but had scarcely
reached the street before she forgot the barber’s name. Meeting with a
caddy, she asked him if he knew where the hairdresser lived. “Whatna
hairdresser is ’t?” replied the caddy. “I ha’e forgot his name,”
answered she. “What kind o’ name wus ’t?” responded Donald. “As near
as I can mind,” said the girl, “it was a name that wad neither _rug_
nor _rive_.” “The deil ’s in ’t,” answered Donald, “but that’s a tam’d
tough name.” “Thank ye, Donald, that’s the man’s name I wanted—_Tam
Tough_.”’—[_From an Edinburgh Newspaper._]
[238] The inscription is now removed.
[239] With the exception of Lord Kames’s house, all the others
referred to have been swept away by the North British Railway and the
Corporation Gasworks, which at one time occupied the eastern side of
the street.
[240] Although it was outside the wall, the city authorities
claimed jurisdiction over the Canongate as far as St John’s Cross,
notwithstanding that the Canongate was a separate burgh, which
it continued to be till the middle of the nineteenth century.
Proclamations were made at St John’s Cross as well as at the Mercat
Cross in the High Street, and at it the Canongate burgh officials
joined the city fathers when paying ceremonial visits to Holyrood.
ST JOHN STREET.
LORD MONBODDO’S SUPPERS—THE SISTER OF SMOLLETT—ANECDOTE OF
HENRY DUNDAS.
[Illustration]
St John Street, so named with reference to St John’s Cross above
mentioned, was one of the heralds of the New Town. In the latter
half of the last century it was occupied solely by persons of
distinction—nobles, judges, and country gentleman; now it is
possessed as exclusively by persons of the middle rank. In No. 13 lived
that eccentric genius, Lord Monboddo, whose supper-parties, conducted
in classic taste, frequented by the _literati_, and for a time presided
over by an angel in the form of a daughter of his lordship, were of
immense attraction in their day. In a stair at the head of this street
lived the sister of the author of _Roderick Random_.
Smollett’s life as a literary adventurer in London, and the full
participation he had in the woes of authors by profession, have
perhaps conveyed an erroneous idea of his birth and connections. The
Smolletts of Dumbartonshire were in reality what was called in Scotland
a good old family. The novelist’s own grandfather had been one of the
commissioners for the Union between England and Scotland. And it is an
undoubted fact that Tobias himself, if he had lived two or three years
longer, would have become the owner of the family estate, worth about
a thousand a year. All this, to any one conversant with the condition
of the Scottish gentry in the early part of the last century, will
appear quite consistent with his having been brought up as a druggist’s
apprentice in Glasgow—‘the bubbly-nosed callant, wi’ the stane in his
pouch,’ as his master affectionately described him, with reference to
his notorious qualities as a Pickle.
The sister of Smollett—she who, failing him, did succeed to the family
property—was a Mrs Telfer, domiciled as a gentle widow in a common
stair at the head of St John Street (west side), first door up. She
is described as a somewhat stern-looking specimen of her sex, with a
high cast of features, but in reality a good-enough-natured woman, and
extremely shrewd and intelligent. One passion of her genus possessed
her—whist. A relative tells me that one of the city magistrates, who
was a tallow-chandler, calling upon her one evening, she said: ‘Come
awa, bailie, and take a trick at the cartes.’
‘Troth, ma’am,’ said he, ‘I hav’na a bawbee in my pouch.’
‘Tut, man, ne’er mind that,’ replied the lady; ‘let’s e’en play for a
pund o’ candles!’
During his last visit to Edinburgh (1766)—the visit which occasioned
_Humphry Clinker_—Smollett lived in his sister’s house. A person who
recollects seeing him there describes him as dressed in black clothes,
tall, and extremely handsome, but quite unlike the portraits at the
front of his works, all of which are disclaimed by his relations. The
unfortunate truth appears to be that the world is in possession of no
genuine likeness of Smollett! He was very peevish, on account of the
ill-health to which he had been so long a martyr, and used to complain
much of a severe ulcerous disorder in his arm.
His wife, according to the same authority, was a Creole, with a dark
complexion, though, upon the whole, rather pretty—a fine lady, but a
silly woman. Yet she had been the Narcissa of _Roderick Random_.[241]
In _Humphry Clinker_, Smollett works up many observations of things and
persons which he had made in his recent visit to Scotland. His relative
Commissary Smollett, and the family seat near Loch Lomond, receive
ample notice. The story in the family is that while Matthew Bramble was
undoubtedly himself, he meant in the gay and sprightly Jerry Melford
to describe his sister’s son, Major Telfer, and in Liddy to depict his
own daughter, who was destined to be the wife of the major, but, to
the inexpressible and ineffaceable grief of her father, died before
the scheme could be accomplished. Jerry, it will be recollected, ‘got
some damage from the bright eyes of the charming Miss R——n, whom he
had the honour to dance with at the ball.’ Liddy contracted an intimate
friendship with the same person. This young beauty was Eleonora Renton,
charming by the true right divine, for she was daughter of Mr Renton
of Lamerton, by Lady Susan Montgomery, one of the fair offshoots of
the house of Eglintoune, described in a preceding article. A sister
of hers was married to Smollett’s eldest nephew, Telfer, who became
inheritor of the family estate, and on account of it took the surname
of Smollett: a large modern village in Dumbartonshire takes its name
from this lady. It seems to have been this connection which brought
the charming Eleonora under the novelist’s attention. She afterwards
married Charles Sharpe of Hoddam, and became the mother of Charles
Kirkpatrick Sharpe, the well-known antiquary. Strange to say, the lady
whose bright eyes had flamed upon poor Smollett’s soul in the middle of
the last century, was living so lately as 1836.
[Illustration: ST JOHN’S CLOSE.
Entrance to Canongate Kilwinning Mason Lodge.
PAGE 305.]
When Smollett was confined in the King’s Bench Prison for the libel
upon Admiral Knowles, he formed an intimacy with the celebrated
Tenducci. This melodious singing-bird had recently got his wings
clipped by his creditors, and was mewed up in the same cage with the
novelist. Smollett’s friendship proceeded to such a height that he paid
the vocalist’s debts from his own purse, and procured him his liberty.
Tenducci afterwards visited Scotland, and was one night singing in a
private circle, when somebody told him that a lady present was a near
relation of his benefactor; upon which the grateful Italian prostrated
himself before her, kissed her hands, and acted so many fantastic
extravagances, after the foreign fashion, that she was put extremely
out of countenance.
On the west side of the street, immediately to the south of the
Canongate Kilwinning Mason Lodge, there is a neat self-contained house
of old fashion, with a flower-plot in front. This was the residence
of —— Anderson, merchant in Leith, the father of seven sons, all
of whom attained respectable situations in life: one was the late Mr
Samuel Anderson of St Germains, banker. They had been at school with Mr
Henry Dundas (afterwards Lord Melville); and when he had risen to high
office, he called one day on Mr Anderson, and expressed his earnest
wish to have the pleasure of dining with his seven school companions,
all of whom happened at that time to be at home. The meeting took place
at Mr Dundas’s, and it was a happy one, particularly to the host, who,
when the hour of parting arrived, filled a bumper in high elation to
their healths, and mentioned that they were the only men who had ever
dined with him since he became a public servant who had not asked some
favour either for themselves or their friends.
The house adjoining to the one last mentioned—having its gable to the
street, and a garden to the south—was, about 1780, the residence of
the Earl of Wemyss. A Lady Betty Charteris, of this family, occupied
the one farthest to the south on that side of the street. She was a
person of romantic history, for, being thwarted in an affair of the
heart, she lay in bed for twenty-six years, till dismissed to the world
where such troubles are unknown.
FOOTNOTES
[241] Strap in _Roderick Random_ was supposed to represent one
Hutchinson, a barber near Dunbar. The man encouraged the idea as much
as possible. When Mr [Warren] Hastings (governor of India) and his wife
visited Scotland, they sent for this man, and were so pleased with him
that Mr Hastings afterwards sent him a couple of razors, mounted in
gold, from London.
MORAY HOUSE.
[Illustration]
In the Canongate there is a house which has had the fortune to be
connected with more than one of the most interesting points in our
history. It is usually styled Moray House, being the entailed property
of the noble family of Moray. The large proportions and elegant
appearance of this mansion distinguish it from all the surrounding
buildings, and in the rear (1847) there is a fine garden, descending in
the old fashion by a series of terraces. Though long deserted by the
Earls of Moray, it has been till a recent time kept in the best order,
being occupied by families of respectable character.[242]
This house was built in the early part of the reign of Charles I.
(about 1628) by Mary, Countess of Home, then a widow. Her ladyship’s
initials, M. H., appear, in cipher fashion, underneath her coronet upon
various parts of the exterior; and over one of the principal windows
towards the street there is a lozenge shield, containing the two lions
rampant which form the coat armorial of the Home family. Lady Home was
an English lady, being the daughter of Edward Sutton, Lord Dudley.
She seems to have been unusually wealthy for the dowager of a Scottish
earl, for in 1644 the English Parliament repaid seventy thousand
pounds which she had lent to the Scottish Covenanting Government; and
she is found in the same year lending seven thousand to aid in paying
the detachment of troops which that Government had sent to Ireland.
She was also a sufferer, however, by the civil war, in as far as
Dunglass House, which was blown up in 1640, by accident, when in the
hands of the Covenanters, belonged to her in liferent. To her affluent
circumstances, and the taste which she probably brought with her from
her native country, may be ascribed the superior style of this mansion,
which not only displays in the outside many traces of the elegant
architecture which prevailed in England in the reign of James I., but
contains two state apartments, decorated in the most elaborate manner,
both in the walls and ceilings, with the favourite stucco-work of
that reign. On the death of Lady Home the house passed (her ladyship
having no surviving male issue) to her daughters and co-heiresses,
Margaret, Countess of Moray, and Anne, Countess (afterwards Duchess)
of Lauderdale, between whom the entire property of their father, the
first Earl of Home, appears to have been divided, his title going into
another line. By an arrangement between the two sisters, the house
became, in 1645, the property of the Countess of Moray and her son
James, Lord Doune.
It stood in this condition as to ownership, though still popularly
called ‘Lady Home’s Lodging,’ when, in the summer of 1648, Oliver
Cromwell paid his first visit to Edinburgh. Cromwell had then just
completed the overthrow of the army of the _Engagement_—a gallant
body of troops which had been sent into England by the more Cavalier
party of the Scottish Covenanters, in the hope of rescuing the king
from the hands of the sectaries. The victorious general, with his
companion Lambert, took up his quarters in this house, and here
received the visits of some of the leaders of the less loyal party of
the Covenanters—the Marquis of Argyll, the Chancellor Loudoun, the
Earl of Lothian, the Lords Arbuthnot, Elcho, and Burleigh, and the
Reverend Messrs David Dickson, Robert Blair, and James Guthrie. ‘What
passed among them,’ says Bishop Henry Guthrie in his _Memoirs_, ‘came
not to be known infallibly; but it was talked very loud that he did
communicate to them his design in reference to the king, and had their
assent thereto.’ It is scarcely necessary to remark that this was
probably no more than a piece of Cavalier scandal, for there is no
reason to believe that Cromwell, if he yet contemplated the death of
the king, would have disclosed his views to men still so far tinctured
with loyalty as those enumerated. Cromwell’s object in visiting
Edinburgh on this occasion and in holding these conferences, was
probably limited to the reinstatement of the ultra-Presbyterian party
in the government, from which the Duke of Hamilton and other loyalists
had lately displaced it.
When, in 1650, the Lord Lorn, eldest son of the Marquis of Argyll, was
married to Lady Mary Stuart, eldest daughter of the Earl of Moray, the
wedding feast ‘stood,’ as contemporary writers express it, at the Earl
of Moray’s house in the Canongate. The event so auspicious to these
great families was signalised by a circumstance of a very remarkable
kind. A whole week had been passed in festivity by the wedded pair
and their relations, when, on Saturday the 18th of May, the Marquis
of Montrose was brought to Edinburgh, an excommunicated and already
condemned captive, having been taken in the north in an unsuccessful
attempt to raise a Cavalier party for his young and exiled prince.
When the former relative circumstances of Argyll and Montrose are
called to mind—when it is recollected that they had some years before
struggled for an ascendancy in the civil affairs of Scotland, that
Montrose had afterwards chased Argyll round and round the Highlands,
burned and plundered his country undisturbed, and on one occasion
overthrown his forces in a sanguinary action, while Argyll looked on
from a safe distance at sea—the present relative circumstances of
the two chiefs become a striking illustration of the vicissitudes in
personal fortune that characterise a time of civil commotion. Montrose,
after riding from Leith on a sorry horse, was led into the Canongate by
the Watergate, and there placed upon a low cart, driven by the common
executioner. In this ignominious fashion he was conducted up the street
towards the prison, in which he was to have only two days to live, and
in passing along was necessarily brought under the walls and windows of
Moray House. On his approach to that mansion, the Marquis of Argyll,
his lady, and children, together with the whole of the marriage-party,
left their banqueting, and stepping out to a balcony which overhangs
the street, there planted themselves to gaze on the prostrated enemy of
their house and cause. Here, indeed, they had the pleasure of seeing
Montrose in all external circumstances reduced beneath their feet; but
they had not calculated on the strength of nature which enabled that
extraordinary man to overcome so much of the bitterness of humiliation
and of death. He is said to have gazed upon them with so much serenity
that they shrank back with some degree of discomposure, though not till
the marchioness had expressed her spite at the fallen hero by spitting
at him—an act which in the present age will scarcely be credible,
though any one well acquainted with the history of the seventeenth
century will have too little reason to doubt it.
In a Latin manuscript of this period, the gardens connected with the
house of the Earl of Moray are spoken of as ‘of such elegance, and
cultivated with so much care, as to vie with those of warmer countries,
and perhaps even of England itself. And here,’ pursues the writer, ‘you
may see how much the art and industry of man may avail in supplying the
defects of nature. Scarcely any one would believe it possible to give
so much beauty to a garden in this frigid clime.’ One reason for the
excellence of the garden may have been its southern exposure. On the
uppermost of its terraces there is a large and beautiful thorn, with
pensile leaves; on the second there are some fruit-trees, the branches
of which have been caused to spread out in a particular way, so as to
form a kind of cup, possibly for the reception of a pleasure-party,
for such fantastic twistings of nature were not uncommon among our
ancestors. In the lowest level of the garden there is a little
receptacle for water, beside which is the statue of a fishing-boy,
having a basket of fish at his feet, and a _clam-shell_ inverted
upon his head.[243] Here is also a small building, surmounted by two
lions holding female shields, and which may therefore be supposed
contemporaneous with the house: this was formerly a summer-house,
but has latterly been expanded into the character of a conservatory.
Tradition vaguely reports it as the place where the Union between
England and Scotland was signed; though there is also a popular story
of that fact having been accomplished in a _laigh shop_ of the High
Street (marked No. 117), at one time a tavern, and known as the _Union
Cellar_.[244] Probably the rumour, in at least the first instance,
refers only to private arrangements connected with the passing of
the celebrated statute in question. The Chancellor Earl of Seafield
inhabited Moray House at that time on lease, and nothing could be more
likely than that he should there have after-dinner consultations on the
pending measure, which might in the evening be adjourned to this garden
retreat.
It would appear that about this period the garden attached to the house
was a sort of a public promenade or lounging-place; as was also the
garden connected with Heriot’s Hospital. In this character it forms a
scene in the licentious play called _The Assembly_, written in 1692
by Dr Pitcairn. _Will_, ‘a discreet smart gentleman,’ as he is termed
in the prefixed list of _dramatis personæ_, but in reality a perfect
debauchee, first makes an appointment with Violetta, his mistress, to
meet her in this place; and as she is under the charge of a sourly
devout aunt, he has to propound the matter in metaphorical language.
Pretending to expound a particular passage in the Song of Solomon for
the benefit of the dame, he thus gives the hint to her young protégée:
‘_Will._ “Come, my beloved, let us walk in the fields, let us lodge in
the villages.” The same metaphor still. The kirk not having the liberty
of bringing her servant to her mother’s house, resolveth to meet him in
the villages, such as the Canongate, in respect of Edinburgh; and the
vineyard, such as _my Lady Murray’s Yards_, to use a homely comparison.
‘_Old Lady._ A wondrous young man this!
* * * * *
‘_Will._ The eighth chapter towards the close: “Thou that dwellest in
the gardens, cause me to hear thy voice.”
‘_Violetta._ That’s still alluding to the metaphor of a gallant, who,
by some signs, warns his mistress to make haste—a whistle or so. The
same with early in the former chapter; that is to say, to-morrow by six
o’clock. Make haste to accomplish our loves.
‘_Old L._ Thou art a hopeful girl; I hope God has blest my pains on
thee.’
In terms of this curious assignation, the third act opens in a walk in
Lady Murray’s Yards, where Will meets his beloved Violetta. After a
great deal of badinage, in the style of Dryden’s comedies, which were
probably Dr Pitcairn’s favourite models, the dialogue proceeds in the
following style:
‘_Will._ I’ll marry you at the rights, if you can find in your heart to
give yourself to an honest fellow of no great fortune.
‘_Vio._ In truth, sir, methinks it were fully as much for my future
comfort to bestow myself, and any little fortune I have, upon you, as
some reverend spark in a band and short cloak, with the patrimony of a
good gift of prayer, and as little sense as his father, who was hanged
in the Grassmarket for murdering the king’s officers, had of honesty.
‘_Will._ Then I must acknowledge, my dear madam, I am most damnably
in love with you, and must have you by foul or fair means; choose you
whether.
‘_Vio._ I’ll give you fair-play in an honest way.
‘_Will._ Then, madam, I can command a parson when I please; and if you
be half so kind as I could wish, we’ll take a hackney, and trot up to
some honest curate’s house: besides, a guinea or so will be a charity
to him perhaps.
‘_Vio._ Hold a little; I am hardly ready for that yet,’ &c.
After the departure of this hopeful couple, Lord Huffy and Lord
Whigriddin, who are understood to have been intended for Lord Leven
(son of the Earl of Melville) and the Earl of Crawford, enter the
gardens, and hold some discourse of a different kind.
FOOTNOTES
[242] For many years the Practising School for Teachers under the
management of the Free Church of Scotland, now the Training College for
Teachers under the Provincial Council of Education.
[243] The terraces have long since been deprived of their last
semblance of the old gardens; but while recent excavations were being
made for an extension of the educational buildings, the statue of the
boy was discovered underground in the lowest terrace. The statue is
preserved, and forms a connecting link between ‘My Lady Murray’s Yards’
and the ‘Yards’ of the modern school.
[244] On the north side of the High Street, opposite the Tron Church.
The site is now covered by the opening of Cockburn Street.
THE SPEAKING HOUSE.
[Illustration]
The mansion on which I venture to confer this title is an old one of
imposing appearance, a little below Moray House. It is conspicuous
by three gables presented to the street, and by the unusual space of
linear ground which it occupies. Originally, it has had no door to
the street. A _porte-cochère_ gives admittance to a close behind,
from which every part of the house had been admissible, and when this
gateway was closed the inhabitants would be in a tolerably defensible
position. In this feature the house gives a striking idea of the
insecurity which marked the domestic life of three hundred years ago.
[Illustration: BAKEHOUSE CLOSE.
Back of ‘Speaking House.’
PAGE 313.]
It was built in the year of the assassination of the Regent Moray,
and one is somewhat surprised to think that, at so dark a crisis of
our national history, a mansion of so costly a character should have
taken its rise. The owner, whatever grade he held, seems to have felt
an apprehension of the popular talk on the subject of his raising
so elegant a mansion; and he took a curious mode of deprecating its
expression. On a tablet over the ground-floor he inscribes: HODIE MIHI:
CRAS TIBI. CUR IGITUR CURAS? along with the year of the erection,
1570. This is as much as to say: ‘I am the happy man to-day; your turn
may come to-morrow. Why, then, should you repine?’ One can imagine
from a second tablet, a little way farther along the front, that as
the building proceeded, the storm of public remark and outcry had come
to be more and more bitter, so that the soul of the owner got stirred
up into a firm and defying anger. He exclaims (for, though a lettered
inscription, one feels it as an exclamation): UT TU LINGUÆ TUÆ, SIC
EGO MEAR. AURIUM, DOMINUS SUM (‘As thou of thy tongue, so I of my
ears, am lord’); thus quoting, in his rage on this petty occasion, an
expression said to have been used in the Roman senate by Titus Tacitus
when repelling the charges of Lucius Metellus.[245] Afterwards he
seems to have cooled into a religious view of the predicament, and in
a third legend along the front he tells the world: CONSTANTI PECTORI
RES MORTALIUM UMBRA; ending a little farther on with an emblem of the
Christian hope of the Resurrection, ears of wheat springing from a
handful of bones. It is a great pity that we should not know who was
the builder and owner of this house, since he has amused us so much
with the history of his feelings during the process of its erection. A
friend at my elbow suggests—a schoolmaster! But who ever heard of a
schoolmaster so handsomely remunerated by his profession as to be able
to build a house?
