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Title: The book of Edinburgh anecdote
Author: Watt, Francis
Language: English
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ANECDOTE ***
BOOK OF EDINBURGH ANECDOTE
[Illustration: HENRY, LORD COCKBURN, 1779-1854]
THE BOOK OF
EDINBURGH
ANECDOTE
BY FRANCIS WATT
T. N. FOULIS
LONDON & EDINBURGH
1912
_Published November 1912_
_Printed by_ MORRISON & GIBB LIMITED, _Edinburgh_
TO
CHARLES BAXTER, WRITER TO THE SIGNET
SIENNA
IN FAITHFUL MEMORY
OF THE OLD DAYS AND THE
OLD FRIENDS
THE LIST OF CHAPTERS
_page_
I. PARLIAMENT HOUSE AND LAWYERS 3
II. THE CHURCH IN EDINBURGH 31
III. TOWN’S COLLEGE AND SCHOOLS 55
IV. SURGEONS AND DOCTORS 73
V. ROYALTY 103
VI. MEN OF LETTERS, PART I. 131
VII. MEN OF LETTERS, PART II. 151
VIII. THE ARTISTS 177
IX. THE WOMEN OF EDINBURGH 195
X. THE SUPERNATURAL 219
XI. THE STREETS 241
XII. THE CITY 269
INDEX 289
THE LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
LORD COCKBURN _frontispiece_
By Sir J. WATSON GORDON
SIR THOMAS HAMILTON, FIRST EARL OF HADDINGTON 8
JOHN CLERK, LORD ELDIN 16
From a mezzotint after Sir HENRY RAEBURN,
R.A.
JOHN INGLIS, LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COURT OF 24
SESSION
From a painting in the Parliament House. By
permission of the FACULTY OF ADVOCATES.
MR. JAMES GUTHRIE 36
From an old engraving.
SIR ARCHIBALD JOHNSTON, LORD WARRISTON 40
From a painting by GEORGE JAMESONE.
REV. SIR HENRY MONCREIFF-WELLWOOD 48
From an engraving after Sir HENRY RAEBURN,
R.A.
ROBERT LEIGHTON, D.D., ARCHBISHOP OF GLASGOW 56
From an engraving by Sir ROBERT STRANGE.
PRINCIPAL WILLIAM CARSTARES 64
From the engraving by JEENS. By kind
permission of Messrs. MACMILLAN & CO.,
London.
DR. ARCHIBALD PITCAIRNE 88
From an engraving after Sir JOHN MEDINA.
DR. ALEXANDER WOOD 92
From an engraving after AILISON.
PROFESSOR JAMES SYME 96
From a drawing in the Scottish National
Portrait Gallery.
MARGARET TUDOR, QUEEN OF JAMES IV. 104
From the painting by MABUSE.
MARY OF GUISE, QUEEN OF JAMES V. 108
From an old engraving.
MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS 112
From the MORTON portrait.
WILLIAM DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN 132
From the painting by CORNELIUS JONSON VAN
CEULEN
JAMES BOSWELL 144
From an engraving after Sir JOSHUA
REYNOLDS, _P._R.A.
HENRY MACKENZIE, “THE MAN OF FEELING” 152
From an engraving after ANDREW GEDDES.
JOHN LEYDEN 160
From a pen drawing.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON AS AN EDINBURGH 172
STUDENT
ALLAN RAMSAY, PAINTER 180
From a mezzotint after Artist’s own
painting.
REV. JOHN THOMSON OF DUDDINGSTON 184
From the engraving by CROLL.
MRS. ALISON COCKBURN 200
From a photograph.
MISS JEAN ELLIOT 204
From a sepia drawing.
SUSANNA, COUNTESS OF EGLINTON 208
From the painting by GAVIN HAMILTON.
CAROLINE, BARONESS NAIRNE 212
From a lithograph.
MRS. SIDDONS AS “THE TRAGIC MUSE” 216
From an engraving after Sir JOSHUA
REYNOLDS, _P._R.A.
JAMES IV. 220
From an old engraving.
A BEDESMAN OR BLUEGOWN 240
From a sketch by MONRO S. ORR.
ALLAN RAMSAY, POET 248
From an engraving after WILLIAM AIKMAN.
ANDREW CROSBIE, “PLEYDELL” 256
From a painting in the Parliament House. By
permission of the FACULTY OF ADVOCATES.
REV. THOMAS SOMERVILLE 272
From a photograph in the Scottish National
Portrait Gallery.
WILLIAM SMELLIE 280
From an engraving after GEORGE WATSON.
BOOK OF EDINBURGH ANECDOTE
CHAPTER ONE
PARLIAMENT HOUSE & LAWYERS
The Parliament House has always had a reputation for good anecdote.
There are solid reasons for this. It is the haunt of men, clever, highly
educated, well off, and the majority of them with an all too abundant
leisure. The tyranny of custom forces them to pace day after day that
ancient hall, remarkable even in Edinburgh for august memories, as their
predecessors have done for generations. There are statues such as those
of Blair of Avontoun and Forbes of Culloden, and portraits like those of
“Bluidy Mackenzie” and Braxfield,—all men who lived and laboured in the
precincts,—to recall and revivify the past, while there is also the
Athenian desire to hear some new thing, to retail the last good story
about Lord this or Sheriff that.
So there is a great mass of material. Let me present some morsels for
amusement or edification. Most are stories of judges, though it may be
of them before they were judges. A successful counsel usually ends on
the bench, and at the Scots bar the exceptions are rare indeed. The two
most prominent that occur to one are Sir George Mackenzie and Henry
Erskine. Now, Scots law lords at one time invariably, and still
frequently, take a title from landed estate. This was natural. A judge
was a person with some landed property, which was in early times the
only property considered as such, and in Scotland, as everybody knows,
the man was called after his estate. Monkbarns of the _Antiquary_ is a
classic instance, and it was only giving legal confirmation to this, to
make the title a fixed one in the case of the judges. They never signed
their names this way, and were sometimes sneered at as paper lords.
To-day, when the relative value of things is altered, they would
probably prefer their paper title. According to tradition their wives
laid claim to a corresponding dignity, but James V., the founder of the
College of Justice, sternly repelled the presumptuous dames, with a
remark out of keeping with his traditional reputation for gallantry. “He
had made the carles lords, but wha the deil made the carlines leddies?”
Popular custom was kinder than the King, and they got to be called
ladies, till a newer fashion deprived them of the honour. It was
sometimes awkward. A judge and his wife went furth of Scotland, and the
exact relations between Lord A. and Mrs. B. gravelled the wits of many
an honest landlord. The gentleman and lady were evidently on the most
intimate terms, yet how to explain their different names? Of late the
powers that be have intervened in the lady’s favour, and she has now her
title assured her by royal mandate.
Once or twice the territorial designation bore an ugly purport. Jeffrey
kept, it is said, his own name, for Lord Craigcrook would never have
done. Craig is Scots for neck, and why should a man name himself a
hanging judge to start with? This was perhaps too great a concession to
the cheap wits of the Parliament House, and perhaps it is not true, for
in Jeffrey’s days territorial titles for paper lords were at a discount,
so that Lord Cockburn thought they would never revive, but the same
thing is said of a much earlier judge. Fountainhall’s _Decisions_ is one
of those books that every Scots advocate knows in name, and surely no
Scots practising advocate knows in fact. Its author, Sir John Lauder,
was a highly successful lawyer of the Restoration, and when his time
came to go up there was one fly in the ointment of success. His compact
little estate in East Lothian was called Woodhead. Lauder feared not
unduly the easy sarcasms of fools, or the evil tongues of an evil time.
Territorial title he must have, and he rather neatly solved the
difficulty by changing Woodhead to Fountainhall, a euphonious name,
which the place still retains.
When James VI. and I. came to his great estate in England, he was much
impressed by the splendid robes of the English judges. His mighty Lord
Chancellor would have told him that such things were but “toys,” though
even he would have admitted, they influenced the vulgar. At any rate
Solomon presently sent word to his old kingdom, that his judges and
advocates there were to attire themselves in decent fashion. If you
stroll into the Parliament House to-day and view the twin groups of the
Inner House, you will say they went one better than their English
brothers.
[Illustration: SIR THOMAS HAMILTON, FIRST EARL OF HADDINGTON,
From the Portrait at Tynninghame]
A Scots judge in those times had not seldom a plurality of offices: thus
the first Earl of Haddington was both President of the Court of Session
and Secretary of State. He played many parts in his time, and he played
them all well, for Tam o’ the Coogate was nothing if not acute. There
are various stories of this old-time statesman. This shows forth the man
and the age. A highland chief was at law, and had led his men into the
witness-box just as he would have led them to the tented field. The Lord
President had taken one of them in hand, and sternly kept him to the
point, and so wrung the facts out of him. When Donald escaped he was
asked by his fellow-clansman whose turn was to follow, how he had done?
With every mark of sincere contrition and remorse, Donald groaned out,
that he was afraid he had spoken the truth, and “Oh,” he said, “beware
of the man with the partridge eye!” How the phrase brings the old judge,
alert, keen, searching, before us! By the time of the Restoration things
were more specialised, and the lawyers of the day could give more
attention to their own subject. They were very talented, quite
unscrupulous, terribly cruel; Court of Justice and Privy Council alike
are as the house of death. We shudder rather than laugh at the
anecdotes. Warriston, Dirleton, Mackenzie, Lockhart, the great Stair
himself, were remarkable men who at once attract and repel. Nisbet of
Dirleton, like Lauder of Fountainhall, took his title from East
Lothian—in both cases so tenacious is the legal grip, the properties
are still in their families—and Dirleton’s _Doubts_ are still better
known, and are less read, if that be possible, than Fountainhall’s
_Decisions_. You can even to-day look on Dirleton’s big house on the
south side of the Canongate, and Dirleton, if not “the pleasantest
dwelling in Scotland,” is a very delightful place, and within easy reach
of the capital. But the original Nisbet was, I fear, a worse rascal than
any of his fellows, a treacherous, greedy knave. You might bribe his
predecessor to spare blood, it was said, “but Nisbet was always so sore
afraid of losing his own great estate, he could never in his own opinion
be officious enough to serve his cruel masters.” Here is _the_ Nisbet
story. In July 1668, Mitchell shot at Archbishop Sharp in the High
Street, but, missing him, wounded Honeyman, Bishop of Orkney, who sat in
the coach beside him. With an almost humorous cynicism some one
remarked, it is only a bishop, and the crowd immediately discovered a
complete lack of interest in the matter and in the track of the would-be
assassin. Not so the Privy Council, which proceeded to a searching
inquiry in the course whereof one Gray was examined, but for some time
to little purpose. Nisbet as Lord Advocate took an active part, and
bethought him of a trick worthy of a private inquiry agent. He pretended
to admire a ring on the man’s finger, and asked to look at it; the
prisoner was only too pleased. Nisbet sent it off by a messenger to
Gray’s wife with a feigned message from her husband. She stopped not to
reflect, but at once told all she knew! this led to further arrests and
further examinations during which Nisbet suggested torture as a means of
extracting information from some taciturn ladies! Even his colleagues
were abashed. “Thow rotten old devil,” said Primrose, the Lord Clerk
Register, “thow wilt get thyself stabbed some day.” Even in friendly
talk and counsel these old Scots, you will observe, were given to plain
language. Fate was kinder to Dirleton than he deserved, he died in
quiet, rich, if not honoured, for his conduct in office was scandalous
even for those times, yet his name is not remembered with the especial
detestation allotted to that of “the bluidy advocate Mackenzie,” really
a much higher type of man. Why the unsavoury epithet has stuck so
closely to him is a curious caprice of fate or history. Perhaps it is
that ponderous tomb in Old Greyfriars, insolently flaunting within a
stone-throw of the Martyrs’ Monument, perhaps it is that jingle which
(you suspect half mythical) Edinburgh callants used to occupy their
spare time in shouting in at the keyhole, that made the thing stick.
However, the dead-and-gone advocate preserves the stony silence of the
tomb, and is still the most baffling and elusive personality in Scots
history. The anecdotes of him are not of much account. One tells how the
Marquis of Tweeddale, anxious for his opinion, rode over to his country
house at Shank at an hour so unconscionably early that Sir George was
still abed. The case admitted of no delay, and the Marquis was taken to
his room. The matter was stated and the opinion given from behind the
curtains, and then a _woman’s hand_ was stretched forth to receive the
fee! The advocate was not the most careful of men, so Lady Mackenzie
deemed it advisable to take control of the financial department. Of this
dame the gossips hinted too intimate relations with Claverhouse, but
there was no open scandal. Another brings us nearer the man. Sir George,
by his famous entail act, tied up the whole land of the country in a
settlement so strict that various measures through the succeeding
centuries only gradually and partially released it. Now the Earl of Bute
was the favoured lover of his only daughter, but Mackenzie did not
approve of the proposed union. The wooer, however ardent, was prudent;
he speculated how the estate would go if they made a runaway match of
it. Who so fit to advise him as the expert on the law of entail? Having
disguised himself—in those old Edinburgh houses the light was never of
the clearest—he sought my lord’s opinion on a feigned case, which was
in truth his own. The opinion was quite plain, and fell pat with his
wishes; the marriage was duly celebrated, and Sir George needs must
submit. All his professional life Mackenzie was in the front of the
battle, he was counsel for one side or the other in every great trial,
and not seldom these were marked by most dramatic incidents. When he
defended Argyll in 1661 before the Estates, on a charge of treason, the
judges were already pondering their verdict when “one who came fast from
London knocked most rudely at the Parliament door.” He gave his name as
Campbell, and produced what he said were important papers. Mackenzie and
his fellows possibly thought his testimony might turn the wavering
balance in their favour—alas! they were letters from Argyll proving
that he had actively supported the Protectorate, and so sealed the fate
of the accused. Again, at Baillie of Jerviswood’s trial in 1684 one
intensely dramatic incident was an account given by the accused with
bitter emphasis of a private interview between him and Mackenzie some
time before. The advocate was prosecuting with all his usual bluster,
but here he was taken completely aback, and stammered out some lame
excuse. This did not affect the verdict, however, and Jerviswood went
speedily to his death. The most remarkable story about Mackenzie is that
after the Estates had declared for the revolutionary cause in April
1689, and his public life was over, ere he fled southward, he spent a
great part of his last night in Edinburgh in the Greyfriars Churchyard.
The meditations among the tombs of the ruined statesmen were, you easily
divine, of a very bitter and piercing character. Sir George Lockhart,
his great rival at the bar and late Lord President of the Court of
Session, had a few days before been buried in the very spot selected by
Mackenzie for his own resting-place, where now rises that famous
mausoleum. Sir George was shot dead on the afternoon of Sunday 31st
March in that year by Chiesly of Dalry in revenge for some judicial
decision, apparently a perfectly just one, which he had given against
him. Even in that time of excessive violence and passion Chiesly was
noted as a man of extreme and ungovernable temper. He made little secret
of his intention; he was told the very imagination of it was a sin
before God. “Let God and me alone; we have many things to reckon betwixt
us, and we will reckon this too.” He did the deed as his victim was
returning from church; he said he “existed to learn the President to do
justice,” and received with open satisfaction the news that Lockhart was
dead. “He was not used to do things by halves.” He was tortured and
executed with no delay, his friends removed the body in the darkness of
night and buried it at Dalry, so it was rumoured, and the discovery of
some remains there a century afterwards was supposed to confirm the
story. The house at Dalry was reported to be haunted by the ghost of the
murderer; it was the fashion of the time to people every remarkable spot
with gruesome phantoms.
An anecdote, complimentary to both, connects the name of Lockhart with
that of Sir James Stewart of Goodtrees (pronounced Gutters, Moredun is
the modern name), who was Lord Advocate both to William III. and Queen
Anne. An imposing figure this, and a man of most adventurous life. In
his absence he was sentenced to death by the High Court of Justiciary.
This was in 1684. The Lord Advocate (Bluidy Mackenzie to wit), after
sentence, electrified the court by shouting out, that the whole family
was sailing under false colours, “these forefault Stewarts are damned
Macgregors” (the clan name was proscribed). And yet Mackenzie ought to
have felt kindly to Stewart, as perhaps he did, and possibly gave him a
hint when to make himself scarce. One curious story tells of Mackenzie
employing him in London with great success in a debate about the
position of the Scots Episcopal Church. Both Lockhart and Mackenzie
confessed him their master in the profound intricacies of the Scots law.
A W.S. once had to lay a case before Lockhart on some very difficult
question. Stewart was in hiding, but the agent tracked him out, and got
him to prepare the memorial. Sir George pondered the paper for some
time, then he started up and looked the W.S. broad in the face, “by God,
if James Stewart is in Scotland or alive, this is his draft; and why did
you not make him solve your difficulty?” The agent muttered that he
wanted both opinions. He then showed him what Stewart had prepared; this
Lockhart emphatically accepted as the deliverance of the oracle. Stewart
had a poor opinion of contemporary lawyers. Show me the man and I’ll
show you the law, quoth he. Decisions, he said, went by favour and not
by right. Stewart made his peace with James’s government, near the end,
and though he did so without any sacrifice of principle, men nicknamed
him Jamie Wilie. It seemed a little odd that through it all he managed
to keep his head on his shoulders. A staunch Presbyterian, he was yet
for the time a liberal and enlightened jurist, and introduced many
important reforms in Scots criminal law. That it fell to him to
prosecute Thomas Aikenhead for blasphemy was one of fate’s little
ironies; Aikenhead went to his death on the 8th January 1697. The
Advocate’s Close, where Stewart lived, and which is called after him,
still reminds us of this learned citizen of old Edinburgh.
In the eighteenth century we are in a different atmosphere; those in
high place did not go in constant fear of their life, they were not so
savage, so suspicious, so revengful, they were witty and playful. On the
other hand, their ways were strangely different from the monotonous
propriety of to-day. Kames and Monboddo are prominent instances, they
were both literary lawyers and constant rivals. Once Kames asked
Monboddo if he had read his last book; the other saw his chance and took
it, “No, my lord, you write a great deal faster than I am able to read.”
Kames presently got _his_ chance. Monboddo had in some sense anticipated
the Darwinian theory, he was certain at any rate that everybody was born
with a tail. He believed that the sisterhood of midwives were pledged to
remove it, and it is said he watched many a birth as near as decency
permitted but always with disappointing results. At a party he politely
invited Kames to enter the room before him. “By no means,” said Kames,
“go first, my lord, that I may get a look at your tail.” Kames had a
grin between a sneer and a smile, probably here the sneer predominated.
But perhaps it was taken as a compliment. “Mony is as proud of his tail
as a squirrel,” said Dr. Johnson. He died when eighty-seven. He used to
ride to London every year, to the express admiration and delight of
George III. One wonders if he ever heard of the tradition that at
Strood, in Kent, all children are born with tails—a mediæval jape from
the legend of an insult to St. Thomas of Canterbury: he might have found
this some support to his theory! On the bench he was like a stuffed
monkey, but for years he sat at the clerks’ table. He had a lawsuit
about a horse, argued it in person before his colleagues and came
hopelessly to grief. You are bound to assume the decision was right,
though those old Scots worthies dearly loved a slap at one another, and
thus he would not sit with Lord President Dundas again; more likely,
being somewhat deaf, he wished to hear better. He was a great classical
scholar, and said that no man could write English who did not know
Greek, a very palpable hit at Lord Kames, who knew everything but Greek.
The suppers he gave at St. John Street, off the Canongate, are still
fragrant in the memory, “light and choice, of Attic taste,” no doubt;
but the basis you believe was Scots, solid and substantial. And they had
native dishes worth eating in quaint eighteenth-century Edinburgh! The
grotesque old man had a beautiful daughter, Elizabeth Burnet, whose
memory lives for ever in the pathetic lines of Burns. She died of
consumption in 1790, and to blunt, if possible, the father’s sorrow, his
son-in-law covered up her portrait. Monboddo’s look sought the place
when he entered the room. “Quite right, quite right,” he muttered, “and
now let us get on with our Herodotus.” For that day, perhaps, his
beloved Greek failed to charm. Kames was at least like Monboddo in one
thing—oddity. On the bench he had “the obstinacy of a mule and the
levity of a harlequin,” said a counsel; but his broad jokes with his
broad dialect found favour in an age when everything was forgiven to
pungency. He wrote much on many themes. If you want to know a subject
write a book on it, said he, a precept which may be excellent from the
author’s point of view, but what about the reader?—but who reads him
now? Yet it was his to be praised, or, at any rate, criticised. Adam
Smith said, we must all acknowledge him as our master. And Pitt and his
circle told this same Adam Smith that they were all his scholars.
Boswell once urged his merits on Johnson. “We have at least Lord Kames,”
he ruefully pleaded. The leviathan frame shook with ponderous mirth,
“Keep him, ha, ha, ha, we don’t envy you him.” In far-off Ferney,
Voltaire read the _Elements of Criticism_, and was mighty wroth over
some cutting remarks on the _Henriade_. He sneered at those rules of
taste from the far north “By Lord Mackames, a Justice of the Peace in
Scotland.” You suspect that “master of scoffing” had spelt name and
office right enough had he been so minded. Kames bid farewell to his
colleagues in December 1782 with, if the story be right, a quaintly
coarse expression. He died eight days after in a worthier frame of
mind—he wrote and studied to his last hour. “What,” he said, “am I to
sit idle with my tongue in my cheek till death comes for me?” He
expressed a stern satisfaction that he was not to survive his mental
powers, and he wished to be away. He was curious as to the next world,
and the tasks that he would have yet to do. There is something heroic
about this strange old man.
We come a little later down, and in Braxfield we are in a narrower
field, more local, more restricted, purely legal. Such as survive of the
Braxfield stories are excellent. The _locus classicus_ for the men of
that time is Lord Cockburn’s _Memorials_. Cockburn, as we have yet to
see, was himself a wit of the first water, and the anecdotes lost
nothing by the telling. Braxfield was brutal and vernacular. One of “The
Fifteen” had rambled on to little purpose, concluding,” Such is my
opinion.” “_Your_ opeenion” was Braxfield’s _sotto voce_ bitter comment,
better and briefer even than the hit of the English judge at his
brother, “what he calls his mind.” Two noted advocates (Charles Hay,
afterwards Lord Newton, was one of them) were pleading before him—they
had tarried at the wine cup the previous night, and they showed it.
Braxfield gave them but little rope. “Ye may just pack up your papers
and gang hame; the tane o’ ye’s riftin’ punch and the ither belchin’
claret” (a quaint and subtle distinction!) “and there’ll be nae guid got
out o’ ye the day.” As Lord Justice-Clerk, Braxfield was supreme
criminal judge; his maxims were thoroughgoing. “Hang a thief when he is
young, and he’ll no’ steal when he is auld.” He said of the political
reformers: “They would a’ be muckle the better o’ being hangit,” which
is probably the truer form of his alleged address to a prisoner: “Ye’re
a vera clever chiel, man, but ye wad be nane the waur o’ a hanging.”
“The mob would be the better for losing a little blood.” But his most
famous remark, or rather aside, was at the trial of the reformer
Gerrald. The prisoner had urged that the Author of Christianity himself
was a reformer. “Muckle He made o’ that,” growled Braxfield, “He was
hangit.” I suspect this was an after-dinner story, at any rate it is not
in the report; but how could it be? It is really a philosophic argument
in the form of a blasphemous jest. He had not always his own way with
the reformers. He asked Margarot if he wished a counsel to defend him.
“No, I only wish an interpreter to make me understand what your Lordship
says.” The prisoner was convicted and, as Braxfield sentenced him to
fourteen years’ transportation, he may have reflected, that he had
secured the last and most emphatic word. Margarot had defended himself
very badly, but as conviction was a practical certainty it made no
difference. Of Braxfield’s private life there are various stories, which
you can accept or not as you please, for such things you cannot prove or
disprove. His butler gave him notice, he could not stand Mrs. Macqueen’s
temper; it was almost playing up to his master. “Man, ye’ve little to
complain o’; ye may be thankfu’ ye’re no married upon her.” As we all
know, R. L. Stevenson professedly drew his Weir of Hermiston from this
original. One of the stories he tells is how Mrs. Weir praised an
incompetent cook for her Christian character, when her husband burst
out, “I want Christian broth! Get me a lass that can plain-boil a
potato, if she was a whüre off the streets.” That story is more in the
true Braxfield manner than any of the authentic utterances recorded of
the judge himself, but now we look at Braxfield through Stevenson’s
spectacles. To this strong judge succeeded Sir David Rae, Lord Eskgrove.
The anecdotes about him are really farcical. He was grotesque, and
though alleged very learned was certainly very silly, but there was
something irresistibly comical about his silliness. Bell initiated a
careful series of law reports in his time. “He taks doun ma very words,”
said the judge in well-founded alarm. Here is his exhortation to a
female witness: “Lift up your veil, throw off all modesty and look me in
the face”; and here his formula in sentencing a prisoner to death:
“Whatever your religi-ous persua-sion may be, or even if, as I suppose,
you be of no persuasion at all, there are plenty of rever-end gentlemen
who will be most happy for to show you the way to yeternal life.” Or
best of all, in sentencing certain rascals who had broken into Sir James
Colquhoun’s house at Luss, he elaborately explained their crimes;
assault, robbery and hamesucken, of which last he gave them the
etymology; and then came this climax—“All this you did; and God
preserve us! joost when they were sitten doon to their denner.”
[Illustration: JOHN CLERK, LORD ELDIN]
The two most remarkable figures at the Scots bar in their own or any
time were the Hon. Henry Erskine and John Clerk, afterwards Lord Eldin.
Erskine was a consistent whig, and, though twice Lord Advocate, was
never raised to the bench; yet he was the leading practising lawyer of
his time, and the records of him that remain show him worthy of his
reputation. He was Dean of the Faculty of Advocates, but he presided at
a public meeting to protest against the war, and on the 12th January
1796 was turned out of office by a considerable majority. A personal
friend of Erskine, and supposed to be of his party, yielded to the storm
and voted against him. The clock just then struck three. “Ah,” murmured
John Clerk, in an intense whisper which echoed through the quiet room,
“when the cock crew thrice Peter denied his Master.” But most Erskine
stories are of a lighter touch. When Boswell trotted with Johnson round
Edinburgh, they met Erskine. He was too independent to adulate the sage
but before he passed on with a bow, he shoved a shilling into the
astonished Boswell’s hand, “for a sight of your bear,” he whispered.
George III. at Windsor once bluntly told him, that his income was small
compared with that of his brother, the Lord Chancellor. “Ah, your
Majesty,” said the wit, “he plays at the guinea table, and I only at the
shilling one.” In a brief interval of office he succeeded Henry Dundas,
afterwards Lord Melville. He told Dundas he was about to order the silk
gown. “For all the time you may want it,” said the other, “you had
better borrow mine.” “No doubt,” said Harry, “your gown is made to fit
any party, but it will never be said of Henry Erskine that he put on the
abandoned habits of his predecessor.” But he had soon to go, and this
time Ilay Campbell, afterwards Lord President, had the post, and again
the gown was tossed about in verbal pleasantries. “You must take nothing
off it, for I will soon need it again,” said the outgoer. “It will be
bare enough, Henry, before you get it,” was the neat reply. Rather tall,
a handsome man, a powerful voice, a graceful manner, and more than all,
a kindly, courteous gentleman, what figure so well known on that ancient
Edinburgh street, walking or driving his conspicuous yellow chariot with
its black horses? Everybody loved and praised Harry Erskine, friends and
foes, rich and poor alike. You remember Burns’s tribute: “Collected,
Harry stood awee.” Even the bench listened with delight. “I shall be
brief, my Lords,” he once began. “Hoots, man, Harry, dinna be
brief—dinna be brief,” said an all too complacent senator—a compliment
surely unique in the annals of legal oratory. And if this be unique,
almost as rare was the tribute of a humble nobody to his generous
courage. “There’s no a puir man in a’ Scotland need to want a friend or
fear an enemy, sae long as Harry Erskine’s to the fore.” Not every judge
was well disposed to the genial advocate. Commissary Balfour was a
pompous official who spoke always _ore rotundo_: he had occasion to
examine Erskine one day in his court, he did so with more than his usual
verbosity. Erskine in his answers parodied the style of the questions to
the great amusement of the audience; the commissary was beside himself
with anger. “The intimacy of the friend,” he thundered, “must yield to
the severity of the judge. Macer, forthwith conduct Mr. Erskine to the
Tolbooth.” “Hoots! Mr. Balfour,” was the crushing retort of the macer.
On another occasion the same judge said with great pomposity that he had
tripped over a stile on his brother’s property and hurt himself. “Had it
been your own style,” said Erskine, “you certainly would have broken
your neck.”
Alas! Harry was an incorrigible punster. When urged that it was the
lowest form of wit, he had the ready retort that therefore it must be
the foundation of all other kinds. Yet, frankly, some of those puns are
atrocious, and even a century’s keeping in Kay and other records has not
made them passable. Gross and palpable, they were yet too subtle for one
senator. Lord Balmuto, or tradition does him wrong, received them with
perplexed air and forthwith took them to _Avizandum_. Hours, or as some
aver, days after, a broad smile relieved those heavy features. “I hae ye
noo, Harry, I hae ye noo,” he gleefully shouted; he had seen the joke!
All were not so dull. A friend pretended to be in fits of laughter.
“Only one of your jokes, Harry,” he said. “Where did you get it?” said
the wit. “Oh, I have just bought ‘The New Complete Jester, or every man
his own Harry Erskine.’” The other looked grave. He felt that
pleasantries of the place or the moment might not wear well in print.