Nothing else is known of the early history of this house beyond the
fact of the Canongate magistrates granting a charter for it to the
Hammermen of that burgh, September 10, 1647.[246] It was, however,
in 1753 occupied by a person of no less distinction than the Dowager
Duchess of Gordon.[247]
In the alley passing under this mansion there is a goodly building of
more modern structure, forming two sides of a quadrangle, with a small
court in front divided from the lane by a wall in which there is a
large gateway. Amidst filthiness indescribable, one discerns traces of
former elegance: a crest over the doorway—namely, a cock mounted on
a trumpet, with the motto ‘VIGILANTIBUS,’ and the date 1633; over two
upper windows, the letters ‘S. A. A.’ and ‘D. M. H.’ These memorials,
with certain references in the charter before mentioned, leave no
room for doubt that this was the house of Sir Archibald Acheson of
Abercairny, Secretary of State for Scotland in the reign of Charles I.,
and ancestor to the Earl of Gosford in Ireland, who to this day bears
the same crest and motto. The letters are the initials of Sir Archibald
and his wife, Dame Margaret Hamilton. Here of course was the _court_
of Scotland for a certain time, the Secretary of State being the grand
dispenser of patronage in our country at that period—_here_, where
nothing but the extremest wretchedness is now to be seen! That boastful
bird, too, still seeming to assert the family dignity, two hundred
years after it ceased to have any connection with the spot! Verily
there are some moral preachments in these dark old closes if modern
refinement could go to hear the sermon!
[Illustration: Acheson House.]
Sir Archibald Acheson acquired extensive lands in Ireland,[248]
which have ever since been in the possession of his family. It was a
descendant of his, and of the same name, who had the gratification of
becoming the landlord of Swift at Market-hill, and whom the dean was
consequently led to celebrate in many of his poems. Swift seems to have
been on the most familiar terms with this worthy knight and his lady;
the latter he was accustomed to call _Skinnibonia_, _Lean_, or _Snipe_,
as the humour inclined him. The inimitable comic painting of her
ladyship’s maid Hannah, in the debate whether Hamilton’s Bawn should
be turned into a malt-house or a barrack, can never perish from our
literature. In like humour, the dean asserts the superiority of himself
and his brother-tenant Colonel Leslie, who had served much in Spain,
over the knight:
‘Proud baronet of Nova Scotia,
The dean and Spaniard much reproach ye.
Of their two fames the world enough rings;
Where are thy services and sufferings?
What if for nothing once you kissed,
Against the grain, a monarch’s fist?
What if among the courtly tribe,
You lost a place and saved a bribe?
And then in surly mood came here
To fifteen hundred pounds a year,
And fierce against the Whigs harangued?
You never ventured to be hanged.
How dare you treat your betters thus?
Are you to be compared to us?’
Speaking also of a celebrated thorn at Market-hill, which had long been
a resort of merry-making parties, he reverts to the Scottish Secretary
of former days:
‘Sir Archibald, that valorous knight,
The lord of all the fruitful plain,
Would come and listen with delight,
For he was fond of rural strain:
Sir Archibald, whose favourite name
Shall stand for ages on record,
By Scottish bards of highest fame,
Wise Hawthornden and Stirling’s lord.’
[Illustration]
The following letter to Sir Archibald from his friend Sir James
Balfour, Lord Lyon, occurs amongst the manuscript stores of the latter
gentleman in the Advocates’ Library:
‘To Sir ARCHIBALD ACHESONE,
one of the Secretaries of Staite.
‘WORTHY SIR—Your letters, full of Spartanical brevity to the
first view, bot, againe overlooked, Demosthenicall longe;
stuffed full of exaggerations and complaints; the yeast of your
enteirest affections, sent to quicken a slumbring friend as you
imagine, quho nevertheless remains vigilant of you and of the
smallest matters, which may aney wayes adde the least rill of
content to the ocean of your happiness; quherfor you may show
your comerad, and intreat him from me, as from one that trewly
loves and honors his best pairts, that now he vold refraine,
both his tonge and pen, from these quhirkis and obloquies,
quherwith he so often uses to stain the name of grate
personages, for hardly can he live so reteiredly, in so voluble
ane age, without becoming at one tyme or uther obnoxious to the
blow of some courtier. So begging God to bless you, I am your—
JA. BALFOUR.
‘_LONDON, 9 Apryll 1631._’
Twenty years before the Duchess of Gordon lived in the venerable house
at the head of the close, a preceding dowager resided in another part
of the town. This was the distinguished Lady Elizabeth Howard (daughter
of the Duke of Norfolk, by Lady Anne Somerset, daughter of the Marquis
of Worcester), who occasioned so much disturbance in the end of Queen
Anne’s reign by the Jacobite medal which she sent to the Faculty of
Advocates. Her grace lived in a house at the Abbeyhill, where, as we
are informed by Wodrow, in a tone of pious horror,[249] she openly
kept a kind of college for instructing young people in Jesuitism and
Jacobitism together. In this labour she seems to have been assisted
by the Duchess of Perth, a kindred soul, whose enthusiasm afterwards
caused the ruin of her family, by sending her son into the insurrection
of 1745.[250] The Duchess of Gordon died here in 1732. I should suppose
the house to have been that respectable old villa, at the extremity of
the suburb of Abbeyhill, in which the late Baron Norton, of the Court
of Exchequer, lived for many years. It was formerly possessed by Baron
Mure, who, during the administration of the Earl of Bute, exercised the
duties and dispensed the patronage of the _sous-ministre_ for Scotland,
under the Hon. Stuart Mackenzie, younger brother of the Premier.
This was of course in its turn the _court_ of Scotland; and from the
description of a gentleman old enough to remember attending the levees
(Sir W. M. Bannatyne), I should suppose that it was as much haunted by
suitors of all kinds as ever were the more elegant halls of Holyrood
House. Baron Mure, who was the personal friend of Earl Bute, died in
1774.
FOOTNOTES
[245] I was indebted to my friend Dr John Brown (_Horæ Subsecivæ_, p.
42) for drawing my attention to a quotation of Seneca by Beyerlinck
(_Magn. Theatr. Vit. Human._, tom. vi. p. 60), involving this fine
expression. Some one, however, has searched all over the writings of
Seneca for it in vain.
[246] The close entering by the archway at the east end of the house,
now called ‘Bakehouse Close,’ was formerly ‘Hammermen’s Close.’
[247] ‘The Speaking House’ is now recognised as a town mansion of the
Huntly family. It is said to be associated with the first marquis, who
killed the ‘Bonnie Earl of Moray’ at Donibristle, and died in 1636 at
Dundee on his way north to Aberdeenshire. His son, the second marquis,
who was beheaded in 1649, was residing in this house ten years prior
to his execution, and in it his daughter Lady Ann was married to Lord
Drummond, third Earl of Perth.
[248] Which he named Gosford, after the estate in East Lothian, which
was acquired by Sir Archibald’s ancestor, a wealthy burgess in the
reign of Queen Mary. The Viscounts Gosford take their title from the
Irish estate.
[249] In his MS. Diaries in the Advocates’ Library.
[250] In an advertisement in a Jacobite newspaper, called _The
Thistle_, which rose and sank in 1734, the house is advertised as
having lately been occupied by the Duchesses of Gordon and Perth.
[1868. It is in the course of being taken down to make way for a
railway.]
PANMURE HOUSE—ADAM SMITH.
At the bottom of a close a little way below the Canongate Church,
there is a house which a few years ago bore the appearance of one of
those small semi-quadrangular manor-houses which were prevalent in
the country about the middle of the seventeenth century. It is now
altered, and brought into juxtaposition with the coarse details of
an ironfoundry, yet still is not without some traits of its original
style. The name of Panmure House takes the mind back to the Earls of
Panmure, the fourth of whom lost title and estates for his concern in
the affair of 1715; but I am not certain of any earlier proprietor of
this family than William Maule, nephew of the attainted earl, created
Earl of Panmure as an Irish title in 1743. _He_ possessed the house in
the middle of the last century.
[Illustration: Back of Canongate Tolbooth—Tolbooth Wynd.]
All reference to rank in connection with this house appears trivial
in comparison with the fact that it was the residence of Adam Smith
from 1778, when he came to live in Edinburgh as a commissioner of the
customs, till his death in 1790, when he was interred in a somewhat
obscure situation at the back of the Canongate Tolbooth. In his time
the house must have seen the most intellectual company to be had in
Scotland; but it had not the honour of being the birthplace of any
of Smith’s great works. His last and greatest—the book which has
undoubtedly done more for the good of the community than any other
ever produced in Scotland—was the work of ten quiet, studious years
previous to 1778, during which the philosopher lived in his mother’s
house in Kirkcaldy.
The gentle, virtuous character of Smith has left little for the
anecdotist. The utmost simplicity marked the externals of the man. He
said very truly (being in possession of a handsome library) that ‘he
was only a beau in his books.’ Leading an abstracted, scholarly life,
he was ill-fitted for common worldly affairs. Some one remarked to a
friend of mine while Smith still lived: ‘How strange to think of one
who has written so well on the principles of exchange and barter—he
is obliged to get a friend to buy his horse-corn for him!’ The author
of the _Wealth of Nations_ never thought of marrying. His household
affairs were managed to his perfect contentment by a female cousin, a
Miss Jeanie Douglas, who almost necessarily acquired a great control
over him. It is said that the amiable philosopher, being fond of a bit
sugar, and chid by her for taking it, would sometimes, in sauntering
backwards and forwards along the parlour, watch till Miss Jeanie’s
back was turned in order to supply himself with his favourite morsel.
Such things are not derogatory to greatness like Smith’s: they link
it to human nature, and secure for it the love, as it had previously
possessed the admiration, of common men.
The one personal circumstance regarding Smith which has made the
greatest impression on his fellow-citizens is the rather too well-known
anecdote of the two fishwomen. He was walking along the streets one
day, deeply abstracted, and speaking in a low tone to himself, when he
caught the attention of two of these many-petticoated ladies, engaged
in selling their fish. They exchanged significant looks, bearing strong
reference to the restraints of a well-managed lunatic asylum, and then
sighed one to the other: ‘Aih, sirs; and he’s weel put on too!’—that
is, well dressed; his gentleman-like condition making the case appear
so much the more piteous.
JOHN PATERSON THE GOLFER.
In the Canongate, nearly opposite to Queensberry House, is a narrow,
old-fashioned mansion, of peculiar form, having a coat-armorial
conspicuously placed at the top, and a plain slab over the doorway
containing the following inscriptions:
‘Cum victor ludo, Scotis qui proprius, esset,
Ter tres victores post redimitus avos,
Patersonus, humo tunc educebat in altum
Hanc, quæ victores tot tulit una, domum.’
‘I hate no person.’
It appears that this quatrain was the production of Dr Pitcairn, while
the sentence below is an anagram upon the name of JOHN PATERSONE. The
stanza expresses that ‘when Paterson had been crowned victor in a
game peculiar to Scotland, in which his ancestors had also been often
victorious, he then built this mansion, which one conquest raised
him above all his predecessors.’ We must resort to tradition for an
explanation of this obscure hint.
[Illustration: Golfers’ Land.]
Till a recent period, golfing had long been conducted upon the Links of
Leith.[251] It had even been the sport of princes on that field. We
are told by Mr William Tytler of Woodhouselee that Charles I. and the
Duke of York (afterwards James II.) played at golf on Leith Links, in
succession, during the brief periods of their residence in Holyrood.
Though there is an improbability in this tale as far as Charles is
concerned, seeing that he spent too short a time in Edinburgh to
have been able to play at a game notorious for the time necessary in
acquiring it, I may quote the anecdote related by Mr Tytler: ‘That
while he was engaged in a party at golf on the green or Links of Leith,
a letter was delivered into his hands, which gave him the first account
of the insurrection and rebellion in Ireland; on reading which, he
suddenly called for his coach, and leaning on one of his attendants,
and in great agitation, drove to the palace of Holyrood House, from
whence next day he set out for London.’ Mr Tytler says, regarding the
Duke of York, that he ‘was frequently seen in a party at golf on the
Links of Leith with some of the nobility and gentry. I remember in my
youth to have often conversed with an old man named Andrew Dickson, a
golf-club maker, who said that, when a boy, he used to carry the duke’s
golf-clubs, and run before him, and announce where the balls fell.’[252]
[Illustration: GOLFERS ON LEITH LINKS.
PAGE 320.]
Tradition reports that when the duke lived in Holyrood House he had on
one occasion a discussion with two English noblemen as to the native
country of golf; his Royal Highness asserting that it was peculiar to
Scotland, while they as pertinaciously insisted that it was an English
game as well. Assuredly, whatever may have been the case in those days,
it is not now an English game in the proper sense of the words, seeing
that it is only played to the south of the Tweed by a few fraternities
of Scotsmen, who have acquired it in their own country in youth.
However this may be, the two English nobles proposed, good-humouredly,
to prove its English character by taking up the duke in a match to be
played on Leith Links. James, glad of an opportunity to make popularity
in Scotland, in however small a way, accepted the challenge, and sought
for the best partner he could find. By an association not at this day
surprising to those who practise the game, the heir-presumptive of
the British throne played in concert with a poor shoemaker named John
Paterson, the worthy descendant of a long line of illustrious golfers.
If the two southrons were, as might be expected, inexperienced in the
game, they had no chance against a pair, one member of which was a
good player. So the duke got the best of the practical argument; and
Paterson’s merits were rewarded by a gift of the sum played for. The
story goes on to say that John was thus enabled to build a somewhat
stylish house for himself in the Canongate, on the top of which, being
a Scotsman, and having of course a pedigree, he clapped the Paterson
arms—three pelicans vulned; on a chief three mullets; crest, a dexter
hand grasping a golf-club; together with the motto—dear to all
golfers—FAR AND SURE.
It must be admitted there is some uncertainty about this tale. The
house, the inscriptions, and arms only indicate that Paterson built
the house after being a victor at golf, and that Pitcairn had a hand
in decorating it. One might even see, in the fact of the epigram, as
if a gentleman wit were indulging in a jest at the expense of some
simple plebeian, who held all notoriety honourable. It might have
been expected that if Paterson had been enriched by a match in which
he was connected with the Duke of York, a Jacobite like Pitcairn
would have made distinct allusion to the circumstance. The tradition,
nevertheless, seems too curious to be entirely overlooked, and the
reader may therefore take it at its worth.
FOOTNOTES
[251] In 1864 this favourite Scottish pastime was resuscitated on Leith
Links, and is now enjoyed with a relish as keen as ever.
[252] _Archæologia Scotica_, i.
[LOTHIAN HUT.
The noble family of Lothian had a mansion in Edinburgh, though of but
a moderate dignity. It was a small house situated in a spare piece of
ground at the bottom of the Canongate, on the south side. Latterly it
was leased to Professor Dugald Stewart, who, about the end of the last
century, here entertained several English pupils of noble rank—among
others, the Hon. the Henry Temple, afterwards Lord Palmerston.[253]
About 1825 building was taken down to make room for a brewery.
About the middle of the last century, Lothian Hut was occupied by the
wife of the fourth marquis, a lady of great lineage, being the only
daughter of Robert, Earl of Holderness, and great-granddaughter of
Charles Louis, Elector Palatine. Her ladyship was a person of grand
character, while yet admittedly very amiable. As a piece of very old
gossip, the Lady Marchioness, on first coming to live in the Hut,
found herself in want of a few trifling articles from a milliner,
and sent for one who was reputed to be the first of the class then
in Edinburgh—namely, Miss Ramsay. But there were two Miss Ramsays.
They had a shop on the east side of the Old Lyon Close, on the south
side of the High Street, and there made ultimately a little fortune,
which enabled them to build the villa of Marionville, near Restalrig
(called _Lappet Hall_ by the vulgar). The Misses Ramsay, receiving a
message from so grand a lady, instead of obeying the order implicitly,
came together, dressed out in a very splendid style, and told the
marchioness that every article they wore was ‘at the very top of the
fashion.’ The marchioness, disgusted with their forwardness and
affectation, said she would take their specimens into consideration,
and wished them a good-morning. According to our gossiping authority,
she then sent for Mrs Sellar, who carried on the millinery business
in a less pretentious style at a place in the Lawnmarket where Bank
Street now stands. (I like the localities, for they bring the Old Town
of a past age so clearly before us.) Mrs Sellar made her appearance at
Lothian Hut in a plain, decorous manner. Her head-dress consisted of a
mob-cap of the finest lawn, tied under her chin; over which there was
a hood of the same stuff. She wore a cloak of plain black silk without
any lace, and had no bonnet, the use of which was supplied by the hood.
Mrs Sellar’s manners were elegant and pleasing. When she entered, the
marchioness rose to receive her. On being asked for her patterns, she
stepped to the door and brought in two large boxes, which had been
carried behind her by two women. The articles, being produced, gave
great satisfaction, and her ladyship never afterwards employed any
other milliner. So the story ends, in the manner of the good-boy books,
in establishing that milliners ought not to be too prone to exhibit
their patterns upon their own persons.]
FOOTNOTES
[253] A newspaper, giving an account of Lord Palmerston’s visit to
Edinburgh in 1865, mentions that his lordship, during his stay in
the city, was made aware that an aged woman of the name of Peggie
Forbes, who had been a servant with Dugald Stewart, well remembered
his lordship when under the professor’s roof in early days. Interested
in the circumstance, Lord Palmerston took occasion to pay her a visit
at her dwelling, No. 1 Rankeillor Street, and expressed his pleasure
at renewing the acquaintance of the old domestic. Dr John Brown had
discovered the existence of this old association, and with it a box of
tools which were the property of ‘young Maister Henry’ of those days.
The sight of them called up within the breast of the Premier further
associations of days long bygone.
HENRY PRENTICE AND POTATOES.
No doubt is entertained on any hand that the field-culture of the
potato was first practised in Scotland by a man of humble condition,
originally a pedlar, by name Henry Prentice. He was an eccentric
person, as many have been who stepped out of the common walk to do
things afterwards discovered to be great. A story is told that while
the potatoes were growing in certain little fields which he leased near
our city, Lord Minto came from time to time to inquire about the crop.
Prentice at length told his lordship that the experiment was entirely
successful, and all he wanted was a horse and cart to drive his
potatoes to Edinburgh that they might be sold. ‘I’ll give you a horse
and cart,’ said his lordship. Prentice then took his crop to market,
cart by cart, till it was all sold, after which he disposed of _the
horse and cart_, which he affected to believe Lord Minto had given him
as a present.
Having towards the close of his days realised a small sum of money, he
sunk £140 in the hands of the Canongate magistrates, as managers of the
poorhouse of that parish, receiving in return seven shillings a week,
upon which he lived for several years. Occasionally he made little
donations to the charity. During his last years he was an object of no
small curiosity in Edinburgh, partly on account of his connection with
potato culture and partly by reason of his oddities. It was said of him
that he would never shake hands with any human being above two years of
age. In his bargain with the Canongate dignitaries, it was agreed that
he should have a _good grave_ in their churchyard, and one was selected
according to his own choice. Over this, thinking it as well, perhaps,
that he should enjoy a little quasi-posthumous notoriety during his
life, he caused a monument to be erected, bearing this inscription:
‘Be not anxious to know how I lived,
But rather how you yourself should die.’
He also had a coffin prepared at the price of two guineas, taking
the undertaker bound to screw it down gratis with his own hands. In
addition to all this, his friends the magistrates were under covenant
to bury him with a hearse and four coaches. But even the designs of
mortals respecting the grave itself are liable to disappointment. Owing
to the mischief done by the boys to the premature monument, Prentice
saw fit to have it removed to a quieter cemetery, that of Restalrig,
where, at his death in 1788, he was accordingly interred.
Such was the originator of that extensive culture of the potato which
has since borne so conspicuous a place in the economics of our country,
for good and for evil.
It is curious that this plant, although the sole support of millions of
our population, should now again (1846) have fallen under suspicion.
At its first introduction, and for several ages thereafter, it was
regarded as a vegetable of by no means good character, though for a
totally different reason from any which affect its reputation in our
day. Its supposed tendency to inflame some of the sensual feelings
of human nature is frequently adverted to by Shakespeare and his
contemporaries; and this long remained a popular impression in the
north.[254]
FOOTNOTES
[254] Robertson, in his _Rural Recollections_ (Irvine, 1829), says:
‘The earliest evidence that I have met with of potatoes in Scotland
is an old household book of the Eglintoune family in 1733, in which
potatoes appear at different times as a dish at supper.’ They appear
earlier than this—namely, in 1701—in the household book of the
Duchess of Buccleuch and Monmouth, where the price per peck is
intimated at 2s. 6d.—See Arnot’s _History of Edinburgh_, 4to, p. 201.
THE DUCHESS OF BUCCLEUCH AND MONMOUTH.
It is rather curious that one of my informants in this article should
have dined with a lady who had dined with a peeress married in the year
1662.
This peeress was Anne, Duchess of Buccleuch and Monmouth, the wife of
the unfortunate son of Charles II. As is well known, she was early
deserted by her husband, who represented, not without justice, that a
marriage into which he had been tempted for reasons of policy by his
relations, when he was only thirteen years of age, could hardly be
binding.
The young duchess, naturally plain in features, was so unfortunate
in early womanhood as to become lame in consequence of some feats in
dancing. For her want of personal graces there is negative evidence in
a dedication of Dryden, where he speaks abundantly of her wit, but not
a word of beauty, which shows that the case must have been desperate.
[This, by the way, was the remark made to me on the subject by Sir
Walter Scott, who, in the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_, has done what
Dryden could not do—flattered the duchess:
‘She had known adversity,
Though born in such a high degree;
In pride of power and _beauty’s bloom_,
Had wept o’er Monmouth’s bloody tomb.’]
Were any further proof wanting, it might be found in the regard in
which she was held by James II., who, as is well known, had such a
tendency to plain women as induced a suspicion in his witty brother
that they were prescribed to him by his confessor by way of penance.
This friendship, in which there was nothing improper, was the means of
saving her grace’s estates at the tragical close of her husband’s life.
It is curious to learn that the duchess, notwithstanding the terms
on which she had been with her husband, and the sad stamp put upon
his pretensions to legitimacy, acted throughout the remainder of her
somewhat protracted life as if she had been the widow of a true prince
of the blood-royal. In her state-rooms she had a canopy erected,
beneath which was the only seat in the apartment, everybody standing
besides herself. When Lady Margaret Montgomery, one of the beautiful
Countess of Eglintoune’s daughters, was at a boarding-school near
London—previous to the year _Thirty_—she was frequently invited by
the duchess to her house; and because her great-grandmother, Lady
Mary Leslie, was sister to her grace’s mother, _she_ was allowed a
chair; but this was an extraordinary mark of grace. The duchess was
the last person of quality in Scotland who kept _pages_, in the proper
acceptation of the term—that is, young gentlemen of good birth, who
acquired manners and knowledge of the world in attending upon persons
of exalted rank. The last of her grace’s pages rose to be a general.
When a letter was brought for the duchess, the domestic gave it to the
page, the page to the waiting-gentlewoman (always a person of birth
also), and she at length to her grace. The duchess kept a tight hand
over her clan and tenants, but was upon the whole beloved.
She was buried (1732) on the same day with the too-much-celebrated
Colonel Charteris. At the funeral of Henry, Duke of Buccleuch, in the
year 1812, in the aisle of the church at Dalkeith, my informant (Sir
Walter Scott) was shown an old man who had been at the funeral of both
her grace and Colonel Charteris. He said that the day was dreadfully
stormy, which all the world agreed was owing to the devil carrying
off Charteris. The mob broke in upon the mourners who followed this
personage to the grave, and threw cats, dogs, and a pack of cards upon
the coffin; whereupon the gentlemen drew their swords, and cut away
among the rioters. In the confusion one little old man was pushed
into the grave; and the sextons, somewhat prompt in the discharge of
their duty, began to shovel in the earth upon the quick and the dead.
The grandfather of my informant (Dr Rutherford), who was one of the
mourners, was much hurt in the affray; and my informant has heard his
mother describe the terror of the family on his coming home with his
clothes bloody and his sword broken.
As to pages—a custom existed among old ladies till a later day of
keeping such attendants, rather superior to the little polybuttoned
personages who are now so universal. It was not, however, to be
expected that a pranksome youth would behave with consistent respect
to an aged female of the stiff manners then prevalent. Accordingly,
ridiculous circumstances took place. An old lady of the name of
Plenderleith, of very stately aspect and grave carriage, used to walk
to Leith by the Easter Road with her little foot-page behind her. For
the whole way, the young rogue would be seen projecting burs at her
dress, laughing immoderately, but silently, when one stuck. An old
lady and her sequel of a page was very much like a tragedy followed by
a farce. The keeping of the rascals in order at home used also to be
a sad problem to a quiet old lady. The only expedient which Miss ——
could hit upon to preserve her page from the corruption of the streets
was, in her own phrase, to _lock up his breeks_, which she did almost
every evening. The youth, being then only presentable at a window,
had to content himself with such chat as he could indulge in with his
companions and such mischief as he could execute from that loophole of
retreat. So much for the parade of keeping pages.
CLAUDERO.
Edinburgh, which now smiles complacently upon the gravities of her
reviews and the flippancies of her magazines, formerly laughed outright
at the coarse lampoons of her favourite poet and pamphleteer, Claudero.
The distinct publications of this witty and eccentric personage (whose
real name was James Wilson) are well known to collectors; and his
occasional pieces must be fresh in the remembrance of those who, forty
or fifty years ago (1824), were in the habit of perusing the _Scots
Magazine_, amidst the general gravity of which they appeared, like the
bright and giddy eyes of a satyr, staring through the sere leaves of a
sober forest scene.
Claudero was a native of Cumbernauld, in Dumbartonshire, and at an
early period of his life showed such marks of a mischief-loving
disposition as procured him general odium. The occasion of his lameness
was a pebble thrown from a tree at the minister, who, having been
previously exasperated by his tricks, chased him to the end of a
closed lane, and with his cane inflicted such personal chastisement as
rendered him a cripple, and a hater of the clergy, for the rest of his
life.
In Edinburgh, where he lived for upwards of thirty years previous to
his death in 1789, his livelihood was at first ostensibly gained by
keeping a little school, latterly by celebrating what were called
_half-mark marriages_—a business resembling that of the Gretna
blacksmith. It is said that he, who made himself the terror of so
many by his wit, was in his turn held in fear by his wife, who was as
complete a shrew as ever fell to the lot of poet or philosopher.
He was a satirist by profession; and when any person wished to have
a squib played off upon his neighbours, he had nothing to do but
call upon Claudero, who, for half a crown, would produce the desired
effusion, composed, and copied off in a fair hand, in a given time. He
liked this species of employment better than writing upon speculation,
the profit being more certain and immediate. When in want of money, it
was his custom to write a sly satire on some opulent public personage,
upon whom he called with it, desiring to have his opinion of the work,
and his countenance in favour of a subscription for its publication.
The object of his ridicule, conscious-struck by his own portrait, would
wince and be civil, advise him to give up thoughts of publishing so
hasty a production, and conclude by offering a guinea or two to keep
the poet alive till better times should come round. At that time there
lived in Edinburgh a number of rich old men who had made fortunes in
questionable ways abroad, and whose characters, labouring under strange
suspicions, were wonderfully susceptible of Claudero’s satire. These
the wag used to bleed profusely and frequently by working upon their
fears of public notice.
In 1766 appeared _Miscellanies in Prose and Verse, by Claudero, Son
of Nimrod the Mighty Hunter, &c., &c._, opening with this preface:
‘Christian Reader—The following miscellany is published at the
desire of many gentlemen, who have all been my very good friends;
if there be anything in it amusing or entertaining, I shall be very
glad I have contributed to your diversion, and will laugh as heartily
at your money as you do at my works. Several of my pieces may need
explanation; but I am too cunning for that: what is not understood,
like Presbyterian preaching, will at least be admired. I am regardless
of critics; perhaps some of my lines want a foot; but then, if the
critic look sharp out, he will find that loss sufficiently supplied
in other places, where they have a foot too much: and besides, men’s
works generally resemble themselves; if the poems are lame, so is the
author—CLAUDERO.’
The most remarkable poems in this volume are: ‘The Echo of the Royal
Porch of the Palace of Holyrood House, which fell under Military
Execution, anno 1753;’ ‘The Last Speech and Dying Words of the Cross,
which was Hanged, Drawn, and Quartered on Monday the 15th of March
1756, for the horrid crime of being an Incumbrance to the Street;’
‘Scotland in Tears for the horrid Treatment of the Kings’ Sepulchres;’
‘An Elegy on the much-lamented Death of Quaker Erskine;’[255] ‘A Sermon
on the Condemnation of the Netherbow;’ ‘Humphry Colquhoun’s Last
Farewell,’ &c. Claudero seems to have been the only man of his time who
remonstrated against the destruction of the venerable edifices then
removed from the streets which they ornamented, to the disappointment
and indignation of all future antiquaries. There is much wit in his
sermon upon the destruction of the Netherbow. ‘What was too hard,’ he
says, ‘for the great ones of the earth, yea, even queens, to effect,
is now accomplished. No patriot duke opposeth the scheme, as did the
great Argyll in the grand senate of our nation; therefore the project
shall go into execution, and down shall Edina’s lofty porches be hurled
with a vengeance. Streets shall be extended to the east, regular and
beautiful, as far as the Frigate Whins; and Portobello[256] shall be a
lodge for the captors of tea and brandy. The city shall be joined to
Leith on the north, and a procession of wise masons shall there lay
the foundations of a spacious harbour. Pequin or Nanquin shall not be
able to compare with Edinburgh for magnificence. Our city shall be the
greatest wonder of the world, and the fame of its glory shall reach the
distant ends of the earth.[257] But lament, O thou descendant of the
royal Dane, and chief of the tribe of Wilson; for thy shop, contiguous
to the porch, shall be dashed to pieces, and its place will know thee
no more! No more shall the melodious voice of the loyalist Grant[258]
be heard in the morning, nor shall he any more shake the bending wand
towards the triumphal arch. Let all who angle in deep waters lament,
for Tom had not his equal. The Netherbow Coffee-house of the loyal
Smeiton can now no longer enjoy its ancient name with propriety; and
from henceforth _The Revolution Coffee-house_ shall its name be called.
Our gates must be extended wide for accommodating the gilded chariots,
which, from the luxury of the age, are become numerous. With an
impetuous career, they jostle against one another in our streets, and
the unwary foot-passenger is in danger of being crushed to pieces. The
loaded cart itself cannot withstand their fury, and the hideous yells
of _Coal Johnie_ resound through the vaulted sky. The sour-milk barrels
are overturned, and deluges of Corstorphin cream run down our strands,
while the poor unhappy milkmaid wrings her hands with sorrow.’ To the
sermon are appended the ‘Last Speech and Dying Words of the Netherbow,’
in which the following laughable declaration occurs: ‘May my clock be
struck dumb in the other world, if I lie in this! and may MACK, the
reformer of Edina’s lofty spires, never bestride my weathercock on
high, if I deviate from truth in these my last words! Though my fabric
shall be levelled with the dust of the earth, yet I fall in hope that
my weathercock shall be exalted on some more modern dome, where it
shall shine like the burnished gold, reflecting the rays of the sun to
the eye of ages unborn. The daring Mack shall yet look down from my
cock, high in the airy region, to the brandy-shops below, where large
graybeards shall appear to him no bigger than mutchkin-bottles, and
mutchkin-bottles shall be in his sight like the spark of a diamond.’
One of Claudero’s versified compositions, ‘Humphry Colquhoun’s
Farewell,’ is remarkable as a kind of coarse prototype of the beautiful
lyric entitled ‘Mary,’ sung in _The Pirate_ by Claud Halcro. One
wonders to find the genius of Scott refining upon such materials:
‘Farewell to Auld Reekie,
Farewell to lewd Kate,
Farewell to each ——,
And farewell to cursed debt;
With light heart and thin breeches,
Humph crosses the main;
All worn out to stitches,
He’ll ne’er come again.
Farewell to old Dido,
Who sold him good ale;
Her charms, like her drink,
For poor Humph were too stale;
Though closely she urged him
To marry and stay,
Her Trojan, quite cloyed,
From her sailed away.
Farewell to James Campbell,
Who played many tricks;
Humph’s ghost and Lochmoidart’s[259]
Will chase him to Styx;
Where in Charon’s wherry
He’ll be ferried o’er
To Pluto’s dominions,
’Mongst rascals great store.
Farewell, pot-companions,
Farewell, all good fellows;
Farewell to my anvil,
Files, pliers, and bellows;
Sails, fly to Jamaica,
Where I mean long to dwell,
Change manners with climate—
Dear Drummond, farewell.’
[Illustration: Netherbow.]
It is not unworthy of notice that the publication of Dr Blair’s
_Lectures on Rhetoric and the Belles-lettres_ was hastened by Claudero,
who, having procured notes taken by some of the students, avowed an
intention of giving these to the world. The reverend author states in
his preface that he was induced to publish the lectures in consequence
of some surreptitious and incorrect copies finding their way to the
public; but it has not hitherto been told that this doggerel-monger was
the person chiefly concerned in bringing about that result.
Claudero occasionally dealt in whitewash as well as blackball, and
sometimes wrote regular panegyrics. An address of this kind to a
_writer_ named Walter Fergusson, who built St James’s Square, concludes
with a strange association of ideas:
‘May Pentland Hills pour forth their springs,
To water all thy square!
May Fergussons still bless the place,
Both gay and debonnair!’
When the said square was in progress, however, the water seemed in no
hurry to obey the bard’s invocation; and an attempt was made to procure
this useful element by sinking wells for it, despite the elevation
of the ground. Mr Walter Scott, W.S., happened one day to pass when
Captain Fergusson of the Royal Navy—a good officer, but a sort of
Commodore Trunnion in his manners—was sinking a well of vast depth.
Upon Mr Scott expressing a doubt if water could be got there, ‘I will
get it,’ quoth the captain, ‘though I sink to hell for it!’ ‘A bad
place for water,’ was the dry remark of the doubter.
FOOTNOTES
[255] A noted brewer, much given to preaching. Of him Claudero says:
‘Our souls with gospel he did cheer,
Our bodies, too, with ale and beer;
_Gratis_ he gospel got and gave away;
For ale and beer he only made us pay.’
[256] This thriving parliamentary burgh originated in a cottage built,
and long inhabited, by a retired seaman of Admiral Vernon’s squadron,
who gave it this name in commemoration of the triumph which his
commander there gained over the Spaniards in 1739. There must have been
various houses at the spot in 1753, when we find one ‘George Hamilton,
in Portobello,’ advertising in the _Edinburgh Courant_ that he would
give a reward of three pounds to any one who should discover the author
of a scandalous report, which represented him as harbouring robbers
in his house. The waste upon which Portobello is now partly founded
was dreadfully infested at this time with robbers, and resorted to
by smugglers; see _Courant_. [Portobello, while remaining one of the
‘Leith burghs’ for parliamentary purposes, was municipally incorporated
with Edinburgh in 1896. Claudero’s ‘Frigate Whins’ are better known as
the ‘Figgate Whins.’]
[257] Claudero could have little serious expectation that several of
these predictions would come to pass before he had been forty years in
his grave.
[258] A celebrated and much-esteemed fishing-rod maker, who afterwards
flourished in the old wooden _land_ at the head of Blackfriars Wynd.
He survived to recent times, and was distinguished for his adherence
to the cocked hat, wrist ruffles, and buckles of his youth. He was a
short, neat man, very well bred, a great angler, intimate with the
great, a Jacobite, and lived to near a century. He had fished in almost
every trouting stream in the three kingdoms, and was seen skating on
Lochend at the age of eighty-five.
[259] This seems to bear some reference to the seizure of young
Macdonald of Kinlochmoidart at Lesmahagow in 1745.
QUEENSBERRY HOUSE.
In the Canongate, on the south side, is a large, gloomy building,
enclosed in a court, and now used as a refuge for destitute persons.
This was formerly the town mansion of the Dukes of Queensberry, and
a scene, of course, of stately life and high political affairs. It
was built by the first duke, the willing minister of the last two
Stuarts—he who also built Drumlanrig Castle in Dumfriesshire, which he
never slept in but one night, and with regard to which it is told that
he left the accounts for the building tied up with this inscription:
‘The deil pyke out his een that looks herein!’ Duke William was a noted
money-maker and land-acquirer. No little laird of his neighbourhood
had any chance with him for the retention of his family property.
He was something still worse in the eyes of the common people—a
_persecutor_; that is, one siding against the Presbyterian cause.
There is a story in one of their favourite books of his having died
of the _morbus pediculosus_, by way of a judgment upon him for his
wickedness. In reality, he died of some ordinary fever. It is also
stated, from the same authority, that about the time when his grace
died, a Scotch skipper, being in Sicily, saw one day a coach-and-six
driving to Mount Etna, while a diabolic voice exclaimed: ‘Open to the
Duke of Drumlanrig!’—‘which proves, by the way,’ says Mr Sharpe, ‘that
the devil’s porter is no herald. In fact,’ adds this acute critic,
‘the legend is borrowed from the story of Antonio the Rich, in George
Sandys’s _Travels_.’[260]
It appears, from family letters, that the first duchess often resided
in the Canongate mansion, while her husband occupied Sanquhar Castle.
The lady was unfortunately given to drink, and there is a letter of
hers in which she pathetically describes her situation to a country
friend, left alone in Queensberry House with only a few bottles of
wine, one of which, having been drawn, had turned out sour. Sour wine
being prejudicial to her health, it was fearful to think of what might
prove the quality of the remaining bottles.
The son of this couple, James, second duke, must ever be memorable as
the main instrument in carrying through the Union. His character has
been variously depicted. By Defoe, in his _History of the Union_, it is
liberally panegyrised. ‘I think I have,’ says he, ‘given demonstrations
to the world that I will flatter no man.’ Yet he could not refrain from
extolling the ‘prudence, calmness, and temper’ which the duke showed
during that difficult crisis. Unfortunately the author of _Robinson
Crusoe_, though not a flatterer, could not insure himself against the
usual prepossessions of a partisan. Boldness the duke must certainly
have possessed, for during the ferments attending the parliamentary
proceedings on that occasion, he continued daily to drive between his
lodgings in Holyrood and the Parliament House, notwithstanding several
intimations that his life was threatened. His grace’s eldest son,
James, was an idiot of the most unhappy sort—rabid and gluttonous,
and early grew to an immense height, which is testified by his coffin
in the family vault at Durisdeer, still to be seen, of great length
and unornamented with the heraldic follies which bedizen the violated
remains of his relatives. A tale of mystery and horror is preserved by
tradition respecting this monstrous being. While the family resided in
Edinburgh, he was always kept confined in a ground apartment, in the
western wing of the house, upon the windows of which, till within these
few years, the boards still remained by which the dreadful receptacle
was darkened to prevent the idiot from looking out or being seen. On
the day the Union was passed, all Edinburgh crowded to the Parliament
Close to await the issue of the debate, and to mob the chief promoters
of the detested measure on their leaving the House. The whole household
of the commissioner went _en masse_, with perhaps a somewhat different
object, and among the rest was the man whose duty it was to watch and
attend Lord Drumlanrig. Two members of the family alone were left
behind—the madman himself, and a little kitchen-boy who turned the
spit. The insane being, hearing everything unusually still around, the
house being deserted, and the Canongate like a city of the dead, and
observing his keeper to be absent, broke loose from his confinement,
and roamed wildly through the house. It is supposed that the savoury
odour of the preparations for dinner led him to the kitchen, where he
found the little turnspit quietly seated by the fire. He seized the
boy, killed him, took the meat from the fire, and spitted the body of
his victim, which he half-roasted, and was found devouring when the
duke, with his domestics, returned from his triumph. The idiot survived
his father many years, though he did not succeed him upon his death
in 1711, when the titles devolved upon Charles, the younger brother.