They don’t, and I refrain for the present from further record. When Lord
President Blair died suddenly on 27th November 1811, a meeting of the
Faculty of Advocates was hastily called. Blair was an ideal judge,
learned, patient, dignified, courteous. He is the subject of one of
those wonderful Raeburn portraits (it hangs in the library of the
Writers to the Signet), and as you gaze you understand how those who
knew him felt when they heard that he was gone forever. Erskine, as
Dean, rose to propose a resolution, but for once the eloquent tongue was
mute: after some broken sentences he sat down, but his hearers
understood and judged it “as good a speech as he ever made.” It was his
last. He was neither made Lord President nor Lord Justice-Clerk, though
both offices were open. He did not murmur or show ill-feeling, but
withdrew to the little estate of Almondell, where he spent six happy and
contented years ere the end.
Clerk was another type of man. In his last years Carlyle, then in his
early career, noted that “grim strong countenance, with its black, far
projecting brows.” He fought his way slowly into fame. His father had
half humorously complained, “I remember the time when people seeing John
limping on the street were told, that’s the son of Clerk of Eldin; but
now I hear them saying, ‘What auld grey-headed man is that?’ and the
answer is, ‘That is the father of John Clerk.’” He was a plain man,
badly dressed, with a lame leg. “There goes Johnny Clerk, the lame
lawyer.” “No, madam,” said Clerk, “the lame _man_, not the lame
_lawyer_.” Cockburn says that he gave his client his temper, his
perspiration, his nights, his reason, his whole body and soul, and very
often the whole fee to boot. He was known for his incessant quarrels
with the bench, and yet his practice was enormous. He lavished his fees
on anything from bric-à-brac to charity, and died almost a poor man. In
consultation at Picardy Place he sat in a room crowded with curiosities,
himself the oddest figure of all, his lame foot resting on a stool, a
huge cat perched at ease on his shoulder. When the oracle spoke, it was
in a few weighty Scots words, that went right to the root of the matter,
and admitted neither continuation nor reply. His Scots was the powerful
direct Scots of the able, highly-educated man, a speech faded now from
human memory. Perhaps Clerk was _princeps_ but not _facile_, for there
was Braxfield to reckon with. On one famous occasion, to wit, the trial
of Deacon Brodie, they went at it, hammer and tongs, and Clerk more than
held his own, though Braxfield as usual got the verdict. They took Clerk
to the bench as Lord Eldin, when he was sixty-five, which is not very
old for a judge. But perhaps he was worn out by his life of incessant
strife, or perhaps he had not the judicial temperament. At any rate his
record is as an advocate, and not as a senator. He had also some renown
as a toper. There is a ridiculous story of his inquiring early one
morning, as he staggered along the street, “Where is John Clerk’s
house?” of a servant girl, a-“cawming” her doorstep betimes. “Why,
_you_’re John Clerk,” said the astonished lass. “Yes, yes, but it’s his
house I want,” was the strange answer. I have neither space nor
inclination to repeat well-known stories of judicial topers. How this
one was seen by his friend coming from his house at what seemed an early
hour. “Done with dinner already?” queried the one. “Ay, but we sat down
yesterday,” retorted the other. How this luminary awakened in a cellar
among bags of soot, and that other in the guard-house; how this set
drank the whole night, claret, it is true, and sat bravely on the bench
the whole of next day; how most could not leave the bottle alone even
there; and biscuits and wine as regularly attended the judges on the
bench as did their clerks and macers. The pick of this form is Lord
Hermand’s reply to the exculpatory plea of intoxication: “Good Gad, my
Laards, if he did this when he was drunk, what would he not do when he’s
sober?” but imagination boggles at it all, and I pass to a more decorous
generation.
The names of two distinguished men serve to bridge the two periods. The
early days of Jeffrey and Cockburn have a delightful flavour of old
Edinburgh. The last years are within living memory. Jeffrey’s accent was
peculiar. It was rather the mode in old Edinburgh to despise the south,
the last kick, as it were, at the “auld enemy”; Jeffrey declared, “The
only part of a Scotsman I mean to abandon is the language, and language
is all I expect to learn in England.” The authorities affirm his
linguistic experience unfortunate. Lord Holland said that “though he had
lost the broad Scots at Oxford, he had only gained the narrow English.”
Braxfield put it briefer and stronger. “He had clean tint his Scots, and
found nae English.” Thus his accent was emphatically his own; he spoke
with great rapidity, with great distinctness. In an action for libel,
the object of his rhetoric was in perplexed astonishment at the endless
flow of vituperation. “He has spoken the whole English language thrice
over in two hours.” This eloquence was inconvenient in a judge. He
forgot Bacon’s rule against anticipating counsel. Lord Moncreiff wittily
said of him, that the usual introductory phrase “the Lord Ordinary
having heard parties’ procurators” ought to be, in his judgment,
“parties’ procurators having heard the Lord Ordinary.” Jeffrey, on the
other hand, called Moncreiff “the whole duty of man,” from his
conscientious zeal. All the same, Jeffrey was an able and useful judge,
though his renown is greater as advocate and editor. Even he, though
justly considerate, did not quite free himself from the traditions of
his youth. He “kept a prisoner waiting twenty minutes after the jury
returned from the consideration of their verdict, whilst he and a lady
who had been accommodated with a seat on the bench discussed together a
glass of sherry.” Cockburn, his friend and biographer, the keenest of
wits, and a patron of progress, stuck to the accent. “When I was a boy
no Englishman could have addressed the Edinburgh populace without making
them stare and probably laugh; we looked upon an English boy at the High
School as a ludicrous and incomprehensible monster:” and then he goes on
to say that Burns is already a sealed book, and he would have it taught
in the school as a classic. “In losing it we lose ourselves,” says the
old judge emphatically. He writes this in 1844, nearly seventy years
ago. We do not teach the only Robin in the school. Looked at from the
dead-level of to-day his time seems picturesque and romantic: were he to
come here again he would have some very pointed utterances for us and
our ways, for he was given to pointed sayings. For instance, “Edinburgh
is as quiet as the grave, or even Peebles.” A tedious counsel had bored
him out of all reason. “He has taken up far too much of your Lordship’s
time,” sympathised a friend. “Time,” said Cockburn with bitter emphasis,
“Time! long ago he has exhaustit _Time_, and has encrotch’d
upon—Eternity.” A touch of Scots adds force to such remarks. This is a
good example.
[Illustration: JOHN INGLIS, LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COURT OF SESSION,
From a Painting in the Parliament House,
by permission of the Faculty of Advocates]
One day the judge, whilst rummaging in an old book shop, discovered some
penny treasure, but he found himself without the penny! He looked up and
there was the clerk of court staring at him through the window. “Lend me
a bawbee,” he screamed eagerly. He got the loan, and in the midst of a
judgment of the full court he recollected his debt; he scrambled across
the intervening senators, and pushed the coin over: “There’s your
bawbee, Maister M., with many thanks.”
At one time the possession of the correct “burr” was a positive hold on
the nation. Lord Melville, the friend and colleague of Pitt, ruled
Scotland under what was called the Dundas despotism for thirty years. He
filled all the places from his own side, for such is the method of party
government, and he can scarce be blamed, yet his rule was protracted and
endured, because he had something more than brute force behind him. For
one thing, he spoke a broad dialect, and so came home to the very hearts
of his countrymen. When he visited Scotland he went climbing the
interminable High Street stairs, visiting poor old ladies that he had
known in the days of his youth. Those returns of famous Scotsmen have
furnished a host of anecdotes. I will only give one for its dramatic
contrasts. Wedderburn was not thought a tender-hearted or
high-principled man, yet when he returned old, ill and famous he was
carried in a sedan chair to a dingy nook in old Edinburgh, the haunt of
early years, and there he picked out some holes in the paved court that
he had used in his childish sports, and was moved well-nigh to tears. He
first left Edinburgh in quite a different mood. He began as a Scots
advocate, and one day was reproved by Lockhart (afterwards Lord
Covington), the leader of the bar, for some pert remark. A terrible row
ensued, at which the President confessed “he felt his flesh creep on his
bones.” It was Wedderburn’s _Sturm und Drang_ period. He had all the
presumption of eager and gifted youth, he tore the gown from his back
declaring he would never wear it again in that court. We know that he
was presently off by the mail coach for London, where he began to climb,
climb, climb, till he became the first Scots Lord High Chancellor of
Great Britain.
And now a word as to modern times. One or two names call for notice. A.
S. Logan, Sheriff Logan, as he was popularly called, died early in 1862,
and with him, it was said, disappeared the only man able in wit and
laughter to rival the giants of an earlier epoch. He still remains the
centre of a mass of anecdote, much of it apocryphal. His enemies sneered
at him as a laboured wit, and averred a single joke cost him a solitary
walk round the Queen’s Drive. Once when pleading for a widow he spoke
eloquently of the cruelty of the relative whom she was suing. The judge
suggested a compromise. “Feel the pulse of the other side, Mr. Logan,”
said he, humorously. “Oh, my Lord,” was the answer, “there can be no
pulse where there is no heart.” This seems to me an example of the best
form of legal witticism, it is an argument conveyed as a jest. Of his
contemporary Robert Thomson (1790-1857), Sheriff of Caithness, there are
some droll memories. Here is one. He was a constant though a bad rider,
and as a bad rider will, he fell from his horse. Even in falling
practice makes perfect. The worthy sheriff did not fall on his
head—very much the opposite, in fact. As he remained sitting on the
ground, a witness of the scene asked if he had sustained any injury.
“Injury!” was the answer; “no injury at all I assure you! Indeed, sir,
quite the reverse, quite the reverse.” Inglis, like Blair, impressed his
contemporaries as a great judge; how far the reputation will subsist one
need not discuss, nor need we complain that the stories about him are
rather tame. This may be given. Once he ridiculed with evident sincerity
the argument of an opposite counsel, when that one retorted by producing
an opinion which Inglis had written in that very case, and which the
other had in fact paraphrased. Inglis looked at it. “I see, my lord,
that this opinion is dated from Blair Athol, and anybody that chooses to
follow me to Blair Athol for an opinion deserves what he gets.” The
moral apparently is, don’t disturb a lawyer in his vacation, when he is
away from his books and is “off the fang,” as the Scots phrase has it.
But this is a confession of weakness, and is only passable as a way of
escaping from a rather awkward position. In the same case counsel
proceeded to read a letter, and probably had not the presence of mind to
stop where he ought. It was from the country to the town agent, and
discussed the merits of various pleaders with the utmost frankness, and
then, “You may get old —— for half the money, but for God’s sake don’t
take him at any price.” In a limited society like the Parliament House,
such a letter has an effect like the bursting of a bombshell, and I note
the incident, though the humour be accidental. This other has a truer
tang of the place. No prisoner goes undefended at the High Court; young
counsel perform the duty without fee or reward. The system has called
forth the admiration of the greedier Southern, though an English judge
has declared that the worst service you can do your criminal is to
assign him an inexperienced counsel. One Scots convict, at least,
agreed. He had been accused and thus defended and convicted. As he was
being removed, he shook his fist in the face of his advocate: “Its a’
through you, you d—d ass.” The epithet was never forgotten. The
unfortunate orator was known ever afterwards as the “d—d ass.” Sir
George Deas was the last judge who talked anything like broad Scots on
the bench. Once he and Inglis took different sides on a point of law
which was being argued before them. Counsel urged that Inglis’s opinion
was contrary to a previous decision of his own. “I did not mean,” said
the President, “that the words should be taken in the sense in which you
are now taking them.” “Ah,” said Lord Deas, “your lordship sails vera
near the wind there.” This is quite in the early manner; Kames might
have said it to Monboddo.
CHAPTER TWO
THE CHURCH
There are many picturesque incidents in the history of the old Scots
Church in Edinburgh; chief of them are the legends that cling round the
memory of St. Margaret. Her husband, Malcolm Canmore, could not himself
read, but he took up the pious missals in which his wife delighted and
kissed them in a passion of homage and devotion. There is the dramatic
account of her last days, when the news was brought her of the defeat
and death of her husband and son at Alnwick, and she expired holding the
black rood of Scotland in her hand, whilst the wild yells of Donald
Bane’s kerns rent the air, as they pressed round the castle to destroy
her and hers. Then follows the story of the removal of her body to
Dunfermline in that miraculous mist in which modern criticism has seen
nothing but an easterly haar. Then we have her son King David’s hunting
in wild Drumsheugh forest on Holy-rood day, and the beast that nearly
killed him, his miraculous preservation, and the legend of the
foundation of Holyrood. In the dim centuries that slipped away there was
much else of quaint and homely and amusing and interesting in mediæval
church life in Edinburgh, but the monkish chroniclers never thought it
worth the telling, and it has long vanished beyond recall. This one
story is a gem of its kind. Scott, who never allowed such fruit to go
ungathered, has made it well known. It is one of the incidents in the
fight between the Douglases and the Hamiltons at Edinburgh on 30th April
1520, known to all time as _Cleanse the Causeway_, because the Hamiltons
were swept from the streets. Beaton, Archbishop of Glasgow, was a
supporter of Arran and the Hamiltons, who proposed to attack the
Douglases and seize Angus, their leader. Angus sent his uncle, Gawin
Douglas, Bishop of Dunkeld, whose “meek and thoughtful eye” Scott has
commemorated in one of his best known lines, to remonstrate with his
fellow-prelate. He found him sitting in episcopal state, and who was to
tell that this was but the husk of a coat of mail? His words were
honied, but Gawin let it be seen that he was far from convinced; whereat
the other in a fit of righteous indignation protested on his conscience
that he was innocent of evil intent, and for emphasis he lustily smote
his reverend breast, too lustily, alas! for the armour rang under the
blow. “I perceive, my lord, your conscience clatters,” was Gawin’s quick
comment, to appreciate which you must remember that “clatter” signifies
in Scots to tell tales as well as to rattle. Old Scotland was chary of
its speech, being given rather to deeds than words, but it had a few
like gems. Was it not another Douglas who said that he loved better to
hear the lark sing than the mouse cheep? Or one might quote that
delightful “I’ll mak’ siccar” of Kirkpatrick in the matter of the
slaughter of the Red Comyn at Dumfries in 1306; but this is a little
away from our subject.
At the Reformation, for good or for ill, the womb of time brought forth
a form of faith distinctively Scots. Here, at any rate, we have Knox’s
_History of the Reformation of Religion within the Realme of Scotland_
to borrow from. It is usually the writer, not the reader, who consults
such books, yet Knox was a master of the picturesque and the graphic. He
was great in scornful humour; now and again he has almost a Rabelaisian
touch. Take, for instance, his account of the riot on St. Giles’ Day,
the 1st September 1558. For centuries an image of St. Giles was carried
through the streets of Edinburgh and adored by succeeding generations of
the faithful, but when the fierce Edinburgh mob had the vigour of the
new faith to direct and stimulate their old-time recklessness, trouble
speedily ensued. The huge idol was raped from the hands of its keepers
and ducked in the Nor’ Loch. This was a punishment peculiarly reserved
for evil livers, and the crowd found a bitter pleasure in the insult.
Then there was a bonfire in the High Street in which the great image
vanished for ever amid a general saturnalia of good and evil passions.
The old church fell swiftly and surely, but some stubborn Scots were
also on that side, and Mary of Guise, widow of James V. and Queen
Regent, was a foe to be reckoned with. She had the preachers up before
her (Knox reproduces her broken Scots with quite comic effect), but
nothing came of the matter. The procession did not cease at once with
the destruction of the image. In 1558 a “marmouset idole was borrowed
fra the Greyfreires,” so Knox tells us, and he adds with a genuine
satirical touch, “A silver peise of James Carmichaell was laid in
pledge”—evidently the priests could not trust one another, so he
suggests. The image was nailed down upon a litter and the procession
began. “Thare assembled Preastis, Frearis, Channonis and rottin Papistes
with tabornes and trumpettis, banneris, and bage-pypes, and who was
thare to led the ring but the Queen Regent hir self with all hir
schavelings for honor of that feast.” The thing went orderly enough as
long as Mary was present, but she had an appointment to dinner, in a
burgher’s house betwixt “the Bowes,” and when she left the fun began.
Shouts of “Down with the idol! Down with it!” rent the air, and down it
went. “Some brag maid the Preastis patrons at the first, but when thei
saw the febilness of thare god (for one took him by the heillis, and
dadding his head to the calsey, left Dagon without head or hands, and
said: ‘Fie upon thee, thow young Sanct Geile, thy father wold haif
taryad four such’) this considered (we say) the Preastis and Freiris
fled faster than thei did at Pynckey Clewcht. Thare might have bein sein
so suddane a fray as seildome has been sein amonges that sorte of men
within this realme, for down goes the croses, of goes the surpleise,
round cappes cornar with the crounes. The Gray Freiris gapped, the Black
Freiris blew, the Preastis panted and fled, and happy was he that first
gate the house, for such ane suddan fray came never amonges the
generation of Antichrist within this realme befoir. By chance thare lay
upoun a stare a meary Englissman, and seeing the discomfiture to be
without blood, thought he wold add some mearynes to the mater, and so
cryed he ower a stayr and said: ‘Fy upoun you, hoorsones, why have ye
brokin ordour? Down the street ye passed in array and with great myrthe,
why flie ye, vilanes, now without ordour? Turne and stryk everie one a
strok for the honour of his God. Fy, cowardis, fy, ye shall never be
judged worthy of your wages agane!’ But exhortations war then
unprofitable, for after that Bell had brokin his neck thare was no
comfort to his confused army.” I pass over Knox’s interviews with Mary,
well known and for ever memorable, for they express the collision of the
deepest passions of human nature set in romantic and exciting
surroundings; but one little incident is here within my scope. It was
the fourth interview, when Mary fairly broke down. She wept so that
Knox, with what seems to us at any rate ungenerous and cruel glee,
notes, “skarslie could Marnock, hir secreat chalmerboy gett neapkynes to
hold hys eyes dry for the tearis: and the owling besydes womanlie
weaping, stayed hir speiche.” Then he is bidden to withdraw to the outer
chamber and wait her Majesty’s pleasure. No one will speak to him,
except the Lord Ochiltree, and he is there an hour. The Queen’s Maries
and the other court ladies are sitting in all their gorgeous apparel
talking, laughing, singing, flirting, what not? and all at once a
strange stern figure, the representative of everything that was new and
hostile, addresses them, nay, unbends as he does so, for he merrily
said: “O fayre Ladyes, how pleasing war this lyeff of youris yf it
should ever abyd, and then in the end that we myght passe to heavin with
all this gay gear. But fye upoun that knave Death, that will come
whither we will or not! And when he hes laid on his ariest, the foull
worms wil be busye with this flesche, be it never so fayr and so tender;
and the seally soull, I fear, shal be so feable that it can neather cary
with it gold, garnassing, targatting, pearle, nor pretious stanes.”
Were they awed, frightened, angry, scornful, contemptuous? Who can tell?
Knox takes care that nobody has the say but himself. You may believe him
honest—but impartial! We have no account on the other side. Mary did
not write memoirs; if she had, it is just possible that Knox had therein
occupied the smallest possible place, and the beautiful Queen’s Maries
vanished even as smoke. There _were_ writers on the other side, but they
mostly invented or retailed stupid vulgar calumnies. We have one picture
by Nicol Burne—not without point—of Knox and his second wife, Margaret
Stuart, the daughter of Lord Ochiltree and of the royal blood, whom he
married when he was sixty and she was sixteen. It tells how he went
a-wooing “with ane great court on ane trim gelding nocht lyke ane
prophet or ane auld decrepit priest as he was, bot lyke as he had bene
ane of the blud royal with his bendis of taffetie feschnit with golden
ringis and precious stanes.”
All that Knox did was characteristic. This, however, is amusing. On
Sunday 19th August 1565, a month after his marriage to Mary, Darnley
attended church at St. Giles’. Knox was, as usual, the preacher. He made
pointed references to Ahab and Jezebel, and indulged in a piquant
commentary upon passing events. The situation must have had in it, for
him, something fascinating. There was the unwilling and enraged Darnley,
and the excited and gratified congregation. Knox improved the occasion
to the very utmost. He preached an hour beyond the ordinary time.
Perhaps that additional hour was his chief offence in Darnley’s eyes. He
“was so moved at this sermon and being troubled with great fury he
passed in the afternoon to the Hawking.” You excuse the poor foolish
boy!
[Illustration: REV. JAMES GUTHRIE, From an old Engraving]
I hurry over the other picturesque incidents of the man and the time;
the last sermon with a voice that once shook the mighty church, now
scarce heard in the immediate circle; the moving account of his last
days; the elegy of Morton, or the brief epitaph that Morton set over his
grave. He was scarce in accord even with his own age; his best schemes
were sneered at as devout imagination. Secretary Maitland’s was the one
tongue whose pungent speech he could never tolerate or forgive, and he
had voiced with bitter irony the reply of the nobles to Knox’s demand
for material help for the church. “We mon now forget our selfis and beir
the barrow to buyld the housses of God.” And yet he never lost heart. In
1559, when the affairs of the congregation were at a low ebb, he spoke
words of courage and conviction. “Yea, whatsoever shall become of us and
of our mortall carcasses, I dowt not but that this caus (in dyspyte of
Sathan) shall prevail in the realme of Scotland. For as it is the
eternall trewth of the eternall God, so shall it ones prevaill howsoever
for a time it be impugned.” And so the strong, resolute man vanishes
from the stage of time, a figure as important, interesting, and fateful
as that of Mary herself.
I pass to the annals of the Covenant. It was signed on 1st March 1638,
in the Greyfriars Church. It is said, though this has been questioned,
that when the building could not hold the multitude, copies were laid on
two flat gravestones which are shown you to-day, and all ranks and ages
pressed round in the fervour of excitement; many added “till death”
after their names, others drew blood from their bodies wherewith to fill
their pens. The place was assuredly not chosen with a view to effect,
yet the theatre had a fitness which often marks the sacred spots of
Scots history. The graveyard was the resting-place of the most famous of
their ancestors; the Castle, the great centrepiece of the national
annals, rose in their view. The aged Earl of Sutherland signed first,
Henderson prayed, the Earl of Loudoun spoke to his fellow-countrymen,
and Johnston of Warriston read the scroll, which he had done so much to
frame. Endless sufferings were in store for those who adhered to the
national cause. After Bothwell Brig in 1679 a number were confined in
the south-west corner of the churchyard in the open air in the rigour of
the Scots climate, and just below in the Grassmarket a long succession
of sufferers glorified God in the mocking words of their oppressors.
Strange, gloomy figures those Covenanters appear to us, with their
narrow views and narrow creeds, lives lived under the shadow of the
gibbet and the scaffold: yet who would deny them the virtues of perfect
courage and unalterable determination? Let me gather one or two
anecdotes that still, as a garland, encircle “famous Guthrie’s head,” as
it is phrased on the Martyrs’ Monument. He journeyed to Edinburgh to
subscribe the Covenant, encountering the hangman as he was entering in
at the West Port; he accepted the omen as a clear intimation of his fate
if he signed. And then he went and signed! He was tried before the Scots
Parliament for treason. By an odd accident he had “Bluidy Mackenzie” as
one of his defending counsel. These admired his skill and law, and at
the end seemed more disturbed at the inevitable result than did the
condemned man himself. He suffered on the 1st June 1661 at the Cross.
One lighter touch strikes a strange gleam of humour. His physicians had
forbidden him to eat cheese, but at his last meal he freely partook of
it. “The Doctors may allow me a little cheese this night, for I think
there is no fear of the gravel now,” he said with grim cynicism. He
spoke for an hour to a surely attentive audience. These were the early
days of the persecution; a few years later and the drums had drowned his
voice. At the last moment he caused the face cloth to be lifted that he
might with his very last breath declare his adherence to the Covenants:
the loving nickname of Siccarfoot given him by his own party was well
deserved! His head was stuck on the Netherbow, his body was carried into
St. Giles’, where it was dressed for the grave by some Presbyterian
ladies who dipped their handkerchiefs in his blood. One of the other
side condemned this as a piece of superstition and idolatry of the
Romish church. “No,” said one of them, “but to hold up the bloody napkin
to heaven in their addresses that the Lord might remember the innocent
blood that was spilt.” So Wodrow tells the story, and he goes on: “In
the time that the body was a-dressing there came in a pleasant young
gentleman and poured out a bottle of rich oyntment on the body, which
filled the whole church with a noble perfume. One of the ladys says,
‘God bless you, sir, for this labour of love which you have shown to the
slain body of a servant of Jesus Christ.’ He, without speaking to any,
giving them a bow, removed, not loving to be discovered.” A strange
legend presently went the round of Edinburgh and was accepted as certain
fact by the true-blue party. Commissioner the Earl of Middleton, an old
enemy of Guthrie’s, presided at his trial. Afterwards, as his coach was
passing under the Netherbow arch some drops of blood from the severed
head fell on the vehicle. All the art of man could not wash them out,
and a new leather covering had to be provided. Guthrie left a little son
who ran with his fellows about the streets of Edinburgh. He would often
come back and tell his mother that he had been looking at his father’s
head. This last may seem a very trivial anecdote, but to me, at least,
it always brings home with a certain direct force the horrors of the
time. The years rolled on and brought the Revolution of 1688. A divinity
student called Hamilton took down the head and gave it decent burial.
Richard Cameron fell desperately fighting on the 20th July 1680 at Airds
Moss, a desolate place near Auchinleck. Bruce of Earlshall marched to
Edinburgh with Cameron’s head and hands in a sack, while the prisoners
who were taken alive were also brought there. At Edinburgh the limbs
were put upon a halbert, and carried to the Council. I must let Patrick
Walker tell the rest of the story. “Robert Murray said, ‘There’s the
Head and Hands that lived praying and preaching and died praying and
fighting.’ The Council ordered the Hangman to fix them upon the
Netherbow Port. Mr. Cameron’s father being in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh
for his Principles, they carried them to him to add Grief to his Sorrow
and enquired if he knew them. He took his son’s Head and Hands and
kissed them. ‘They are my Son’s, my dear Son’s,’ and said: ‘It is the
Lord, good is the Will of the Lord who cannot wrong me nor mine, but has
made Goodness and Mercy to follow us all our Days.’ Mr. Cameron’s Head
was fixed upon the Port and his Hands close by his Head with his Fingers
upward.”
[Illustration: SIR ARCHIBALD JOHNSTON, LORD WARRISTON,
From a Painting by George Jamesone]
Of Sir Archibald Johnston of Warriston, bishop Gilbert Burnet, his
relative, says: “Presbytery was to him more than all the world.” At the
Restoration he knew his case was hopeless and effected his escape to
France, but was brought back and suffered at the Cross. You would fancy
life was so risky and exciting in those days that study and meditation
were out of the question, but, on the contrary, Warriston was a great
student (it was an age of ponderous folios and spiritual reflection),
could seldom sleep above three hours out of the twenty-four, knew a
great deal of Scots Law, and many other things besides; and with it all
he and his fellows—Stewart of Goodtrees, for instance—spent untold
hours in meditation. Once he went to the fields or his garden in the
Sheens (now Sciennes) to spend a short time in prayer. He so remained
from six in the morning till six or eight at night, when he was
awakened, as it were, by the bells of the not distant city. He thought
they were the eight hours bells in the morning; in fact, they were those
of the evening.
Another class of stories deals with the stormy lives and unfortunate
ends of the persecutors, and there is no name among those more prominent
than that of the Archbishop of St. Andrews, him whom Presbyterian
Scotland held in horror as Sharp, the Judas, the Apostate. Years before
his life closed at Magus Muir he went in continual danger; he was
believed to be in direct league with the devil. Once he accused a
certain Janet Douglas before the Privy Council of sorcery and
witchcraft, and suggested that she should be packed off to the King’s
plantations in the West Indies. “My Lord,” said Janet, “who was you with
in your closet on Saturday night last betwixt twelve and one o’clock?”
The councillors pricked up their ears in delighted anticipation of a
peculiarly piquant piece of scandal about a Reverend Father in God.
Sharp turned all colours and put the question by. The Duke of Rothes
called Janet aside and, by promise of pardon and safety, unloosed
Janet’s probably not very reluctant lips. “My lord, it was the muckle
black Devil.”
Here is a strange episode of this troubled time. Patrick Walker in his
record of the life and death of Mr. Donald Cargill tells of a sect
called the sweet singers, “from their frequently meeting together and
singing those tearful Psalms over the mournful case of the Church.” To
many of the persecuted it seemed incredible that heaven should not
declare in some terrible manner vengeance on a community that was guilty
of the blood of the Saints, and as this little band sang and mused it
seemed ever clearer to them that the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah must
fall on the wicked city of Edinburgh. They needs must flee from the
wrath to come, and so with one accord “they left their Houses, warm soft
Beds, covered Tables, some of them their Husbands and Children weeping
upon them to stay with them, some women taking the sucking Children in
their arms” (to leave _these_ behind were a counsel of perfection too
high even for a saint!) “to Desert places to be free of all Snares and
Sins and communion with others and mourn for their own sins, the Land’s
Tyranny and Defections, and there be safe from the Land’s utter ruin and
Desolations by Judgments. Some of them going to Pentland hills with a
Resolution to sit there to see the smoke and utter ruin of the sinful,
bloody City of Edinburgh.” The heavens made no sign; Edinburgh remained
unconsumed. A troop of dragoons were sent to seize the sweet singers;
the men were put in the Canongate Tolbooth, the women into the House of
Correction where they were soundly scourged. Their zeal thus being
quenched they were allowed to depart one by one, the matter settled. And
so let us pass on to a less tragic and heroic, a more peaceful and
prosaic time.