He is known to have died in England. This horrid act of his child was,
according to the common sort of people, the judgment of God upon him
for his wicked concern in the Union—the greatest blessing, as it has
happened, that ever was conferred upon Scotland by any statesman.
[Illustration: Allan Ramsay’s Shop, High Street.]
Charles, third Duke of Queensberry, who was born in Queensberry House,
resided occasionally in it when he visited Scotland; but as he was
much engaged in attending the court during the earlier part of his
life, his stay here was seldom of long continuance. After his grace
and the duchess embroiled themselves with the court (1729), on account
of the support which they gave to the poet Gay, they came to Scotland,
and resided for some time here. The author of the _Beggar’s Opera_
accompanied them, and remained about a month, part of which was given
to Dumfriesshire. Tradition in Edinburgh used to point out an attic in
an old house opposite to Queensberry House, where, as an appropriate
abode for a poet, his patrons are said to have stowed him. It was said
he wrote the _Beggar’s Opera_ there—an entirely gratuitous assumption.
In the progress of the history of his writings, nothing of consequence
occurs at this time. He had finished the second part of the opera a
short while before. After his return to the south, he is found engaged
in ‘new writing a damned play, which he wrote several years before,
called _The Wife of Bath_; a task which he accomplished while living
with the Duke of Queensberry in Oxfordshire, during the ensuing months
of August, September, and October.’[261] It is known, however, that
while in Edinburgh, he haunted the shop of Allan Ramsay, in the
Luckenbooths—the flat above that well-remembered and classical shop
so long kept by Mr Creech, from which issued the _Mirror_, _Lounger_,
and other works of name, and where for a long course of years all the
_literati_ of Edinburgh used to assemble every day, like merchants at
an Exchange. Here Ramsay amused Gay by pointing out to him the chief
public characters of the city as they met in the forenoon at the Cross.
Here, too, Gay read the _Gentle Shepherd_, and studied the Scottish
language, so that upon his return to England he was enabled to make
Pope appreciate the beauties of that delightful pastoral. He is said
also to have spent some of his time with the sons of mirth and humour
in an alehouse opposite to Queensberry House, kept by one Janet Hall.
_Jenny Ha’s_, as the place was called, was a noted house for drinking
claret from the butt within the recollection of old gentlemen living in
my time.
[Illustration: Jenny Ha’s Ale-House.]
While Gay was at Drumlanrig, he employed himself in picking out a great
number of the best books from the library, which were sent to England,
whether for his own use or the duke’s is not known.
Duchess Catherine was a most extraordinary lady, eccentric to a degree
undoubtedly bordering on madness. Her beauty has been celebrated by
Pope not in very elegant terms:
‘Since Queensberry to strip there’s no compelling,
’Tis from a handmaid we must take a Helen.’
Prior had, at an early period of her life, depainted her irrepressible
temper:
‘Thus Kitty, beautiful and young,
And wild as colt untamed,
Bespoke the fair from whom she sprang,
By little rage inflamed;
Inflamed with rage at sad restraint,
Which wise mamma ordained;
And sorely vexed to play the saint,
Whilst wit and beauty reigned.
“Shall I thumb holy books, confined
With Abigails forsaken?
Kitty’s for other things designed,
Or I am much mistaken.
Must Lady Jenny frisk about,
And visit with her cousins?
At balls must she make all the rout,
And bring home hearts by dozens?
What has she better, pray, than I?
What hidden charms to boast,
That all mankind for her should die,
Whilst I am scarce a toast?
Dearest mamma, for once let me,
Unchained, my fortune try;
I’ll have my earl as well as she,
Or know the reason why.
I’ll soon with Jenny’s pride quit score,
Make all her lovers fall;
They’ll grieve I was not loosed before,
She, I was loosed at all.”
Fondness prevailed, mamma gave way;
Kitty, at heart’s desire,
Obtained the chariot for a day,
And set the world on fire!’
It is an undoubted fact that, before her marriage, she had been
confined in a _strait-jacket_ on account of mental derangement; and
her conduct in married life was frequently such as to entitle her to a
repetition of the same treatment. She was, in reality, at all times to
a certain extent insane, though the politeness of fashionable society
and the flattery of her poetical friends seem to have succeeded in
passing off her extravagances as owing to an agreeable freedom of
carriage and vivacity of mind. Her brother was as clever and as mad as
herself, and used to amuse himself by hiding a book in his library, and
hunting for it after he had forgot where it was deposited.
Her grace was no admirer of Scottish manners. One of their habits she
particularly detested—the custom of eating off the end of a knife.
When people dined with her at Drumlanrig, and began to lift their food
in this manner, she used to scream out and beseech them not to cut
their throats; and then she would confound the offending persons by
sending them a silver spoon or fork upon a salver.[262]
When in Scotland her grace always dressed herself in the garb of a
peasant-girl. Her object seems to have been to ridicule and put out
of countenance the stately dresses and demeanour of the Scottish
gentlewomen who visited her. One evening some country ladies paid her
a visit, dressed in their best brocades, as for some state occasion.
Her grace proposed a walk, and they were of course under the necessity
of trooping off, to the utter discomfiture of their starched-up frills
and flounces. Her grace at last pretended to be tired, sat down upon
the dirtiest dunghill she could find, at the end of a farmhouse,
and saying, ‘Pray, ladies, be seated,’ invited her poor draggled
companions to plant themselves round about her. They stood so much in
awe of her that they durst not refuse; and of course her grace had the
satisfaction of afterwards laughing at the destruction of their silks.
When she went out to an evening entertainment, and found a tea-equipage
paraded which she thought too fine for the rank of the owner, she
would contrive to overset the table and break the china. The forced
politeness of her hosts on such occasions, and the assurances which
they made her grace that no harm was done, &c., delighted her
exceedingly.
Her custom of dressing like a _paysanne_ once occasioned her grace a
disagreeable adventure at a review. On her attempting to approach the
duke, the guard, not knowing her rank or relation to him, pushed her
rudely back. This threw her into such a passion that she could not be
appeased till his grace assured her that the men had all been soundly
flogged for their insolence.
An anecdote scarcely less laughable is told of her grace as occurring
at court, where she carried to the same extreme her attachment to
plain-dealing and plain-dressing. An edict had been issued forbidding
the ladies to appear at the drawing-room in aprons. This was
disregarded by the duchess, whose rustic costume would not have been
complete without that piece of dress. On approaching the door she was
stopped by the lord in waiting, who told her that he could not possibly
give her grace admission in that guise, when she, without a moment’s
hesitation, stripped off her apron, threw it in his lordship’s face,
and walked on, in her brown gown and petticoat, into the brilliant
circle!
Her caprices were endless. At one time when a ball had been announced
at Drumlanrig, after the company were all assembled her grace took a
headache, declared that she could bear no noise, and sat in a chair
in the dancing-room, uttering a thousand peevish complaints. Lord
Drumlanrig, who understood her humour, said: ‘Madam, I know how to
cure you;’ and taking hold of her immense elbow-chair, which moved on
castors, rolled her several times backwards and forwards across the
saloon, till she began to laugh heartily—after which the festivities
were allowed to commence.
The duchess certainly, both in her conversation and letters, displayed
a great degree of wit and quickness of mind. Yet nobody perhaps, saving
Gay, ever loved her. She seems to have been one of those beings who are
too much feared, admired, or envied, to be loved.
The duke, on the contrary, who was a man of ordinary mind, had the
affection and esteem of all. His temper and dispositions were sweet
and amiable in the extreme. His benevolence, extending beyond his
fellow-creatures, was exercised even upon his old horses, none of which
he would ever permit to be killed or sold. He allowed the veterans of
his stud free range in some parks near Drumlanrig, where, retired from
active life, they got leave to die decent and natural deaths. Upon his
grace’s decease, however, in 1778, these luckless pensioners were all
put up to sale by his heartless successor; and it was a painful sight
to see the feeble and pampered animals forced by their new masters to
drag carts, &c., till they broke down and died on the roads and in the
ditches.
Duke Charles’s eldest son, Lord Drumlanrig, was altogether mad. He had
contracted himself to one lady when he married another. The lady who
became his wife was a daughter of the Earl of Hopetoun, and a most
amiable woman. He loved her tenderly, as she deserved; but owing to
the unfortunate contract which he had engaged in, they were never
happy. They were often observed in the beautiful pleasure-grounds at
Drumlanrig weeping bitterly together. These hapless circumstances had
such a fatal effect upon him that during a journey to London in 1754
he rode on before the coach in which the duchess travelled, and shot
himself with one of his own pistols. It was given out that the pistol
had gone off by chance.
There is just one other tradition of Drumlanrig to be noticed. The
castle, being a very large and roomy mansion, had of course a ghost,
said to be the spirit of a Lady Anne Douglas. This unhappy phantom used
to walk about the house, terrifying everybody, with her head in one
hand and her fan in the other—are we to suppose, fanning her face?
On the death of the Good Duke, as he was called, in 1778, the title and
estates devolved on his cousin, the Earl of March, so well remembered
as a sporting character and debauchee of the old school by the name of
_Old Q._ In his time Queensberry House was occupied by other persons,
for he had little inclination to spend his time in Scotland. And this
brings to mind an anecdote highly illustrative of the wretchedness of
such a life as his. When professing, towards the close of his days,
to be eaten up with ennui, and incapable of any longer taking an
interest in anything, it was suggested that he might go down to his
Scotch estates and live among his tenantry. ‘I’ve tried that,’ said the
_blasé_ aristocrat; ‘it is not amusing.’ In 1801 he caused Queensberry
House to be stripped of its ornaments and sold. With fifty-eight
fire-rooms, and a gallery seventy feet long, besides a garden, it was
offered at the surprisingly low upset price of £900. The Government
purchased it for a barrack. Thus has passed away the [home of the]
Douglas of Queensberry from its old place in Edinburgh, where doubtless
the money-making duke thought it would stand for ever.
FOOTNOTES
[260] Introduction to Law’s _Memorials_, p. lxxx.
[261] See letters of Gay, Swift, Pope, and Arbuthnot, in Scott’s
edition of Swift.
[262] In a letter from Gay to Swift, dated February 15, 1727-8, we find
the subject illustrated as follows: ‘As to my favours from great men,
I am in the same state you left me; but I am a great deal happier, as
I have expectations. The Duchess of Queensberry has signalised her
friendship to me upon this occasion [the bringing out of the _Beggar’s
Opera_] in such a conspicuous manner, that I hope (for her sake) you
will take care to put your fork to all its proper uses, and suffer
nobody for the future to put their knives in their mouth.’
In the _P.S._ to a letter from Gay to Swift, dated Middleton Stoney,
November 9, 1729, Gay says: ‘To the lady I live with I owe my life and
fortune. Think of her with respect—value and esteem her as I do—and
never more despise a fork with three prongs. I wish, too, you would not
eat from the point of your knife. She has so much goodness, virtue, and
generosity, that if you knew her, you would have a pleasure in obeying
her as I do. She often wishes she had known you.’
TENNIS COURT.
EARLY THEATRICALS—THE CANONGATE THEATRE—DIGGES AND MRS
BELLAMY—A THEATRICAL RIOT.
‘Just without the Water-gate,’ says Maitland, ‘on the eastern side of
the street, was the Royal Tennis Court, anciently called the Catchpel
[from Cache, a game since called _Fives_, and a favourite amusement
in Scotland so early as the reign of James IV.].’ The house—a long,
narrow building with a court—was burned down in modern times, and
rebuilt for workshops. Yet the place continues to possess some interest
as connected with the early and obscure history of the stage in
Scotland, not to speak of the tennis itself, which was a fashionable
amusement in Scotland in the seventeenth century, and here played by
the Duke of York, Law the financial schemer, and other remarkable
persons.
The first known appearance of the post-reformation theatre in Edinburgh
was in the reign of King James VI., when several companies came from
London, chiefly for the amusement of the Court, including one to which
Shakespeare is known to have belonged, though his personal attendance
cannot be substantiated. There was no such thing, probably, as a play
acted in Edinburgh from the departure of James in 1603 till the arrival
of his grandson, the Duke of York, in 1680.
Threatened by the Whig party in the House of Commons with an exclusion
from the throne of England on account of his adherence to popery, this
prince made use of his exile in Scotland to conciliate the nobles, and
attach them to his person. His beautiful young wife, Mary of Modena,
and his second daughter, the _Lady Anne_, assisted by giving parties
at the palace—where, by the bye, tea was now first introduced into
Scotland. Easy and obliging in their manners, these ladies revived
the entertainment of the masque, and took parts themselves in the
performance. At length, for his own amusement and that of his friends,
James had some of his own company of players brought down to Holyrood
and established in a little theatre, which was fitted up in the Tennis
Court. On this occasion the remainder of the company playing at Oxford
apologised for the diminution of their strength in the following lines
written by Dryden:
‘Discord and plots, which have undone our age,
With the same ruin have o’erwhelmed the stage.
Our house has suffered in the common woe;
We have been troubled with Scots rebels too.
Our brethren have from Thames to Tweed departed,
And of our sisters, all the kinder-hearted
To Edinburgh gone, or coached or carted.
With bonny _Blew cap_ there they act all night,
For Scotch half-crowns—in English threepence hight.
One nymph to whom fat Sir John Falstaff’s lean,
There, with her single person, fills the scene.
Another, with long use and age decayed,
Died here old woman, and there rose a maid.
Our trusty door-keeper, of former time,
There struts and swaggers in heroic rhyme.
Tack but a copper lace to drugget suit,
And there’s a hero made without dispute;
And that which was a capon’s tail before,
Becomes a plume for Indian emperor.
But all his subjects, to express the care
Of imitation, go like Indians bare.
Laced linen there would be a dangerous thing,
It might perhaps a new rebellion bring;
The Scot who wore it would be chosen king.’
We learn from Fountainhall’s _Diary_ that on the celebration of the
king’s birthday, 1681, the duke honoured the magistrates of the city
with his presence in the theatre—namely, this theatre in the Tennis
Court.
No further glimpse of our city’s theatrical history is obtained till
1705, when we find a Mr Abel announcing a concert in the Tennis Court,
under the patronage of the Duke of Argyll, then acting as the queen’s
commissioner to the Parliament. It is probable that the concert was
only a cloak to some theatrical representation. This is the more
likely from a tradition already mentioned of some old members of the
Spendthrift Club who once frequented the tavern of a Mrs Hamilton,
whose husband recollected having attended the theatre in the Tennis
Court at Holyrood House, when the play was _The Spanish Friar_, and
many members of the Union Parliament were present in the house.
Theatrical amusements appear to have been continued at the Tennis Court
in the year 1710, if we are to place any reliance upon the following
anecdote: When Mrs Siddons came to Edinburgh in 1784, the late Mr
Alexander Campbell, author of the _History of Scottish Poetry_, asked
Miss Pitcairn, daughter of Dr Pitcairn, to accompany him to one of the
representations. The old lady refused, saying with coquettish vivacity:
‘Laddie, wad ye ha’e an auld lass like me to be running after the
play-actors—me that hasna been at a theatre since I gaed wi’ papa
to the Canongate in the year _ten_?’ The theatre was in those days
encouraged chiefly by such Jacobites as Dr Pitcairn. It was denounced
by the clergy as a hotbed of vice and profanity.
After this we hear no more of the theatre in the Tennis Court. The next
place where the drama set up its head was in a house in Carrubber’s
Close, under the management of an Italian lady styled Signora Violante,
who paid two visits to Edinburgh. After her came, in 1726, one Tony
Alston, who set up his scenes in the same house, and whose first
prologue was written by Ramsay: it may be found in the works of that
poet. In 1727 the Society of High Constables, of which Ramsay was then
a member, endeavoured to ‘suppress the abominable stage-plays lately
set up by Anthony Alston.’[263] Mr Alston played for a season or two,
under the fulminations of the clergy and a prosecution on their part in
the Court of Session.
CANONGATE THEATRE.
From a period subsequent to 1727 till after the year 1753, the
Tailors’ Hall in the Cowgate[264] was used as a theatre by itinerating
companies, who met with some success notwithstanding the incessant
hostility of the clergy.[265] It was a house which in theatrical
phrase, could hold from £40 to £45. A split in the company here
concerned led to the erection, in 1746-7, of a theatre at the bottom
of a close in the Canongate, nearly opposite to the head of New
Street. This house, capable of holding about £70—the boxes being
half-a-crown and pit one and sixpence—was for several years the
scene of good acting under Lee, Digges, Mrs Bellamy, and Mrs Ward. We
learn from Henry Mackenzie that the tragedy of _Douglas_, which first
appeared here in 1756, was most respectably acted—the two ladies above
mentioned playing respectively Young Norval and Lady Randolph.[266] The
personal elegance of Digges—understood to be the natural son of a man
of rank—and the beauty of Mrs Bellamy were a theme of interest amongst
old people fifty years ago; but their scandalous life was of course
regarded with horror by the mass of respectable society. They lived in
a small country-house at Bonnington, between Edinburgh and Leith. It is
remembered that Mrs Bellamy was extremely fond of singing-birds, and
kept many about her. When emigrating to Glasgow, she had her feathered
favourites carried by a porter all the way that they might not suffer
from the jolting of a carriage. Scotch people wondered to hear of ten
guineas being expended on this occasion. Persons under the social ban
for their irregular lives often win the love of individuals by their
benevolence and sweetness of disposition—qualities, it is remarked,
not unlikely to have been partly concerned in their first trespasses.
This was the case with Mrs Bellamy. Her waiting-maid, Annie Waterstone,
who is mentioned in her _Memoirs_, lived many years after in Edinburgh,
and continued to the last to adore the memory of her mistress. Nay,
she was, from this cause, a zealous friend of all kinds of players,
and never would allow a slighting remark upon them to pass unreproved.
It was curious to find in a poor old Scotchwoman of the humbler class
such a sympathy with the follies and eccentricities of the children of
Thespis.
[Illustration: Tailors’ Hall, Cowgate.]
While under the temporary management of two Edinburgh citizens
extremely ill-qualified for the charge—one of them, by the bye, a Mr
David Beatt, who had read the rebel proclamations from the Cross in
1745—a sad accident befell the Canongate playhouse. Dissensions of
a dire kind had broken out in the company. The public, as usual, was
divided between them. Two classes of persons—the gentlemen of the
bar and the students of the university[267]—were especially zealous
as partisans. Things were at that pass when a trivial incident will
precipitate them to the most fearful conclusion. One night, when
_Hamlet_ was the play, a riot took place of so desperate a description
that at length the house was set on fire. It being now necessary for
the authorities to interfere, the Town-guard was called forth, and
marched to the scene of disturbance; but though many of that veteran
corps had faced the worst at Blenheim and Dettingen, they felt it as a
totally different thing to be brought to action in a place which they
regarded as a peculiar domain of the Father of Evil. When ordered,
therefore, by their commander to advance into the house and across
the stage, the poor fellows fairly stopped short amidst the scenes,
the glaring colours of which at once surprised and terrified them.
Indignant at their pusillanimity, the bold captain seized a musket,
and placing himself in an attitude equal to anything that had ever
appeared on those boards, exclaimed: ‘Now, my lads, follow _me_!’
But just at the moment that he was going to rush on and charge the
rioters, a trap-door on which he trod gave way, and in an instant the
heroic leader had sunk out of sight, as if by magic. This was too much
for the excited nerves of the guard; they immediately vacated the
house, leaving the devil to make his own of it; and accordingly it
was completely destroyed. It is added that when the captain by-and-by
reappeared, they received him in the quality of a gentleman from the
other world; nor could they all at once be undeceived, even when he
cursed them in vigorous Gaelic for a pack of cowardly scoundrels.
[Illustration: Old Playhouse Close.]