After the revolution reaction almost inevitably set in. Religious
zeal—fanaticism if you will—died rapidly down, and there came in
Edinburgh, of all places, the reign of the moderates, or as we should
now say, broad churchmen, learned, witty, not zealous or passionate,
“the just and tranquil age of Dr. Robertson.” Principal William
Robertson was a type of his class. We come across him in the University,
for he was Principal, and we meet him again as man of letters, for the
currents of our narrative are of necessity cross-currents. Here the
Robertson anecdotes are trivial. Young Cullen, son of the famous doctor,
was the bane of the Principal’s life; he was an excellent mimic, could
not merely imitate the reverend figure but could follow exactly his
train of thought. In 1765, some debate or other occupied Robertson in
the General Assembly; Cullen mimicked the doctor in a few remarks on the
occasion to some assembled wits. Presently in walks the Principal and
makes the very speech, a little astonished at the unaccountable hilarity
which presently prevailed. Soon the orator smelt a rat. “I perceive
somebody has been ploughing with my heifer before I came in,” so he
rather neatly turned the matter off. Certain young Englishmen of good
family were boarded with Robertson: one of them lay in bed recovering
from a youthful escapade, when a familiar step approached, for that too
could be imitated, and a familiar voice read the erring youth a solemn
lecture on the iniquities of his walk, talk, and conversation. He
promised amendment and addressed himself again to rest, when again the
step approached. Again the reproving voice was heard. He pulled aside
the curtain and protested that it was too bad to have the whole thing
twice over—it was Robertson this time, however, and not Cullen. The
Principal once went to the father of this remarkable young man for
medical advice. He was duly prescribed for, and as he was leaving the
doctor remarked that he had just been giving the same advice for the
same complaint to his own son. “What,” said Robertson, “has the young
rascal been imitating me here again?” The young rascal lived to sit on
the bench as Lord Cullen, a grave and courteous but not particularly
distinguished senator. The Principal was also minister of Old
Greyfriars’. His colleague here was Dr. John Erskine. The evangelical
school was not by any means dead in Scotland, and Erskine, a man of good
family and connections, was a devoted adherent. It is pleasant to think
that strong bonds of friendship united the colleagues whose habits of
thought were so different. You remember the charming account of Erskine
in _Guy Mannering_ where the colonel goes to hear him preach one Sunday.
He was noted for extraordinary absence of mind. Once he knocked up
against a cow in the meadows; in a moment his hat was off his head and
he humbly begged the lady’s pardon. The next she he came across was his
own wife, “Get off, you brute!” was the result of a conceivable but
ludicrous confusion of thought. His spouse observed that he invariably
returned from church without his handkerchief; she suspected one of the
old women who sat on the pulpit stairs that they might hear better, or
from the oddity of the thing, or from some other reason, and the
handkerchief was firmly sewed on. As the doctor mounted the stairs he
felt a tug at his pocket. “No the day, honest woman, no the day,” said
Erskine gently. Dr. Johnson was intimate with Robertson when he was in
Edinburgh and was tempted to go and hear him preach. He refrained. “He
could not give a sanction by his presence to a Presbyterian Assembly.”
Dr. Hugh Blair (1718-1800), Professor of Rhetoric in the University, was
another of the eminent moderates. Dr. Johnson said: “I have read over
Dr. Blair’s first sermon with more than approbation; to say it is good
is to say too little.” The King and indeed everybody else agreed with
Johnson, the after time did not, and surely no human being now-a-days
reads the once famous _Rhetoric_ and the once famous _Sermons_. Blair
was vain about everything. Finical about his dress, he was quite a sight
as he walked to service in the High Kirk. “His wig frizzed and powdered
so nicely, his gown so scrupulously arranged on his shoulders, his hands
so pure and clean, and everything about him in such exquisite taste and
neatness.” Once he had his portrait painted; he desired a pleasing smile
to mantle his expressive countenance, The model did _his_ best and the
artist did _his_ best; the resulting paint was hideous. Blair destroyed
the picture in a fit of passion. A new one followed, in which less
sublime results were aimed at, and the achievement did not sink below
the commonplace. An English visitor told him in company that his sermons
were not popular amongst the southern divines: Blair’s piteous
expression was reflected in the faces of those present. “Because,” said
the stranger, who was plainly a master in compliment, “they are so well
known that none dare preach them.” The flattered Doctor beamed with
pleasure. Blair’s colleague was the Rev. Robert Walker, and it was said
by the beadle that it took twenty-four of Walker’s hearers to equal one
of Blair’s, but then the beadle was measuring everything by the heap on
the plate. An old student of Blair’s with Aberdeen accent, boundless
confidence and nothing else, asked to be allowed to preach for him on
the depravity of man. Blair possibly thought that a rough discourse
would throw into sharp contrast his polished orations; at any rate he
consented, and the most cultured audience in Edinburgh were treated to
this gem: “It is well known that a sou has a’ the puddins o’ a man
except ane; and if _that_ doesna proove that man is fa’an there’s
naething will.”
Dr. Alexander Webster, on the other hand, was of the evangelical school,
though an odd specimen, since he preached and prayed, drank and feasted,
with the same whole-hearted fervour. The Edinburgh wits called him
Doctor Magnum Bonum, and swore that he had drunk as much claret at the
town’s expense as would float a 74-ton-gun ship. He died somewhat
suddenly, and just before the end spent one night in prayer at the house
of Lady Maxwell of Monreith, and on the next he supped in the tavern
with some of his old companions who found him very pleasant. He was
returning home one night in a very unsteady condition. “What would the
kirk-session say if they saw you noo?” said a horrified acquaintance.
“Deed, they wadna believe their een” was the gleeful and witty answer.
This bibulous divine was the founder of the Widows Fund of the Church of
Scotland, and you must accept him as a strange product of the strange
conditions of strange old Edinburgh.
The material prosperity of the Church, such as it was, did not meet with
universal favour. Lord Auchinleck, Boswell’s father, a zealous
Presbyterian of the old stamp, declared that a poor clergy was ever a
pure clergy. In former times, he said, they had timmer communion cups
and silver ministers, but now we were getting silver cups and timmer
ministers.
It is alleged of one of the city ministers, though I know not of what
epoch, that he performed his pastoral ministrations in the most
wholesale fashion. He would go to the foot of each crowded close in his
district, raise his gloved right hand and pray unctuously if vaguely for
“all the inhabitants of this close.”
Some divines honestly recognise their own imperfections. Dr. Robert
Henry was minister of the Old Kirk: his colleague was Dr. James
M‘Knight. Both were able and even distinguished men, but not as
preachers. Dr. Henry wittily said, “fortunately they were incumbents of
the same church, or there would be twa toom kirks instead of one.” One
very wet Sunday M‘Knight arrived late and drenched. “Oh, I wish I was
dry, I wish I was dry,” he exclaimed; and then after some perfunctory
brushing, “Do you think I’m dry noo?” “Never mind, Doctor,” said the
other consolingly, “when ye get to the pulpit you’ll be dry enough.”
As the last century rolled on the moderate cause weakened and the
evangelical cause became stronger. The Rev. Sir Henry Moncreiff was one
of the great figures of that movement. Referring to his power in the
Assembly a country minister said: “It puts you in mind of Jupiter among
the lesser Gods.” Another was Dr. Andrew Thomson, minister of St.
George’s, who died in 1831. An easy-going divine once said to him that
“he wondered he took so much time with his discourses; for himself,
many’s the time he had written a sermon and killed a salmon before
breakfast.” “Sir,” was the emphatic answer, “I had rather have eaten
your salmon, than listened to your sermon.”
[Illustration: REV. SIR HENRY MONCRIEFF-WELLWOOD,
From an Engraving after Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A.]
The evangelical party were much against pluralities. The others upheld
them on the ground that only thus could the higher intellects of the
church be fostered and rewarded. Dr. Walker had been presented to
Colinton in the teeth of much popular opposition. He had obtained a
professorship at the same time, and this was urged in his favour. “Ah,”
said an old countryman, “that makes the thing far waur; he will just
make a bye job of our souls.”
Dr. Chalmers is the great figure of the Disruption controversy, but most
of his work lay away from Edinburgh. Well known as he was, there existed
a submerged mass to whom he was but a name. In 1845 he began social and
evangelical work in the West Port. An old woman of the locality, being
asked if she went to hear any one, said, “Ou ay, there’s a body Chalmers
preaches in the West Port, and I whiles gang to keep him in countenance,
honest man!”
Chalmers was the founder of the Free Church; its great popular preacher
for years afterwards was Thomas Guthrie. His fame might almost be
described as world-wide; his oratory was marked by a certain vivid
impressiveness that brought the scenes he described in actual fact
before his hearers. A naval officer hearing him picture the wreck of a
vessel, and the launching of the lifeboat to save the perishing crew,
sprang from one of the front seats of the gallery and began to tear off
his coat that he might rush to render aid. He was hardly pulled down by
his mother who sat next him. Guthrie had other than oratorical gifts, he
was genial and open-hearted. A servant from the country, amazed at the
coming and going and the hospitality of the manse, said to her mistress:
“Eh, mem, this house is just like a ‘public,’ only there’s nae siller
comes in!”
Another leader, second only to Chalmers, was Dr. Candlish, much larger
in mind than in body. “Ay,” said an Arran porter to one who was watching
the Doctor, “tak’ a gude look, there’s no muckle o’ him, but there’s a
deal in him!” Lord Cockburn’s words are to the like effect. “It requires
the bright eye and the capacious brow of Candlish to get the better of
the smallness of his person, which makes us sometimes wonder how it
contains its inward fire.” The eager spirit of this divine chafed and
fretted over many matters; his oratory aroused a feeling of sympathetic
indignation in its hearers; afterwards they had some difficulty in
finding adequate cause for their indignation. When the Prince Consort
died his sorrowing widow raised a monument to him on Deeside, whereon a
text from the Apocrypha was inscribed. Candlish declaimed against the
quotation with all the force of his eloquence. “I say this with the
deepest sorrow if it is the Queen who is responsible, I say it with the
deepest indignation whoever else it may be.” These words bring vividly
before us an almost extinct type of thought. And this, again, spoken
eight days before his death and in mortal sickness, has a touch of the
age of Knox: “If you were to set me up in the pulpit I still could make
you all hear on the deafest side of your heads.”
Times again change, the leaders of religious thought in Scotland are
again broad church, if I may use a non-committal term. They have often
moved in advance of their flocks. At a meeting in Professor Blackie’s
house in 1882 a number of Liberal divines were present. Among them Dr.
Macgregor and Dr. Walter C. Smith. They were discussing the personality
of the Evil One in what seemed to an old lady a very rationalistic
spirit. “What,” she said in pious horror, “would you deprive us of the
Devil?”
With this trivial anecdote may go that of another conservative old woman
more than a century earlier. The Rev. David Johnson, who died in 1824,
was minister of North Leith. In his time a new church was built, which
was crowned with a cross wherein lurked, to some, a suggestion of
prelacy if not popery. “But what are we to do?” said the minister to a
knot of objecting pious dames. “Do!” replied one of them, “what wad ye
do, but just put up the auld cock again!” (no doubt the weather-cock).
This cock, or one of its predecessors, crows in history centuries
before. On the 21st March 1567 the Castle of Edinburgh was given in
charge to Cockburn of Skirling. That day there was a great storm which,
among greater feats, blew the tail from the cock on the steeple at
Leith. An ancient prophecy ran the round of the town as miraculously
fulfilled.
“When Skirling sall be capitaine
The Cock sall want his tail.”
Thus the diary of Robert Birrell, at any rate.
The strictness of old-time Sabbath observance is well known. Lord George
Campbell, afterwards Duke of Argyll, was in command of a corps of
Fencibles in Edinburgh in the early years of last century. He was
skilled in whistling. He sat one Sunday morning at the open window of
his hotel in Princes Street, and exercised his favourite art. An old
woman passing by to church viewed him with holy horror and shook her
fist at him, “Eh! ye reprobate! ye reprobate!” she shouted.
It were easy to accumulate anecdotes of the church officers of
Edinburgh. I find space for two. In old days Mungo Watson was beadle of
Lady Yester’s Church under Dr. Davidson. His pastime was to mount the
pulpit and thunder forth what he believed to be a most excellent
discourse to an imaginary audience. Whilst thus engaged he was surprised
by Dr. Davidson, who shut him up very quickly: “Come down, Mungo, come
down, toom barrels mak’ most sound.” In _Jeems the Doorkeeper, a Lay
Sermon_, Dr. John Brown has drawn a charming picture of the officer of
his father’s church in Broughton Place. The building was crowded, and
part of the congregation consisted of servant girls, “husseys” as Jeems
contemptuously described them. Some were laced to the point of
suffocation, and were not rarely carried out fainting to the vestry.
Jeems stood over the patient with a sharp knife in his hand. “Will oo
rip her up noo?” he said as he looked at the young doctor; the signal
was given, the knife descended and a cracking as of canvas under a gale
followed, the girl opened her eyes, and closed them again in horror at
the sight of the ruined finery. But we are chronicling very small beer
indeed, and here must be an end of these strangely assorted scenes and
pictures.
CHAPTER THREE
TOWN’S COLLEGE AND SCHOOLS
The official title of the University of Edinburgh is _Academia Jacobi
Sexti_. So “our James,” as Ben Jonson calls him, gave a name to this
great seat of learning, and in the form of a charter he gave it his
blessing, and there he stopped! Bishop Reid, the last Roman Catholic
Bishop of Orkney, left eight thousand merks for a college in Edinburgh,
and though that sum sinks considerably when put into current coin of the
realm, it is not to be neglected. It was obtained and applied, but the
real patrons, authors, managers and supporters for centuries of the
University was the good town of Edinburgh through its Town Council. It
was _Oure Tounis Colledge_. They appointed its professors and ruled its
destinies until almost our own time. The Scottish University Act of 1858
greatly lessened, though it by no means destroyed, their influence.
In a country so much under ecclesiastical influence as Scotland of the
Reformation, the union between the College and the Kirk was close and
intimate; still it was a corporation of tradesmen that managed the
University, and though the professors kicked, there is no doubt they
managed it very well. There has ever been something homely and
unconventional about the college. It was opened on the 14th October
1583; the students were to wear gowns, they were to speak Latin, none
was to soil his mouth with common Scots, and none was to go to taverns,
or (it was later ordained) to funerals—a serious form of entertainment
for which old Scotland evinced a peculiar zest.
Ah, those counsels of perfection! how the years set them at naught! Why
they alone of all men in Edinburgh should not go to taverns or funerals
was not a question wherewith they troubled themselves; they simply went.
Gowns they never wore, and though half-hearted attempts were now and
again made to introduce them, these never succeeded. Sir Alexander
Grant, the late Principal, tells us that a working man, whose son was a
student, wrote to him, pointing out the advantage of gowns in covering
up a shabby dress. Sir Alexander seemed rather struck with this point of
view, though after all, the gown must cost something, which might have
been better applied to the cloak. The students, as now, lived anywhere.
[Illustration: ROBERT LEIGHTON, D.D., ARCHBISHOP OF GLASGOW,
From an Engraving by Sir Robert Strange]
The histories give many quaint details as to the manners of other days.
The classes began at five in summer and six in winter; the bursars rung
the bell and swept the rooms; the janitor was a student or even a
graduate. His it was to lock the door at eleven at night. The early
professors, who did not confine themselves to one subject but carried
their class right through, were called regents. One of them, James Reid,
had taken up the office in 1603; he was popular in the council, in the
town, and in the whole city, but after more than twenty years’ service
he came to grief on a quarrel with the all-powerful Kirk. In 1626,
William Struthers, Moderator of the Presbytery, spoke of philosophy as
the dish-clout of divinity. At a graduation ceremony, Reid quoted
Aristippus to the effect that he would rather be an unchristian
philosopher than an unphilosophical divine! for which innocent retort
the regent was forced to throw up his office. One wonders what would
have happened if Town Council and Kirk had come to loggerheads, but they
never did, and through a college committee and a college bailie they
directed the affairs of the University. Creech, best known to fame as
Burns’s publisher, and the subject of some kindly or some unkindly
half-humorous verse, was in his time college bailie; but Creech was a
great many things in his time, though the world has pretty well
forgotten him. The Lord Provost was the important figure in University
as well as City life. In 1665 he was declared by the council Rector of
the College, yet in the years that followed he did nothing in his
office. Long afterwards, in 1838, there was a trial of students before
the Sheriff, for the part these had taken in a great snowball bicker
with the citizens. Witty Patrick Robertson was their counsel, and was
clever enough to throw a farcical air over the whole proceedings. “You
are Rector of the University, are you not?” he asked the then Lord
Provost. “No! I may be, but I am not aware of it,” was the rather
foolish answer. A caricature was immediately circulated of the man who
does not know he is Rector! This office was not the present Lord
Rectorship, which only dates from the Act of 1858.
Edinburgh has never been a rich town. In the old days, it was as poor as
poor might be, and so was its college; they had nothing in the way of
plate to show visitors, or to parade on great occasions. Their only
exhibits were the college mace and George Buchanan’s skull! There was a
legend about the mace. In 1683 the tomb of Bishop Kennedy at St. Andrews
was opened: it contained five silver maces—quite a providential
arrangement, one for each of the Scots Universities, and one to spare!
But there was a mace in Edinburgh before this. We have note of it in
1640, and in 1651 the Town Council had it on loan for the use of the
public. In 1660 the macer of the Parliament needs must borrow it till
his masters get one of their own. There is a quaint, homely touch about
this passing on of the mace from one body to another. It had been a
valuable and interesting relic, but in the night between 29th and 30th
October 1787 the library was forced, and the mace stolen from the press
wherein it lay, and was never seen more. Ten guineas reward was offered,
but in vain. Every one presently suspected Deacon Brodie, himself a
member of the Council, and perhaps the most captivating and romantic
burglar on record. Ere a year was over, he was lying in the Tolbooth a
condemned felon, but he uttered no word as to the precious bauble. The
year after that, very shame induced the Council to procure an elegant
silver mace, with a fine Latin inscription, and the arms of James VI.,
the arms of the City, and the arms of the University itself, invented
for the special purpose. It was just in time to be used on the laying of
the foundation-stone of the new university buildings in 1789, and it has
been used ever since on great occasions only. The loan of it is not
asked for any more! every body corporate now has a mace of its own!
The Buchanan skull is still held by the college. That eminent scholar
died on the 28th September 1582, and was buried in the Greyfriars
Churchyard. John Adamson, Principal of the University between 1623 and
1651, got the skull by bribing the sexton, and bequeathed it to the
college. The story rather revolts the taste of to-day, but grim old
Scotland had a strange hankering after those elements of mortality. Its
remarkable thinness was noted, in fact the light could be seen through
it, and anatomists of later years dwelt on the fine breadth of forehead,
and remarkable contours. It was judged, moreover, a skull of a Celtic
type—Celtic was possibly enough Buchanan’s race. Long afterwards Sir
William Hamilton, at the Royal Society in Edinburgh, compared it with
the skull of a Malay robber and cut-throat, and showed that, according
to the principles of the phrenologists, the Malay had the finer head.
This was meant as a _reductio ad absurdum_ of phrenology, though, after
all, the evidence of identification could not be satisfactory. If the
sexton consented to be bribed he was not likely, in old Greyfriars, to
be at a loss for a skull, but it seems irreverent to pursue the subject
further.
Robert Leighton, Principal between 1653 and 1662, was afterwards Bishop
of Dunblane, and then Archbishop of Glasgow. In 1672 he was still living
in his rooms in the college, and was there waited upon one day by
Chorley, an English student studying divinity at Glasgow. He brought the
compliments of his college and tutor, and invited the prelate to his
approaching laureation. He next presented him with the laureation
thesis, which was gratefully received, but when the visitor produced a
pair of “fine fringed gloves” “he started back and with all
demonstrations of humility excused himself as unworthy of such a
present.” Chorley, however, whilst humble was persistent, and though the
Archbishop refused again and again and retreated backwards, Chorley
followed, and at the end fairly pinned Leighton against the wall! His
Grace needs must yield, “but it was amazing to see with what humble
gratitude, bowing to the very ground, this great man accepted them.” So
much for the author of the classic _Commentary on the 1st Epistle of St.
Peter_. Is it not a picture of the time when men were extreme in all
things, though Leighton alone was extreme in humility? Was there not
(you ask) something ironic in the self-depreciation? I do not think so,
for you look as “through a lattice on the soul” and recognise a spirit
ill at ease in an evil day, one who might have uttered Lord Bacon’s
pathetic complaint _multum incola fuit anima mea_ with far more point
and fitness than ever Bacon did.
Of a later Principal, Gilbert Rule (1690-1701), a less conspicuous but
very pleasing memory remains. His window was opposite that of Campbell,
Professor of Divinity. Now Dr. Rule was ever late at his books, whilst
Campbell was eager over them ere the late northern dawn was astir; so
the one candle was not out before the other was lighted. They were
called the evening and the morning star. Rule died first, and when
Campbell missed the familiar light, he said, “the evening star was now
gone down, and the morning star would soon disappear,” and ere long it
was noted that both windows were dark. Among his other gifts, Gilbert
Rule was a powerful preacher. In some ministerial wandering it was his
lot to pass a night in a solitary house in a nook of the wild Grampians.
At midnight enter a ghost, who would take no denial; Gilbert must out
through the night till a certain spot was reached; then the ghost
vanished and the Doctor got him back to bed, with, you imagine,
chattering teeth and dismal foreboding. Next day the ground was opened,
and the skeleton of a murdered man discovered. Gilbert preached on the
following Sunday from the parish pulpit, and reasoned so powerfully of
judgment and the wrath to come that an old man got up and confessed
himself the murderer. In due course he was executed and the ghost walked
no more.
William Carstares, Principal between 1703 and 1715, was a great figure
in Church and State. “Cardinal” Carstares they nicknamed him at Dutch
William’s Court, and both that astute monarch and Queen Anne, Stuart as
she was, gave him almost unbounded confidence. In tact and diplomacy he
excelled his contemporaries and in the valuable art of knowing what to
conceal even when forced to speak. He was put to it, for the most famous
anecdote about him tells of his suffering under the thumbikins in 1684.
They were applied for an hour with such savage force that the King’s
smith had to go for his tools to reverse the screws before it was
possible to set free the maimed and bruised thumbs. In Carstares’
picture the thumbs are very prominent, in fact or flattery they show
forth quite untouched. At the King’s special request he tried them on
the royal digits; His Majesty vowed he had confessed anything to be rid
of them. We have a pleasing picture of an annual fish dinner at Leith
whereat the Principal was entertained by his colleagues. Calamy the
English nonconformist was a guest, and was much delighted with the talk
and the fare, and especially “the freedom and harmony between the
Principal and the masters of the college,” they expressing a veneration
for him as a common father, and he a tenderness for them as if they had
all been his children.
Principal Robertson (1762-1793) is still a distinguished figure, but he
belongs to Letters in the first place, and the Church in the second; yet
even here he was eminent. A charming anecdote tells how as Principal he
visited the logic class where John Stevenson, his own old teacher, was
still prelecting. He addressed the students in Latin, urging them to
profit, as he hoped he had himself profited, by the teaching of
Stevenson, whereat “the aged Professor, unable any longer to suppress
his emotion, dissolved in tears of grateful affection, and fell on the
neck of his favourite pupil, his Principal.”
George Husband Baird (1793-1840) was a much more commonplace figure. His
middle name was thought felicitous; he was husband to the Lord Provost’s
daughter and there seemed no other sufficient reason to account for his
elevation. This play upon names, by the way, has always been a favourite
though puerile form of Edinburgh wit. The better part of a century
afterwards we had one of our little wars on the Gold Coast, and some
local jester asked for the difference between the folk of Ashantee and
those of Edinburgh. The first, it was said, took their law from Coffee
and the second their coffee from Law! The Ashantee war of the ’seventies
is already rather dim and ancient history, but Coffee, it may be
remembered, was the name of their king, and the other term referred to a
well-known Edinburgh house still to the fore. However, we return to our
Baird for a moment. He was Minister of the High Church as well as
Principal. Discoursing of the illness of George III., he wept copiously
and unreasonably; “from George Husband Baird to George III. _greeting_,”
said one of his hearers.
There is a mass of legendary stories about the ordinary professors, but
the figures are dim, and the notes of their lives mostly trivial. For
instance, there is Dr. John Meiklejohn, who was Professor of Church
History, 1739-1781: “He had a smooth round face, that never bore any
expression but good-humour and contentment,” he droned monotonously
through his lectures, glad to get away to his glebe at Abercorn, eight
miles off. He delighted to regale the students at his rural manse, and
pressed on them the produce of the soil, with a heartiness which he
never showed in inviting their attention to the fathers of the church.
“Take an egg, Mr. Smith,” he would genially insist, “_they are my own_
eggs, for the eggs of Edinburgh are not to be depended on.” Of like
kidney was David Ritchie, who was Professor of Logic and Metaphysics and
Minister of St. Andrew’s Church, but “was more illustrious on the
curling pond, than in the Professor’s chair.” But, then, to him in 1836
succeeded Sir William Hamilton, and for twenty years the chair was _the_
philosophical chair of Britain. The records of his fame are not for this
page; his passionate devotion to study, his vast learning, are not
material for the anecdotist. He was fond of long walks with a friend
into the surrounding country, and in his day it was still very easy to
leave the town behind you. Though he started with a companion, he was
presently away in advance or on the other side of the road, muttering to
himself in Greek or Latin or English, forgetful of that external world
which occupied no small place in his philosophy. “Dear me, what did you
quarrel about?” asked a lady, to his no small amusement. The Council did
not always select the most eminent men. About a century before, in 1745
to wit, they had preferred for the chair of Moral Philosophy William
Cleghorn to David Hume. There was no other choice, it was said. A Deist
might possibly become a Christian, but a Jacobite could not become a
Whig. Ruddiman’s amanuensis, Adam Walker, was a student at this class,
where he had listened to a lecture on the doctrine of necessity. “Well,
does your Professor make us free agents or not?” said his employer. “He
gives us arguments on both sides and leaves us to judge,” was the reply.
“Indeed,” was Ruddiman’s caustic comment, “the fool hath said in his
heart, there is no God, and the Professor will not tell you whether the
fool is right or wrong.”
[Illustration: PRINCIPAL WILLIAM CARSTARES,
From the Engraving by Jeens]
Many of us remember Dunbar’s _Greek Lexicon_, so much in use till
superseded by Liddell and Scott’s. Its author was Professor of Greek in
the University from 1806 to 1852. He fell from a tree, it was said, into
the Greek chair. In fact, he commenced life as gardener; confined by an
accident he betook himself to study, with highly satisfactory results.
His predecessor in the chair had been Andrew Dalzel, an important figure
in his time, perhaps best remembered by the ineptitude of his criticism
of Scott, whom he entertained unawares in his class. Scott sent him in
an essay, “cracking up” Ariosto above Homer. Dalzel was naturally
furious: “Dunce he was and dunce he would remain.” You cannot blame the
professor, but _dîs_ _aliter visum_! Dunbar’s successor was John Stuart
Blackie (1852-1882), one of the best known Edinburgh figures of his
time. He had a creed of his own, ways of his own, and a humour of his
own. Even the orthodox loved and tolerated the genial individualist who
was never malicious. “Blackie’s neyther orthodox, heterodox, nor any
ither dox; he’s juist himsel’!” An ardent body of abstainers under some
mistaken idea asked him to preside at one of their meetings. He thus
addressed them: “I cannot understand why I am asked to be here, I am not
a teetotaler—far from it. If a man asks me to dine with him and does
not give me a good glass of wine, I say he is neither a Christian nor a
gentleman. Germans drink beer, Englishmen drink wine, ladies tea, and
fools water.” Blackie was an advocate as well as a professor. Possibly
he had in his mind a certain Act of 1716, to wit, the 3rd of Geo. I.
chap. 5, whereby a duty was imposed “of two pennies Scots, or one-sixth
of a penny sterling on every pint of ale and beer that shall be vended
and sold within the City of Edinburgh.” Among the objects to which the
duty was to be applied was the settling of a salary upon the Professor
of Law in the University of Edinburgh and his successor in office not
exceeding £100 per annum. Here is a portrait by himself which brings
vividly back, true to the life, that once familiar figure of the
Edinburgh pavement: “When I walk along Princes Street I go with a kingly
air, my head erect, my chest expanded, my hair flowing, my plaid flying,
my stick swinging. Do you know what makes me do that? Well, I’ll tell
you—just con-ceit.” Even those who knew him not will understand that
the Edinburgh ways never quite seemed the same when that picturesque
figure was seen no longer there. And yet the Blackie anecdotes are
disappointing. There is a futile story that he once put up a notice he
would meet his _classes_ at such an hour. A student with a very
elementary sense of humour cut off the _c_, and he retorted by deleting
the _l_. All this is poor enough. Alas! he was only of the silver or,
shall we say, of the iron age of Auld Reekie?
Aytoun in an address at the graduation of 1863, spoke of the professors
of his time as the instructors, and almost idols, of the rising
generation. He himself filled the chair of Rhetoric between 1845 and
1865. A quaint though scarcely characteristic story is preserved of his
early years. One night he was, or was believed to be, absent from home,
“late at een birling the wine.” An irate parent stood grimly behind the
door the while a hesitating hand fumbled at the latch, the dim light of
morn presently revealed a cloaked figure, upon whom swift blows
descended without stint or measure. It was not young Aytoun at all, but
a mighty Senator of the College of Justice who had mistaken the door for
his own, which was a little farther along the street!
One of the idols to whom Aytoun referred was no doubt his father-in-law,
John Wilson (1820-1853), the well-known Christopher North, described by
Sir R. Christison as “the grandest specimen I have ever seen of the
human form, tall, perfectly symmetrical, massive and majestic, yet
agile.” Even in old age he had many of his early characteristics. He
noted a coal carter brutally driving a heavily-laden horse up the steep
streets of Edinburgh; he remonstrated with the fellow, who raised his
whip in a threatening manner as if to strike. The spirit of the old man
swelled in righteous anger, he tore away the whip as if it had been
straw, loosened the harness, threw the coals into the street, then
clutching the whip in one hand and leading the horse by the other, he
marched through Moray Place, to deposit the unfortunate animal in more
kindly keeping.
There are stories of the library that merit attention. I will give the
name of Robert Henderson, appointed librarian in 1685, where he so
continued till 1747—sixty-two years altogether, the longest record of
University service extant. Physically of a lean and emaciated figure, he
had a very high opinion of his own erudition. Now in the old college
there was a certain ruinous wall to which was attached the legend, that
it would topple over on some great scholar. The librarian affected an
extreme anxiety when in the vicinity of the wall. At length it was taken
down. Boswell told the story to Johnson. The sage did not lose the
chance for a very palpable hit at Scots learning. “They were afraid it
never would fall!” he growled. There was a like tradition regarding that
precipitous part of Arthur’s Seat quaintly named Samson’s Ribs. An old
witch prophesied they would be sure to fall on the greatest philosopher
in Scotland. Sir John Leslie was afraid to pass that way.
The relations between the Town Council and the professors in the first
half of the nineteenth century were sometimes far from harmonious. The
days were past when the Academy of James VI. was merely the “Tounes
Colledge,” it was more and more a University with a European reputation.
A cultured scholar of the type of Sir William Hamilton, “spectator of
all time and of all existence,” in Plato’s striking phrase, was not like
to rest contented under the sway of the Town Council. Possibly the
Council sneered at him and his likes, as visionary, unpractical,
eccentric; possibly there was truth on both sides, so much _does_ depend
on your point of view. The University, somewhat unwisely, went to law
with the Council, and came down rather heavily; nor were the Council
generous victors. The Lord Provost of the time met Professor Dunbar one
day at dinner—“We have got you Professors under our thumb, and by ——
we will make you feel it,” said he rather coarsely. The professors
consoled each other with anecdotes of Town Council oddities in college
affairs. One councillor gave as a reason why he voted for a professorial
candidate that, “He was asked by a leddy who had lately given him a good
job.” “I don’t care that,” said another, snapping his fingers, “for the
chair of —— , but whoever the Provost votes for, I’ll vote for
somebody else.” An English scholar had come to Edinburgh as candidate
for a chair. He called on a worthy member of the Council to whom his
very accent suggested black prelacy, or worse. “Are ye a jined member?”
The stranger stared in hopeless bewilderment. “Are ye a jined member o’
onie boadie?” was the far from lucid explanation. However, the Act of
1858 has changed all this, and town and gown in Edinburgh fight no more.
Well, there is no gown, and the University has always been a good part
of the good town of Edinburgh, as much now as ever. Take a broad view
from first to last, and how to deny that the Council did their duty
well! Principal Sir Alexander Grant in his _Story of the University of
Edinburgh_ bears generous and emphatic testimony as to this, and here we
may well leave the matter.
I must now desert the groves of the Academy of James VI. to say a word
on a lesser school and its schoolmasters. Here we have the memorable and
illustrative story of the great barring out of September 1595 at the old
High School. The scholars had gone on the 15th of that month to ask the
Council for the week’s holiday of privilege as was usual. It was curtly
refused, whereupon some “gentlemen’s bairns” collected firearms and
swords, and in dead of night seized the schoolhouse, which they
fortified in some sort. Their Rector, Master Pollock, was refused
admittance next morning, and complained to the magistrates. Bailie John
Macmorran came to the spot with a posse of officers, but William
Sinclair, son of the Chancellor of Caithness, took his stand at a window
and threatened to pistol the first who approached. Bailie Macmorran was
a big man in his day—his house, now restored as University Hall, still
rises stately and impressive in Riddle’s Close, on the south side of the
Lawnmarket—and he was not to be put down by a schoolboy; he ordered his
satellites to crash in the door with the beam they were bringing
forward. It is not hard to reconstitute the scene: the bailie, full of
civic importance and wrath, the angry boy at the window, the pride of
youth and blood in his set, determined face. Presently the pistol shot
rang out, and Macmorran fell dead on the pavement with a bullet through
his brain. The whole town rushed to the spot, seized the frightened boys
and thrust them into the Tolbooth, but finally they were liberated
without hurt, after, it would seem, some form of a trial.
There are many quaint details as to the scholars. They used to go to the
fields in the summer to cut rushes or bent for the floor of the school,
but, you see, fighting was the work or the game of nearly every male in
Scotland, and even the children must needs have their share. On these
expeditions the boys fell to slashing one another with their hooks, and
they were stopped. The winter of 1716 was distinguished by furious
riots, though not of the same deadly nature. The pupils demolished every
window of the school and of the adjacent parish church of Lady Yester,
also the wall which fenced the playground.
I will not gather records of the various Rectors, not even of Dr.
Alexander Adam, the most famous of them all. You can see to-day his
portrait by Raeburn, and one of Raeburn’s best in the Gallery on the
Mound, and think of his striking utterance in the last hours of his
life, “Boys, it is growing dark, you may go home.” In his prime he had a
profound conviction of his own qualities and those of his school. “Come
away, sir,”—thus he would address a new scholar,—“you will see more
here in an hour than you will in any other school in Europe.” He had a
long series of eminent pupils, among them Scott, Horner, and Jeffrey,
and the manner in which they have spoken of him justifies his words and
his reputation.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE SURGEONS & THE DOCTORS
The physicians, the surgeons, the medical schools of Edinburgh have long
and famous histories. A few facts may assist the reader to understand
the anecdotes which fill this chapter. The Guild of Surgeons and Barbers
received a charter of Incorporation from the Town Council on the 1st
July 1505, and to this in 1506 the sanction of James IV. was obtained.
On 26th February 1567 the surgeons and apothecaries were made into one
body; henceforth they ceased to act as barbers and, after 1722, save
that the surgeons kept a register of barbers’ apprentices, there was no
connection whatever between the profession and the trade. In 1778 a
charter was obtained from George III., and the corporation became the
Royal College of Surgeons of the City of Edinburgh. In early days they
had a place of meeting in Dixon’s Close, but in 1656 they acquired and
occupied Curriehill House, once the property of the Black Friars. In May
1775 the foundation-stone of a new hall was laid in Surgeons Square,
hard by the old High School. Here the Incorporation met till the opening
of the new Surgeons Hall in 1832 on the east side of Nicolson Street, a
little way south of the old University buildings. Just as the barbers
became separated from the surgeons, so in time a distinction was drawn
between these last and the physicians. In 1617, James VI. in the High
Court of Parliament decreed the establishment of a College of Physicians
for Edinburgh. In poverty-stricken Scotland a scheme often remained a
mere scheme for many long years. In 1656, Cromwell issued a patent
establishing a College of Physicians on the lines laid down by James
VI., but he passed away and his scheme with him, and it was not till
1681 that the charter was finally obtained. Their ancient place of
meeting was near the Cowgate Port, but in 1775 the foundation of a
splendid building was laid by Professor Cullen, their most eminent
member. It stood opposite St. Andrew’s Church, George Street, but in
1843 this was sold to the Commercial Bank for £20,000, and in 1844 the
foundation-stone was laid of the present hall in Queen Street.
The first botanical garden in Edinburgh was founded by Sir Andrew
Balfour (1630-1694), who commenced practice in the capital in 1670. He
obtained from the Town Council a small piece of land between the east
end of the Nor’ Loch and Trinity College, which had formed part of the
Trinity Garden. Here were the old Physic Gardens. About 1770 this was
completely abandoned in favour of new land on the west side of Leith
Walk, and in less than a hundred years, namely, in 1824, the new and
splendid Royal Botanical Gardens were established in Inverleith Row; to
this all the “plant” of the old gardens was transferred.
As to the medical faculty in the University, I note that the chair of
anatomy was founded in 1705, and that its most famous occupants were the
three Alexander Monro’s, known as _primus_, _secundus_, and _tertius_,
who held the professorship between them for 126 years, namely, from 1720
to 1846. The first Monro distinguished himself at the battle of
Prestonpans, not by slaying but by healing. He attended diligently to
the wounded on both sides and got them conveyed to Edinburgh. The second
was professor from 1754 to 1808, a remarkable period of fifty-four
years. His father made an odd bargain with the Town Council. If they
would appoint his son to succeed him he would carefully train him for
the post in the best schools both at home and abroad. They agreed, and
the experiment turned out a complete success. He had studied at London,
Leyden, Paris, and Berlin, and when he returned his father asked the
city notabilities to hear his first lecture. Monro had got it up by
heart, but he lost his presence of mind and forgot every word; he had to
speak extempore, yet he knew his subject and soon found his feet. He
lectured without notes ever after. The most popular Scots divines have
always done the same. Monro _tertius_ was not equal to his father or
grandfather. The memory of his great predecessors was too much for him,
“froze the genial current of his soul,” made him listless and apathetic.
He had as rival the famous Dr. John Barclay, extra-mural lecturer on
anatomy, 1797-1825. This last was very ready and self-possessed. Once he
had to lecture on some part of the human frame; the subject lay before
him covered with a sheet. He lifted the sheet, laid it down again, and
proceeded to give an excellent discourse on anatomy, but not quite
according to the programme; in fact, a mistake had been made, and there
was nothing under the sheet; but, again, the feat does not seem
altogether surprising. However, the mistake was not so dire as that of
one of his assistants, who after dinner one night hurried to the
dissecting room to prepare the subject for next day. He pulled off the
cloth, but it was at once pulled back again; he pulled it off again, the
same thing happened: the farthing dip that faintly illumined the room
almost fell from his nerveless hand, a low growl revealed the unexpected
presence of a dog whose teeth had supplied the opposing force! Barclay’s
lectures were flavoured with pungent doses of caustic old Edinburgh wit.
He warned his students to beware of discoveries of anatomy. “In a field
so well wrought, what remained to discover? As at harvest, first come
the reapers to the uncut grain and then the gleaners, and finally the
geese, idly poking among the rubbish. Gentlemen, _we are the geese_!” It
was not rarely the habit of professors in former times to give free
tickets for their courses. The kindness was sometimes abused. Barclay
applied a humorous but sufficient corrective. Once he had a note from
Mr. Laing, bookseller, father of Dr. David Laing the well-known
antiquary, requesting a free ticket for some sucking sawbones. Barclay
professed himself delighted to confer the favour, but invited his
proposed pupil to accompany him to Mr. Laing’s shop, where he selected
books on anatomy to the exact value of his ticket, and sagely remarking
that without text-books his lectures were useless, presented them to the
astonished youth as a gift from Mr. Laing! Taking no denial he bundled
the youth and the books out of the place. He did not again find it
necessary to repeat the lesson. In Sir Robert Christison’s _Life_ some
remarkable instances are given of this curious form of benevolence at
somebody else’s expense, but the subject need not be pursued. Barclay
had collected a considerable museum, of which a fine elephant, an early
Jumbo in fact, was the gem. His friends, who were numerous and powerful,
tried to get a chair of comparative anatomy founded for him in the
University. Various members of the medical faculty opposed it tooth and
nail, as poaching on their preserves. One of Kay’s most famous
caricatures represents Barclay seated on an elephant charging the
college gate, which is barred against him by a learned crowd. The
opposition succeeded and Barclay was never elected professor.
Barclay had been brought up for the church, and in his early days had,
during the absence of the Rev. Mr. Baird of Bo’ness, wagged his head in
the pulpit of that divine. “How did they like him?” asked Baird of
Sandy, the village sage or the village idiot or, perhaps, both. “Gey
weel, minister, gey weel, but everybody thought him daft.” “Why, Sandy?”
“Oh, for gude reasons, minister; Mr. Barclay was aye skinning puddocks”
(frogs). It was reported that dogs fled in terror at the sight of him;
the sagacious animals feared capture and dissection; he had incautiously
cut up a dog in the presence of its kind and thus had an ill name in the
canine world! Not that this implied any ill-will to dogs; quite the
contrary, as witness a story of John Goodsir (1814-1867), who succeeded
Monro _tertius_ as professor of anatomy in 1846. He had carefully
studied the anatomy of the horse. “I love the horse, I love the horse,”
he said with genuine fervour, “I have dissected him twice!”
Barclay possessed an uncle, a full-blown divine, and the founder of a
sect by some called after him. Nephew and uncle argued theological
points. The young man was so hard to convince that the elder sent a
heavy folio flying at his head; he dodged the missile, but if not
confuted, was at any rate silenced.
Many of the anecdotes of the surgeon’s life in old Edinburgh turn on
this question of anatomy. Until the Anatomy Act of 1832, that science
was terribly hampered by the want of subjects. The charter of 1505
provided an allowance of one body annually, which was almost ludicrously
insufficient, hence body snatching became almost a necessity, perhaps
among the surgeons themselves it was counted a virtue, but they dared
not say it openly. On 20th May 1711, the college solemnly protested
against body snatching. On the 24th of January 1721 a clause was ordered
to be inserted in indentures binding apprentices not to violate graves,
but the populace, rightly or wrongly, thought those rascal surgeons had
tongue in cheek all the time, and were ever inclined to put the worst
possible construction on every circumstance that seemed to point that
way. Lauder of Fountainhall commemorates an early case. On the 6th
February 1678 four gipsies, a father and three sons, were hanged
together at Edinburgh, for killing another gipsy called Faa at Romanno.
To the Edinburgh burghers of the day the gipsy and the cateran were mere
wild beasts of prey, and these four wretches were hung in haste, cut
down in haste, and forthwith huddled together with their clothes on—it
was not worth while to strip them of their rags—into a shallow hole in
Greyfriars Churchyard. Next morning the grave lay open, and the body of
the youngest son, aged sixteen, was missing. It was remembered he had
been the last thrown over, and the first cut down, and the last buried.
Perhaps he had revived, thrown aside a scanty covering of earth, and
fled to Highland hill or Border waste. Others opined that the body had
been stolen by some chirurgeon or his servant for the purpose of
dissection, on which possibility Fountainhall takes occasion to utter
some grave legal maxims; solemnly locks the door, as it were, in the
absence of the steed. In 1742 a rifled grave was noted in the West
Kirkyard, and a body, presumably its former tenant, was presently
discovered near the shop of one Martin Eccles, surgeon. Forthwith the
Portsburgh drum was beating a mad tattoo through the Cowgate, and the
mob proceeded to smash the surgeon’s shop. As for Martin, you may safely
assume _non est inventus_, else had he been smashed likewise. Again, a
sedan chair is discovered containing a dead body, apparently on its way
to the dissecting room. The chairman and his assistant were banished,
and the chair was burned by the common hangman. Again, one John Samuel,
a gardener, moved thereto, you guess, by an all too consuming thirst, is
taken at the Potterow Port trying to sell the dead body of a child,
which was recognised as having been buried at Pentland the week before.
He was soundly whipped through Edinburgh and banished Scotland for seven
years.
A still more sordid and more terrible tragedy is among the events of
1752. Two women, Ellen Torrence and Jean Waldy, meet in the street a
mother with her little boy, they ask her to drink, an invitation, it
seems, impossible to resist. Whilst one plied her with liquor, the other
enticed the boy to her own den, where she promptly suffocated him. The
body was sold for two shillings to the students, sixpence was given to
the one who carried it, and it was only after long haggling that an
additional ten pence was extorted “for a dram.” They were presently
discovered and executed. This almost incredible story, to which Gilbert
Glossin in _Guy Mannering_ makes a rather far-fetched reference in a
discussion with Mr. Pleydell, proves at any rate one thing, there was a
ready market for dead bodies in Edinburgh for purposes of dissection,
and as the buyer was not too inquisitive, indeed he could scarcely
afford to be, the bodies almost certainly were illegally procured;
though, whatever the populace might think and suspect, there was never
any case where there was the least evidence that the surgeon was a party
to the murder. Any surgeon who was such must have been a criminal
lunatic. The case of Dr. Knox, to be presently referred to, was the one
that excited most notice and suspicion. It was carefully inquired into,
and nothing was found against him. If there had been a _prima facie_
case, the popular feeling was so strong that the Crown authorities needs
must have taken action, but I anticipate a little.
From the latter half of the eighteenth century to the first part of the
nineteenth, the resurrectionist and the pressgang were two subjects on
which the popular imagination dwelt with a certain fascinated horror.
The resurrectionist was so much in evidence that graves were protected
with heavy iron frames (you still see one or two specimens in old
Greyfriars and elsewhere), and churchyards were regularly watched. There
is no need to set forth how the tenderest and deepest feelings of human
nature were outraged by the desecration of the last resting-place. On
the other hand, the doctors were mad for subjects. A certain enthusiasm
for humanity possessed them, too. Were they not working to relieve
suffering? There was something else: the love of daring adventure, the
romance and mystery of the unholy midnight raid had their attraction; it
was never difficult, you can believe, to collect a harum-scarum set of
medical students for an expedition. Some men, afterwards very eminent,
early distinguished themselves. Thus, the celebrated surgeon, Robert
Liston (1794-1847), was engaged in more than one of the following
adventures, the stories of which I here tell as samples of the bulk. One
Henderson, an innkeeper, had died in Leven, in Fifeshire. Two students
from Edinburgh had snatched the body and were conveying it away, when
one of them suddenly felt ill. They took refuge with their burden,
enclosed in a sack, in a convenient public-house. It happened to be the
one formerly kept by Henderson, and now in charge of his widow and
daughter. They were shown to an upper room, which contained a closed-in
box bed, so frequent a feature in old Scots houses. The sick man was
pulling himself together with brandy and what not, when a great hubbub
arose downstairs. The town officers were searching the house for stolen
property. The students were beside themselves with panic, though in fact
the officers do not seem to have searched the upstairs room at all.
However, “The thief doth fear each bush an officer.” The two lads
hastily took the body from the sack and put it in the bed, then they
bolted through the window, and were seen no more. The room as it turned
out was used by the widow as a bedroom, and it was only when she retired
for the night—I need not follow the narrative further, save to note
that the graveclothes had been made by herself!
When Liston was a student he heard from a country surgeon of an
interesting case where a post-mortem seemed desirable in the interests
of science. He and some others dressed as sailors and repaired to the
place by boat, for it was on the shore of the Firth. The surgeon’s
apprentice met them as arranged, and everything went off well. The
marauding party repaired for refreshment to a little change-house,
leaving their sack under a near hedge. Here they spent a happy time in
carousing and chaffing the country wench whom they found in charge. A
loud shout of “Ship ahoy!” startled them. The girl said it was only her
brother, and a drunken sailor presently staggered in with the sack on
his shoulders. Pitching it to the ground, he said with an oath, “Now if
that ain’t something good, rot them chaps who stole it.” Presently he
produced a knife. “Let’s see what it is,” said he as he ripped the sack
open. The sight of the contents worked a sudden change: the girl fled
through the door with hysterical screams, the sailor on the instant dead
sober followed, Liston seized the body, and all made for the boat, and
they were soon safe back in Edinburgh. Liston is the chief figure of
another adventure. He and his party had gone by boat to Rosyth to get
the body of a drowned sailor. His sweetheart, nearly distracted at her
recent loss, was scarce absent from the tomb night or day. They did
manage to get the body lifted and on board the boat, when the woman
discovered the violated grave. Her wild shrieks rang in their ears as
they pulled for the opposite shore as hard as they could, but they kept
secure hold of their prey. Another story tells of a party of tyros who
had raised the body of a farmer’s wife from Glencorse or some
neighbouring churchyard. As they dragged along it seemed to their
excited fancy that the body had recovered life and was hopping after
them! They fled with loud yells of terror, and left their burden by the
roadside. The widower was the first to discover it there next morning.
He thought it was a case of premature burial and made some frantic
efforts at resuscitation: the truth only gradually dawned upon him.
This, I venture to think, was the story that suggested to R. L.
Stevenson his gruesome tale of _The Body-snatcher_.
Yet another story tells of a certain Miss Wilson of Bruntsfield Links
who was courted by two admirers. She showed a marked preference for one,
and when he died she seemed heart-broken. The other, not content with
having the field to himself, engaged the services of a professional
body-snatcher and proceeded to Buccleuch burying-ground. Miss Wilson was
mourning at the grave; they waited till she was gone and then set to
work, and the surviving rival soon had the cruel satisfaction of knowing
that the body of the other was on the anatomical table at the
University!
I have mentioned the professional body-snatcher, and the class certainly
existed. Obviously it was formed of men of a low type, however afraid
they might be to perpetrate actual murder. Among the best known was a
certain Andrew Lees, called “Merry Andrew” by the students. He had been
a carrier between a country town and Edinburgh, and his house was near
the churchyard, which he despoiled at leisure. In after days he used to
lament the times when he got subjects “as cheap as penny pies.” It was
said he drank sixteen glasses of raw whisky daily, and that on great
occasions the glasses became pints. Various ruffians were associated
with him, one nicknamed “Moudiewart,” or mole, from his skill in the
delving part of the operation. Perhaps a line from Shakespeare was in
the mind of the nicknamer:
“Well said, old mole, can’st work i’ the earth so fast?”
More probably it was all native wit. Another was a sham parson called
“Praying Howard,” who wept and supplicated with an unction hard to
distinguish from the real article. There is no doubt these rascals
thoroughly enjoyed their knavish pranks, and they were ever on the watch
to hear of some one dying, friendless and alone; then one appeared among
a household perplexed to know what to do with the remains of a person in
whom they had no special interest. The stranger was a dear friend or
near relative of the deceased, and was only anxious to bury him with all
possible honour, and in due course a mock funeral was arranged, with
parson, undertaker, and chief mourner. The procession started for some
place in the country, but of course the real destination of the departed
was one of the Edinburgh dissecting rooms. If things went well, Andrew
and his fellows spent a night in wild debauchery in some tavern of ill
odour in every sense of the word.
At least those pranks were comparatively harmless. The dead were gone
beyond the reach of hurt, and the feelings of the living were not
outraged. As regards the rifling of graveyards, you wonder how it was so
often successful. The watchers were, however, paid hirelings, they were
frozen with superstitious terror, they were usually paralysed with
drink, and they had watched hours and nights already, and nothing had
happened. The assailants were infinitely more active in mind and body;
they had full command of cash and of all necessary appliances, and they
selected the time of their attack; more than all, they seemed absolutely
free from superstitious feeling. Yet, with it all, it is curious that no
Edinburgh doctor or student seems ever to have been put in actual peril.
I turn now to the Burke and Hare murders, which had important effects in
various directions. The locus was Tanner’s Close in the West Port,
outside the city boundary. Here Burke kept a lodging-house, and here, on
the 29th of November 1827, Donald, an old pensioner, died in debt to
Burke. Thus a needy man found himself in possession of the body of his
dead-and-gone debtor, and it seemed to him quite justifiable to fill up
the coffin with rubbish, and sell the corpse to Dr. Knox of 10 Surgeon
Square at £7,10s., a sum which seemed for the moment a small fortune.
Then the notion occurred to him or his associate, Hare, how easy to
press the life out of some of the waifs and strays that floated about
the Grassmarket and its adjacent quarters, the very lowest in Edinburgh!
These were here to-day and gone to-morrow, and if they never turned up
again who was there to ask after them or mourn their loss? I shall not
tell here the story of “Daft Jamie” and handsome Mary Paterson and the
other victims, or of how the murderers were discovered, how Hare turned
King’s evidence, how Burke was convicted, whilst his associate, Helen
Macdougal, escaped. Burke was executed amidst impressive and even
terrible marks of popular indignation, and by a sort of poetic justice,
which appealed to the popular imagination, he himself was dissected.
For us Dr. Knox is a more interesting and important figure. The thing
cast a shadow over his brilliant career, and at last his life was lost
in flats and shallows, yet he was one of the most striking figures of
his time. Though a cruel attack of small-pox in his youth had left him
blind in the left eye, and plain to the verge, or over the verge, of
ugliness, he was a special favourite with women, by his talk, by his
manner, by you know not what. According to Shakespeare, Richard
Crookback, a more evil man, surely, in every way, had the same fatal
gift. Knox was widely read and of wide culture. In a city of brilliant
talkers he was, so his biographer would have us believe, among the very
best, nay, he ranks him equal or superior to De Quincey. We are told
that he was so tender-hearted that he hated to think of experiments on
living animals; he did not believe that any real advantage was to be
gained therefrom. He certainly was possessed of true enthusiasm for
science; he was by no means a rich man, yet he spent £300 on a whale
which he dissected, and whose skeleton he secured for the museum. It was
only an amiable weakness that he was very careful in his dress and
person. His friend, Dr. Macdonald, afterwards professor of natural
history at St. Andrews, calling upon him one day, found him with his
sister Mary. She had a pair of curling-tongs in her hand, with which she
was touching up her brother’s rather scanty locks. “Ah, ah! I see,” said
Macdonald, “the modern Apollo attired by the Graces.” Knox was not
unduly disturbed by remarks of this sort. Monro’s pupils considered
themselves in the opposite camp. One of them wagered that he would put
the anatomist out of countenance. He set himself right before him in the
street: “Well, by Jove, Dr. Knox, you are the ugliest fellow I ever saw
in my life!” Knox quietly patted the impudent student on the shoulder:
“Ah! then you cannot have seen my brother Fred!” As it happened, Fred
was much the handsomer of the two, but he had been rather a thorn in the
side of the anatomist, who had shown him much kindness, and maybe Knox
was not ill pleased at the chance to give him a sly dig. His own
students doted on him, they called him Robert for short. “Yes,” said an
enemy, “Robert le Diable”; as such the people regarded him. How he
escaped death, or at least bodily injury, is a little curious; even the
students were affrighted at the yells and howls of the mob outside his
evening classroom. The lecturer pointed out that he had never missed a
single lecture, and that he was not afraid. Once the rabble burned his
effigy and attacked his house. Knox escaped to his friend, Dr. Adams, in
St. Patrick Square. He was asked how he dare venture out. He said he
preferred to meet his fate, whatever it was, outside than die like a rat
in a hole, then he threw open the military cloak that he wore and
revealed a sword, pistols, and a Highland dirk. The brutes might kill
him, but he would account for at least twenty of them first. All sorts
of legends were told about him. He had many Kaffir skulls in his museum,
and he was alleged to have explained: “Why, sir, there was no difficulty
in Kaffraria. I had but to walk out of my tent and shoot as many as I
wanted for scientific and ethnological purposes.” Knox _had_ experiences
in South Africa, but they were not of this kind. In chap books and
popular ditties his name ever went with the West Port murderers—a verse
may be given:
“Burke an’ Hare
Fell doun the stair
Wi’ a leddy in a box
Gaun tae Doctor Knox.”
Once when walking in the Meadows with Dr. Adams, Knox gave a penny and
said some pleasant words to a pretty little girl of six who was playing
there. “Would she come and live with him,” he said jestingly, “if he
gave her a penny every day?” The child shook her head. “No; you’d maybe
sell me to Dr. Knox.” His biographer affirms he was more affected by
this childish thrust than by all the hostility of the mob. He could give
a shrewd thrust himself, however. Dr. John Reid, the physiologist, had
dissected two sharks, in which he could discover no sign of a brain; he
was much perplexed. “How on earth could the animals live without it?”
said he to Knox. “Not the least extraordinary,” was the answer. “If you
go over to the Parliament House any morning you will see a great number
of live sharks walking about without any brains whatever.”
[Illustration: DR. ARCHIBALD PITCAIRN,
From an Engraving after Sir John Medina]
I have gone somewhat out of my way to complete the story of the
resurrectionist times. I return to an earlier period with a note on the
Royal Infirmary. The great evil of the body-snatching incidents was that
it brought into disrepute and odium the profession towards which the
public felt kindly and to which they have been so greatly indebted for
unpaid, unselfish, and devoted service. During nearly two hundred years
the great Edinburgh hospital known as “The Royal Infirmary” has borne
witness to the labours in the public cause of the Edinburgh doctors. The
story of its inception is creditable to the whole community. It was
opened in 1729 on a very humble scale in a small house. A charter was
granted by George II. in 1736, and on the 2nd August 1738 the
foundation-stone of a great building was laid to the east of the college
near the old High School. The whole nation helped: the proprietors of
stone quarries sent stone and lime; timber merchants supplied wood; the
farmers carried materials; even day labourers gave the contribution of
their labour, all free of charge. Ladies collected money in assemblies,
and from every part of the world help was obtained from Scotsmen settled
in foreign parts. Such is the old Royal Infirmary. When it was unable
further to supply the wants of an ever-increasing population and the
requirements of modern science, the new Royal Infirmary was founded in
October 1870 and opened in October 1879 on the grounds of George
Watson’s Hospital, which had been acquired for the purpose. The place is
the western side of the Meadow Walk, and the same devoted service to the
cause of humanity has now been given for more than thirty years in those
newer walls. But for the present we are concerned with incidents in the
lives of old eighteenth-century doctors. Dr. Archibald Pitcairne
(1652-1713), scholar and Jacobite, perhaps better known as that than as
a physician, was a well-known figure. He was buried in Greyfriars’
Churchyard under a rectangular slab with four pillars, on which there
was an inscription by the learned Ruddiman, himself a Jacobite scholar
and much in sympathy with the deceased. Pitcairne, like the rest of
Edinburgh, set great store on his wine; with an almost sublime
confidence he collected certain precious bottles and decreed in his will
that these should not be uncorked until the King should enjoy his own
again, but when the nineteenth century dawned it seemed hardly worth
while to wait any longer. Pious souls were found to restore the tomb
which, like so many other tombs in Greyfriars, alas! had fallen into
decay and disorder. They were rewarded in a way which was surely after
the master’s own heart. The 25th of December 1800 was the anniversary of
the doctor’s birth. The consent of Lady Anne Erskine, his granddaughter,
having been obtained, the bottles were solemnly uncorked, and they were
found to contain Malmsey in excellent preservation. Each contributor to
the restoration received a large glass quaintly called a jeroboam. This,
you do not doubt, they quaffed with solemn satisfaction in memory of the
deceased.