The Canongate theatre revived for a short time, and had the honour
to be the first house in our city in which the drama was acted with
a license. It was opened with this privilege by Mr Ross on the 9th
December 1767, when the play was _The Earl of Essex_, and a general
prologue was spoken, the composition of James Boswell. Soon after,
being deserted for the present building in the New Town,[268] it fell
into ruin; in which state it formed the subject of a mock elegy to the
muse of Robert Fergusson. The reader will perhaps be amused with the
following extract from that poem:
‘Can I contemplate on those dreary scenes
Of mouldering desolation, and forbid
The voice elegiac, and the falling tear!
No more from box to box the basket, piled
With oranges as radiant as the spheres,
Shall with their luscious virtues charm the sense
Of taste or smell. No more the gaudy beau,
With handkerchief in lavender well drenched,
Or bergamot, or [in] rose-waters pure,
With flavoriferous sweets shall chase away
The pestilential fumes of vulgar cits,
Who, in impatience for the curtain’s rise,
Amused the lingering moments, and applied
Thirst-quenching porter to their parched lips.
Alas! how sadly altered is the scene!
For lo! those sacred walls, that late were brushed
By rustling silks and waving capuchines,
Are now become the sport of wrinkled Time!
Those walls that late have echoed to the voice
Of stern King Richard, to the seat transformed
Of crawling spiders and detested moths,
Who in the lonely crevices reside,
Or gender in the beams, that have upheld
Gods, demigods, and all the joyous crew
Of thunderers in the galleries above.’
FOOTNOTES
[263] Record of that Society.
[264] The date over the exterior gateway of the Tailors’ Hall, towards
the Cowgate, is 1644; but it is ascertained that the corporation had
its hall at this place at an earlier period. An assembly of between
two and three hundred clergymen was held here on Tuesday the 27th of
February 1638 in order to consider the National Covenant, which was
presented to the public next day in the Greyfriars Church. We are
informed by the Earl of Rothes, in his _Relations_ of the transactions
of this period, in which he bore so distinguished a part, that some few
objected to certain points in it; but being taken aside into the garden
attached to this hall, and there lectured on the necessity of mutual
concession for the sake of the general cause, they were soon brought to
give their entire assent.
[265] The announcements of entertainments given at this fashionable
place of amusement in the eighteenth century make amusing reading
to-day. ‘February 17, 1743. We hear that on Monday 21st instant, at the
Tailors’ Hall, Cowgate, at the desire of several ladies of distinction,
will be performed a concert of vocal and instrumental music. After
which will be given gratis _Richard the Third_, containing several
historical passages. To which will be added gratis “The Mock Lawyer.”
Tickets for the Concert (on which _are_ [sic] printed a new device
called Apology and Evasion) to be had at the Exchange and John’s
Coffee-houses, and at Mr Este’s lodgings at Mr Monro’s, musician in the
Cowgate, near Tailors’ Hall. As Mrs Este’s present condition will not
admit a personal application, she hopes the ladies notwithstanding will
grace her concert.’
[266] Among the audience on the first night of the performance of
_Douglas_ were the two daughters of John and Lady Susan Renton, one of
whom, Eleanor, was the mother of Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, to whom
the author in his ‘Introductory Notice’ expresses his indebtedness
for assistance on the first appearance of this work. And it was for
attending one of the performances that the minister of Liberton
Church brought himself under sentence of six weeks’ suspension by the
Presbytery of Edinburgh—a sentence modified in consideration of his
plea that though he attended the play, ‘he concealed himself as well as
he could to avoid giving offence.’
[267] Maitland, in his _History of Edinburgh_, 1753, says that the
encouragement given to the diversions at the house ‘is so very great,
’tis to be feared it will terminate in the _destruction of the
university_. Such diversions,’ he adds, ‘are noways becoming a seat of
the Muses.’
[268] The Theatre Royal in Shakespeare Square, where the General Post
Office now stands.
MARIONVILLE—STORY OF CAPTAIN MACRAE.
[Illustration: Marionville.]
Between the eastern suburbs of Edinburgh and the village of Restalrig
stands a solitary house named Marionville, enclosed in a shrubbery
of no great extent, surrounded by high walls. Whether it be that the
place has become dismal in consequence of the rise of a noxious fen
in its neighbourhood, or that the tale connected with it acts upon
the imagination, I cannot pretend to decide, but unquestionably there
is about the house an air of depression and melancholy such as could
scarcely fail to strike the most unobservant passenger. Yet, in 1790,
this mansion was the abode of a gay and fashionable family, who,
amongst other amusements, indulged in that of private theatricals,
and in this line were so highly successful that admission to the
Marionville theatre became a privilege for which the highest in the
land would contend. Mr Macrae, the head of this family, was a man of
good fortune, being the proprietor of an estate in Dumfriesshire, and
also of good connections—the Earl of Glencairn, whom Burns has so
much celebrated, being his cousin, while by his mother he was nearly
related to Viscount Fermoy and the celebrated Sir Boyle Roche. He had
been for some years retired from the Irish Carabiniers, and being still
in the prime of life, he was thinking of again entering the army, when
the incident which I am about to relate took place. He was a man of
gentlemanlike accomplishments and manners, of a generous and friendly
disposition, but marked by a keen and imperious sense of the deference
due to a gentleman, and a heat of temper which was apt to make him
commit actions of which he afterwards bitterly repented. After the
unfortunate affair which ended his career in Scotland, the public,
who never make nice distinctions as to the character of individuals,
adopted the idea that he was as inhumane as rash, and he was reported
to be an experienced duellist. But here he was greatly misrepresented.
Mr Macrae would have shrunk from a deliberate act of cruelty; and the
only connection he had ever had with single combat was in the way of
endeavouring to reconcile friends who had quarrelled—an object in
which he was successful on several memorable occasions. But the same
man—whom all that really knew him allowed to be a delightful companion
and kind-hearted man—was liable to be transported beyond the bounds of
reason by casual and trivial occurrences. A messenger of the law having
arrested the Rev. Mr Cunningham, brother of the Earl of Glencairn,
for debt, as he was passing with a party from the drawing-room to the
dining-room at Drumsheugh House, Mr Macrae threw the man over the
stair. He was prompted to this act by indignation at the affront which
he conceived his cousin, as a gentleman, had received from a common
man. But soon after, when it was represented to him that every other
means of inducing Mr Cunningham to settle his debt had failed, and when
he learned that the messenger had suffered severe injury, he went to
him, made him a hearty apology, and agreed to pay three hundred guineas
by way of compensation. He had himself allowed a debt due to a tailor
to remain too long unpaid, and the consequence was that he received
a summons for it before the sheriff-court. With this document in his
hand, he called, in a state of great excitement, upon his law-agent, to
whom he began to read: ‘Archibald Cockburn of Cockpen, sheriff-depute,’
&c., till he came to a passage which declared that ‘he, the said James
Macrae, had been oft and diverse times desired and required,’ &c. ‘The
greatest lie ever uttered!’ he exclaimed. ‘He had never heard a word
of it before; he would instantly go to the sheriff and horsewhip him.’
The agent had at the time letters of _horning_ against a very worthy
baronet lying upon his table—that is to say, a document in which the
baronet was denounced as a rebel to the king, according to a form of
the law of Scotland, for failing to pay his debt. The agent took up
this, and coolly began to read: ‘George III. by the grace of God,’ &c.
Macrae at once saw the application, and fell a-laughing at his own
folly, saying he would go directly and give the sheriff tickets for
the play at Marionville, which he and his family requested. It will be
seen that the fault of this unfortunate gentleman was heat of temper,
not a savage disposition; but what fault can be more fatal than heat of
temper?
Mr Macrae was married to an accomplished lady, Maria Cecilia le Maitre,
daughter of the Baroness Nolken, wife of the Swedish ambassador.
They occasionally resided in Paris, with Mrs Macrae’s relations,
particularly with her cousin, Madame de la Briche, whose private
theatricals in her elegant house at the Marais were the models of those
afterwards instituted at Marionville. It may not be unworthy of notice
that amongst their fellow-performers at Madame de la Briche’s was
the celebrated Abbé Sieyès. When Mr Macrae and his lady set up their
theatre at Marionville, they both took characters, he appearing to
advantage in such parts as that of Dionysius in the _Grecian Daughter_,
and she in the first line of female parts in genteel comedy. Sir David
Kinloch and a Mr Justice were their best male associates; and the
chief female performer, after Mrs Macrae herself, was Mrs Carruthers
of Dormont, a daughter of the celebrated artist Paul Sandby. When all
due deduction is made for the effects of complaisance, there seems to
remain undoubted testimony that these performances involved no small
amount of talent.
In Mr and Mrs Macrae’s circle of visiting acquaintance, and frequent
spectators of the Marionville theatricals, were Sir George Ramsay of
Bamff and his lady. Sir George had recently returned, with an addition
to his fortune, from India, and was now settling himself down for
the remainder of life in his native country. I have seen original
letters between the two families, showing that they lived on the most
friendly terms and entertained the highest esteem for each other. One
written by Lady Ramsay to Mrs Macrae, from Sir George’s country-seat in
Perthshire, commences thus: ‘My dear friend, I have just time to write
you a few lines to say how much I long to hear from you, and to assure
you how sincerely I love you.’ Her ladyship adds: ‘I am now enjoying
rural retirement with Sir George, who is really so good and indulgent,
that I am as happy as the gayest scenes could make me. He joins me in
kind compliments to you and Mr Macrae,’ &c. How deplorable that social
affections, which contribute so much to make life pass agreeably,
should be liable to a wild upbreak from perhaps some trivial cause, not
in itself worthy of a moment’s regard, and only rendered of consequence
by the sensitiveness of pride and a deference to false and worldly
maxims!
The source of the quarrel between Mr Macrae and Sir George was of a
kind almost too mean and ridiculous to be spoken of. On the evening
of the 7th April 1790, the former gentleman handed a lady out of the
Edinburgh theatre, and endeavoured to get a chair for her, in which
she might be conveyed home. Seeing two men approaching through the
crowd with one, he called to ask if it was disengaged, to which the
men replied with a distinct affirmative. As Mr Macrae handed the lady
forward to put her into it, a footman, in a violent manner, seized hold
of one of the poles, and insisted that it was engaged for his mistress.
The man seemed disordered by liquor, and it was afterwards distinctly
made manifest that he was acting without the guidance of reason. His
lady had gone home some time before, while he was out of the way. He
was not aware of this, and, under a confused sense of duty, he was now
eager to obtain a chair for her, but in reality had not bespoken that
upon which he laid hold. Mr Macrae, annoyed at the man’s pertinacity
at such a moment, rapped him over the knuckles with a short cane to
make him give way; on which the servant called him a scoundrel, and
gave him a push on the breast. Incensed overmuch by this conduct, Mr
Macrae struck him smartly over the head with his cane, on which the
man cried out worse than before, and moved off. Mr Macrae, following
him, repeated his blows two or three times, but only with that degree
of force which he thought needful for a chastisement. In the meantime
the lady whom Mr Macrae had handed out got into a different chair, and
was carried off. Some of the bystanders, seeing a gentleman beating a
servant, cried shame, and showed a disposition to take part with the
latter; but there were individuals present who had observed all the
circumstances, and who felt differently. One gentleman afterwards gave
evidence that he had been insulted by the servant, at an earlier period
of the evening, in precisely the same manner as Mr Macrae, and that
the man’s conduct had throughout been rude and insolent, a consequence
apparently of drunkenness.
Learning that the servant was in the employment of Lady Ramsay,
Mr Macrae came into town next day, full of anxiety to obviate any
unpleasant impression which the incident might have made upon her mind.
Meeting Sir George in the street, he expressed to him his concern
on the subject, when Sir George said lightly that the man being his
lady’s footman, he did not feel any concern in the matter. Mr Macrae
then went to apologise to Lady Ramsay, whom he found sitting for her
portrait in the lodgings of the young artist Raeburn, afterwards so
highly distinguished. It has been said that he fell on his knees before
the lady to entreat her pardon for what he had done to her servant.
Certainly he left her with the impression that he had no reason to
expect a quarrel between himself and Sir George on account of what had
taken place.
James Merry—this was the servant’s name—had been wounded in the
head, but not severely. The injuries which he had sustained—though
nothing can justify the violence which inflicted them—were only of
such a nature as a few days of confinement would have healed. Such,
indeed, was the express testimony given by his medical attendant,
Mr Benjamin Bell. There was, however, a strong feeling amongst his
class against Macrae, who was informed, in an anonymous letter,
that a hundred and seven men-servants had agreed to have some
revenge upon him. Merry himself had determined to institute legal
proceedings against Mr Macrae for the recovery of damages. A process
was commenced by the issue of a summons, which Mr Macrae received
on the 12th. Wounded to the quick by this procedure, and smarting
under the insolence of the anonymous letter, Mr Macrae wrote next day
a note to Sir George Ramsay, in which, addressing him without any
term of friendly regard, he demanded that either Merry should drop
the prosecution or that his master should turn him off. Sir George
temperately replied ‘that he had only now heard of the prosecution for
the first time; that the man met with no encouragement from him; and
that he hoped that Mr Macrae, on further consideration, would not think
it incumbent on him to interfere, especially as the man was at present
far from being well.’
On the same evening Mr Amory, a military friend of Mr Macrae, called
upon Sir George with a second note from that gentleman, once more
insisting on the man being turned off, and stating that in the event
of his refusal Mr Amory was empowered to communicate his opinion of
his conduct. Sir George did refuse, on the plea that he had yet seen
no good reason for his discharging the servant; and Mr Amory then said
it was his duty to convey Mr Macrae’s opinion, which was ‘that Sir
George’s conduct had not been that of a gentleman.’ Sir George then
said that further conversation was unnecessary; all that remained was
to agree upon a place of meeting. They met again that evening at a
tavern, where Mr Amory informed Sir George that it was Mr Macrae’s wish
that they should meet, properly attended, next day at twelve o’clock at
Ward’s Inn, on the borders of Musselburgh Links.
The parties met there accordingly, Mr Macrae being attended by Captain
Amory, and Sir George Ramsay by Sir William Maxwell; Mr Benjamin
Bell, the surgeon, being also of the party. Mr Macrae had brought an
additional friend, a Captain Haig, to favour them with his advice, but
not to act formally as a second. The two parties being in different
rooms, Sir William Maxwell came into that occupied by Mr Macrae, and
proposed that if Mr Macrae would apologise for the intemperate style of
his letters demanding the discharge of the servant, Sir George would
grant his request, and the affair would end. Mr Macrae answered that he
would be most happy to comply with this proposal if his friends thought
it proper; but he must abide by their decision. The question being put
to Captain Haig, he answered, in a deliberate manner: ‘It is altogether
impossible; Sir George must, in the first place, turn off his servant,
and Mr Macrae will then apologise.’ Hearing this speech, equally marked
by wrong judgment and wrong feeling, Macrae, according to the testimony
of Mr Bell, shed tears of anguish. The parties then walked to the
beach, and took their places in the usual manner. On the word being
given, Sir George took deliberate aim at Macrae, the neck of whose coat
was grazed by his bullet. Macrae had, if his own solemn asseveration
is to be believed, intended to fire in the air; but when he found Sir
George aiming thus at his life, he altered his resolution, and brought
his antagonist to the ground with a mortal wound in the body.
There was the usual consternation and unspeakable distress. Mr Macrae
went up to Sir George and ‘told him that he was sincerely afflicted at
seeing him in that situation.’[269] It was with difficulty, and only at
the urgent request of Sir William Maxwell, that he could be induced to
quit the field. Sir George lingered for two days. The event occasioned
a great sensation in the public mind, and a very unfavourable view was
generally taken of Mr Macrae’s conduct. It was given out that during a
considerable interval, while in expectation of the duel taking place,
he had practised pistol-shooting in his garden at a barber’s block;
and he was also said to have been provided with a pair of pistols
of a singularly apt and deadly character; the truth being that the
interval was a brief one, his hand totally unskilled in shooting, and
the pistols a bad brass-mounted pair, hastily furnished by Amory. We
have Amory’s testimony that as they were pursuing their journey to
another country, he was constantly bewailing the fate of Sir George
Ramsay, remarking how unfortunate it was that he took so obstinate a
view about the servant’s case. The demand, he said, was one which he
would have thought it necessary to comply with. He had asked Sir George
nothing but what he would have done had it been his own case. This is
so consonant with what appears otherwise respecting his character that
we cannot doubt it. It is only to be lamented that he should not have
made the demand in terms more calculated to lead to compliance.
The death of an amiable man under such deplorable circumstances
roused the most zealous vigilance on the part of the law
authorities; but Mr Macrae and his second succeeded in reaching
France. A summons was issued for his trial, but he was advised
not to appear, and accordingly sentence of outlawry was passed
against him. The servant’s prosecution meanwhile went on, and
was ultimately decided against Mr Macrae, although, on a cool
perusal of the evidence on both sides, there appears to me the
clearest proof of Merry having been the first aggressor. Mr
Macrae lived in France till the progress of the Revolution forced
him to go to Altona. When time seemed to have a little softened
matters against him, he took steps to ascertain if he could safely
return to his native country. It was decided by counsel that he
could not. They held that his case entirely wanted the extenuating
circumstance which was necessary—his having to contemplate
degradation if he did not challenge. He was under no such
danger; so that, from his letters to Sir George Ramsay, he
appeared to have forced on the duel purely for revenge. He came
to see the case in this light himself, and was obliged to make up
his mind to perpetual self-banishment. He survived thirty years.
A gentleman of my acquaintance, who had known him in early life in
Scotland, was surprised to meet him one day in a Parisian coffee-house
after the peace of 1814—the wreck or ghost of the handsome,
sprightly man he had once been. The comfort of his home,
his country, and friends, the use of his talents to all these, had
been lost, and himself obliged to lead the life of a condemned
Cain, all through the one fault of a fiery temper.
FOOTNOTES
[269] Letter of Captain Amory, MS.
ALISON SQUARE.
This is a large mass of building between Nicolson Square and the
Potterrow, in the south side of the town. It was built about the middle
of the eighteenth century, upon venture, by one Colin Alison, a joiner,
who in after-life was much reduced in his circumstances, not improbably
in consequence of this large speculation. In his last days he spent
some of his few remaining shillings in the erection of two boards, at
different parts of his buildings, whereon was represented a globe in
the act of falling, with this inscription:
‘If Fortune smile, be not puffed up,
And if it frown, be not dismayed;
For Providence governeth all,
Although the world’s turned upside down.’
Alison Square[270] has enjoyed some little connection with the Scottish
muses. It was in the house of a Miss Nimmo in this place that Burns met
Clarinda. It would amuse the reader of the ardent letters which passed
between these two kindred souls to visit the plain, small, dusky house
in which the lady lived at that time, and where she received several
visits of the poet. It is situated in the adjacent humble street called
the Potterrow, the first floor over the passage into General’s Entry,
accessible by a narrow spiral stair from the court. A little parlour, a
bedroom, and a kitchen constituted the accommodations of Mrs M’Lehose;
now the residence of two, if not three, families in the extreme of
humble life. Here she lived with a couple of infant children, a young
and beautiful woman, blighted in her prospects in consequence of an
unhappy marriage (her husband having deserted her, after using her
barbarously), yet cheerful and buoyant, through constitutional good
spirits and a rational piety. To understand her friendship with Burns
and the meaning of their correspondence, it was almost necessary to
have known the woman. Seeing her and hearing her converse, even in
advanced life, one could penetrate the whole mystery very readily,
in appreciating a spirit unusually gay, frank, and emotional. The
perfect innocence of the woman’s nature was evident at once; and by her
friends it was never doubted.
[Illustration: ALISON SQUARE.
PAGE 358.]
In Alison Square Thomas Campbell lived while composing his _Pleasures
of Hope_. The place where any deathless composition took its shape
from the author’s brain is worthy of a place in the chart. A lady, the
early friend of Campbell and his family, indicates their residence at
that time as being the second door in the stair, entered from the east
side, on the north side of the arch, the windows looking partly into
Nicolson Square and partly to the Potterrow. The same authority states
that much of the poem was written in the middle of the night, and from
a sad cause. The poet’s mother, it seems, was of a temper so extremely
irritable that her family had no rest till she retired for the night.
It was only at that season that the young poet could command repose of
mind for his task.
FOOTNOTES
[270] The north and south sides only of this square now remain. The
west was removed to make a thoroughfare—Marshall Street, connecting
Nicolson Square and Potterrow.