Pitcairne was far from “sound,” according to the standard of the time;
he was deist or perhaps even atheist, it was opined, and one was as bad
as the other, but he must have his joke at whatever price. At a sale of
books a copy of Holy Writ could find no purchaser. “Was it not written,”
sniggered Pitcairne, “_Verbum Deimanetin æternum_?” The crowd had Latin
enough to see the point. There was a mighty pother, strong remarks were
freely interchanged, an action for defamation was the result, but it was
compromised. I tell elsewhere of a trick played by Pitcairne on the
tryers. Dr. Black, of the police establishment, played one even more
mischievous on Archibald Campbell, the city officer. Black had a shop in
the High Street, the taxes on which were much in arrear, and the
irascible Highlander threatened to seize his “cattinary (ipecacuanha)
pottles.” Black connected the handle of his door with an electric
battery and awaited developments. First came a clerk, who got nothing
more than a good fright. He appeared before his master, who asked him
what he meant by being “trunk like a peast” at that time of day? He set
off for the doctor’s himself, but when he seized the door handle he
received a shock that sent him reeling into the gutter. “Ah,” said one
of the bystanders, who no doubt was in the secret, “you sometimes accuse
me of liking a _glass_, but I think the doctor has given you a
_tumbler_!” “No, sir,” cried Archie as soon as he had recovered his
speech. “He shot me through the shoulder with a horse-pistol. I heard
the report by —— Laddie, do you see any plood?” An attempt was made to
communicate with the doctor next day through the clerk, but the latter
promptly refused. “You and the doctor may paith go to the tevil; do you
want me to be murdered, sir?”
Practical joking of the most pronounced description was much in favour
in old Edinburgh. One Dempster, a jeweller in the Parliament Close,
after a bout of hard drinking, was minded to cut his throat. A friend,
described by Kay as “a gentleman of very convivial habits,” remarked in
jest that he would save him the trouble, and proceeded to stick a knife
into him. It was at once seen that the joke—and the knife—if anything,
had been pushed too far, and John Bennet, surgeon, was summoned in
desperate haste; his treatment was so satisfactory that the wound was
cured and the matter hushed up. The delighted Hamilton, relieved from
dismal visions of the Tolbooth and worse, “presented Mr. Bennet with an
elegant chariot,” and from this time he was a made man. _His_ ideas of
humour were also a little peculiar. In payment of a bet he gave a dinner
at Leith at which, as usual, everybody drank a great deal too much. They
were to finish up the evening at the theatre, and there they were driven
in mourning coaches at a funereal pace. All this you may consider mere
tomfoolery, mad pranks of ridiculous schoolboys, but Bennet was a grave
and reputable citizen; he was President of the Royal College of Surgeons
in 1803, and died in 1805, and in the stories that I tell of him and
others you have for good or ill eighteenth-century Edinburgh. He was a
very thin man. He once asked a tailor if he could measure him for a suit
of small clothes? “Oh,” said the man of shears, “hold up your stick, it
will serve the purpose well enough.” You can only conjecture whether the
order was in fact given, for there the chronicle stops short. There are
certain “large and comfortable words” in the _Rhyming Epistle to a
Tailor_ that would have served excellent well for a reply. Bennet had
not the wit of Burns, and _his_ reply is not preserved. You believe,
however, it did not lack strength.
[Illustration: DR. ALEXANDER WOOD,
From an Engraving after Ailison]
One of the best known surgeons of old Edinburgh was Alexander Wood
(1725-1807), whose name still survives in a verse of Byron’s. Once he
“would a-wooing go,” and was asked by his proposed father-in-law as to
his means. He drew out his lancet case: “We have nothing but this,” he
said frankly. He got the lady, however. Sir James Stirling, the Provost,
was unpopular on account of his opposition to a scheme for the reform of
the Royal boroughs of Scotland. He was so like Wood that the one was not
seldom mistaken for the other, and a tragedy of errors was well-nigh
acted. An angry mob, under the mistaken impression that they had their
Lord Provost, were dragging Wood to the edge of the North Bridge with
the loudly expressed intention of throwing him over, but when he yelled
above the din, “I’m lang Sandy Wood; tak’ me to a lamp and ye’ll see,”
the crowd dissolved in shouts of laughter.
When the great Mrs. Siddons was at the theatre it was a point of fashion
with ladies to faint by the score. Wood’s services were much in
requisition, a good deal to his disgust. “This is glorious acting,” said
some one to him. “Yes, and a d—d deal o’t too,” growled Sandy, as he
sweated from one unconscious fair to the other. Almost as well known as
Sandy were his favourite sheep Willie and a raven, which followed him
about whenever they could.
The most conspicuous figure of the eighteenth-century Edinburgh doctors
was William Cullen (1710-1790), who in 1756 was made Professor of
Chemistry in the University. One charming thing about those Edinburgh
doctors is their breadth of culture: Cullen had the pleasure of reading
_Don Quixote_ in the original. When Dugald Stewart was a lad he fell
ill, and was attended by Cullen, who recommended the great Spaniard to
the ingenious youth. Doctor and patient had many a long talk over
favourite passages. Dr. John Brown, afterwards author of the Brunonian
system of medicine, was assistant to Cullen, but they quarrelled, and
Brown applied for a mastership in the High School. Cullen could scarcely
trust his ears. “Can this be oor Jock?” quoth he.
Plain speaking was a note of those old Edinburgh medicals. Dr. John
Clark was called in to consult as to the state of Lord Provost Drummond,
who was ill of a fever. Bleeding seemed his only chance, but they
thought him doomed, and it seemed useless to torture him. “None of your
idle pity,” said Clark, “but stick the lancet into him. I am sure he
would be of that opinion were he able to decide upon his case.” Drummond
survived because, or in spite, of the operation. Lord Huntington died
suddenly on the bench after having delivered an opinion. Clark was
hurried in from the Parliament Close. “The man is as dead as a herring,”
said he brutally. Every one was shocked, for even in old Edinburgh plain
speaking had its limits. He might have taken a lesson from queer old
Monboddo, who said to Dr. Gregory, “I know it is not in the power of man
to cure me; all I wish is euthanasia, viz. a happy death.” However, he
recovered. “Dr. Gregory, you have given me more than I asked—a happy
life.” This was the younger Gregory (1753-1821), Professor of Medicine
in the University, as his father had been earlier. He was an eminent
medical man, but a great deal more; his quick temper, his caustic wit,
his gift of style, made him a dangerous opponent. The public laughed
with him whether he was right or wrong. His _History of the Western
Islands and Highlands of Scotland_ showed that he had other than medical
interests. In 1793, when the Royal Edinburgh volunteers were formed, he
became one of them, and he disturbed the temper of Sergeant Gould, who
said, “He might be a good physician, but he was a very awkward soldier.”
He asked too many questions. “Sir,” said the instructor, “you are here
to obey orders and not to ask reasons; there is nothing in the King’s
orders about reasons,” and again, “Hold your tongue, sir. I would rather
drill ten clowns than one philosopher.”
He who professes universal knowledge is not in favour with the
specialist. Gregory visited Matthew Baillie in London, and the two
eminent medicos were in after talk not entirely laudatory of one
another. “Baillie,” said Gregory, “knows nothing but physic.” “Gregory,”
said the other, “seems to me to know everything but physic.” This
Matthew Baillie (1761-1823) was a well-known physician of his time who
had done well in Edinburgh and gone south to do better still. He worked
sixteen hours a day, and no wonder he was sometimes a little irritable.
A fashionable lady once troubled him with a long account of imaginary
ills, he managed to escape, but was recalled by an urgent message:
“Might she eat some oysters on her return from the opera?” “Yes, ma’m,”
said Baillie, “shells and all.”
Robert Liston (1794-1847) began as Barclay’s assistant. Like other
eminent surgeons stories are told of his presence of mind and fertility
of resource during an operation. In an amputation of the thigh by
Russell, Professor of Clinical Surgery at the University, an artery bled
profusely. From its position it could not be tied up or even got at.
Liston, with the amputating knife, chipped off a piece of wood from the
operating table, formed it into a cone, and inserted it so as at once to
stop the bleeding and so save the patient. In 1818 Liston left Barclay
and lectured with James Syme (1799-1870) as his assistant, but in 1822
Syme withdrew and commenced to lecture for himself. His old master was
jealous. “Don’t support quackery and humbug,” he wrote as late as 1830
in the subscription book of his rival’s hospital. However, the two made
it up before the end. This is not the place to speak of the skill of one
of the greatest surgeons of his time; it was emphatically said of him
“he never wasted a word, nor a drop of ink, nor a drop of blood.”
[Illustration: PROFESSOR JAMES SYME,
From a Drawing in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery]
A contemporary of Syme was Sir William Fergusson (1808-1877). He was one
of that brilliant Edinburgh band who did so well in London; he began as
a demonstrator to Knox. In London he became President of the Royal
College of Surgeons, and the best known stories are of his later period.
The speed and certainty of his work were remarkable. “Look out sharp,”
said a student, “for if you only even wink, you’ll miss the operation
altogether.” Once when operating on a large deep-seated tumour in the
neck, a severed artery gave forth an enormous quantity of blood; an
assistant stopped the wound with his finger. “Just get your finger out
of the way, and let’s see what it is,” and quick as lightning he had the
artery tied up. There must have been something magical in the very touch
of those great operators. A man afflicted with a tumour was perplexed as
to the operation and the operator. But as he himself said: “When
Fergusson put his hand upon me to examine my jaw, I felt that he was the
man who should do the operation for me, the contrast between his
examination and that of the others was so great.”
A little earlier than these last were the famous family of Bells. Sir
Charles Bell (1774-1842) is rather of London than of Edinburgh, though
to him is ascribed the saying that “London is the place to live in, but
not to die in.” John Bell (1763-1820), his brother, was an Edinburgh
surgeon of note, and a famous lecturer on surgery and anatomy. He had a
violent controversy with Professor James Gregory, who attacked him in a
_Review of the Writings of John Bell_ by Jonathan Dawplucker. This
malignant document was stuck up like a playbill on the door of the
lecture room, on the gates of the college, and of the infirmary, where
he operated; in short, everywhere, for such were the genial methods of
Edinburgh controversy. Bell was much occupied and had large fees for his
operations. A rich country laird once gave him a cheque for £50, which
the surgeon thought much below his deserts. As the butler opened the
door for him, he said to that functionary: “You have had considerable
trouble opening the door for me, here is a trifle for you,” and he
tossed him the bill. The laird took the hint and immediately forwarded a
cheque for £150. It is worth while to note that Joseph Bell (1837-1911),
who sprang from the same family, has a place in literary fiction as the
original Sherlock Holmes.
The great name among modern Edinburgh doctors is clearly that of Sir
James Young Simpson (1811-1870), an accomplished scholar and
antiquarian, as well as the discoverer of chloroform. His activity was
incessant. An apology was made to him because he had been kept waiting
for a ferry-boat. “Oh dear, no,” said he, “I was all the time busy
chloroforming the eels in the pool.” His pietistic tendencies by no
means quenched his sense of humour. Parting from a young doctor who had
started a carriage, “I have just been telling him I will pray for his
humility.” Some one propounded the not original view that the Bible and
Shakespeare were the greatest books in the world. “Ah,” said he, “the
Bible and Shakespeare—and Oliver and Boyd’s Edinburgh Almanac,” this
last huge collection of facts he no doubt judged indispensable for the
citizen. The final and solemn trial of chloroform was made on the 28th
November 1837. Simpson, Keith, and Duncan experimented on themselves.
Simpson went off, and was roused by the snores of Dr. Duncan and the
convulsive movements of Dr. Keith. “He saw that the great discovery had
been made, and that his long labours had come to a successful end.” Some
extreme clergymen protested. “It enabled women,” one urged, “to escape
part of the primeval curse; it was a scandalous interference with the
laws of Providence.” Simpson went on with his experiments. Once he
became insensible under the influence of some drug. As he came to
himself, he heard his butler, Clarke, shouting in anger and concern:
“He’ll kill himself yet wi’ thae experiments, an’ he’s a big fule, for
they’ll never find onything better than clory.” On another occasion,
Simpson and some friends were taking chloral ether in aerated water.
Clarke was much interested in the “new champagne chlory”; he took what
was left downstairs and administered it to the cook, who presently
became insensible. The butler in great alarm burst in upon the assembled
men of science: “For God’s sake, sir, come doun, I’ve pushioned the
cook.” Those personal experiments were indeed tricky things. Sir Robert
Christison (1797-1882) once nearly killed himself with Calabar bean. He
swallowed his shaving water, which acted promptly as an emetic, but he
was very ill for some time. One of the most beautiful things in
Simpson’s story was the devotion of his own family to him, specially the
care of his elder brother Alexander. “Oh, Sandie, Sandie,” said Simpson
again and again to the faithful brother, who stood by him even on his
death-bed. To the outside world he seemed the one Edinburgh figure of
first importance. A citizen was presented at the Court of Denmark to the
King of that country. “You come from Edinburgh,” said His Majesty. “Ah!
Sir Simpson was of Edinburgh.”
CHAPTER FIVE
ROYALTY
A difficulty meets you in making Kings the subject of anecdote; the
“fierce light” that beats about a throne distorts the vision, your
anecdote is perhaps grave history. Again, a monarch is sure to be a
centre of many untrustworthy myths. What credit is to be placed, for
instance, on engaging narratives like that of Howieson of Braehead and
James V.? Let us do the best we can. Here I pass over the legends of
Queen Margaret and her son David, but one story of the latter I may
properly give. Fergus, Prince of Galloway, was a timid if not repentant
rebel. He made friends with Abbot Alwyn of Holyrood, who dressed him as
a monk and presented him with the brethren on the next visit of the
King. The kiss of peace, words of general pardon for all past
transgressions, were matters of form, not to be omitted, but quite
efficacious. Fergus presently revealed himself, and everybody accepted
the dodge as quite legitimate. You recall the trick by which William of
Normandy got Harold to swear on the bones of the saints: the principle
evidently was, get your oath or your pardon by what dodge you choose,
but at all costs get it. Alexander, Lord of the Isles, played a more
seemly part in 1458 when he appeared before James I. at the High Altar
at Holyrood, and held out in token of submission his naked sword with
the hilt towards the King. A quaint story is chronicled of James II. As
a child he was held in Edinburgh Castle by Crichton, the Lord
Chancellor. The Queen Mother was minded to abduct him; she announced a
pilgrimage to Whitekirk, a famous shrine or shrines, for there was more
than one of the name. Now a Queen, even on pilgrimage and even in
old-time Scotland, must have a reasonable quantity of luggage, change of
dresses, and what not. Thus no particular attention was given to a
certain small box, though the Queen’s servants, you believe, looked
after it with considerable care. In fact it contained His Majesty _in
propria persona_. By means of a number of air-holes practised in the lid
he managed to survive the journey. It is said his consent was obtained
to his confinement, but those old Scots were used to carry their own
lives and the lives of others in their hands, and he had little choice.
This is the James who ended at Roxburgh by the bursting of a cannon. His
son had peculiar relations with Edinburgh. In 1482 he gave the city its
Golden Charter, exalting its civic rulers, and his Queen and her ladies
knit with their own hands for the craftsmen the banner of the Holy
Ghost, locally known for centuries as the “Blue Blanket,” that famous
ensign which it was ridiculously fabled the citizens carried with them
to the Holy Land. At this, or rather against the proud spirit of its
owners, James VI. girded in the _Basilicon Doron_. It made a last public
appearance when it waved, a strange anachronism, in 1745 from the
steeple of St. Giles to animate the spirits of the burghers against
Prince Charles and his Highlanders, then pressing on the city. There it
hung, limp, bedraggled, a mere hopeless rag! How unmeet, incongruous,
improper, to use it against a Stuart! At any rate it was speedily pulled
down, and stowed away for ever. James III. fell at Sauchieburn in 1488.
It was rumoured he had survived the battle and taken refuge on the
_Yellow Carvel_ which Sir Andrew Wood, his Admiral, had brought to the
Forth. The rebel lords sent for Sir Andrew, whom the Duke of Rothesay,
afterwards James IV., mistook for his dead parent. “Sir, are you my
father?” said the boy. “I am not your father, but his faithful servant,”
answered the brave sailor with angry tears. The lords after many
questions could make nothing of him, so they let him go back to his
ship, just in time to save the lives of the hostages whom his brothers,
truculent and impatient, were about to string up at the yard-arm.
[Illustration: MARGARET TUDOR, QUEEN OF JAMES IV.,
From the Painting by Mabuse]
The reign of James IV. is full of picturesque incident. There are
stories of brilliant tournaments at Edinburgh, where he sat on a ledge
of the Castle rock and presided over the sports of a glittering throng
gathered from far and near. There are the splendid records of his
marriage with Margaret, Henry VII.’s daughter, the marriage that a
hundred years afterwards was to unite the Crowns, the marriage whose
fateful import even then was clearly discerned; and there is the tragic
close at Flodden, of which, in the scanty remnants of the Flodden Wall,
Edinburgh still bears the tangible memorials.
I prefer to note here quainter and humbler memorials. James had a
curious, if fitful, interest in art and letters. The picturesque
Pitscottie boldly affirms him “ane singular guid chirurgione.” In the
book of the royal expenses we have some curious entries. A fine pair of
teeth had an unholy attraction for him. He would have them out, on any
or no pretext. “Item, ane fellow because the King pullit furtht his
teith, xviii shillings.” “Item, to Kynnard, ye barbour, for twa teith
drawn furtht of his hed be the King, xviii sh.” History does not record
what the “fellow” or the “barbour” said on the subject, or whether they
were contented with the valuation of their grinders, which was far from
excessive since the computation is in Scots money, wherein a shilling
only equalled an English penny. The barber, moreover, according to the
practice of the time, was a rival artist, but—speculation is vain;
though it will be observed that instead of the patients feeing the Royal
physician, they were themselves feed to submit to treatment. This same
Lindsay of Pitscottie is also our authority for another story to the
full as quaint. James desired to know the original language of mankind.
He procured him two children—human waifs and strays were plentiful in
old Scotland; provided them with a dumb woman for nurse, and plumped the
three down on Inchkeith, that tiny islet in the Forth a little way out
from Leith. Our chronicler is dubious as to the result. “Some say they
spak guid Hebrew, but I know not by authoris rehearse.” The “guid
Hebrew,” if it ever existed, died with them. Nor is there any trace of a
Scots Yiddish, a compound whereof you shudder at the bare conception.
Under James V. we have the popular legend of Howieson already referred
to. James, or all tradition errs, was given to wandering in disguise
through his kingdom to see how his subjects fared or to seek love
adventures, or perhaps for both. The King of the Commons, as his folk
called him, took things as they came and life as he found it. The story
goes that he was courting some rustic damsel in Cramond village when he
was set upon by a band of enraged rivals or relatives. He defended
himself on the narrow bridge that then crossed the Almond, but spite his
efficient swordplay was like to get the worst of it when a rustic, one
Jock Howieson, who was working near at hand, came to his aid and laid
about him so lustily with his flail that the assailants fled. There was
some talk of a reward, and Jock confessed that his dearest wish was to
own the land which he tilled. The stranger, without revealing his
identity, or, rather, concealing it under the title of the Gudeman of
Ballengiech (the traditional name adopted by James in his wanderings and
derived from a road or pass at Stirling Castle), made an appointment
with his preserver at Holyrood Palace. Jock turned up in due course, and
was promised an interview with the King, whom he would recognise as the
only man with his bonnet on. Jock, with rustic humour, replied that
either he himself or his friend must be the King since they were the
only two that were covered. A grant of the land, which conveniently
turned out to be Crown property, speedily followed on the condition that
when the King came that way Jock or his descendant should present him
with a vessel of water wherein to wash his hands. “Accordingly in the
year 1822 when George IV. came to Scotland the descendant of John
Howieson of Braehead, who still possesses the estate, which was given to
his ancestor, appeared at a solemn festival and offered His Majesty
water from a silver ewer that he might perform the service by which he
held his lands.” Thus Sir Walter Scott in the _Tales of a Grandfather_.
It seems that in 1822 the proprietor was William Howieson Crawford, Esq.
of Braehead and Crawfordland. One fancies that the good Sir Walter
jogged, if one may say so, Mr. Crawford’s memory, and possibly arranged
both “the solemn festival” and “the silver ewer.” This entertaining
legend has not escaped—how could it?—sceptical modern critics. It is
shown that not for centuries after James did the story take coherent
shape, and that as handed down it can scarce have happened. What can you
say but that in some form or other it may have had a foundation in fact?
That if it is not possible conclusively to prove, neither is it possible
clearly to disprove, and finally it is at least _ben trovato_.
In setting down one or two anecdotes of James V.’s Queens I am on surer
ground. In 1537, James was married to Magdalen, daughter of Francis I.,
in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris. They reached Scotland on the
27th of May. As the Queen landed she knelt down and kissed the soil, a
pretty way of adopting her new fatherland that touched those hard Scots
as it still touches us, but on the 10th of July the poor child, she was
not complete seventeen, was lying dead at Holyrood. It was a cold
spring: the Castle was high and bleak, Holyrood was damp and low. She
was a fragile plant and she withered and faded away, for us the most
elusive and shadowy of memories, yet still with a touch of old-world
sweetness. All the land grieved for that perished blossom. It was the
first general mourning known in Scotland, and there was in due time “the
meed of some melodious tear” from George Buchanan and David Lindsay.
[Illustration: MARY OF GUISE, QUEEN OF JAMES V.,
From an old Engraving]
Before a year had passed away, to wit, in June 1538, James had brought
another mate to Scotland, a very different character, known in our
history as Mary of Guise, the famous mother of a still more famous
daughter, Mary Queen of Scots. James V.’s widow was Queen Regent during
most of the minority of her child, and she held her own with unfailing
courage and ability. If she tricked and dodged she was like everybody
else. In that bitter fight neither Catholic nor Protestant were
over-scrupulous; she was on the unpopular and finally on the losing
side, but she fought as steadfastly and stoutly for what gods she had as
Knox himself, and she was not one of the royal authors. Her story is
told for us mainly by her enemies, and chief of all by John Knox, the
most deadly among them.
In 1556 he addressed a letter to her, by desire of the Congregation,
exhorting her to renounce the errors of Rome; she handed this to Beaton,
Bishop of Glasgow. “Please you, my Lord, to read a pasquil.” Knox, a
humorist himself, was peculiarly sensitive to scornful irony, and of
that two of his contemporaries had a peculiar gift, the Queen Regent,
Mary of Guise, and the Secretary, Maitland of Lethington. He never
forgot nor forgave these thrusts, and he cordially hated both. This does
not justify his vicious and one-sided account of the death-bed of this
Royal lady in 1560: “God, for his greit mercyis saik, red us frome the
rest of the Guysiane blude. Amen. Amen.” Such were the folk of the time.
In 1560 the Congregation made an attack on Leith, which was held by the
French. They failed: the French, Knox tells us, stripped the slain and
laid them along the wall. When the Regent looked across the valley at
this strange decoration she could not contain herself for joy, and said,
“Yonder are the fairest tapestrie that ever I saw. I wald that the haill
feyldis that is betwix this place and yon war strowit with the same
stuffe.” I am quite ready to believe this story. On both sides death did
not extinguish hatred, not even then was the enemy safe from insult.
Does not Knox himself tell us with entire approval how his party refused
the dead Regent the rights of her church, and how the body was “lappit
in a cope of lead and keipit in the Castell” for long weary months till
it could be sent to France, where the poor ashes were at length laid to
rest in due form?
Whatever the creed of either side, both in practice firmly held that
Providence was on the side of big battalions. Almost of necessity the
Regent was continually scheming for troops and possession of castles and
so forth. Some quaint anecdotes are told of her dealings with Archibald,
sixth Earl of Angus, grandson of old “Bell the Cat,” and gifted like him
with power of emphatic utterance. Angus had married, in 1514, Margaret,
the widow of James IV. For some time he was supreme in Scotland and was
at the lowest a person to be reckoned with. In his passages of wit with
the Regent she comes off second best, but then again the account is by
Hume of Godscroft, historian and partisan of the house of Douglas. The
time had not yet come for Kings to subsidise letters. Once Mary told
Angus that she proposed to create the Earl of Huntly, his rival, a duke.
“By the might of God”—his oath when angry—“then I will be a drake.” He
was punning on duke, which is Scots for duck, and meant to say that he
would still be the greater, though possibly the Queen required a
surgical operation before she understood. Once he came to pay his
compliments to her in Edinburgh at the head of a thousand horsemen. She
angrily reproved him for breach of the proclamation against noblemen
being so attended; but Angus had his answer ready. “The knaves will
follow me. Gladly would I be rid of them, for they devour all my beef
and my bread, and much, Madam, should I be beholden to you, if you could
tell me how to get quit of them.” Again, when she unfolded to him a plan
for a standing army, he promptly said, “We will fight ourselves better
than any hired fellows,” she could hardly reply that it was against
disturbing forces like his own that she longed for a defence. She
proposed to garrison Tantallon, that strong fortress of the Douglas
which still rises, mere shell though it be, in impressive ruin on the
Lothian coast opposite the Bass Rock. Angus had his goshawk on his
wrist, and was feeding it as he talked with the Queen, and one notes
that it seemed quite proper for nobles to go about so accompanied. He
made as if he addressed the bird, “Greedy gled, greedy gled, thou hast
too much already, and yet desirest more”: the Queen chose not to take
the obvious hint, but persisted. Angus boldly faced the question. “Why
not, Madam? Ah yes, all is yours, but, Madam, I must be captain of your
muster and keeper of Tantallon.” Not that these epigrams altered the
situation, rather they expressed it. Even in the hostile narrative your
sympathies are sometimes on the side of Mary of Guise. In 1558 a calf
with two heads was shown to her, apparently as a portent of calamity,
like the _bos locutus est_ of Livy, but what it exactly meant no one
could say. “She scripped and said it was but a common thing,” in which,
at any rate, she has the entire approval of the modern world.
[Illustration: MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS,
From the Morton Portrait]
Her daughter Mary gave Edinburgh the most exciting, romantic,
interesting, and important time in the city’s annals. It was scarcely
six years in all (19th August 1561-16th June 1567), but those were
crowded years: the comparatively gay time at first; the marriage with
Darnley; the assassination of Rizzio; the murder of Darnley; her seizure
by Bothwell; her marriage to Bothwell; the surrender of Carberry, with
her departure for Loch Leven. I scarce know what to select. On 15th
April 1562 Randolph writes: “The Queen readeth daily after her dinner,
instructed by a learned man, Mr. George Buchanan, somewhat of Livy.” You
wish it had been Virgil, because you are sure scholar and pupil had
tried the _Sortes Virgilianæ_ with results even more pregnant than
happed to Mary’s grandson Charles I., at Oxford, in the time of the
civil wars, and the mere mention of George Buchanan is fateful. He, at
any rate, was an earnest and high-minded man, and he employed all the
grace of his Latin muse to say delightful things about her on more than
one occasion, and he had, in after years, every term of invective to
hurl at her also in Latin, but prose this time, and he felt himself
justified in both. The modern point of view which would find her almost
certainly guilty of being an accessary before the fact to the slaughter
of Darnley, that would also find that the circumstances were so
peculiar, that she was by no means altogether blameworthy, was not the
conception of her own day. She was guilty, and therefore a monster of
wickedness; or she was innocent, and therefore a martyr: those are the
sharply opposed views. It was not an age of compromise or judicial
balance. Take another incident. Rizzio’s murder was on 9th March 1566.
Immediately after she won over Darnley, mixed up with the affair as he
had been. The pair escaped from Holyrood in the midnight hours, through
the burial vaults and tombs of the palace. Darnley made some sudden and
half-involuntary reference to the freshly-turned grave of Rizzio that
lay right in their path. Mary gripped his arm and vowed, in what must
have been a terrible whisper, that ere a year had passed “a fatter than
he should lie as low.” Kirk-o’-field was on 10th February 1567.