LEITH WALK.
[Illustration]
Up to the period of the building of the North Bridge, which connects
the Old with the New Town of Edinburgh, the Easter Road was the
principal passage to Leith. The origin of Leith Walk was accidental. At
the approach of Cromwell to Edinburgh, immediately before the battle of
Dunbar, Leslie, the Covenanting general, arranged the Scottish troops
in a line, the right wing of which rested upon the Calton Hill, and
the left upon Leith, being designed for the defence of these towns. A
battery was erected at each extremity, and the line was itself defended
by a trench and a mound, the latter composed of the earth dug from the
former. Leslie himself took up his head-quarters at Broughton, whence
some of his despatches are dated. When the war was shifted to another
quarter, this mound became a footway between the two towns. It is thus
described in a book published in 1748: ‘A very handsome gravel walk,
twenty feet broad, which is kept in good repair at the public charge,
and no horses suffered to come upon it.’ When Provost Drummond built
the North Bridge in 1769, he contemplated that it should become an
access to Leith as well as to the projected New Town. Indeed, he seems
to have been obliged to make it pass altogether under that semblance
in order to conciliate the people; for upon the plate sunk under
the foundations of the bridge it is solely described as the opening
of a road to Leith. At that time the idea of a New Town seemed so
chimerical that he scarcely dared to avow his patriotic intentions.
After the opening of the bridge, the _Walk_ seems to have become used
by carriages, but without any regard being paid to its condition or
any system established for keeping it in repair. It consequently fell
into a state of disorder, from which it was not rescued till after
the commencement of the present century, when a splendid causeway was
formed at a great expense by the city of Edinburgh, and a toll erected
for its payment.
One terrible peculiarity attended Leith Walk in its former condition.
It was overhung by a gibbet, from which were suspended all culprits
whose bodies at condemnation were sentenced to be hung in chains. The
place where this gibbet stood, called the Gallow Lee, is now a good
deal altered in appearance. It was a slight rising ground immediately
above the site of the toll[271] and on the west side of the road, being
now partly enclosed by the precincts of a villa, where the beautiful
Duchess of Gordon once lived. The greater part of the Gallow Lee now
exists in the shape of mortar in the walls of the houses of the New
Town. At the time when that elegant city was built, the proprietor of
this redoubtable piece of ground, finding it composed of excellent
sand, sold it all away to the builders, to be converted into mortar, so
that it soon, from a rising ground, became a deep hollow. An amusing
anecdote is told in connection with this fact. The honest man, it
seems, was himself fully as much of a sand-bed as his property. He was
a big, voluminous man, one of those persons upon whom drink never seems
to have any effect. It is related that every day, while the carts were
taking away his sand, he stood regularly at the place receiving the
money in return, and every little sum he got was immediately converted
into liquor and applied to the comfort of his inner man. A public-house
was at length erected at the spot for his particular behoof; and,
assuredly, as long as the Gallow Lee lasted this house did not want
custom. Perhaps, familiar as the reader may be with stories of sots who
have drunk away their last acre, he never before heard of the thing
being done in so literal a manner.
If my reader be an inhabitant of Edinburgh of any standing, he must
have many delightful associations of Leith Walk in connection with his
childhood. Of all the streets in Edinburgh or Leith, the _Walk_ in
former times was certainly the street for boys and girls. From top to
bottom, it was a scene of wonders and enjoyments peculiarly devoted
to children. Besides the panoramas and caravan-shows, which were
comparatively transient spectacles, there were several shows upon Leith
Walk, which might be considered as regular fixtures and part of the
_country-cousin sights_ of Edinburgh. Who can forget the waxworks of
‘Mrs Sands, widow of the late G. Sands,’ which occupied a _laigh_ shop
opposite to the present Haddington Place, and at the door of which,
besides various parrots and sundry birds of Paradise, sat the wax
figure of a little man in the dress of a French courtier of the _ancien
régime_, reading one eternal copy of the _Edinburgh Advertiser_? The
very outsides of these wonder-shops was an immense treat; all along
the Walk it was one delicious scene of squirrels hung out at doors,
and monkeys dressed like soldiers and sailors, with holes behind where
their tails came through. Even the half-penniless boy might here get
his appetite for wonders to some extent gratified.
Besides being of old the chosen place for shows, Leith Walk was the
Rialto of _objects_. This word requires explanation. It is applied by
the people of Scotland to persons who have been born with or overtaken
by some miserable personal evil. From one end to the other, Leith
Walk was garrisoned by poor creatures under these circumstances, who,
from handbarrows, wheelbarrows, or iron legs, if peradventure they
possessed such adjuncts, entreated the passengers for charity—some by
voices of song, some by speech, some by driddling, as Burns calls it,
on fiddles or grinding on hand-organs—indeed, a complete continuous
ambuscade against the pocket. Shows and _objects_ have now alike
vanished from Leith Walk. It is now a plain street, composed of little
shops of the usual suburban appearance, and characterised by nothing
peculiar, except perhaps a certain air of pretension, which is in some
cases abundantly ludicrous. A great number, be it observed, are mere
tiled cottages, which contrive, by means of lofty fictitious fronts,
plastered and painted in a showy manner, to make up a good appearance
towards the street. If there be a school in one of those receptacles,
it is entitled an _academy_; if an artisan’s workshop, however
humble, it is a _manufactory_. Everything about it is still showy
and unsubstantial; it is still, in some measure, the type of what it
formerly was.
Near the bottom of Leith Walk is a row of somewhat old-fashioned
houses bearing the name of Springfield. A large one, the second from
the top, was, ninety years ago, the residence of Mr M’Culloch of
Ardwell, a commissioner of customs, and noted as a man of pleasantry
and wit. Here, in some of the last years of his life, did Samuel
Foote occasionally appear as Mr M’Culloch’s guest—_Arcades ambo et
respondere parati_. But the history of their intimacy is worthy of
being particularly told; so I transcribe it from the recollection of a
gentleman whose advanced age and family connections could alone have
made us faithfully acquainted with circumstances so remote from our
time.
In the winter of 1775-6 [more probably that of 1774-5], Mr M’Culloch
visited his country mansion in the stewartry of Kirkcudbright, in
company of a friend named Mouat, in order to be present at an election.
Mr M’Culloch was a man of joyous temperament and a good deal of wit,
and used to amuse his friends by spouting half-random verses. He and
his friend spent a week or two very pleasantly in the country, and
then set out on their return to Leith; Mr M’Culloch carrying with him
his infant son David, familiarly called _Wee Davie_, for the purpose
of commencing his education in Edinburgh. To pursue the narrative of
my correspondent: ‘The two travellers got on pretty well as far as
Dumfries; but it was with difficulty, occasioned by a snowstorm, that
they reached Moffat, where they tarried for the night.
‘Early on a January morning, the snow having fallen heavily during
the preceding night, they set off in a post-chaise and four horses
to proceed on their perilous journey. Two gentlemen in their own
carriage left the _King’s Arms Inn_ (then kept by James Little) at the
same time. With difficulty the first pair of travellers reached the
top of Erickstane, but farther they could not go. The parties came
out of their carriages, and, aided by their postillions, they held
a consultation as to the prudence of attempting to proceed down the
vale of Tweed. This was considered as a vain and dangerous attempt,
and it was therefore determined on to return to Moffat. The turning
of the carriages having become a dangerous undertaking, Wee Davie
had to be taken out of the chaise and laid on the snow, wrapped in a
blanket, until the business was accomplished. The parties then went
back to Moffat, arriving there between nine and ten in the morning. Mr
M’Culloch and his friend then learned that, of the two strangers who
had left the inn at the same time, and had since returned, one was the
celebrated Foote, and the other either Ross or Souter, but which of the
two favourite sons of Thalia I cannot remember at this distant period
of time. Let it be kept in mind that Foote had lost a leg, and walked
with difficulty.
‘Immediately on returning Foote had entered the inn, not in
good-humour, to order breakfast. His carriage stood opposite the inn
door, in order to get the luggage taken off. While this was going
on a paper was placarded on one of the panels. The wit came out to
see how all matters were going on, when, observing the paper, he in
wrath exclaimed: “What rascal has been placarding his ribaldry on my
carriage?” He had patience, however, to pause and read the following
lines:
“While Boreas his flaky storm did guide,
Deep covering every hill, o’er Tweed and Clyde,
The north-wind god spied travellers seeking way;
Sternly he cried: ‘Retrace your steps, I say;
Let not _one foot_, ’tis my behest, profane
The sacred snows which lie on Erickstane.’”
The countenance of our wit now brightened, as he called out, with an
exclamation of surprise: “I should like to know the fellow who wrote
that; for, be he who he may, he’s no mean hand at an epigram.” Mrs
Little, the good but eccentric landlady, now stepped forward and spoke
thus: “Trouth, Maister Fut, it’s mair than likely that it was our
_frien’_ Maister M’Culloch of Ardwell that did it; it’s weel kent that
he’s a poyet; he’s a guid eneugh sort o’ man, but he never comes here
without poyet-teasing mysel’ or the guidman, or some are or other about
the house. It wud be weel dune if ye wud speak to him.” Ardwell now
came forward, muttering some sort of apology, which Foote instantly
stopped by saying: “My dear sir, an apology is not necessary; I am fair
game for every one, for I take any one for game when it suits me. You
and I must become acquainted, for I find that we are brother-poets,
and that we were this morning companions in misfortune on ‘the sacred
snows of Erickstane.’” Thus began an intimacy which the sequel will
show turned out to be a lasting one. The two parties now joined at the
breakfast-table, as they did at every other meal for the next twenty
days.
[Illustration: DYERS’ CLOSE.
Old houses being demolished to make room for extension of Heriot Watt
College.
PAGE 364.]
‘Foote remained quiet for a few hours after breakfast, until he had
beat about for game, as he termed it, and he first fixed on worthy
Mrs Little, his hostess. By some occult means he had managed to get
hold of some of the old lady’s habiliments, particularly a favourite
night-cap—provincially, a _mutch_. After attiring himself _à la_ Mrs
Little, he went into the kitchen and through the house, mimicking the
garrulous landlady so very exactly in giving orders, scolding, &c.
that no servant doubted as to its being the mistress _in propriâ
personâ_. This kind of amusement went on for several days for the
benefit of the people in Moffat. By-and-by the snow allowed the united
parties to advance as far as the Crook, upon Tweed, and here they were
again storm-stayed for ten days. Nevertheless, Foote and his companion,
who was well qualified to support him, never for a moment flagged in
creating merriment or affording the party amusement of some sort. The
snow-cleared away at last, so as to enable the travellers to reach
Edinburgh, and there to end their journey. The intimacy of Foote and
Ardwell did not end here, but continued until the death of Foote.
‘After this period Foote several times visited Scotland: he always in
his writings showed himself partial to Scotland and to the Scotch.
On every visit which he afterwards made to the northern metropolis,
he set apart a night or two for a social meeting with his friend
Ardwell, whose family lived in the second house from the head of that
pretty row of houses more than half-way down Leith Walk, still called
Springfield. In the parlour, on the right-hand side in entering that
house, the largest of the row, Foote, the celebrated wit of the day,
has frequently been associated with many of the Edinburgh and Leith
worthies, when and where he was wont to keep the table in a roar.
‘The biography of Foote is well known. However, I may add that Mr Mouat
and Mr M’Culloch died much lamented in the year 1793. David M’Culloch
(Wee Davie) died in the year 1824, at Cheltenham, much regretted.
For many years he had resided in India. In consequence of family
connection, he became a familiar visitor at Abbotsford, and a favourite
acquaintance of Sir Walter Scott.[272] Mr Lockhart tells us that, next
to Tom Moore, Sir Walter thought him the finest warbler he had ever
heard. He was certainly an exquisitely fine singer of Scotch songs. Sir
Walter Scott never heard him sing until he was far advanced in life, or
until his voice had given way to a long residence in India. Mr Lockhart
also tells us that David M’Culloch in his youth was an intimate and
favourite companion of Burns, and that the poet hardly ventured to
publish many of his songs until he heard them sung by his friend. I
will only add that the writer of this has more than once heard Burns
say that he never fully knew the beauty of his songs until he heard
them sung by David M’Culloch.’
FOOTNOTES
[271] The site was midway between Edinburgh and Leith, now represented
by Shrub Place.
[272] Sir Walter’s brother Thomas was married to a sister of Mr
M’Culloch.
[GABRIEL’S ROAD.
Previous to 1767 the eye of a person perched in a favourable situation
in the Old Town surveyed the whole ground on which the New Town was
afterwards built. Immediately beyond the North Loch was a range of
grass fields called Bearford’s Parks, from the name of the proprietor,
Hepburn of Bearford in East Lothian. Bounding these on the north, in
the line of the subsequent Princes Street, was a road enclosed by two
dry-stone walls, thence called the Lang Dykes; it was the line by which
the Viscount Dundee rode with his small troop of adherents when he had
ascertained that the Convention was determined to settle the crown upon
the Prince of Orange, and he saw that the only duty that remained for
him was to raise the Highland clans for King James.[273] The main mass
of ground, originally rough with whins and broom, but latterly forming
what was called Wood’s Farm, was crossed obliquely by a road extending
between Silvermills, a rural hamlet on the mill-course of the Leith,
and the passage into the Old Town obtained by the dam of the North Loch
at the bottom of Halkerston’s Wynd. There are still some traces of
this road. You see it leave Silvermills behind West Cumberland Street.
Behind Duke Street, on the west side, the boundary-wall of the Queen
Street Garden is oblique in consequence of its having passed that way.
Finally it terminates in a short, oblique passage behind the Register
House, wherein stood till lately a tall building containing a famous
house of resort, Ambrose’s Tavern. This short passage bore the name
of Gabriel’s Road, and it was supposed to do so in connection with a
remarkable murder, of which it was the scene.
The murderer in the case was in truth a man named Robert Irvine. He was
tutor to two boys, sons of Mr Gordon of Ellon. In consequence of the
children having reported some liberties they saw him take with their
mother’s maid, he conceived the horrible design of murdering them,
and did so one day as he was leading them for a walk along the rough
ground where the New Town is now situated. The frightful transaction
was beheld from the Castle-hill; he was pursued, taken, and next day
but one hanged by the baron of Broughton, after having his hands hacked
off by the knife with which he had committed the deed. The date of
this off-hand execution was 30th April 1717. Both the date and the
murderer’s name have several times been misstated.[274]
Adjacent to this road, about the spot now occupied by the Royal Bank,
stood a small group of houses called Mutrie’s Hill, some of which
professed to furnish curds and cream and fruits in their seasons, and
were on these accounts resorted to by citizens and their families on
summer evenings. One in particular bore the name of ‘Peace and Plenty.’
The village of Silvermills, for the sake of which, as an access to the
city, Gabriel’s Road existed, still maintains its place amidst the
streets and crescents of the New Town. It contains a few houses of a
superior cast; but it is a place sadly in want of the _sacer vates_.
No notice has ever been taken of it in any of the books regarding
Edinburgh, nor has any attempt ever been made to account for its
somewhat piquant name. I shall endeavour to do so.
In 1607 silver was found in considerable abundance at Hilderstone,
in Linlithgowshire, on the property of the gentleman who figures in
another part of this volume as Tam o’ the Cowgate. Thirty-eight barrels
of ore were sent to the Mint in the Tower of London to be tried,
and were found to give about twenty-four ounces of silver for every
hundredweight. Expert persons were placed upon the mine, and mills
were erected on the Water of Leith for the melting and fining of the
ore. The sagacious owner gave the mine the name of _God’s Blessing_.
By-and-by the king heard of it, and thinking it improper that any
such fountain of wealth should belong to a private person, purchased
God’s Blessing for £5000, that it might be worked upon a larger scale
for the benefit of the public. But somehow, from the time it left the
hands of the original owner, God’s Blessing ceased to be anything like
so fertile as it had been, and in time the king withdrew from the
enterprise a great loser. The Silvermills I conceive to have been a
part of the abandoned plant.[275]]
FOOTNOTES
[273] It was also along this road that the anxious citizens, watching
on the Castle esplanade, saw the royalist cavalry retiring at full
gallop from Coltbridge on the approach of Prince Charlie and his
Highland army.
[274] In Mr Lockhart’s clever book, _Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk_,
the murderer is called Gabriel. A work called _Celebrated Trials_ (6
vols. 1825) gives an erroneous account of the murder, styling the
murderer as the Rev. Thomas Hunter.
[275] See _Domestic Annals of Scotland_, i. 407.
INDEX.
Abbey Chapel, 206.
Abbey Hill, 10, 316.
Abbey Zett (Yett, Gate), 257.
Abbotsford, 25, 83.
Aberuchil, Lord, 72.
Acheson House, 313.
Acheson, Sir Archibald, of Abercairny, 314.
Actors, Canongate Theatre, 346.
Adam Street, 187.
_Advertiser, Edinburgh_, 5, 49.
Advocates’ Library, 113.
Ainslie, Sir Philip, 300.
Airth, Laird of, 38.
Aitchinsoune, Thomas (Cunyie House), 260.
Aldridge, Robert, dancing-master, 151, 153.
Alesse, Alexander, 240.
Alison Square, 358, 359.
Aloetic medicine, an, 27.
Alston, Tony, 346.
Alva, Lord Justice-clerk, 204-208.
Ambrose’s Tavern, 366.
Amory, Captain, 355.
Anchor Close, 162.
Anderson, Samuel, anecdote of, 305.
Anderson’s pills, 27.
Angus, Earl of, 241.
Antemanum Club, 149.
Arbuthnot, Lord, 307.
Ardwell, residence of M’Culloch of, 362.
Argyll, 15, 51, 156, 175, 234, 307, 308, 345.
Arnot, Hugo, 4, 12, 36, 46, 49, 171.
Arran, Earl of, 241.
Arrot, Dr, 10.
Assemblies, 3, 14, 44, 265.
Assembly Close, 59.
Assembly Rooms, 43, 46, 195, 233, 253, 265.
_Assembly, The_, a play by Dr Pitcairn, 310.
Auchans House, Dr Johnson at, 197.
Auld Reekie, 138, 152.
_Auld Robin Gray_, author of, 277.
Aytoun of Inchdairnie, 123, 270.
Back Stairs, the, 291.
Baijen-hole, 112.
Baillie, Alexander, of Dochfour, 235.
Baird, Mr, of Newbyth, 20.
Baird’s Close, Castlehill, 58.
Baird, Sir David, 20.
Balcarres, Countess of, 277.
Balfour, James, accountant (‘Singing Jamie’), 141-143.
Balfour, Sir James (Lord Lyon), 315, 316.
Ballantyne, printer, 143.
Bank Close, Old, 70, 94.
Bank of Scotland, 70.
Bankton House, oratory at, 29.
Bannatyne Club, 73.
Bannatyne, Sir William Macleod, 10, 129, 317.
Banquet at Mint House to Danish lords, 260.
Barnard, Mr, violinist, 253.
Bassentyne’s house, 257.
Bearford’s Parks, 366.
Beatoun, Archbishop, 117.
Begbie’s murder, 36, 280.
Beith’s or Bess Wynd, 93, 113.
Bellamy, Mrs, 347-350.
Bell, Benjamin, surgeon, 355.
Bell’s Wynd, 46.
Bethune, Archbishop, 228, 241.
Bethune, Cardinal, 228.
Bickers (street fights of boys), 189, 245.
Birrel, the chronicler, 38.
Bishop’s Land, 269.
Black, Alexander, of Balbirney, 211.
Blackbird, a Jacobite, 30.
Blackfriars’ Monastery, 242.
Blackfriars Wynd, 10, 38, 223, 228, 234, 237, 238, 241, 257.
Black, Joseph, Professor, 242, 289.
Black Wigs Club, 155.
Blair, Dr, 56, 136, 288, 334.
Blair, Hugh, merchant, 72.
Blair, Rev. Robert, 307.
Blair’s Close, 18.
Blue Blanket, 183.
Blue-gowns—their annual assembly, 102.
Bluidy Mackenzie, 224.
Blyth’s Close, 22.
Boar Club, 151, 153.
Boarding-schools of last century, 230.
Bonnet Lairds’ Club, 155.
Bonnington, 348.
Booths, 3, 110.
Boroughmoor, 271.
Boswell, James, 16, 55, 60, 172, 197.
Boswell, James, advocate, 125.
Boswell, Sir Alexander, 126, _n._, 146, 266.
Bothwell, Adam, Bishop of Orkney, Commendator of Holyrood, 71, 97.
Bothwell, Anne, her _Lines_, 97.
Bothwell Bridge, 289.
Bothwell, Earl of, 38, 83, 121, 256.
Bow, angle of, 46.
‘Bowed Joseph,’ a general of mobs, 184-188.
Bowfoot, 50.
Bowhead, 27, 41.
Bowhead Saints, 30.
Bowling-greens, 247.
Bow, the West, 26, 53, 133.
Boyd, James, White Horse Inn, 172.
Boyd, Lord, 121.
Breadalbane, Earl of, 180.
Bridge, North, 269, 283, 360.
Bridges, the, 53.
British Linen Company’s Bank, 280.
Brodie, Deacon, 76, 91.
Brodie’s Close, 76.
Broomfield, Andrew, 124.
Brougham, Lord, 80.
Broughton, 360.
Broughton, Baron of, 367.
Brownhill, James, joiner, 55.
Brown, James, builder, 5.
Brown, Mrs, of Coalstoun, 266.
Brownonian System Club, 156.
Brown’s Close, 18.
Brown Square, 5, 248.
Bruce, Dame Magdalen, of Kinross, 19 _n._
Bruce of Kennet, 3.
Bruce of Kinnaird, 210.
Bruntsfield Links, 5.
Bryce, his small shop, 101.
Buccleuch, Duchess of, 327.
Buccleuch, Duke of, 328.
Buchanan, George, 288 _n._
Buchan, Earl of, 98.
Burke, Edward (Ned—a chairman engaged in the escape of Prince Charles), 177.
Burleigh, Lord, 307.
Burnett, Miss, of Monboddo, 251.
Burning, strange tale of a, 298.
Burns, Robert, 7, 14, 106, 164, 251, 351, 358, 362, 365.
Burton, Mrs, 58, 60.
Burt’s Letters, 176.
Busks, enormous size of, 201.
Bute, Lord, 10, 316, 317.
Byres of Coates, 95.
Byres’s Close, 96.
Caddies (street messengers), 175.
Cairnie, Lady, 124.
Caithness, Earls of, 77.
Caledonian Club, 155.
_Caledonian Mercury_, 15.
Calton, 149.
Calton Hill, 83, 297, 360.
Cambuskenneth, Abbot of, 223.
Campbell, Alexander, 180, 345.
Campbell, Lady Eleanor, 64.
Campbell, Mrs, of Monzie, 205, 208.
Campbell, Mungo, 90.
Campbell of Laguine, 134.
Campbell, Sir James, of Aberuchil, 72.
Campbell, Thomas, poet, 167, 359.
Canal, Forth and Clyde, 5.
Canongate, 3, 8, 11, 65, 295-301.
Canongate Council House, 71.
Canongate Theatre, 346.
Canongate Tolbooth, 248.
Canonmills, 154.
Cant’s Close, 221.
Cape Club, 149.
Cardross, Lord, 98.
Carrubber’s Close, 15.
Carters of Gilmerton, the, 4.
Castle-hill, 11, 18, 20, 22, 39, 150.
Castle Street, 8.
Cathcart, Robert, 39.
Cat Nick on Salisbury Crags, 91.
Cats, a lover of, 16.
Cayley, Squire, or Captain, 291.
Chairmen, 176.
Chalmers, Miss (Mrs Pringle), 251.
Chalmers, Miss, of Pittencrief, 251.
Chalmers’s Entry, 168.
Changes of the last hundred years, 1.
Chapman, Walter, printer, 109.
Charles I., 64, 170, 301, 306, 321.
Charles II., 260, 327.
Charles X., 228.
Charles, Prince, 27, 28, 48, 72, 175, 177, 181, 219, 235, 236, 269.
Charlotte Square, 9.
Charteris, Colonel, 328.
Chessels’s Court, 27, 91.
Chiesly of Dairy, 75, 211.
Circulating Library, 15, 104.
Citadel of Leith, inhabitants in 1745, 19.
City Guard, 4, 31, 84, 148, 179, 233, 238, 348.
Clarinda, 358.
Clarke, Stephen, musician, 253.
Clattering of tinsmiths in West Bow, 42.
Claudero, pamphleteer, 330.
Claverhouse, 6.
Cleanse the Causeway, 117, 241, 242.
Cleghorn, Miss, 251.
Clerihugh’s Tavern, 162.
Clerks, drucken, of Sir William Forbes, 138.
Clerk, Sir John, of Penicuik, 193.
Clubs, convivial, 149-157.
Coalstoun, Lord, and his wig, 96.
Coates, Sir John Byres of, 95.
Cockburn, Mrs, author of _Flowers of the Forest_, 58.
Cock-fights, 236.
Coffee-house, John’s, 112.
Coffee-house, Netherbow, 332.
Coffin, the, 166.
Coinage, 260.
Coke, William, bookseller, 167.
College of King James, 259.
College Street, North, 242.
College, the, 3.
College Wynd, 3, 242.
Colquhoun, Sir James, 132.
Commendator Bothwell’s house, 97.
Commercial Bank, 265.
Concerts, 249, 251.
Constable, Archibald, 7.
Convivial clubs, 149-157.
Convivialia, 138-157.
Corelli, musician, 254.
Corri, Signor and Signora Domenico, 250, 253.
_Court of Session Garland_, a burlesque poem, 124, 125.
Court, the Dirt, 115.
Covington, Lockhart of, 129.
Covington, Lord, fate of his gown, 130.
Cowgate, 72, 223, 240, 244, 257.
Cowgate Port, 152.
Craigie, Lord President, 9.
Craig, James, 7.
Crawford, Earl of, 311.
Crawfuird, 39.
Creech, Provost, bookseller, 9, 103, 339.
Crighton Street, Potterrow, 59.
_Criminal Trials_, by Hugo Arnot, 13.
Crochallan, a convivial society, 164.
Cromarty, Earl of, 225.
Cromwell, Oliver, 99, 122, 193, 307, 360.
Crosbie, advocate, 153.
Cross, the, 4, 174, 175;
taken down, 178 _n._
Cullen, Dr, 261.
Cullen, Lord, 263.
Cullen, Robert, mimic, 261.
Culloden, 177.
Cumming of Lyon Office, 167.
Cunliffe, Sir Foster, of Acton, 252.
Cunningham, Rev. Mr, 352.
Cunyie House (Mint), 257, 260.
Dalrymple, Miss, New Hailes, 131.
Dalrymple, President, 123.
Dalrymple, Sir David (Lord Hailes), 126 _n._, 131, 300.
Dancing in Edinburgh, 44;
Allan Ramsay on, 44;
Goldsmith on, 45.
Danish lords entertained, 260.
Darien Expedition, the, 52.
Darnley, 71, 83, 107, 121, 256.
David I., 295.
Davidson’s Close, 170.
Defensive Band, 152.
Defoe, 337.
‘Deid-chack,’ the, 114.
De la Cour, artist, 9.
De Witt’s map, 259.
Dhu, Sergeant John, 180.
Dick, Lady Anne, of Corstorphine, her eccentricities and verses, 225.
Dick, Sir William, &c., 78, 100.
Dicks of Prestonfield, 78.
Dickson, Andrew, golf-club maker, 321.
Dickson, Rev. David, 307.
Dickson’s Close, 222.
Dirt Court, the, 115.
Dirty Club, 155.
_Diurnal_, the, of a Scottish judge, 139.
Doctors of Faculty Club, the, 155.
Doctor, the Tinklarian, 41.
Donacha Bhan, a Highland poet, 180.
Donaldson, Alexander, bookseller, 48.
Donaldson, James, bookseller, 49.
Douglas, Archibald, 238.
Douglas, Duke of, 9, 69.
Douglas, Gavin, poet, 240.
Douglas, Jeanie, Adam Smith’s cousin, 319.
Douglas, Lady Anne, ghost of, 343.
Douglas, Lady Jane, 69, 238.
Douglas’s Tavern, 162.
_Douglas_, tragedy of, 347.
Doune, Lord, 307.
Dowie, Johnnie, 138, 166.
Dowie’s Tavern, 138, 166.
Drem, Barony of, 50.
Dresses, ladies’, of last century, 199.
Drinking customs, 138, 143.
Drumlanrig, 336, 339, 340, 343.
Drummond, Bishop Abernethy, 229.
Drummond, Pious Club poet, 150.
Drummond, Provost, 5, 6, 360.
Drummore, Lord, 9, 125.
Drumsheugh, 205.
Dryden, 327, 344.
Duff, Miss (Countess of Dumfries and Stair), 230.
Dunbar’s Close, 100.
Dunbar, Willie, 164.
Dundas, Robert, of Arniston, Lord President, 127, 132, 140.
Dundee, Lord, 30, 366.
Dundonald, Earl of, 69.
Dunglass Castle, 99.
Dunkeld, Bishop of, 223, 240.
Dun, Lady, 124.
Durie, Abbot of Dunfermline, 273.
Easter Road, 328, 360.
Edward or Udward, Nicol, Provost, 210.
Eglintoune, Countess of, 192-198.
Eglintoune, Earl of, 90, 162, 192.
Eglintoune, Miss (Lady Wallace), 276.
Elcho, Lord, 307.
Elibank, Lord, 14.
Elliot, Jeanie, of Minto, 6.
Elliot, Lady, of Minto, 266.
Elliot, Sir Gilbert, of Minto, 206.
Elphingston, Lady Betty, 124.
Elphinstone, James, 49.
Errol, Earl of (Constable), 103.
Erskine, Alexander, the Hon., 98.
Erskine, Harry, epigram by, on Hugo Arnot, 12.
Erskine, James, of Cambo, 98.
Erskine, James, of Grange, 211.
Euphame, Mrs (Effie Sinclair), 230.
Excise Office, 91, 244, 247, 248.
Executioners of Edinburgh, 51.
Faculty of Doctors’ Club, 155.
Falconer, William, author of _The Shipwreck_, 285.
Female dresses of last century, 199-203.
Ferguson, Dr, 56.
Fergusson, Governor, his house in the Luckenbooths, 10.
Fergusson, Robert, 26, 114 _n._, 148, 149, 162, 180, 233, 271, 349.
Fergusson, Robert, the Plotter, took refuge in Old Tolbooth, 88.
Fergusson, Walter, writer, digs for water in James’s Square, 335.
Fife’s Close, Bailie, 265.
Findlater, Earl of, 231.
Fishmarket Close, 140.
Fives, the game of, 344.
Flockhart’s, Lucky, Tavern in Potterrow, 168.
_Flowers of the Forest_, the author of, 58.
Foliot, John and Bartoulme, 209.
Foote, Samuel, anecdotes of, 363-365.
Forbes, Lord President, 123, 125, 235.
Forbes, Rev. Robert, Bishop of Orkney, 19 _n._
Forbes, Sir William, 115, 138, 199, 251.
Fore-stairs, 100, 271.
Forrest, David, 273.
Forrester, Sir Andrew, 293.
Forrester’s Wynd, 3.
Forster of Corsebonny, 214.
Forth and Clyde Canal, 5.
Fortune’s Tavern, 143, 161, 192, 251.
Foulis, William, of Woodhall, 124.
Fountainhall, Lord, anecdote of, 61.
Fyvie, Lord, 120.
Gabriel’s Road, 366.
Galloway, Earl of, 244.
Gallow Lee, the, 75, 185, 361.
Gallows Stone in Grassmarket, 51.
Gardenstone, Lord, 132.
Gardiner, Colonel, his oratory, 29.
Gask family, 10.
Gay, John, poet, 4, 338, 339.
Geddes, Jenny, and her stool, 105, 106.
Ged, Dougal, of Town-guard, 233.
Ged, Misses, their boarding-school, 232.
General’s Entry, the residence of Burns’s ‘Clarinda,’ 358.
George II., 279.
George III., 16, 197, 275.
George IV., 269.
George IV. Bridge, 70, 167, 244.
George Square, 5, 8, 169, 243.
George Street, 46, 53.
Gibson of Durie, 121, 124.
Gilmerton, carters of, 4.
Gilmour, Lord President, 122.
Gilmour, Mr Little, of the Inch, 76.
Gilson, Mr, singer, 253.
Giornovicki, violinist, 254.
Glencairn, 25, 352.
Glenlee, Lord, 5.
Glenorchy, Lady, 226, 205, 206.
Goldsmith, 242, 265.
Goldsmith, account of a dancing assembly in Edinburgh, 45.
Goldsmiths in Parliament Square, 111.
Golfers’ Land, 320.
Golf, the game of, 52;
Charles I. plays on Leith Links, 321.
Goolister, Henry, Captain, 260.
Gordon, Captain, 181.
Gordon, Duchess of, 145, 252, 275, 276, 313, 316, 361.
Gordon family, 18, 316.
Gordon, Mr, of Ellon, 366.
Gourlay, Robert, house of, 70, 71.
Grace, Countess, of Aboyne and Murray, 66.
Grange, Lady, story of, 211-221.
Grange, Lord, 15, 211.
Grassmarket, 18, 26, 50, 51, 171, 260.
Gray, Sir William, of Pittendrum, 64, 76.
Green Breeks, a noted fighter, 190.
Gregory, Dr John, 172.
Greping-office Tavern, 159.
Greville, Lord, 262.
Greyfriars, 93, 95, 109, 224, 288.
Guard, City or Town, 84, 148, 179, 233, 238, 348.
Guard-house, 84, 140, 180.
Guise, Mary of, 22.
Guthrie, Bishop Henry, 307.
Guthrie, Rev. James, 307.
Haddington, Earl of, 99, 244.
Hailes, Lord (Sir D. Dalrymple), 126, 131, 300.
Haining, Lord, 125.
Halkerston’s Wynd, 5, 117, 366.
Halket, Miss, of Pitferran, 252.
Halyburton, James, 222.
Hamilton, ‘Dear Sandie,’ 247.
Hamilton, Duke of, 172, 308.
Hamilton, Marie, 295.
Hamiltons of Pencaitland, 270.
Hamilton’s Tavern, Mrs, 345.
Hamiltons, the, 241.
Hamilton, Thomas (Tam o’ the Cowgate),
Lord President, first Earl of Haddington, 244.
Hammermen of Canongate, 313.
Hangman’s Craig, 52.
Hangmen of Edinburgh, 51.
Ha’s, Jenny, Ale-house, 142, 339.
Harcarse, Lord, 123.
Haunted houses, 35.
Hawley, General, 181.
Hay, advocate, Lord Newton, 139.
Hay, a young criminal, singular escape, 92.
Hay, Miss, of Hayston, 251.
Heart of Midlothian, 82.
Heckler, the, a lunatic litigant, 135.
Hell-fire Club, 153.
Henderland, Lord, 118.
Henderson, Alexander, tombstone of, 288.
Hepburn of Bearford, 366.
Herd, David, 167, 168.
Heriot, George, 50, 113-116;
stock with which he commenced business, 112 _n._;
a costly fire, 113.
Heriot’s Hospital, 93, 247, 310.
‘He that tholes overcomes,’ 47.
High Constables, 346.
High School, 76, 242, 245.
High School Wynd, 257.
High Street, 8, 11, 29.
Hilderstone, 367.
_History of Edinburgh_, by Hugo Arnot, 12.
_History of England_, by Hume, 56.
Hogg’s, Daniel, Tavern, 151, 153.
Holderness, Lord, 323.
Holstein, Duke of, entertained, 78.
Holyrood, 11, 28, 206, 209, 228, 248, 256, 260, 295, 321, 344.
Holyrood, Chapel of, 109.
Holyroodhouse, Lord, 97.
Home, Countess of, 306.
Home-Drummond of Blairdrummond, 252.
Home, Earl of, 307.
Home, Miss Betsy, 251.
Hoop, the, as worn by ladies, 200.
Hope of Rankeillor, 216, 218.
Hope’s Close, 70.
Hope, Sir Thomas, K.C., 70, 72, 73, 74.
Hope, Sir Thomas, of Kerse, 72.
Hopetoun, Earl of, 204, 342.
‘Horn Order,’ the, 157.
Horse Wynd, 59, 239, 244.
Howard, Lady Elizabeth, 316.
Hume, David, 55-59, 162.
Hume, Misses, of Linthill, 231.
Humphrey, Duke, 107.
Hunter, John, Professor, 133.
Huntly, Marquis of, 19, 175, 210.
Hyndford’s Close, 264, 275.
Inchdairnie, Aytouns of, 270.
Inch, the, 76.
Industrious Company Club, 154.
Infirmary Street, 241.
Innes, Gilbert, of Stow, 289.
Innes, Mrs Gilbert, of Stow, 61.
Inn, White Hart, 2.
Inn, White Horse, 2.
Irvine, Robert, 366.
Irving, General, 27.
Irving, Mrs, her recollections of the ’45, 27, 28.
Jack’s Land, 56.
Jacobite blackbird, a, 30.
Jail, 3, 83.
James I., 83, 307.
James II., 321, 327.
James III., 183.
James IV., 272.
James V., 229.
James VI., 38, 77, 175, 183, 210, 244, 260, 344.
James’s Court, 55-62, 172.
James’s Square, 335.
Jameson, George, painter, 288.
Jardine, Miss, 252.
Jeddart staff possessed by each citizen, 100.
Jeffrey, Francis, 265.
‘Jock o’ Sklates’ (Earl of Mar), 246.
John’s Coffee-house, 148.
Johnson, Dr Samuel, 16, 49, 60, 172, 197.
Johnston, James, of Westerhall, 37.
Johnston, Miss Lucy, 252.
Justice in bygone times, 120.
Kames, Lord, 130;
scene at the death of, 130;
his house, 300.
Kay’s portraits, 181.
Keith, Bishop, 170.
Keith, Mrs, 230.
Keith, Sir Alexander, of Ravelston, 242.
Keith, Sir Robert, ambassador, 230.
Kelly, Earl of, 255.
Kennedy, Sir Archibald, 194.
Kennedy, Susanna, 192.
Kerr & Dempster, goldsmiths, 111.
Kerr, goldsmith, Parliament Square, 3.
Ketten’s, Michael, shoe-shop, 83.
Kincaid, Mr (a great dandy), king’s printer, 277.
King’s Bridge, 18.
King’s Park, 91.
King’s Stables, 260.
Kinloch, Miss, of Gilmerton, 252.
Kinloch, Sir Francis and Mrs, 124.
Kinnaird, Miss, having second sight, 210.
Kirkcudbright, Lord, 265.
Kirk o’ Field, situation of, 256, 259.
Knockers, 207.
Knowles, Admiral, 304.
Knox, John, 25, 84, 105, 107, 109, 271, 279.
Krames, 102, 119.
Ladies and the drinking customs, 143, 147.
Ladies of Traquair, 286.
Lady’s Steps, the, payments made at, 103.
Laigh shops, 145.
Lally-Tollendal, Count, 252.
Lament, a, by Anne Bothwell, 97.
Lang Gait, or Lang Dykes, 6, 366.
Lauderdale, Duchess of, 307.
Lauderdale, Duke of, 122.
Lauder, Sir Andrew, 61.
Lauder, Sir Thomas Dick, 61.
Lauder, Thomas, Canon of Aberdeen, 240.
Lawnmarket, 11, 26, 27, 39, 70, 223.
Lawnmarket Club, 156.
Leith Links, 320.
Leith Street, 283.
Leith Walk, 281, 283, 360.
Leith Wynd, 149, 258, 281, 284.
Lennox, Earl of, 107.
Leslie, General, 39, 193, 360.
Leslie, Lady Mary, 328.
Leven, Lord, 124, 311.
Liberton’s Wynd, 166.
Lind, Mr, of the ‘Pious Club,’ 150.
Lindsay, Sir Alexander, of Evelick, 17.
Linlithgow road, 214.
List of Notables who lived in Canongate, 296.
Little, William, of Liberton, 76.
Lockhart of Carnwath, 209.
Lockhart of Covington, 129.
Lockhart, President, murder of, 75.
Lockhart’s Court, 209.
Lodge, Canongate Kilwinning, 305.
Logan, Rev. George, 27.
Long Way, the, 214.