I prefer here to deal with trivialities, not tragedies. How curiously
from the first she occupied the thoughts of men: ere she was a month old
grave statesmen were busy match-making! In 1558 she married the Dauphin,
afterwards Francis II. When the news came to Edinburgh it was felt that
some celebration was necessary. “Mons Meg was raised forth from her
lair” and fired once. The bullet was found on Wardie Muir, two miles
off, and bought back by a careful Government to serve another occasion.
We are told the cost of the whole affair was ten shillings and eight
pence, no doubt Scots currency, and without any doubt at all the most
frugal merry-making in history. I will relate this other comic interlude
of the night of her arrival at Holyrood. Knox tells the story of her
landing with his never-failing graphic force: the thick and dark mist
that covered the earth, a portent of the evil days to come, “the fyres
of joy” that blazed through it all, “and a company of the most honest
with instruments of musick and with musitians gave their salutationis at
hir chamber wyndo. The melody (as she alledged) lyked hir weill and she
willed the same to be contineued some nightis after.” Knox is a little
doubtful as to the sincerity of her thanks. Brantôme was of the Queen’s
company, and the gay Frenchman gives us a very different account of the
proceedings. “There came under her window five or six hundred rascals of
that town, who gave her a concert of the vilest fiddles and little
rebecs, which are as bad as they can be in that country, and accompanied
them with singing Psalms, but so miserably out of time and concert that
nothing could be worse. Ah, what melody it was! What a lullaby for the
night!” One of the Queen’s Maries remembered and applied a favourite
text of Montlin, Bishop of Valence, on which they had heard more than
one sermon: “Is any merry, let him sing Psalms.” If she showed herself a
Scot by her Biblical quotation, you guess she revealed her French
upbringing in an infinitely expressive shrug and grimace; but for that
night even Mary’s spirit was broken. She found no place for mirth and
could scarce refrain from tears, yet she had the courage on that and
other mornings gracefully to thank the musicians; only she shifted her
bedroom to the floor above, and slept, you believe, none the worse for
the change. The drop in material comfort, not to speak of anything else,
must have been enormous, from gay, wealthy, joyous France to this
austere, poverty-stricken land and people. Did not some mad scheme for
instant return move through her brain? No, for after all she was a Queen
and a Stuart, and it is mere commonplace to say that she never failed to
confront her fate.
It were easy and useless to dwell on the glaring contrasts in character
between Mary and her son James, between the most tragically unfortunate
and the most prosaically fortunate of the Stuarts. Such contrasts
between the character and fate of parent and child are not uncommon in
daily life. The first day of James on earth was memorable for the
dramatic meeting of his father and mother. He was born in Edinburgh
Castle, in the little room that is shown you there, between nine and ten
on the morning of Wednesday, 19th June 1566. About two in the afternoon
Darnley came to see his child. Like everybody else in Edinburgh, he had
known of the event for hours, since a few minutes after the birth heavy
guns, almost at Mary’s bedside and without a word of protest from the
courageous woman, had roared out their signal to the capital that
well-nigh went mad on the instant with joy and pride. The nurse put the
child into Darnley’s arms. “My Lord,” said Mary simply and solemnly,
“God has given you and me a son.” Then she turned to Sir William
Stanley: “This is the son who I hope shall first unite the two kingdoms
of Scotland and England.” The Englishman said something courteous about
the prior rights of Mary and Darnley, and then Mary wandered off into
the Rizzio business only three months before. What would have happened
if they had then killed her? You fancy the colour went and came in
Darnley’s face. “These things are all past,” he muttered. “Then,” said
the Queen, “let them go.” As James grew up he became well-nigh the most
eminent of royal and noble authors, and that strange mixture of
erudition, folly, wisdom, and simplicity which marks him as one of the
oddest characters in history. He was great in nicknames and phrases, and
the nicknames stuck and the phrases are remembered. “Tam o’ the Coogate”
for the powerful Earl of Haddington; “Jock o’ the Sclates” for the Earl
of Mar, because he, when James’s fellow-pupil, had been entrusted by
George Buchanan with a slate thereon to note James’s little peccadilloes
in his tutor’s absence; better than all, “Jingling Geordie” for George
Heriot the goldsmith. What a word picture that gives you of the
prosperous merchant prince who possibly hinted more than once that he
could an he would buy up the whole Court! That well-known story of
ostentatious benevolence can hardly be false. George visited James at
Holyrood and found him over a fire of cedar wood, and the King had much
to say of the costly fuel; and then the other invited him to visit his
booth hard by St. Giles’, where he was shown a still more costly fire of
the Royal bonds or promissory notes, as we might call them in the
language of to-day. We know that the relations between the banker and
his Royal customer were of the very best; and how can we say anything
but good of Heriot when we think of that splendid and beautiful
foundation that to-day holds its own with anything that modern Edinburgh
can show? As for his colloquial epigrams, there is the famous account of
David I. as a “sair sanct” for the Crown; his humorous and not
altogether false statement, when the Presbyterian ministers came to
interview him, “Set twal chairs, there be twal kings coming”; his
description—at an earlier date, of course—of the service of the
Episcopal Church as “an evil said mass in English wanting nothing but
the liftings”; his happy simile apropos of his visit to Scotland in 1617
of his “salmon-lyke” instinct—a great and natural longing to see “our
native soil and place of our birth and breeding.” No wonder he got a
reputation for wisdom! A quaint anecdote dates his renown in that regard
from a very early period indeed. On the day after his birth the General
Assembly met, and were much concerned as to the religious education of
the infant. They sent Spottiswoode, “Superintendant of Lothian,” to
interview the Queen on the subject. He urged a Protestant baptism and
upbringing for the child. Mary gave no certain answer, but brought in
her son to show to the churchmen, and probably also as the means of
ending an embarrassing interview. Spottiswoode, however, repeated his
demand, and with pedantic humour asked the infant to signify his
consent. The child babbled something, which one of the hearers at least
took for “Amen,” and “Master Amen” was the Court-name for Spottiswoode
ever after.
James deserved to be called the British Solomon, but then how did it
happen that the man had such a knack of making himself ridiculous? On
the night of the 23rd July 1593 the madcap Francis Earl of Bothwell made
one of his wild raids on Holyrood. James came out of his chamber in
terror and disorder, “with his breeks in his hand”; trembling, he
implored the invaders to do him no harm. “No, my good bairn,” said
Bothwell with insolence (the King was twenty-seven at the time); and as
a matter of fact no harm was done him. Fate tried the mother of James
and the son of James far more severely than it ever tried James himself,
and Mary Stuart and Charles the First managed things so ill that each in
the end had to lay the head on the block, but no one ever spoke to them
like that, and they never made themselves ridiculous. Mary was never
less than Queen and Charles was never less than King, and each played
the last scene so superbly as to turn defeat and ruin into victory and
honour, and if you say it was birth and breeding and the heritage of
their race how are you to account for the odd figure in between? Here is
another trivial anecdote. On Tuesday, 5th April 1603 James set forth
southward to take possession of his English throne. As Robert Chambers
points out, here was the most remarkable illustration of Dr. Johnson’s
remark that the best prospect a Scotsman ever saw was the high road to
England. Not very far from Holyrood stood splendid Seton Palace, and as
James and his folk drew near they crossed another procession. It was the
funeral train of the first Earl of Winton, who had been an attached
adherent of James’s mother. One of the Queen’s Maries was a Seton, and
James, as was right and proper, made way and halted till the procession
of the mightier King Death had passed. He perched himself in the
meantime on the garden wall, and you think of him hunched up there
“glowering” at the proceedings. On his return to Scotland James spent at
Seton Palace his second night after crossing the Tweed, and it was here
he received Drummond of Hawthornden’s poem of _Forth Feasting_. There
was unbounded popular rejoicing, though not without an occasional
discordant note; for the Presbyterian Scot was terribly suspicious. It
happened that one of the royal guards died during the visit. He was
buried with the service of the English Church, read by a surpliced
clergyman; there was an unseemly riot, and the parson if he escaped hard
knocks got the hardest of words. He was William Laud, afterwards
Archbishop of Canterbury. Let me end those stories of James with one of
a lighter character. I have spoken of James’s schoolfellow, the Earl of
Mar. He was left a widower, his wife Ann Drummond having died after
giving birth to a son. An Italian magician had shown him, as in a glass
darkly, the face of his second spouse. He identified the figure as that
of Lady Mary Stuart of the Lennox family, who would have none of him;
for the Drummond baby would be Earl of Mar, whilst hers would only be
Mr. Erskine. Jock o’ the Sclates was so mortified at the refusal that he
took to his bed, and seemed like to make a mortal though ridiculous
exit; but the King came to encourage him. “By God, ye shanna dee, Jock,
for ony lass in a’ the land!” In due course James brought about the
marriage, which turned out well for all concerned.
The Kings after James had but a very remote and chance connection with
Edinburgh. There are golfing anecdotes of Charles I. and James II., and
there is not even that about Charles II. Charles I. when in Edinburgh
was fond of the Royal game on the links at Leith, then the favourite
ground for the sport. It was whilst so engaged he heard the news of the
massacre in Ireland, and not unnaturally he threw down his club and
hastily quitted the links. The anecdote of James II. is of a more
detailed character, for Golfer’s Land, grim and battered, still stands
in the Canongate. When James held court at Holyrood as Duke of York, he
was given to golfing on the links. He had a match with two English
noblemen, his fellow-player in the foursome being John Patterson, a poor
shoemaker in the Canongate, but a superb golfer. If you don’t know the
story, at least you anticipate the result. The Englishmen were
shamefully beaten, and the stake being too small game for Royalty,
Patterson netted the proceeds, with which he built Golfer’s Land. The
learned Dr. Pitcairne adorned it with a Latin inscription, and all you
can say is you hope the legend is true. Another story of James tells how
one of the soldiers on duty at Holyrood, mortal tired or perhaps mortal
drunk, was found asleep at his post. Grim old Tom Dalzell was in charge,
and he was not the man to overlook such an offence, but marked out the
culprit for instant execution. The Duke, however, intervened and saved
the man’s life. I am glad to tell those stories of James, who as a rule
fares so ill at the hands of the historians.
Although I have said nothing of Charles II., his statue perhaps deserves
a word. It stands in Parliament Square, between St. Giles’ and the
Parliament House. The local authorities were once minded to set up the
stone image of Cromwell in that same place, indeed the stone had been
got ready when the Restoration changed the current of their thoughts,
and after an interval of twenty-five years they put up one to Charles
II. instead, the only statue that old Edinburgh for many a long day
possessed.
Kings and Queens came and went for the better part of a century, but
none of them came to Edinburgh, or even to Scotland, for you cannot
count the fugitive visit of the Old Pretender as anything at all. It was
not till Prince Charles Edward Stuart made the memorable descent on the
capital in the ’45 that I can again take up the easy thread of my
narrative. Here anecdotes are abundant, but the most too well known for
quotation: they tell of the cowardice of the citizens and the daring
simplicity of the Highlanders. The capture of the city was without
opposition. A burgher taking a walk saw a Highlander astride a gun, and
said to him that surely he did not belong to the troops that were there
yesterday. “Och no,” quoth the Celt, “she pe relieved.” According to all
accounts, the invading army behaved well. An exception was the man who
presented a musket at the head of a respectable shopkeeper, and when the
trembling cit asked what he wanted, replied, “A bawbee.” This modest
request being instantly complied with, they parted the best of friends.
The demands of others did not rise beyond a pinch of snuff, and one
hopes it was not required in an equally heroic manner. The day of
Charles’s entry, his father as King and himself as Regent were
proclaimed at the Cross by the heralds in their antique garb and with
their antique rites, and conspicuous among the attendant throng was the
beautiful Mrs. Murray of Broughton on horseback with a drawn sword,
covered with white cockades, the conspicuous Stuart emblem. With her it
was the one supreme moment of a life that was presently obscured in
shadows. Her husband’s reputation as traitor still lay in the future.
You remember how Scott’s father, Whig as he was, dashed to pieces the
cup that Murray had touched, so that neither he nor any of his family
might ever use it? At that same Cross, not many months after, the
standards of the clans and of Charles were burnt by the hangman and Tron
men or sweeps by the order of Cumberland, the least generous of foes. In
the crowd there must have been many who had gazed on the other
ceremonial. What a complete circuit fortune’s wheel had made! Amidst the
festivities of Holyrood those things were not foreseen. Then came
Prestonpans, with many a legend grave or gay. I will not repeat in
detail those almost threadbare stories of the Highland estimation of the
plunder: how that chocolate was Johnny Cope’s salve, and the watch that
stopped was a beast that had died, and a pack-saddle was a fortune, and
so forth. Here is perhaps the quaintest anecdote of misadventure. Two
volunteers, one of them destined to the bench as Lord Gardenstone, were
detailed to watch the precincts of Musselburgh. They were both convivial
“cusses”: they knew every tavern in Edinburgh and every change-house in
the far and near suburbs: they remembered a little den noted for its
oysters and its sherry—possibly an odd combination, but the stomachs of
young Edinburgh were invincible. At any rate, they made themselves
merry. But there were limbs of the law, active or “stickit,” on the
other side, and one as he prowled about espied the pair, and seized them
without difficulty as they tried to negotiate that narrow bridge which
still crosses the Esk at Musselburgh. They were dragged to the camp at
Duddingston, and were about to be hanged as spies, but escaped through
the intercession of still another lawyer, Colquhoun Grant, an adherent
of the Prince. This same Colquhoun was a remarkable person, and
distinguished himself greatly at Preston. He seized the horse of an
English officer and pursued a great body of dragoons with awe-inspiring
Gaelic curses. On, on went the panic-stricken mob, with Grant at their
heels so close that he entered the Netherbow with them, and was just
behind them at the Castle. He stuck his dirk into the gate, rode slowly
down the High Street, ordered the Netherbow Port to be thrown open, and
the frightened attendants were only too glad to see the back of him. In
after years he beat his sword to a ploughshare, or rather a pen, and
became a highly prosperous Writer to the Signet of Auld Reekie. It is
related by Kay that Ross of Pitcarnie, a less fortunate Jacobite, used
to extract “loans” from him by artful references to his exploits at
Preston and Falkirk. The cowardice of the regular troops is difficult to
account for, but there was more excuse for the volunteers, of whom many
comical stories are told. The best is that of John Maclure the
writing-master, who wound a quire of writing-paper round his manly
bosom, on which he had written in his best hand, with all the
appropriate flourishes, “This is the body of John Maclure, pray give it
a Christian burial.” However, when once the Prince was in, the citizens
preserved a strict neutrality. Of sentimental Jacobites like Allan
Ramsay we hear not a word: they lay low and said nothing. What could
they do but wait upon time? One clergyman was bold enough, at any rate,
namely, the Rev. Neil M‘Vicar, incumbent of St. Cuthbert’s, who kept on
praying for King George during the whole time of the Jacobite
occupation: “As for this young man who has come among us seeking an
earthly crown, we beseech Thee that he may obtain what is far better, a
heavenly one.” Archibald Stewart was then Provost, and he was said to
have Jacobite leanings. His house was by the West Bow, and here, it was
rumoured, he gave a secret banquet to Charles and some of his chiefs.
The folk in the Castle heard of this, and sent down a party of soldiers
to seize the Prince. Just as they were entering the house the guests
disappeared into a cabinet, which was really an entrance to a trap
stair, and so got off. The story is obviously false. Stewart was
afterwards tried for neglect of duty during the Rebellion, and the
proceedings, which lasted an inordinate time—the longest then on
record—resulted in his triumphant acquittal. The Government had never
omitted a damning piece of evidence like this—if the thing had
happened. One comic and instructive touch will pave my way to the next
episode. A certain Mrs. Irvine died in Edinburgh in the year 1837 at the
age of ninety-nine years or so, if the story be true which makes her a
young child in the ’45. She was with her nurse in front of the Palace,
where a Highlander was on guard: she was much attracted by his kilt, she
advanced and seized it, and even pulled it up a little way. The nurse
was in a state of terror, but the soldier only smiled and said a few
kind words to the child. The moral of this story is that till the
Highlanders took the city the kilt was a practically unknown garment to
the folk in the capital. Six years before Mrs. Irvine died, to wit in
1831, she saw the setting up at the intersection of George Street and
Hanover Street of the imposing statue by Chantrey which commemorates the
visit of George IV. to Scotland. This visit was from 14th August to 29th
August 1822. Sir Walter Scott stage-managed the business, and Lockhart
has pointed out how odd the whole thing was. Scott was a Lowlander, and
surely better read than any other in the history of his country, and who
better knew that the history of Scotland is the history of the Lowlands,
that Edinburgh was a Lowland capital, that the Highlands were of no
account, save as disturbing forces? Yet, blinded by the picturesque
effect, he ran the show as if the Highlands and the Highlands alone were
Scotland. Chieftains were imported thence, Scott was dressed as a
Highlander, George was dressed as a Highlander, Sir William Curtis,
London alderman, was dressed as a Highlander: the whole thing trembled
on the verge of burlesque. The silver St. Andrew’s cross that Scott
presented to the King when he landed had a Gaelic inscription! The King,
not to be outdone, called for a bottle of Highland whisky and pledged
Sir Walter there and then, and Sir Walter begged the glass that had
touched the Royal lips, for an heirloom no doubt. He got it, thrust it
into his coat-tail pocket, and presently reduced it to fragments in a
moment of forgetfulness by sitting on it. There, fortunately, the thing
was left: they did not try to reconstitute it, after the fashion of the
Portland Vase in the British Museum. George IV. had a fine if somewhat
corpulent figure (Leigh Hunt wrote to Archibald Constable at an earlier
period that he had suffered imprisonment for not thinking the Prince
Regent slender and laudable), and no doubt in the Highland garb he made
a “very pretty man,” but the knight from London was even more corpulent,
Byron sings in _The Age of Bronze_:
“He caught Sir William Curtis in a kilt,
While thronged the Chiefs of every Highland clan
To hail their brother Vich Ian an Alderman.”
“Faar’s yer speen?” (Where’s your spoon?) said an envious and mocking
Aberdeen bailie, to the no small discomfiture of the London knight, as
he strutted to and fro, believing that his costume was accurate in every
detail. Lockhart hints that possibly Scott invented the story to soothe
the King’s wounded feelings. On the 24th of August the Provost and
Magistrates of Edinburgh entertained the King in Parliament House to a
great banquet. The King gave one toast, “The Chieftains and Clans of
Scotland, and prosperity to the Land of Cakes.” He also attended a
performance of _Rob Roy_ at the theatre. Carlyle was in Edinburgh at the
time, and fled in horror from what he called the “efflorescence of the
flunkeyisms,” but everybody else seemed pleased, and voted the thing a
great success. No doubt it gave official stamp to what is perhaps still
the ordinary English view of Scotland. The odd thing is that Scott
himself never grasped the Highland character—at least, where has he
drawn one for us? Rob Roy and Helen Macgregor and Fergus M‘Ivor and
Flora M‘Ivor are mere creatures of melodrama, but the Bailie and Mattie
and Jeanie Deans and Davie Deans and the Antiquary and Edie Ochiltree
and Andrew Fairservice and Mause and Cuddie Hedrigg are real beings of
flesh and blood. We have met them or their likes on the muir or at the
close fit, or on the High Street or in the kirk.
Twenty years passed, and a British Sovereign again comes to Scotland. On
the 1st of September in 1842 Queen Victoria and Prince Albert arrived at
Granton. They duly proceeded towards Edinburgh. The Lord Provost and
Bailies ought to have met them at Canonmills to present the keys of the
city, but they were “conspicuous by their absence,” and the Royal party
had to go to Dalkeith (like George the Fourth, they put up for the time
in the Duke of Buccleuch’s huge palace there). The local wits waxed
merry; they swore that my Lord Provost and his fellows had over-slept
themselves, and a parody of a well-known song rang unpleasantly in civic
ears:
“Hey, Jamie Forrest,
Are ye waukin’ yet,
Or are yer byles
Snoring yet?”
However, the Royal party came specially from Dalkeith on a subsequent
day, and received the keys at the Cross, and nobody even whispered
“Anticlimax!”
CHAPTER SIX
MEN OF LETTERS. PART I.
George Buchanan is the first in time as he is one of the first in
eminence of Scots men of letters. Many wrote before him; among the
kings, James I. certainly, James V. possibly, and even yet they are
worth reading by others than students. There is Gawin Douglas, the
Bishop, there is Buchanan’s contemporary, Knox, the Reformer, whose work
is classic, but they are not men of letters in the modern sense of the
term. Buchanan is. Literature was his aim in life, and he lived by it
indirectly if not directly. He is always to me a perplexing figure. How
deep was his reforming zeal, how deep his beliefs, I cannot tell. I have
read, I trust not without profit, Mr. Hume Brown’s two careful volumes
upon this great Scot, but he has not solved my doubts. The old scholar
was too learned, too travelled, too cultured to be in harmony with the
Scotland of his day; a certain aloofness marks him, a stern and heroic
rather than a human and sympathetic figure. You remember how
consistently the British Solomon hated his sometime schoolmaster.
Certain quaint anecdotes remain of their relations, but they have not to
do with Edinburgh; yet he died in the capital, and in one or two
memories that linger round those last hours you seem just at the end to
get in real touch with the man, with the human figure under the cloak.
In 1581 James Melville, the diarist, with certain friends, visited him
in Edinburgh. They found him teaching the young man that served him: A,
b, ab, and so forth. “I see you are not idle,” said one of the visitors
in ironical astonishment, but he said it was better than idleness. They
mentioned his _magnum opus_, his History of Scotland, the literary
sensation of the day, if that day had literary sensations. He stopped
them. “I may da nae mair for thinking on another matter.” “What is
that?” says Mr. Andro. “To die,” quoth he.
They went to the printer’s to have a peep at the last sheets, just
passing through the press, where they presently spied some plain-spoken
words like to be highly unpalatable at Court. Again they sought the old
scholar and spoke to him about them. “Tell me, man,” says he, “giff I
have tould the truth.” His visitors were of the same views as himself,
and they could not shirk so plain an issue. “Yes, sir,” says one of
them, “I think sae.” Then says the old man sternly: “Let it remain, I
will byde it, whatever happen. Pray, pray to God for me and let Him
direct all.” A “Stoick” philosopher, says Melville, and so he proved to
the end, which came on the 28th of September 1582, in Kennedy’s Close,
the second close to the west of the Tron Kirk, and long since vanished.
The day before he died he found that he had not enough money to pay for
his funeral, but even this, he said, must be given to the poor, his body
could fare for itself. Wisely provident for its own renown Edinburgh
gave him a public funeral in the Greyfriars Churchyard. Tradition marked
the spot for some time, and then a blacksmith put up a tablet at his own
cost, but that too vanished, and one is not certain that the learned Dr.
David Laing succeeded in fixing the true place. As we have seen, the
University of Edinburgh possesses what is believed to be his skull. When
Deacon Brodie stole the mace, this trophy did not come under his hand,
or it had surely gone too.
[Illustration: WILLIAM DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN,
From the Painting by Cornelius Janson van Ceulen]
No one could be less like George Buchanan than William Drummond of
Hawthornden, born three years after the death of the other, save that he
also was a man of letters, and that he also had intimate connection with
Edinburgh. Hawthornden is one of the beauty spots near the capital. Here
Ben Jonson paid him, in 1618-19, one of the most famous visits in all
the history of letters. The story is that Drummond was seated under a
huge sycamore tree when Jonson’s huge form hove in sight. The meeting of
two poets needs must call forth a spark of poetry.
“Welcome! Welcome! royal Ben!
Thank ye kindly, Hawthornden!”
A little suspicious, you may think! Where did Ben Jonson learn to
address a Scots laird in this peculiarly Scots fashion? After all, Ben’s
forbears came from Annandale, and who that has seen Hawthornden will
doubt here was the ideal spot for such an encounter? Drummond was a
devoted cavalier; his death was caused or hastened by that of Charles I.
He was buried by his favourite river in the neighbouring churchyard of
Lasswade. He has written his own epitaph:
“Here Damon lies whose songs did sometime grace
The wandering Esk—may roses shade the place.”
The town of Edinburgh honoured itself and the two poets by a banquet,
and in the next century Allan Ramsay honoured the pair in a more
appropriate fashion. There was once a huge pile of buildings called the
Luckenbooths, between St. Giles’ Church and the north side of the High
Street. The building at the east end, afterwards known as Creech’s Land,
from the bookseller who did business there, and who was locally famous
as the Provost and is still remembered as Burns’s publisher, was
occupied by Ramsay, and here, in 1725, he established the first
circulating library ever known in Scotland. It would have been the last
if godly Mr. Robert Wodrow and his fellows could have had their way, on
account of “the villainous, profane, and obscene books of plays” it
contained. You see they neither weighed nor minced words at the time. As
sign Allan stuck over the door the heads of Drummond of Hawthornden and
Ben Jonson.
Scots literature was altogether on the side of the Crown, or one should
rather say of the Stuarts. Who so stout a Jacobite as Allan, in words,
at any rate? In deeds it was quite otherwise: you never hear of him in
the ’45. His copious muse that could throw off a popular ballad on the
instant was silent during that romantic occupation of Edinburgh by the
young Ascanius. It was prudence that saved him. He was a Jacobite and so
against the powers that were, but he took no hurt; he was given to
theatrical speculation and he did burn his fingers over an abortive
business in that Carrubber’s Close which has now a reputation far other,
yet he came to no harm in the end, even if it be true that his
prosperous painter son had finally to discharge some old debts. We have
seen the view of the godly anent the books he sold or lent, and yet he
dodged their wrath; but I wonder most of all how he escaped a drunkard’s
death. Who knew better that grimy, witty, sordidly attractive, vanished
Edinburgh underworld of tavern and oyster-cellar—and worse? _The Gentle
Shepherd_ is all very well, and the _Tea-Table Miscellany_, with its
sentimental faking up of old Scots songs, is often very ill, though you
cannot deny its service to Scots literature; but not there is the real
Allan to be found. He minces and quibbles no longer when he sings the
praises of umquhile Maggie Johnson, who kept that famous “howf” on
Bruntsfield links.
“There we got fou wi’ little cost
And muckle speed.
Now wae worth Death! our sport’s a’ lost
Since Maggy’s dead!”
Nor is his elegy on Luckie Wood of the Canongate less hearty.
“She ne’er gae in a lawin fause,
Nor stoups a’ froath aboon the hause,
Nor kept dow’d tip within her waws,
But reaming swats.
She ne’er ran sour jute, because
It gees the batts.”
Unfortunately I cannot follow him in his lamentation over John Cowper or
Luckie Spence, or dwell on the part those worthies played in old
Edinburgh life. An’ you be curious you must consult the
original—unexpurgated. Let us quote our Allan on at least a quotable
topic.
“Then fling on coals and ripe the ribs,
And beek the house baith but and ben,
That mutchkin stoup it hauds but dribs,
Then let’s get in the tappit hen.
Good claret best keeps out the cauld,
And drives away the winter sune;
It makes a man baith gash and bauld,
And heaves his saul beyond the mune.”
Among drinking-songs it would be hard to beat these lines for vigour.
Did he quaff as heartily as he sang? I think not, probably his comrades
shouted “pike yer bane” to no purpose (he would have translated it to an
English admirer as “no heel taps”) to this little “black-a-vised” man
with his nightcap for head-dress, and his humorous, contented,
appreciative smile. The learned Thomas Ruddiman, his fellow-townsman and
fellow-Jacobite, used to say “The liquor will not go down” when urged to
yet deeper potations; perhaps Allan escaped with some such quip, at
least there is no touch of dissipation about his life, nay, a
well-founded reputation for honest, continuous, and prosperous industry.
In the end he built that famous house on the Castle Hill, called, from
its quaint shape, the “Goose Pie.” “Indeed, Allan, now that I see you in
it I think the term is very properly applied,” said Lord Elibank. The
joke was obvious and inevitable, but for all that rather pointless,
unless it be that Ramsay affected a little folly now and then to escape
envy or a too pressing hospitality. However, he lived reputably, died a
prosperous citizen, and his is one of the statues you see to-day in the
Princes Street Gardens.
Although Buchanan was one of the greatest scholars of his time in
Europe, he was not the founder of a race in minute points of classical
scholarship, especially in correct quantities of Latin syllables.
Scotland was long lacking, perhaps the reason was the want of rich
endowments, but Dr. Archibald Pitcairne (1652-1713), the physician, the
Jacobite, and the scholar, had another reason: “If it had not been for
the stupid Presbyterianism we should have been as good as the English at
longs and shorts.” Oddly enough, the same complaint was echoed within
the national Zion itself. Dalzel, Professor of Greek and Clerk to the
General Assembly, was, according to Sydney Smith, heard to declare, “If
it had not been for that Solemn League and Covenant we should have made
as good longs and shorts as they.” Before I pass from Pitcairne I quote
a ludicrous story of which he is the hero. His sceptical proclivities
were well known in Edinburgh, and he was rarely seen inside a church. He
was driven there, however, on one occasion by a shower of rain. The
audience was thin, the sermon commonplace, but the preacher wept
copiously and, as it seemed to Pitcairne, irrelevantly. He turned to the
only other occupant of the pew, a stolid-visaged countryman, and
whispered, “What the deevil gars the man greet?” “You would maybe greet
yoursel’,” was the solemn answer, “if ye was up there and had as little
to say.”