Lord’s Day, walking on the, condemned, 11.
Lorimer, the, a deceased trade, 233.
Lorne, Lord, 308.
Lothian, Earl of, 307, 323.
Lothian Hut, 323.
Lothian, Marchioness, 323.
Loudon, Earl of, 64.
Loudoun, Chancellor, 307.
Loughborough, Chancellor, his house in the Mint Close, 263.
_Lounger_, the, 6.
Lovat, Lady, 234-239, 286.
Lovat, Lord, 205, 213, 214, 234, 235.
Luckenbooths, 10, 95-104, 272, 339.
Lucky Fykie’s Tavern, 168.
Lucky Middleman’s Tavern, 145, 146 _n._
Lyon Close, Old, 323.
Macalpine’s, Saunders, sedan-chair, 4.
M’Crie, Dr, 273.
M’Culloch, David (Wee Davie), 363.
M’Culloch of Ardwell, residence of, 362.
Macdonald, Sir Alexander, of Sleat, 216.
Macdowalls of Logan, 60.
Macduff of Ballenloan and his two law pleas, 136.
Macfarlane, John and Mrs, 291.
Macfarlane, William, judge, 60.
Macgill of Rankeillour, 244.
Macintyre, Duncan (Donacha Bhan), poet, 180.
Mackenzie, Henry, attorney, 154.
Mackenzie, Henry (_Man of Feeling_), 6, 288.
Mackenzie, Hon. Stuart, 316.
Mackenzie, Sir George, 93, 103, 223, 224, 225, 288.
_Mackoull, James, Life and Trial of_ (supposed Murderer of Begbie), 282.
Maclaurin, John, advocate, 125.
M’Lehose, Mrs, house of (Clarinda of Burns), 358.
Maclellans of Galloway, 265.
Maclennan, Rev. Roderick, St Kilda, 217.
Macleod, Alexander, of Muiravonside, 177.
Macleod, John, of Muiravonside, 214.
Macmoran, Bailie, killed, 76;
banquets held in house of, 77, 78.
Macrae, Mr, Marionville, tragical story of, 351.
Magdalen Chapel, Cowgate, 248 _n._
Mahogany Land, 47, 100.
‘Maiden,’ the, 71.
Maitland, _History of Edinburgh_, 209, 271, 272.
_Mally Lee_, a ballad, 202.
Mansfield, Earl of, 17, 265.
March, Lady, 103.
Mar, Countess of, 74, 213, 220.
Mar, Earl of, 5, 98, 119, 246.
Marionville, villa of, 323;
theatricals at, 351.
Martin’s Wynd, story of, 209.
Mary King’s Close, 36.
Mary of Guise, her house in Edinburgh, 22;
her resistance to the Reformation, 25;
erection of Free Church Hall on the site of her house, 25.
Mary, Queen, 71, 83, 109, 163, 257, 260, 271, 287.
Mary, Regent, 23.
Maugaret, Braid Ransome, 260.
Maule, William, 318.
Maxwell, Lady, of Monreith, her house, 275.
Maxwell, Sir William, 355, 356.
Meadows, the, 5.
Meldrum, George, of Dumbreck, 121.
Melrose, Abbot of, his ‘lodging’ in Edinburgh, 223.
Melville, Lord, 127 _n._, 140, 145, 305.
Merchant Street, 248.
‘Meridian,’ a, 147.
Meuse Lane, St Andrew Street, 13.
Mickle, William Julius, on Parliament Close, 116.
Miller, Sir William, of Glenlee, 251.
Milliners, a story of two, 323, 324.
Mint Close, 10, 260, 263.
Minto, Lord, 325.
Mint, the, 257-259.
Mirror, magic, story of a, 65.
_Mirror_, the, 6.
Mitchell, William, pamphleteer, 41, 42.
Mobs of Edinburgh, 183-188.
Modena, Mary of, 344.
Monastery, the Blackfriars’, 242.
Monboddo, Lord, 59, 132, 133, 303.
Monk, Peter, admiral of Denmark, 260.
Monmouth, Duchess of, 327.
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 69, 220.
Montgomery, Lady Margaret, 328.
Montrose, Marquis of, 108, 170, 175, 308.
Moray, Bonny Earl of, 312.
Moray, Countess of, 307.
Moray House, Canongate, 306.
Moray, Lord, 66 _n._
Morocco’s Land, 299.
Morton, Regent, 25, 71, 120, 260.
Motte, De la, French ambassador, 71.
Mound, the, 23, 55.
Moyses’s memoirs, 71, 210.
Murder, extraordinary, 366.
Mure, Baron, 316.
Murkle, Lord, 124.
Murray, Hon. Miss Nicky, ball directress, 265-268.
Murray, Miss, of Lintrose (‘Flower of Strathmore’), 251.
Murray, Mr, of Henderland, 16, 17.
Murray, Mrs, of Broughton, 175.
Murray, Mrs, of Henderland, 15, 239.
Murray, Regent, 38, 106.
Murray, Sir John A. (Lord), erects a statue to Allan Ramsay, 18.
Murray, Sir Peter, of Balmanno, 226.
Music Hall, 253.
Musselburgh Links, 355.
Mutrie’s Hill, 5, 7, 367.
Mylne, Robert, architect, 252.
Mylnes, family of, 204.
Mylne Square, 204.
Nairne, Katherine, her tale of guilt and escape from justice, 88.
Nairn’s Close, 22.
Neale, John (built first house in Princes Street), 7.
Negligée, the, 199.
Negro servants, 69 _n._
Netherbow Port (fortified gate), 1, 149, 257, 258, 271, 272, 281, 331, 332.
Newberry, Mr J., his books for the young, 41.
Newhall, Lord, 124.
Newhaven, fishwomen of, 4.
New Street, 8, 16, 131, 284, 300, 347.
Newton, Lord, 44, 139.
New Town, first house in, 8;
Hume’s house in, 58.
Nichol, Andrew, diarist, 106.
Nichol, Andrew (‘Muck Andrew’), claimant-at-law of a midden-stead, 136.
Nicolson Square, 358.
Niddry Street, 241.
Niddry’s Wynd, 121, 209, 212, 249.
Nimmo, Miss, in whose house Burns met Clarinda, 358.
North Back of Canongate, 170.
North Bridge, 6, 269, 283, 360.
North, Christopher, 167.
Northesk, Earl of, 204.
North Loch, 8, 23, 64, 117, 118, 366.
Norton, Baron, 316.
Odd Fellows Club, 155.
Ogilvie, Hon. Mrs, her boarding-school, 231.
Old Bank Close, 70.
Oliphant, Miss, of Gask, house of, 10.
Oliver & Boyd, publishers, 280.
Oratories, a feature in houses of a certain era, 29.
‘Order of the Horn,’ the, 156.
Ormistounes, Laird of, 257.
Oswald, Mr, of Auchincruive, 252.
Oyster cellars, 145.
Paganini, 254.
Pages, keeping of, 328, 329.
Palmerston, Lord, a pupil of Dugald Stewart in Edinburgh, 323.
Panmure, Earl of, 318.
Panmure House, 318.
Paoli, General, 172.
Parliament Close, 109-116, 142, 159, 337.
Parliament Council, 115.
Parliament House, 8, 85, 106, 110, 119.
Parliament House worthies, 134-137.
Parliament Square, 3, 115, 247.
Paterson, John, a golfing shoemaker, 320.
Paterson, Lady Jane, 212.
Paterson’s Court, 232.
Paton, George, antiquary, 167.
Patullo, William, 35.
Peat or Pate, a, 123.
Peebles, Peter, 134.
Peebles Wynd, 39.
Pettigrew, Rev. Mr, of Govan, 160.
Picardy Place, 140.
Pigs, 276.
Pinners, 201.
Pious Club, the, 149.
Pitcairn, Dr, 158, 160, 166, 287, 310, 320, 345.
Pitcairn, Miss, 345.
Pitfour, Lord, 129.
Pitilloch, Mr, advocate, 123.
Playfair, architect, 50
Pleasance, 187.
Poker Club, the, 3, 162.
Poole, Miss, singer, 253.
Population returns, the first in Scotland, 20.
Porteous, Captain (Porteous Riot), 42, 47, 51, 111, 133, 180, 184.
Portobello, origin of village of, 332 _n._
Post-office Close, 129 _n._
Post-office, old arrangement of, 129 _n._
Potatoes, earliest trace of, in Scotland, 325.
Potterrow, 59, 168, 247, 358.
Prebendaries’ Chamber, 256, 259.
Prentice, Henry, introducer of the field-culture of potatoes, 325.
Press, printing, used in the rebel army, 72.
Prestonfield, 78.
Primrose, Lady Dorothy, 237.
Primrose, Lord, 124.
Primrose, Viscount, a profligate, 64.
Princes Street, 53, 214, 366.
Princes Street Gardens, 18.
Princes Street one hundred years ago, 6.
Princes Street, the naming of, 7.
Pringle, Dr and Miss, Newhall, 124.
Pringle, Mr, of Haining, 251.
Puppo, Signor, violinist, 253.
Queen Mary, 71, 83, 109, 163, 257-259, 271, 287.
Queensberry, Catherine, Duchess of, 339.
Queensberry House, 142, 320, 336.
Queensberry, second Duke of, strange story of, 336.
Queensberry, third Duke of, and poet Gay, 338.
Queen’s garden, 257.
Queen Street, 9.
Raeburn, Sir Henry, portrait-painter, 354.
_Rambler_, the, reproduced in Edinburgh, 49.
Ramsay, Allan, the painter, 16, 17.
Ramsay, Allan, the poet, 4, 14-18, 44, 104, 161, 248, 288, 295, 339, 346.
Ramsay, Christian, 16.
Ramsay Gardens, 16.
Ramsay, General John, 16.
Ramsay, Lady, of Bamff, 353.
Ramsay, Miss, anecdote of, 323.
Ramsay’s Inn or Tavern, 152, 171, 276.
Ramsay, Sir Andrew, Provost, 32.
Ramsay, Sir George, of Bamff, killed in a duel, 353-356.
Rats, pets of Lady Eglintoune, 197, 198.
Rats, town, 179, 186.
Rattray, Clerk, Sheriff, 281.
Register House, 7, 366.
Reinagle, Joseph, ’cellist, 253.
Renton, Eleonora, of Lamerton, 304.
Restalrig, 323, 326, 351.
Riddel’s Close, Lawnmarket, 55, 76.
Risps or tirlin’-pins on doors, 207.
Rivane, Generall, 40.
Robertson, Principal, 80, 162, 243, 262, 288.
Rochester, Earl of, 122.
Rockville, Lord, 230.
Rollo, Lord, 270.
Romieu, Paul, a noted watchmaker, 46.
Rope for hanging Porteous bought, 47.
Rose Court, George Street, 7.
Rose, Dr Alexander, Bishop of Edinburgh, 170.
Rosehaugh’s Close (Strichen’s), 224.
Ross House, George Square, 209 _n._
Rosslyn, Earl of, 263.
Rothes, the Duke of, his rough remark, 51.
Roxburgh Street, 187.
Royal Bank, 7, 367.
Royal Bank Close, 154.
Ruddiman, Thomas, 27.
Rumple-knot, the, 201.
Runciman, painter, 149.
Rutherford, Dr Daniel (Professor), 264, 277, 328.
Rutherford, Miss, Sir Walter Scott’s mother, 231.
Ruthven, Mr, 300.
Rye-House Plot, 88.
St Andrews, Bishop of, 223.
St Andrew Square, 6, 8, 58.
St Cecilia’s Hall, 152, 249.
St Clair, Lord, 124.
St David Street, a joke about name of, 58.
St Giles’s, booths around, 3, 110.
St Giles’s, characteristics of the High Kirk, 114.
St Giles’s Church, endowment to chaplain of, 240.
St Giles’s Churchyard, 109.
St Giles’s Clock, 8.
St Giles’s, memoranda of Old Kirk of, 105-108.
St Giles’s, Old Kirk described, 114.
St Giles’s, position of, relative to Heart of Midlothian, 82.
St Giles’s Street, suggested name for Princes Street, 7.
St Giles, statue of, thrown into North Loch, 118.
St Giles’s, Tolbooth Church described, 114.
St James’s Square, 335.
St John’s Cross, 301.
St John’s Street, 8, 302.
St Mary-in-the-Fields (Kirk o’ Fields), situation of, 256.
St Mary’s Wynd, 171, 258, 276, 287.
Saints, Bowhead, the, 30.
Salisbury Crags, 91.
Sanctuary, 260.
‘Saving the ladies,’ 147, 251.
Schetky, J. G. H., musician, 152, 253.
Scott, Sir Walter, 6, 24, 31, 38, 87, 134, 140, 143, 147, 181,
182, 190, 231, 242, 243, 264, 277, 293, 298, 327, 328, 365.
Scott, Walter, W.S., 335.
Scott, William, Lord Stowell, 172.
Scoundrels’ Walk, the, 115.
Seafield, Earl of, 309.
Selkirk, Earl of, 156, 264.
Sellar, Mrs, milliner, anecdote of, 324.
Shakspeare Square, 151.
Sharpe, Charles Kirkpatrick, antiquary, 304.
Ship Tavern, Leith, 284.
Shows in Leith Walk, 362.
Shut-up houses in Old Town, 35.
Siddons, Mrs, 345.
Silvermills, village of, 367.
Sinclair, Effie (Mrs Euphame), her boarding-school, 230.
Sinclair, Sir Robert, of Longformacus, 230.
Sinclair, Sir William, of Mey, 77.
Singing Jamie Balfour, 141.
Sinkum the Cawdy, 130.
Skull, the, of George Buchanan, 288 _n._
Smeaton, Mr, singer, 253.
Smellie, William, printer of Burns’s Poems, 164.
Smith, Adam, 57, 318.
Smith, David, of Methven, 252.
Smith, ‘General’ Joe, leader of Edinburgh mobs, 184.
Smollett, a sister of, 303.
Smollett, Tobias, 56, 303.
Snuff-taking, prevalence of, 200.
Somerville, Braid Hugh, a street fight in 1640, 39.
Somerville family, arms of, 43.
Somerville, Lord, and his method of litigation, 120.
Somerville, Major, his combat with Captain Crawford, 39.
Somerville of Cambusnethan, 120.
Somerville, Peter and Bartholomew, 43.
_Somervilles, Memorie of the_, 37.
Sommers, Thomas, 149.
South Back of Canongate, 258.
South Bridge, 209.
Speaking House, the, 312.
Spendthrift Club, the, 150, 345.
Spottiswoode, John, of Spottiswoode, 119, 269.
Springfield, 362.
Stabilini, musician, 254.
Stair, Countess of, 63-69.
Stair, Earl of, 63, 67, 123.
Stamp-office Close, 143, 162, 192.
Star and Garter Tavern, 162.
Stays, 199.
Steell, Sir John, sculptor, 18.
Steil, John, musician, 161.
Stewart, Archibald, Provost, 48, 181.
Stewart, Dugald, Professor, 323.
Stewart, General, of Garth, 72.
Stewart, James, 25.
Stewart, Robert (Rob Uncle), 72.
Stewart, Sir William, killed in Blackfriars Wynd, 38.
Stewarts of Bonskeid, 181.
Stinking Close, 34.
Stipends of Scotch Church, 20.
Stomacher, the, 199.
Strachan, Lord, 124.
Straiton, Colonel Charles, 293.
Strichen, Lord, 224, 236.
Strichen’s Close, 222.
Sutherland, Countess of, 205.
Sutherland, Earl of, 205, 288.
Sweating Club, 154.
Swift, 314, 315.
Swine roaming in the streets, 100.
Swinton, Margaret, 293.
Syme, Mrs, 80.
Syme, Robert, W.S., 61.
Tailors’ Hall, Cowgate, 346.
Tam o’ the Cowgate (first Earl of Haddington), 244, 367.
Tappit-hen, 151.
Taverns of old times, 158-173.
Taylor, the Water-Poet, 138.
Tea-parties, fashionable hour for, 286.
Telfer, Mrs, Smollett’s sister, 303.
Templars’ Lands in Grassmarket, 50.
Tenducci, singer, 253, 304, 305.
Tennis Court, 344, 345.
Theatre in Canongate, 346.
Theatre in Carrubber’s Close, 15, 346.
Theatre Royal, 7.
Theatres, early, in Edinburgh, 344, 346, 347.
Theophilus, Nicholaus, 260.
Thomson, George, his account of music in Edinburgh in last century, 249-254.
Thomson, poet, 7.
Thomson’s, Mrs, lodgings, 171.
Thomson, William, dagger-maker, 39.
Thrale, Mrs, 60.
Threipland, Sir Stuart, of Fingask, 269.
Tinklarian Doctor (William Mitchell), a prating fanatic, 41.
Tinwald, Lord Justice-Clerk, 9.
Tirlin’-pins, 207.
Toddrick’s Wynd, 257.
Tod’s Close, 22.
Tolbooth, Canongate, 248, 319.
Tolbooth Church, 53, 105, 107, 114, 115.
Tolbooth, Old, 82-94, 179.
Tolbooth or ‘Towbuith’ Whigs, 21, 115.
Topham, Major, 49, 176, 267.
Town-guard, the, 4, 30, 84, 148, 179-182, 233.
Town Rats, the, 179, 186.
Town-wall, 258.
Tradesman, habits of an old Edinburgh, 148.
Traquair, ladies of, 286.
Tron Church, 39, 58, 143, 144, 209.
Tulzies (street fights), 37.
Tweeddale Court, 280.
Tweeddale, Marquis of, 225, 279.
Tytler, Alexander, 289.
Tytler of Woodhouselee, 152, 321.
Udward’s house in Niddry’s Wynd, 210.
Union Club, the, 155.
Union, the, legends of, 309.
University, the, 259.
Urbani, Mr, singer, 253.
Veronica, Miss, 60.
Violante, Signora, 346.
Wallace, Lady, 276, 277.
Wall, town, 258.
Ward’s Inn, 355.
Warriston, 175.
Water-gate, 150, 170, 308, 344.
Water of Leith, 367.
Waterstone, John, 39.
Watson, George, 50.
Webster, Dr Alexander, of convivial memory, 20, 115, 162.
Webster’s Close, 20.
Weigh-house, the, 27, 39.
Weir, Grizel, 32.
Weir, Major, wizard, 26, 31-37.
Wemyss, Earl of, 111, 305.
Wemyss, Laird of, 38.
West Bow, 26-54, 133.
West Port, 75, 245.
Whey Club, the, 156.
Whigs, Tolbooth, 21, 115.
Whitefield, George, in Edinburgh, 7.
Whiteford House, 10.
White Hart Inn, 2, 171.
White Horse Inn, 2, 170, 172.
White Horse Stables, 170.
Whitesmiths of the Bow, 26, 42.
Wig Club, the, 155.
Wig, the, of Lord Coalstoun, 96.
Williamson of Cardrona, 165.
Williamson, Peter, 114.
Wilson, Daniel (_Memorials of Edinburgh_), 222.
Wilson, James (Claudero), 330.
Wilson the smuggler, 52, 180.
Wodrow, historian, 15.
Wooden-fronted houses, account of, 271.
Woodhead, 61, 62.
Woodhouselee, Lord, 130.
Wood, Lang Sandy, 6.
Wood’s Farm, 6, 366.
Woods, Mr, actor, 149.
Worthies, the, of Parliament House, 134.
Writers’ Court, 162.
Young, Alexander, W.S., 59.
Young Bibles, 277.
Young, John, 7.
York, Duke of, 80, 181, 248, 344.
THE END.
Edinburgh:
Printed by W. & R. Chambers, Limited.
* * * * *
Transcriber’s note:
The following changes have been made to this text:
Footnote 167: ancedote to anecdote—‘an anecdote is told’.
Page 238: encirling to encircling—‘encircling the head’.
Page 291: where to were—‘what were called the Back Stairs’.
Page 371: Newhailes to New Hailes—‘Dalrymple, Miss, Newhailes’.
Page 372: Fyfie to Fyvie—‘Fyvie, Lord’.
Hardcarse to Harcarse—‘Harcarse, Lord’.
Page 373: Jamieson to Jameson—‘Jameson, George’.
Page 374: Moyse’s to Moyses’s.
North Esk to Northesk.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Traditions of Edinburgh" ***
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