I pass from one sceptic to another—one might say from one age to
another. Edinburgh, in the latter part of the eighteenth century,
according to Smollett’s famous phrase, was a “hotbed of genius.” When
Amyot, the King’s dentist, was in Edinburgh he said, as he stood at the
Cross, that he could any minute take fifty men of genius by the hand. Of
this distinguished company David Hume was the chief. To what extent this
historian, philosopher, sceptic, is now read, we need not inquire; he
profoundly influenced European thought, and gave a system of religious
philosophy the deadliest blow it ever received. He was a prominent and
interesting figure, and many and various are the legends about him. What
were his real religious beliefs, if he had any, remains uncertain. He
was hand in glove with “Jupiter” Carlyle, Principal Robertson, Dr. Hugh
Blair, and other leading moderates. They thought his scepticism was
largely pretence, mere intellectual bounce, so to speak; they girded at
his unreasonable departure from the normal, and indeed Carlyle takes
every opportunity of thrusting at him on this account. The Edinburgh
folk regarded him with solemn horror. The mother of Adam, the architect,
who was also aunt to Principal Robertson, had much to say against the
‘atheist,’ whom she had never seen. Her son played her a trick. Hume was
asked to the house and set down beside her. She declared “the large
jolly man who sat next me was the most agreeable of them all.” “He was
the very atheist, mother,” said the son, “that you were so much afraid
of.” “Oh,” replied the lady, “bring him here as much as you please, for
he is the most innocent, agreeable, facetious man I ever met with.” His
scepticism was subject for his friends’ wit and his own. He heard
Carlyle preach in Athelstaneford Church. “I did not think that such
heathen morality would have passed in East Lothian.” One day when he sat
in the Poker Club it was mentioned that a clerk of Sir William Forbes,
the banker, had bolted with £900. When he was taken, there was found in
one pocket Hume’s _Treatise on Human Nature_ and in the other Boston’s
_Fourfold State of Man_, this latter being a work of evangelical
theology. His moderate friends presently suggested that no man’s
morality could hold out against the combination. Dr. Jardine of the Tron
Kirk vigorously argued with him on various points of theology, suggested
by Hume’s _Natural History of Religion_. His friend, like most folk in
Edinburgh, lived in a flat off a steep turnpike stair, down which Hume
fell one night in the darkness. Jardine got a candle and helped the
panting philosopher to his feet. Your old Edinburgh citizen never could
resist the chance of a cutting remark. The divine was no exception.
“Davy, I have often tell’t ye that ‘natural licht’ is no’ sufficient.”
Like Socrates, he hid his wit under an appearance of simplicity. His own
mother’s opinion of him was: “Davy’s a fine, good-natured crater, but
uncommon wake-minded.” He had his weaknesses, undoubtedly. Lord Saltoun
said to him, referring to his credulity, “David, man, you’ll believe
onything except the Bible,” but like other Scotsmen of his time he did
not believe overmuch in Shakespeare. In 1757 he thus addresses the
author of _Douglas_: “You possess the true theatrical genius of
Shakespeare and Otway, refined from the barbarisms of the one, and the
licentiousness of the other.” Put beside this Burns’s famous and fatuous
line: “Here Douglas forms wild Shakespeare into plan,” and what can you
do but shudder? When young, he had paid his court to a lady of fashion,
and had met with scant courtesy. He was told afterwards that she had
changed her mind. “So have I,” said the philosopher. On another occasion
he was more gallant. Crossing the Firth in a gale he said to Lady
Wallace, who was in the boat, that they would soon be food for the
fishes. “Will they eat you or me?” said the lady. “Ah,” was the answer,
“those that are gluttons will undoubtedly fall foul of me, but the
epicure will attack your ladyship.” David, like the fishes he described,
was a bit of an epicure of the simplest kind. He would sup with his
moderate friends in Johnny Dowie’s tavern in Libberton’s Wynd. On the
table lay his huge door-key, wherewith his servant, Peggy, had been
careful to provide him that she might not have to rise to let him in.
After all, the friends did not sit very late, and the supper was some
simple Scots dish—haddock, or tripe, or fluke, or pies, or it might be
trout from the Nor’ Loch, for Dowie’s was famous for these little
dainties. But the talk! Would you match it in modern Edinburgh with all
its pomp and wealth? I trow not—perhaps not even in mightier London.
The story is threadbare of how he was stuck in a bog under the Castle
rock, and was only helped out by a passing Edinburgh dame on condition
that he would say the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed. More witty and more
probable, though perhaps as well known, is the following: In the last
years of his life he deserted the Old Town for the New. He had a house
at the corner of St. Andrew Square, in a street as yet anonymous. “St.
David Street” chalked up a witty young lady, Miss Nancy Ord, daughter of
Chief Baron Ord, and St. David Street it is to this day. His servant, in
a state of indignation, brought him the news. “Never mind, lassie, many
a better man has been made a saint without knowing it,” said the placid
philosopher. A female member of a narrow sect called upon him near the
end with an alleged message from Heaven. “This is an important matter.
Madam, we must take it with deliberation. Perhaps you had better get a
little temporal refreshment before you begin.—Lassie, bring this young
lady a glass of wine.” As she drank, he in his turn questioned, and
found that the husband was a tallow-chandler. How fortunate, for he was
out of candles! He gave an order, the woman forgot the message, and
rushed off to fulfil it. Hume, you fancy, had a quiet chuckle at his
happy release. He was a great friend of Mrs. Mure, wife of Baron Mure,
and was a frequent visitor at their house at Abbeyhill, near Holyrood.
On his death-bed he sent to bid her good-bye. He gave her his _History
of England_. “O, Dauvid, that’s a book ye may weel be proud o’! but
before ye dee ye should burn a’ yer wee bookies,” to which the
philosopher, with difficulty raising himself on his arms, was only able
to reply with some little show of vehemence, “_What for_ should I burn
a’ my wee bookies?” But he was too weak to argue such points; he pressed
the hand of his old friend as she rose to depart. When his time came he
went quietly, contentedly, even gladly, regretted by saint and sceptic
alike. If Carlyle girded at him, his intimate friend, Adam Smith, who
might almost dispute his claim to mental eminence, pictured him forth in
those days as the perfectly wise man, so far as human imperfections
allowed. The piety or caution of his friends made them watch the grave
for some eight nights after the burial. The vigil began at eight
o’clock, when a pistol was fired, and candles in a lanthorn were placed
on the grave and tended from time to time. Some violation was feared,
for a wild legend of Satanic agency had flashed on the instant through
the town. Hume has no monument in Edinburgh, crowded as she is with
statues of lesser folk; but the accident of position and architecture
has in this, as in other cases, produced a striking if undesigned
result. From one cause or another the valley is deeper than of yore, and
the simple round tower that marks Hume’s grave in the Calton
burying-ground crowns a half-natural, half-artificial precipice. It is
seen with effect from various points: thus you cannot miss it as you
cross the North Bridge. Some memory of this great thinker still projects
itself into the trivial events of the modern Edinburgh day.
Of Hume’s friend and companion, Adam Smith, there are various anecdotes,
more or less pointed, bearing on his oblivious or maybe contemptuous
indifference to the ordinary things of life. The best and best known
tells how, as he went with shuffling gait and vacant look, a Musselburgh
fishwife stared at him in amazement. “Hech, and he is weel put on tae.”
It seemed to her a pity that so well-dressed a simpleton was not better
looked after. No amount of learning helps you in a crowded street. The
wisdom of the ancients reports that Thales, wrapt in contemplation of
the stars, walked into a well and thus ended. Adam Smith’s grave is in a
dark corner of the Canongate Churchyard; it is by no means so prominent
as Hume’s, nay, it takes some searching to discover. When I saw it last
I found it neglected and unvisited alike by economic friends and foes.
Among Hume’s intimate cronies was Dr. Carlyle of Inveresk, whose
_Autobiography_ preserves for us the best record of the men of his time.
“The grandest demigod I ever saw,” says Sir Walter Scott, “commonly
called Jupiter Carlyle, from having sat more than once for the King of
gods and men to Gavin Hamilton, and a shrewd, clever old carle he was,
no doubt, but no more a poet than his precentor.” This last is apropos
of some rhyming of Carlyle’s as bad as rhymes can possibly be. In 1758
Carlyle and Principal Robertson and John Home were together in London;
they went down to Portsmouth and aboard the _Ramilies_, the warship in
the harbour, where was Lieut. Nelson, a cousin of Robertson’s. The
honest sailor expressed his astonishment in deliciously comical terms:
“God preserve us! what has brought the Presbytery of Edinburgh here? for
damme me if there is not Willy Robertson, Sandie Carlyle, and John Home
come on board.” He soon had them down in the cabin, however, and treated
them to white wine and salt beef. A jolly meal, you believe, for divines
or sceptics, philosophers or men of letters or business, those old
Edinburgh folk had a common and keen enjoyment of life. Certainly
Carlyle had. Dr. Lindsay Alexander of Augustine Church, Edinburgh,
remembered as a child hearing one of the servants say of this divine,
“There he gaed, dacent man, as steady as a wa’ after his ain share o’
five bottles o’ port.” Home by this time was no longer a minister of the
Church. He had thrown up his living in the previous year on account of
the famous row about the once famous tragedy of _Douglas_. He still had
a hankering after the General Assembly, where, if he could no longer sit
as teaching elder, he might as ruling elder, because he was Conservator
of Scots privileges at Campvere, but he was something else; he was
lieutenant in the Duke of Buccleuch’s Fencibles, and as such had a right
to attire himself in a gorgeous uniform, and it was so incongruously
adorned that he took his seat in that reverend house. The country
ministers stared with all their eyes, and one of them exclaimed, “Sure,
that is John Home the poet! What is the meaning of that dress?” “Oh,”
said Mr. Robert Walker of Edinburgh, “it is only the farce after the
play.”
Eminent lawyers who are also industrious, and even eminent writers, were
a feature of the time, but of them I have already spoken and there is
little here to add. Monboddo had a remarkable experience in his youth;
the very day, in 1736, he returned to Edinburgh from studying abroad he
heard at nightfall a commotion in the street. In nightdress and slippers
he stepped from the door and was borne along by a wild mob, not a few of
whom were attired as strangely as himself. It was that famous affair of
Captain Porteous, and, _nolens volens_, he needs must witness that
sordid yet picturesque tragedy whose incidents, you are convinced, he
never forgot, and often, as an old man, retailed to a newer generation.
[Illustration: JAMES BOSWELL,
From an Engraving after Sir Joshua Reynolds P.R.A.]
Like many another Scots lawyer, Lord Kames had a keen love for the land,
keener in his case because it had come to him from his forbears; but his
zeal was not always according to knowledge. One of the “fads” of the
time was a wonderful fertilising powder. He told one of his tenants that
he would be able to carry the manure of an acre of land in his coat
pocket, “And be able to bring back the crop in yer waistcoat pouch?” was
the crushing reply. He would have his joke, cruel and wicked, at any
cost. To him belongs the well-nigh incredible story of a murder trial at
Ayr in 1780. He knew the accused and had played chess with him. “That’s
checkmate for you, Matthie,” he chuckled in ungodly glee when the
verdict was recorded. This story, by the way, used to be told of
Braxfield, to whom it clearly does not belong, and one wished it did not
belong to Kames either. He spared himself as little as he did others. He
lived in New Street, an early old-time improvement on the north side of
the Canongate, and from there he went to the Parliament House in a sedan
chair. One morning, near the end, he was being helped into it, for he
was old and infirm, when James Boswell crossed his path. Jamie was
always in one scrape or the other, but this time you fancy he had done
something specially notorious. “I shall shortly be seeing your father,”
said Kames (old Auchinleck had died that year (1782), as on the 27th of
December did Kames himself); “have you any message for him? Shall I tell
him how you are getting on?” You imagine his diabolical grin and Bozzy’s
confused answer.
Beside these quaint figures Lord Hailes, with his ponderous learning, is
a mere Dry-as-dust antiquary—the dust lies ever deeper over his many
folios; of his finical exactness there still linger traditions in the
Parliament House. It is said he dismissed a case because a word was
wrongly spelt in one of the numbers of process. Thus he earned himself a
couplet in the once famous _Court of Session Garland_.
“To judge of this matter I cannot pretend,
For justice, my Lords, wants an ‘e’ at the end.”
So wrote Boswell, himself, though he only partly belongs to Edinburgh,
not the least interesting figure of our period. There is more than one
story of him and Kames. The judge had playfully suggested that Boswell
should write his biography! How devoutly you wish he had. What an
entertaining and famous book it had been! but perhaps he had only it in
him to do one biography, and we know how splendid _that_ was. Poor Bozzy
once complained to the old judge that even he, Bozzy himself, was
occasionally dull. “Homer sometimes nods,” said Kames in a reassuring
tone, but with a grin that promised mischief. The other looked as
pleased as possible till the old cynic went on: “Indeed, sir, it is the
only chance you have of resembling him.” Old Auchinleck, his father, was
horrified at his son’s devotion to Johnson. “Jamie has gaen clean gyte.
What do you think, man? He’s done wi’ Paoli—he’s aff wi’ the
land-loupin’ scoondrel o’ a Corsican. Whae’s tail do ye think he has
preened himsel’ tae noo? A dominie man—an auld dominie who keepit a
schule and caa’ed it an Acaademy!” In fact, the great Samuel pleased
none of the Boswell clan except Boswell and Boswell’s baby daughter.
Auchinleck had many caustic remarks even after he had seen the sage: “He
was only a dominie, and the worst-mannered dominie I ever met.” So much
for the father. The wife was not more favourable: “She had often seen a
bear led by a man, but never till now had she seen a man led by a bear.”
Afterwards, when the famous biography was published, the sons were
horribly ashamed both of it and of him. Bozzy has given us so much
amusement—we recognise his inimitable literary touch—that we are
rather proud of and grateful to him; but then, we don’t look at the
matter with the eyes of his relatives.
Johnson was himself in Edinburgh. You remember how he arrived in
February 1773 at Boyd’s Whitehorse Inn off St. Mary’s Wynd, not the more
famous Inn of that name in the Whitehorse Close down the Canongate; how
angry he was with the waiter for lifting with his dirty paw the sugar to
put in his lemonade; how, in the malodorous High Street, he pleasantly
remarked to Boswell, “I smell you in the dark”; how, as he listened at
Holyrood to the story of the Rizzio murder, he muttered a line of the
old ballad _Johnnie Armstrong’s last good-night_—“And ran him through
the fair bodie.” They took him to the Royal Infirmary, and he noted the
inscription “Clean your feet.” “Ah,” said he, “there is no occasion for
putting this at the doors of your churches.” The gibe was justified; he
had just looked in at St. Giles’, then used for every strange civic
purpose, and plastered and twisted about to every strange shape. Most
interesting to me is that Sunday morning, 15th August 1773, when Bozzy
and Principal Robertson toiled with him up the College Wynd to see the
University, and passed by Scott’s birthplace. The Wizard of the North
was then two years old, and who could guess that his fame in after years
would be greater than that of those three eminent men of letters put
together? In this strange remote way do epochs touch one another. No
wonder Bozzy’s relatives got tired of his last hobby, his very subject
himself got tired. “Sir,” said the sage, “you have but two topics,
yourself and me. I am sick of both.” Yet Bozzy knew what he was about
when he stuck to his one topic. After his idol was gone, what was there
for him but the bottle? It was one of the earliest recollections of Lord
Jeffrey that he had assisted as a boy in putting the biographer to bed
in a state of absolute unconsciousness. Next morning Boswell was told of
the service rendered: he clapped the lad on the head, and complacently
congratulated him. “If you go on as you’ve begun, you may live to be a
Bozzy yourself yet.” And so much bemused the greatest of biographers
vanishes from our sight.
CHAPTER SEVEN
MEN OF LETTERS. PART II.
To turn to some lesser figures. Hugo Arnot, advocate, is still
remembered as author of one of the two standard histories of Edinburgh.
No man better known in the streets of the old capital: he was all length
and no breadth. That incorrigible joker, Harry Erskine, found him one
day gnawing a speldrin—a species of cured fish chiefly used to remove
the trace of last night’s debauch, and prepare the stomach for another
bout. It is vended in long thin strips. “You are very like your meat,”
said the wit. The Edinburgh populace called a house which for some time
stood solitary on Moutries Hill, afterwards Bunkers Hill, where is now
the Register House, “Hugo Arnot,” because the length was out of all
proportion to the breadth. One day he found a fishwife cheapening a
Bible in Creech’s shop; he had some semi-jocular remarks, probably not
in the best taste, at the purchase and the purchaser. “Gude ha mercy on
us,” said the old lady, “wha wad hae thocht that ony human-like cratur
wud hae spokan that way; but _you_,” she went on with withering
scorn—“a perfect atomy.” He was known to entertain sceptical opinions,
and he was pestered with chronic asthma, and panted and wheezed all day
long. “If I do not get quit of this,” he said, “it will carry me off
like a rocket.” “Ah, Hugo, my man,” said an orthodox but unkind friend,
“but in a contrary direction.” He could joke at his own infirmities. A
Gilmerton carter passed him bellowing “sand for sale” with a voice that
made the street echo. “The rascal,” said the exasperated author, “spends
as much breath in a minute as would serve me for a month.” Like other
Edinburgh folk he migrated to the New Town, to Meuse Lane, in fact, hard
by St. Andrew Square. What with his diseases and other natural
infirmities, Hugo’s temper was of the shortest. He rang his bell in so
violent a manner that a lady on the floor above complained. He took to
summoning his servant by firing a pistol; the remedy was worse than the
disease. The caustic, bitter old Edinburgh humour was in the very bones
of him. He was, as stated, an advocate by profession, and his collection
of criminal trials, by the way, is still an authority. Once he was
consulted in order that he might help in some shady transaction. He
listened with the greatest attention. “What do you suppose me to be?”
said he to the client. “A lawyer, an advocate,” stammered the other.
“Oh, I thought you took me for a scoundrel,” sneered Arnot as he showed
the proposed client the door. A lady who said she was of the same name
asked how to get rid of an importunate suitor. “Why, marry him,” said
Hugo testily. “I would see him hanged first,” rejoined the lady. The
lawyer’s face contorted to a grin. “Why, marry him, and by the Lord
Harry he will soon hang himself.” All very well, but not by such arts is
British Themis propitiated. Arnot died in November 1786 when he was not
yet complete thirty-seven. He had chosen his burial-place in the
churchyard at South Leith, and was anxious to have it properly walled in
ere the end, which he clearly foresaw, arrived. It was finished just in
time, and with a certain stoical relief this strange mortal departed to
take possession.
[Illustration: HENRY MACKENZIE, “THE MAN OF FEELING”,
From an Engraving after Andrew Geddes]
Another well-known Edinburgh character was Henry Mackenzie. Born in 1745
he lived till 1831, and connects the different periods of Edinburgh
literary splendour. His best service to literature was his early
appreciation of Burns, but in his own time the _Man of Feeling_ was one
of the greatest works of the day, and the _Man of the World_ and _Julia
de Roubigné_ followed not far behind. To this age all seems weak,
stilted, sentimental to an impossible degree, but Scott and Lockhart, to
name but these, read and admired with inexplicable admiration. In
ordinary life Mackenzie was a hard-headed lawyer, and as keen an
attendant at a cock main, it was whispered, as Deacon Brodie himself. He
told his wife that he’d had a glorious night. “Where?” she queried.
“Why, at a splendid fight.” “Oh Harry, Harry,” said the good lady, “you
have only feeling on paper.”
Tobias Smollett, though not an Edinburgh man, had some connection with
the place. His sister, Mrs. Telfer, lived in the house yet shown in the
Canongate, at the entrance to St. John Street. Here, after long absence,
his mother recognised him by his smile. Ten years afterwards he again
went north, and again saw his mother; he told her that he was very ill
and that he was dying. “We’ll no’ be very lang pairted onie way. If you
gang first, I’ll be close on your heels. If I lead the way, you’ll no’
be far ahint me, I’m thinking,” said this more than Spartan parent. But
when you read the vivacious Mrs. Winifred Jenkins in the _Expedition of
Humphrey Clinker_, you recognise how good a thing it was for letters
that Smollett visited Edinburgh.
It is a little odd, but I have no anecdotes to tell (the alleged meeting
between him and old John Brown in Haddington Churchyard is a wild myth)
of that characteristic Edinburgh figure, Robert Fergusson, the Edinburgh
poet, the native and the lover. He struck a deeper note than Allan
Ramsay, has a more intimate touch than Scott, is scarcely paralleled by
R. L. Stevenson, who half believed himself a reincarnation of “my
unhappy predecessor on the causey of old Edinburgh” . . . “him that went
down—my brother, Robert Fergusson.”
“Auld Reekie! thou’rt the canty hole,
A bield for mony a cauldrife soul
Wha’ snugly at thine ingle loll
Baith warm and couth,
While round they gar the bicker roll
To weet their mouth.”
There you see the side of Edinburgh that most attracted him. He was no
worse than his fellows perhaps, but perhaps he could not stand what they
stood. It is said that he once gave as an excuse, “Oh, sirs, anything to
forget my poor mother and these aching fingers.” As Mr. H. G. Graham
truly says: “It was a poor enough excuse for forgetting himself.” He
used to croon over that pleasing little trifle, _The Birks of Invermay_,
in Lucky Middlemist’s or elsewhere, and dream of trim rural fields he
did not trouble to visit. I have no heart to repeat the melancholy story
of his lonely death in the Schelles, hard by the old Darien House at the
Bristo Port in 1774, at the age of twenty-four. His interest is as a
ghost from the Edinburgh underworld, you catch a glimpse of a more
vicious Grub Street. There must have been a circle of broken
professional men of all sorts, more or less clever, all needy, all
drunken and ready to do anything for a dram. What a crop of anecdotes
there was! But no one gathered, and the memory of it passed away with
the actors. Local history that chronicled the oddities of Kames or
Monboddo refused to chronicle the pranks of lewd fellows of the baser
sort. Only when the wastrel happened to be a genius do we piece together
in some sort his career. Whatever one says about Fergusson, you never
doubt his genius.
It is curious how very occasional is the anecdote of this Caledonian
Grub Street. Here is rather a characteristic straw which the stream of
time has carried down regarding a certain drudge called Stewart. One
night, homeless and houseless, he staggered into the ash pit of a
primitive steam-engine, and lay down to rest. An infernal din aroused
him from his drunken slumber; he saw the furnace opened, grimy black
figures stoking the fire and raking the bars of the enormous grate,
whilst iron rods and chains clanked around him with infernal din. A
tardily awakened conscience hinted where he was. “Good God, has it come
to this at last?” he growled in abject terror. Another anecdote, though
of a later date, is told in Lockhart’s _Life of Scott_. Constable, the
Napoleon of publishers, called the crafty in the _Chaldean Manuscript_,
is reported “a most bountiful and generous patron to the ragged tenants
of Grub Street.” He gave stated dinners to his “own circle of literary
serfs.” At one of these David Bridges, “tailor in ordinary to this
northern potentate,” acted as croupier. According to instructions he
brought with him a new pair of breeches, and for these Alister Campbell
and another ran a race, and yet this same Campbell was editor of
_Albyn’s Anthology_, 1816, to which Scott contributed _Jock o’
Hazeldean_, _Pibroch of Donald Dhu_, and better than any, that brilliant
piece of extravagance, _Donald Caird’s come again_. Perhaps the story
isn’t true, but it is at least significant that Lockhart should tell it.
One glittering Bohemian figure, though he was much greater and much
else, lights up for us those Edinburgh taverns, Johnnie Dowie’s and the
rest, those Edinburgh clubs, the Crochallan Fencibles and the others,
that figure is Robert Burns. His winter of 1786-1787 in the Scots
capital is famous. To us, more than a century after, it still satisfies
the imagination, a striking, dramatic, picturesque appearance. On the
whole, Edinburgh, not merely her great but common men, received him
fitly. One day in that winter Jeffrey was standing in the High Street
staring at a man whose appearance struck him, he could scarce tell why.
A person standing at a shop door tapped him on the shoulder and said:
“Ay, laddie, ye may weel look at that man; that’s Robert Burns.” He
never saw him again. His experience in this was like that of Scott; but
you are glad at any rate that Burns and Scott did meet, else had that
Edinburgh visit wanted its crowning glory. Scott was then fifteen. He
saw Robin in Professor Fergusson’s house at Sciennes. It was a
distinguished company, and Scott, always modest, held his tongue. There
was a picture in the room of a soldier lying dead in the snow, by him
his dog and his widow with his child in her arms. Burns was so affected
at the idea suggested by the picture that “he actually shed tears,” like
the men of the heroic age, says Andrew Lang; he asked who wrote the
lines which were printed underneath, and Scott alone remembered that
they were from the obscure Langhorne. “Burns rewarded me with a look and
a word which, though a mere civility, I then received, and still
recollect, with very great pleasure.” Scott goes on to describe Burns as
like the “douce guid man who held his own plough.” Most striking was his
eye: “It was large and of a dark cast and glowed (I say literally
_glowed_) when he spoke with feeling or interest. I never saw such
another eye in a human head, though I have seen the most distinguished
men in my time.” Whether Scott was right in thinking that Burns talked
with “too much humility,” I will not discuss. We know what Robin thought
of the “writer chiel.” The most pleasing result of his Edinburgh visit,
as it is to-day still the most tangible, was the monument, tasteful and
sufficient, which he put over Fergusson’s grave in the Canongate
Churchyard. R.L.S., by the way, from his distant home in the South Seas,
was anxious that if neglected it should be put in order. I do not think
it has ever been neglected. I have seen it often and it was always
curiously spick and span: these _vates_ have not lacked pious services
at the hands of their followers. Scott was not so enthusiastic an
admirer, but he knew his Fergusson well and quotes him with reasonable
frequency. When Fergusson died Scott was only three years old. Edinburgh
was then a town of little space, and the unfortunate poet may have seen
the child, but he could not have noticed him, and we have no record.
Just as the last half of the eighteenth century may be said to group
itself round Hume, so the first half of the nineteenth has Scott for its
central figure. I have spoken of his birthplace in the College Wynd. In
1825 he pointed out its site to Robert Chambers. “It would have been
more profitable to have preserved it,” said Chambers in a neat
compliment to Scott’s rapidly growing fame. “Ay, ay,” said Sir Walter,
“that is very well, but I am afraid that I should require to be dead
first, and that would not have been so comfortable, you know.” Thus,
with good sense and humour, Scott turned aside the eulogium which
perhaps he thought too strong. How modest he was! He frankly, and
justly, put himself as a poet below Byron and Burns, and as for
Shakespeare, “he was not worthy to loose his brogues.” His sense and
good-nature helped to make him popular with his fellows. Hogg, the
Ettrick Shepherd, was a possible exception. Scott did him good, yet
after Scott’s death he wrote some nasty things. In truth, he had an
unhappy nature, since he was somewhat rough to others and yet abnormally
sensitive. Lockhart tells a story of Hogg’s visit to Scott’s house in
Castle Street, where he was asked to dinner. Mrs. Scott was not well,
and was lying on a sofa. The Shepherd seized another sofa, wheeled it
towards her, and stretched himself at full length on it. “I thought I
could never do wrong to copy the lady of the house.” His hands, we are
told, had marks of recent sheep-shearing, of which the chintz bore
legible traces; but the guest noted not this; he ate freely, and drank
freely, and talked freely; he became gradually more and more familiar;
from “Mr. Scott” he advanced to “Shirra” and thence to “Scott,”
“Walter,” “Wattie,” until at supper he fairly convulsed the whole party
by addressing Mrs. Scott as “Charlotte.” I think, however, that Scott
was too much of a gentleman ever to have told this story. “The
Scorpion,” as the _Chaldean Manuscript_ named Lockhart, had many good
qualities, but was, after all, a bit of a “superior person.”
Scott’s connection with John Leyden was altogether pleasant, and no one
mourned more sincerely over the early death in the East of that
indefatigable poet and scholar. Leyden was of great assistance to Scott
in collecting material for his _Border Minstrelsy_. Once there was a
hiatus in an interesting old ballad, when Leyden heard of an ancient
reported able to recite the whole thing complete. He walked between
forty and fifty miles and back again, turning the recovered verses over
in his mind, and as Scott was sitting after dinner with some company “a
sound was heard at a distance like that of the whistling of a tempest
through the torn rigging of a vessel which scuds before it.” It was
Leyden who presently burst into the room, chanting the whole of the
recovered ballad. Leyden and Thomas Campbell had a very pretty quarrel
about something or other. When Scott repeated to Leyden the poem of
_Hohenlinden_, the latter burst out, “Dash it, man, tell the fellow that
I hate him; but, dash him, he has written the finest verses that have
been published these fifty years.” Scott, thinking to patch up a peace,
repeated this to Campbell. He only said, “Tell Leyden that I detest him,
but I know the value of his critical approbation.” Well he might! Leyden
once repeated to Alexander Murray, the philologist, the most striking
lines in Campbell’s _Lochiel_, adding, “That fellow, after all, we may
say, is King of us all, and has the genuine root of the matter in him.”
Campbell’s verse still lives, but our day would not place it so high. I
have spoken of Scott’s modesty, also he was quiet under hostile
criticism. Jeffrey had some hard things to say of _Marmion_ in the
_Edinburgh Review_, and immediately after dined in Castle Street. There
was no change in Scott’s demeanour, but Mrs. Scott could not altogether
restrain herself. “Well, good-night, Mr. Jeffrey. They tell me you have
abused Scott in the _Review_, and I hope Mr. Constable has paid you very
well for writing it,” which was rather an odd remark. As that Highland
blue-stocking, Mrs. Grant of Laggan, observed, “Mr. Scott always seems
to me like a glass through which the rays of admiration pass without
sensibly affecting it, but the bit of paper that lies beside it will
presently be in a blaze—and no wonder.” Scott was “truest friend and
noblest foe.” In June 1821, as he stood by John Ballantyne’s open grave
in the Canongate Churchyard, the day, which had been dark, brightened
up, and the sun shone forth, he looked up and said with deep feeling to
Lockhart, “I feel as if there will be less sunshine for me from this
time forth.” And yet through the Ballantynes Scott was involved in those
reckless speculations which led to the catastrophe of his life. His very
generosity and nobleness led him into difficulties. “I like Scott’s ain
bairns, but Heaven preserve me from those of his fathering,” says
Constable. As for those “ain bairns,” especially those Waverley Novels,
which are a dear possession to each of us, there are anecdotes enough.
[Illustration: JOHN LEYDEN,
From a Pen Drawing]
We know the speed and ease, in truth Shakespearean, with which he threw
off the best of them, yet to the outsider he seemed hard at work. In
June 1814 a party of young bloods were dining in a house in George
Street, at right angles with North Castle Street. A shade overspread the
face of the host. “Why?” said the narrator. “There is a confounded hand
in sight of me here which has often bothered me before, and now it won’t
let me fill my glass with a good will. Since we sat down I have been
watching it—it fascinates my eye—it never stops; page after page is
finished and thrown on that heap of MS., and still it goes on unwearied,
and so it will be till candles are brought in, and God knows how long
after that; it is the same every night.” It was the hand of Walter
Scott, and in the evenings of three weeks in summer it wrote the last
two volumes of Waverley (there were three in all). Whatever impression
the novels make upon us has been discounted before we have read them,
but when they were appearing, when to the attraction of the volumes
themselves was added the romance of mystery, when the Wizard of the
North was still “The Great Unknown,” _then_ was the time to enjoy a
Waverley. James Ballantyne lived in St. John Street, then a good class
place off the Canongate. He was wont to give a gorgeous feast whenever a
new Waverley was about to appear. Scott was there, but he and the
staider members of the company left in good time, and then there were
broiled bones and a mighty bowl of punch, and James Ballantyne was
persuaded to produce the proof-sheets, and, with a word of preface, give
the company the liver wing of the forthcoming literary banquet. Long
before the end the secret was an open secret, but it was only formally
divulged, as we all know, at the Theatrical Fund dinner, on Friday the
23rd February 1827. Among the company was jovial Patrick Robertson, “a
mighty incarnate joke.” When _Peveril of the Peak_ appeared he applied
the name to Scott from the shape of his head as he stood chatting in the
Parliament House, “better that than Peter o’ the Painch,” was the not
particularly elegant but very palpable retort at Peter’s rotundity. At
the banquet Scott sent him a note urging him to confess something too.
“Why not the murder of Begbie?” (the porter of the British Linen Company
Bank, murdered under mysterious circumstances in November 1806, in
Tweeddale Close, in the High Street). Immediately after, the farce of
_High Life Below Stairs_ was played in the theatre. A lady’s lady asked
who wrote Shakespeare? One says Ben Jonson, another Finis. “No,” said an
actor, with a most ingenious “gag,” “it is Sir Walter Scott; he
confessed it at a public meeting the other day.”
Most of the literary men of the time were in two camps. Either they
wrote for the _Edinburgh Review_, or for _Blackwood’s Magazine_,
occasionally for both. The opponents knew each other, and were more or
less excellent friends, though they used the most violent language.
Jeffrey was the great light on the _Edinburgh_; he was described by
Professor Wilson’s wife as “a horrid little man, but held in as high
estimation here as the Bible.” Her husband, with Lockhart and Hogg, were
the chief writers for the Magazine. The first number of that last, as we
now know it, contained the famous _Chaldean Manuscript_, in which
uproarious fun was made of friends and foes, under the guise of a
scriptural parable. They began with their own publisher and real editor.
“And his name was as it had been the colour of ebony, and his number was
the number of a maiden when the days of the year of her virginity have
expired.” In other words, Mr. Blackwood of 17 Princes Street. Constable,
the publisher, was the “crafty in council,” and he had a notable horn in
his forehead that “cast down the truth to the ground.” This was the
_Review_. Professor Wilson was “the beautiful leopard from the valley of
the plane trees,” referring to the _Isle of Palms_, the poem of which
Christopher North was the author. Lockhart was the “scorpion which
delighteth to sting the faces of men.” Hogg was “the great wild boar
from the forests of Lebanon whetting his dreadful tusks for the battle.”
It was the composition of these last three spirits, and is described by
Aytoun as “a mirror in which we behold literary Edinburgh of 1817,
translated into mythology.” It was chiefly put together one night at 53
Queen Street, amidst uproarious laughter that shook the walls of the
house, and made the ladies in the room above send to inquire in wonder
what the gentlemen below were about. Even the grave Sir William Hamilton
was of the party; he contributed a verse, and was so amused at his own
performance that he tumbled off his chair in a fit of laughter. Perhaps
the personalities by which it gained part of its success were not in the
best taste, but never was squib so successful. It shook the town with
rage and mirth. After well-nigh a century, though some sort of a key is
essential, you read it with a grin; it has a permanent, if small, place
in the history of letters. Yet Wilson contributed to the _Edinburgh_!
“John,” said his mother when she heard it, “if you turn Whig, this house
is no longer big enough for us both.” There was no fear of _that_,
however.
The most engaging stories of Christopher North tell of his feats of
endurance. After he was a grave professor he would throw off his coat
and tackle successfully with his fists an obstreperous bully. He would
walk seventy miles in the waking part of twenty-four hours. Once, in the
braes of Glenorchy, he called at a farmhouse at eleven at night for
refreshment. They brought him a bottle of whisky and a can of milk,
which he mixed and consumed in two draughts from a huge bowl. He was
called to the Scots bar in 1815, and from influence, or favour, agents
at first sent him cases. He afterwards confessed that when he saw the
papers on his table, he did not know what to do with them. But he
speedily drifted into literature, wherein he made a permanent mark. We
have all dipped into that huge mine of wit and wisdom, the _Noctes
Ambrosianæ_. You would say of him, and you would of Scott, they were
splendid men, their very faults and excesses lovable. What a strange
power both had over animals! As in the case of Queen Mary, their
servants were ever their faithful and devoted friends. Wilson kept a
great number of dogs. Rover was a special favourite. As the animal was
dying, Wilson bent over it, “Rover, my poor fellow, give me your paw,”
as if he had been taking leave of a man. When Camp died, Scott
reverently buried him in the back garden of his Castle Street house; his
daughter noted the deep cloud of sorrow on her father’s face. Maida is
with him on his monument as in life. Wilson kept sixty-two gamebirds all
at once; they made a fearful noise. “Did they never fight?” queried his
doctor. “No,” was the answer; “but put a hen amongst them, and I will
not answer for the peace being long observed. And so it hath been since
the beginning of the world.” These gifted men played each other tricks
of the most impish nature. Lockhart once made a formal announcement of
Christopher North’s sudden death, with a panegyric upon his character in
the _Weekly Journal_; true, he confined it to a few copies, but it was
rather a desperate method of jesting. Patrick Robertson, as Lord
Robertson, a Senator of the College of Justice, published a volume of
poems. This was duly reviewed in the _Quarterly_, which Lockhart edited,
and a copy sent to the author; it finished off with this mad couplet:
“Here lies the peerless paper lord, Lord Peter,
Who broke the laws of God and man and metre.”
The feelings of “Peter,” as his friends always called Robertson, may be
imagined. True, it was the only copy of the _Review_ that contained the
couplet: it must have been some time before the disturbed poet found
out. Yet “Peter” was a “jokist” of a scarcely less desperate character.
At a dinner-party an Oxford don was parading his Greek erudition, to the
boredom of the whole company. Robertson gravely replied to some
proposition, “I rather think, sir, Dionysius of Halicarnassus is against
you there.” “I beg your pardon,” said the don quickly, “Dionysius did
not flourish for ninety years after that period.” “Oh,” rejoined
Patrick, with an expression of face that must be imagined, “I made a
mistake; I meant Thaddeus of Warsaw.” There was no more Greek erudition
that night. This fondness for a jest followed those men into every
concern of life. One of Wilson’s daughters came to her father in his
study and asked, with appropriate blushes, his consent to her engagement
to Professor Aytoun. He pinned a sheet of paper to her back, and packed
her off to the next room, where her lover was. They were both a little
mystified till he read the inscription: “With the author’s compliments.”
De Quincey spent the last thirty years of his life mainly in Edinburgh.
His grave is in St. Cuthbert’s Churchyard. He seems a strange, exotic
figure, for his literary interests, at any rate, were not at all Scots.
Once he paid a casual visit to Gloucester Place, where Wilson lived. It
was a stormy night, and he stayed on—for about a year. His hours and
dietary were peculiar, but he was allowed to do exactly as he liked.
“Thomas de Sawdust,” as W. E. Henley rather cruelly nicknamed him,
excited the astonishment of the Scots cook by the magnificent way in
which he ordered a simple meal. “Weel, I never heard the like o’ that in
a’ my days; the bodie has an awfu’ sicht o’ words. If it had been my ain
maister that was wanting his denner he would ha’ ordered a hale tablefu’
in little mair than a waff o’ his han’, and here’s a’ this claver aboot
a bit mutton no bigger than a preen. Mr. De Quinshay would mak’ a gran’
preacher, though I’m thinking a hantle o’ the folk wouldna ken what he
was driving at.” During most of the day De Quincey lay in a stupor; the
early hours of the next morning were his time for talk. The Edinburgh of
that time was still a town of strong individualities, brilliant wits,
and clever talkers, but when that weird voice began, the listeners,
though they were the very flower of the intellect of the place, were
content to hold their peace: all tradition lies, or this strange figure
was here the first of them all.
In some ways it was a curious and primitive time, certainly none of
these men was a drunkard, but they all wrote as if they quaffed liquor
like the gods of the Norse mythology, and with some of them practice
conformed to theory, whilst fists and sticks were quite orthodox modes
of settling disputes. Even the grave Ebony was not immune. A writer in
Glasgow, one Douglas, was aggrieved at some real or fancied reference in
the Magazine. He hied him to Edinburgh, and as Mr. Blackwood was
entering his shop, he laid a horsewhip in rather a half-hearted fashion,
it would seem, about his shoulders. Then he made off. The editor
publisher forthwith procured a cudgel, and luckily discovered his
aggressor on the point of entering the Glasgow coach; he gave him a
sound beating. As nothing more is heard of the incident, probably both
sides considered honour as satisfied. How difficult to imagine people of
position in incidents like this in Edinburgh of to-day; but I will not
dwell longer on them and their likes, but move on to another era.
“_Virgilium viditantum_,” very happily quoted Scott, the only time he
ever saw (save for a casual street view) and spoke with Burns. One
wishes that there was more to be said of Scott and Carlyle. Carlyle was
a student at Edinburgh, and passed the early years of his literary
working life there. He saw Scott on the street many a time and earnestly
desired a more intimate knowledge. This meeting would have been as
interesting as that, but it was not to be. Never was fate more ironical,
nay, perverse. Goethe was the friend and correspondent of both, and it
seemed to him at Weimar an odd thing that these men, both students of
German literature, both citizens of Edinburgh, should not be personal
friends. He did everything he could. Through Carlyle he sent messages
and gifts to Scott, and these Carlyle transmitted in a modest and
courteous note (13th April 1828). Alas! it was after the deluge. Scott,
with the bravest of hearts, yet with lessening physical and mental
power, was fighting that desperate and heroic battle we know so well.
The letter went unanswered, and they never met. Less important people
were kinder. Jeffrey told Carlyle he must give him a lift, and they were
great friends afterwards. In 1815 for the first time he met Edward
Irving in a room off Rose Street. The latter asked a number of local
questions about Annan, which subject did not interest the youthful sage
at all; finally, he professed total ignorance and indifference as to the
history and condition of some one’s baby. “You seem to know nothing,”
said Irving very crossly. The answer was characteristic. “Sir, by what
right do you try my knowledge in this way? I have no interest to inform
myself about the births in Annan, and care not if the process of birth
and generation there should cease and determine altogether.” Carlyle
studied for the Scots kirk, but he was soon very doubtful as to his
vocation. In 1817 he came from Kirkcaldy to put down his name for the
theological hall. “Old Dr. Ritchie was ‘not at home’ when I called to
enter myself. ‘Good,’ said I, ‘let the omen be fulfilled,’” and he shook
the dust of the hall from his feet for evermore. Possibly he muttered
something about, “Hebrew old Clo”, if he did, his genius for cutting
nicknames carried him away. Through it all no one had greater reverence
for the written Word. Carlyle, for good or for ill, was a Calvinist at
heart. In the winter of 1823 he was sore beset with the “fiend
dyspepsia.” He rode from his father’s house all the way to Edinburgh to
consult a specialist. The oracle was not dubious. “It was all tobacco,
sir; give up tobacco.” But could he give it up? “Give it up, sir?” he
testily replied. “I can cut off my hand with an axe if that should be
necessary.” Carlyle let it alone for months, but was not a whit the
better; at length, swearing he would endure the “diabolical farce and
delusion” no longer, he laid almost violent hands on a long clay and
tobacco pouch and was as happy as it was possible for him to be. Perhaps
the doctor was right after all.
Up to the middle of the last century a strange personage called Peter
Nimmo, or more often Sir Peter Nimmo, moved about the classes of
Edinburgh University, and had done so for years. Professor Masson in
_Edinburgh Sketches and Memories_ has told with his wonted care and
accuracy what it is possible to know of the subject. He was most
probably a “stickit minister” who hung about the classes year after
year, half-witted no doubt, but with a method in his madness. He
pretended or believed or not unwillingly was hoaxed into the belief that
he was continually being asked to the houses of professors and others,
where not seldom he was received and got some sort of entertainment.
Using Professor Wilson’s name as a passport he achieved an interview
with Wordsworth, who described him as “a Scotch baronet, eccentric in
appearance, but fundamentally one of the most sensible men he had ever
met with.” It was shrewdly suspected that he simply held his tongue, and
allowed Wordsworth to do all the talking; a good listener is usually
found a highly agreeable person. He tickled Carlyle’s sense of humour,
and was made the subject of a poem by the latter in _Fraser’s Magazine_.
It was one of the earliest and one of the very worst things that Carlyle
ever did.
I note in passing that Peter Nimmo had a predecessor or contemporary,
John Sheriff by name, who died in August 1844 in his seventieth year. He
was widely known as Doctor Syntax, from some fancied resemblance to the
stock portrait of that celebrity. He devoted all his time to University
class-rooms and City churches, through which he roamed at will as by
prescriptive right. He boasted that he had attended more than a hundred
courses of lectures; but his great joy was when any chance enabled him
to occupy the seat of the Lord High Commissioner in St. Giles’.
One of Carlyle’s best passages is the account in _Sartor Resartus_ of
his perambulation of the Rue St. Thomas de L’Enfer, the spiritual
conflict that he waged then with himself, the victory that he won in
which the everlasting “Yes” answered the everlasting “No.” Under the
somewhat melodramatic French name Leith Walk is signified, the most
commonplace thoroughfare in a town where the ways are rarely
commonplace. Perhaps the name was suggested by a quaint incident that
befell him there. He was walking along it when a drunken sailor coming
from Leith and “tacking” freely as he walked ran into a countryman going
the other way. “Go to hell,” said the sailor, wildly and unreasonably
enraged. “Od, man, I’m going to Leith,” said the other, “as if merely
pleading a previous engagement, and proceeded calmly on his way.”
I have said the fates were kind in linking together though but for a
moment the lives of Burns and Scott, and they were unkind in refusing
this to the lives of Scott and Carlyle. You wish that in some way or
other they had allowed Carlyle and Robert Louis Stevenson to meet, if
but for a moment, so that the last great writer whom Edinburgh has
produced might have had the kindly touch of personal intercourse with
his predecessors; but it was not to be, nor are there many R.L.S.
Edinburgh anecdotes worth the telling. This which he narrates of his
grandfather, Robert of Bell Rock fame, is better than any about himself.
The elder Stevenson’s wife was a pious lady with a circle of pious if
humble friends. One of those, “an unwieldy old woman,” had fallen down
one of those steep outside stairs abundant in old Edinburgh, but she
crashed on a passing baker and escaped unhurt by what seemed to Mrs.
Stevenson a special interposition of Providence. “I would like to know
what kind of Providence the baker thought it,” exclaimed her husband.
R.L.S. had certain flirtations with the Edinburgh underworld of his
time, for the dreary respectability and precise formalism which has
settled like a cloud on the once jovial Auld Reekie was abhorrent to the
soul of the bright youth. No doubt he had his adventures, but if they
are still known they are not recorded. There is some tradition of a
novel, _Maggie Arnot_, I think it was called, wherein he told strange
tales of dark Edinburgh closes, but pious hands consigned it, no doubt
wisely and properly, to the flames; and though certain Corinthians were
scornful and wrathful, yet you feel his true function was that of the
wise and kindly, sympathetic and humane essayist and moralist that we
have learned to love and admire, the almost Covenanting writer whom of a
surety the men of the Covenant would have thrust out and perhaps
violently ended in holy indignation. I gather a few scraps. Of the
stories of his childhood this seems admirably characteristic. He was
busy once with pencil and paper, and then addressed his mother: “Mamma,
I have drawed a man. Shall I draw his soul now?” The makers of the New
Town when they planned those wide, long, exposed streets, forgot one
thing, and that was the Edinburgh weather, against which, if you think
of it, the sheltered ways of the ancient city were an admirable
protection. In many a passage R.L.S. has told us how the east wind, and
the easterly “haar,” and the lack of sun assailed him like cruel and
implacable foes. He would lean over the great bridge that spans what was
once the Nor’ Loch, and watch the trains as they sped southward on their
way, as it seemed, to lands of sunshine and romance.
[Illustration: ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON,
As an Edinburgh Student]
It was but the pathetic inconsistency of human nature that in the lands
of perpetual sunshine made him think no stars were so splendid as the
Edinburgh street lamps, and so the whole romance of his life was bound
up with “the huddle of cold grey hills from which we came,” and most of
all with that city of the hills, and the winds and the tempest where he
had his origin. He was called to the Scots bar; his family were powerful
in Edinburgh and so he got a little work—four briefs in all we are
told. Even when he was far distant the brass plate on the door of 17
Heriot Row bore the legend “Mr. R. L. Stevenson, Advocate” for many a
long day. Probably the time of the practical joker is passed in
Edinburgh, or an agent might have been tempted to shove some papers in
at the letter-box; but what about the cheque with which it used to be,
and still is in theory at any rate, the laudable habit in the north of
enclosing as companion to all such documents? Ah! that would indeed have
been carrying the joke to an unreasonable length. I will not tell here
of the memorable occasion when plain Leslie Stephen, as he then was,
took him to the old Infirmary to introduce him to W. E. Henley, then a
patient within those grimy walls. It was the beginning of a long story
of literary and personal friendship, with strange ups and downs. Writing
about Edinburgh as I do, I would fain brighten my page and conclude my
chapter with one of his most striking notes on his birthplace. “I was
born likewise within the bounds of an earthly city illustrious for her
beauty, her tragic and picturesque associations, and for the credit of
some of her brave sons. Writing as I do in a strange quarter of the
world, and a late day of my age, I can still behold the profile of her
towers and chimneys, and the long trail of her smoke against the sunset;
I can still hear those strains of martial music that she goes to bed
with, ending each day like an act of an opera to the notes of bugles;
still recall with a grateful effort of memory, any one of a thousand
beautiful and spacious circumstances that pleased me and that must have
pleased any one in my half-remembered past. It is the beautiful that I
thus actively recall, the august airs of the castle on its rock,
nocturnal passages of lights and trees, the sudden song of the blackbird
in a suburban lane, rosy and dusky winter sunsets, the uninhabited
splendours of the early dawn, the building up of the city on a misty
day, house above house, spire above spire, until it was received into a
sky of softly glowing clouds, and seemed to pass on and upwards by fresh
grades and rises, city beyond city, a New Jerusalem bodily scaling
heaven.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE ARTISTS
St. Margaret, Queen of Malcolm Canmore, has been ingeniously if
fancifully claimed as the earliest of Scots artists. At the end of her
life she prophesied that Edinburgh Castle would be taken by the English.
On the wall of her chapel she pictured a castle with a ladder against
the rampart, and on the ladder a man in the act of climbing. In this
fashion she intimated the castle would fall; _Gardez vous de Français_,
she wrote underneath. Probably by the French she meant the Normans from
whom she herself had fled. They had taken England and would try, she
thought, to take Scotland. Thus you read the riddle, if it be worth your
while. The years after are blank; the art was ecclesiastical and not
properly native. In the century before the Reformation there is reason
to believe that Edinburgh was crowded with fair shrines and churches
beautifully adorned, but the Reformers speedily changed all that. The
first important native name is that of George Jamesone (1586-1644), the
Scots Van Dyck, as he is often called, who, though he was born in
Aberdeen, finally settled in Edinburgh, and, like everybody else, you
might say, was buried in Greyfriars.
In 1729 a fine art association, called the Edinburgh Academy of St.
Luke, was formed, but it speedily went to pieces. This is not the place
to trace the art history of that or of the Edinburgh Select Society. In
1760 classes were opened at what was called the Trustees Academy; it was
supported by an annual grant of £2000, which was part compensation for
the increased burdens imposed on Scotland by the union with England.
This was successively under the charge of Alexander Runciman, David
Allan, called the “Scots Hogarth,” John Graham, and Andrew Wilson. It
still exists as a department of the great government art institution at
South Kensington. In 1808 a Society of Incorporated Artists was formed,
and it began an annual exhibition of pictures which at first were very
successful. Then came the institution for the encouragement of fine arts
in Scotland, formed in 1819. In 1826 the foundations, so to speak, of
the Scottish Academy were laid. In 1837 it received its charter, and was
henceforth known as the Royal Scottish Academy; its annual exhibition
was the chief art event of the year in Scotland, and since 1855 this
exhibition has been held in the Grecian temple on the Mound, which is
one of the most prominent architectural effects in Edinburgh. It is a
mere commonplace to say there is no art without wealth, and, as far as
Edinburgh is concerned, it is only after a new town began that she had
painters worth the naming. It is a period of (roughly) 150 years. It is
possible that in the future Glasgow maybe more important than Edinburgh,
but with this I have nothing to do. I have only to tell a few anecdotes
of the chief figures, and first of all there is Jamesone.
Whatever be his merits, we ought to be grateful to this artist because
he has preserved for us so many contemporary figures. Pictures in those
days were often made to tell a story. After the battle of Langside Lord
Seton escaped to Flanders, where he was forced to drive a waggon for his
daily bread. He returned in happier times for his party, and entered
again into possession of his estates. He had himself painted by
Jamesone, represented or dressed as a waggoner driving a wain with four
horses attached, and the picture was hung at Seton Palace. When Charles
I. came to Scotland in 1633 he dined with my Lord. He was much struck
with the painting, could not, in fact, keep his eyes off it. The
admiration of an art critic of such rank was fatal. What could a loyal
courtier do but beg His Majesty’s acceptance thereof? “Oh,” said the
King, “he could not rob the family of so inestimable a jewel.” Royally
spoken, and, you may be sure, gratefully heard. It is said the
magistrates of Edinburgh employed Jamesone to trick up the Netherbow
Port with portraits of the century of ancient Kings of the line of
Fergus. Hence possibly the legend that he limned those same mythical
royalties we see to-day at Holyrood Palace, though it is certain enough
they are not his, but Flemish De Witt’s. Jamesone was in favour with
Charles, assuredly a discriminating patron of art and artists. The King
stopped his horse at the Bow and gazed long at the grim phantoms in
whose reality he, like everybody else, devoutly believed. He gave
Jamesone a diamond ring from his own finger, and he afterwards sat for
his portrait. He allowed the painter to work with his hat on to protect
him from the cold, which so puffed up our artist that he would hardly
ever take it off again, no matter what company he frequented. We don’t
know his reward, but it seems his ordinary fee was £1 sterling for a
portrait. No doubt it was described as £20 Scots, which made it look
better but not go farther. You do not wonder that there was a lack of
eminent painters when the leader of them all was thus rewarded.
Artists work from various motives. Witness Sir Robert Strange the
engraver. He fell ardently in love with Isabella Lumsden, whose brother
acted as secretary to Prince Charles Edward Stuart. The lady was an
extreme Jacobite, and insisted that Strange should throw in his lot with
the old stock. He was present in the great battles of the ’45, and at
Inverness engraved a plate for bank-notes for the Stuart Government. He
had soon other things to think of. When the cause collapsed at Culloden,
he was in hiding in Edinburgh for some time, and existed by selling
portraits of the exiled family at small cost. Once when visiting his
Isabella the Government soldiers nearly caught him; probably they had a
shrewd suspicion he was like to be in the house, which they unexpectedly
entered. The lady was equal to this or any other occasion. She wore one
of the enormous hoops of the period, and under this her lover lay hid,
she the while defiantly carolling a Jacobite air whilst the soldiers
were looking up the chimney, and under the table, and searching all
other orthodox places of refuge. The pair were shortly afterwards
married. Strange had various and, finally, prosperous fortunes, and in
1787 was knighted. “If,” as George III. said with a grin, for he knew
his history, “he would accept that honour from an Elector of Hanover.”
But the King’s great favourite among Scots artists was Allan Ramsay, the
son of the poet and possibly of like Jacobite proclivities, although
about that we hear nothing. He had studied “at the seat of the Beast,”
as his father said, in jest you may be sure, for our old friend was no
highflyer.
[Illustration: ALLAN RAMSAY, PAINTER,
From a Mezzotint after Artist’s own painting]
Young Ramsay became an accomplished man of the world, and had more than
a double share, like his father before him, of the pawkiness attributed,
though not always truthfully, to his countrymen. He was soon in London
and painting Lord Bute most diligently. He did it so well that he made
Reynolds, in emulation, carefully elaborate a full-length that he was
doing at the time. “I wish to show legs with Ramsay’s Lord Bute,” quoth
he. The King preferred Ramsay; he talked German, an accomplishment rare
with Englishmen at the period, and he fell in, so to say, with the
King’s homely ways. When His Majesty had dined plentifully on his
favourite boiled mutton and turnips he would say: “Now, Ramsay, sit down
in my place and take your dinner.” He was a curled darling of great folk
and was appointed Court painter in 1767. A universal favourite, even
Johnson had a good word for him. All this has nothing to do with art,
and nobody puts him beside Reynolds, but he was highly prosperous. The
King was wont to present the portrait of himself and his consort to all
sorts of great people, so Ramsay and his assistants were kept busy. Once
he went on a long visit to Rome, partly on account of his health. He
left directions with his most able assistant, Philip Reinagle, to get
ready fifty pairs of Kings and Queens at ten guineas apiece. Now
Reinagle had learned to paint so like Ramsay that no mortal man could
tell the difference, but as he painted over and over again the
commonplace features of their Majesties, he got heartily sick of the
business. He struck for more pay and got thirty instead of ten guineas,
so after the end of six years he managed to get through with it, somehow
or other, but ever afterwards he looked back upon the period as a horrid
nightmare. Ramsay was a scholar, a wit, and a gentleman. In a coarse age
he was delicate and choice. He was fond of tea, but wine was too much
for his queasy stomach. Art was certainly not the all in all for him,
and his pictures are feeble. Possibly he did not much care; he had his
reward. Some critics have thought that he might have been a great
painter if his heart had been entirely in his work.
It has been said of a greater than he, of the incomparable Sir Henry
Raeburn, that the one thing wanting to raise his genius into the highest
possible sphere was the chastening of a great sorrow or the excitement
of a great passion. I cannot myself conceive anything better than his
_Braxfield_ among men or his _Mrs. James Campbell_ among women, but I
have no right to speak. At least his prosperity enabled him to paint a
whole generation, though from that generation as we have it on his
canvas, a strange malice of fate makes the figure of Robert Burns, the
greatest of them all, most conspicuous by its absence. His prosperity
and contentment were the result of the simple life and plain living of
old Edinburgh. He was a great friend of John Clerk, afterwards Lord
Eldin. In very early days Clerk asked him to dinner. The landlady
uncovered two dishes, one held three herrings and the other three
potatoes. “Did I not tell you, wuman,” said John with that accent which
was to make “a’ the Fifteen” tremble, “that a gentleman was to dine wi’
me, and that ye were to get _sax_ herrings and _sax_ potatoes?”
These were his salad days, and ere they were fled a wealthy young widow
saw and loved Raeburn. She was not personally known to him, but her wit
easily devised a method. She asked to have her portrait painted, and the
rest was plain sailing. It was then the fixed tradition of all the
northern painters that you must study at Rome if you would be an artist.
Raeburn set off for Italy. The story is that he had an introduction to
Sir Joshua Reynolds, whom he visited as he passed through London.
Reynolds was much impressed with the youth from the north, and at the
end took him aside, and in the most delicate manner suggested that if
money was necessary for his studies abroad he was prepared to advance
it. Raeburn gratefully declined. When he returned from Rome he settled
in Edinburgh, from which he scarcely stirred. His old master, Martin,
jealously declared that the lad in George Street painted better before
he went to Rome, but the rest of Scotland did not agree. It became a
matter of course that everybody who was anybody should get himself
painted by Raeburn. He seemed to see at once into the character of the
face he had before him, and so his pictures have that remarkable
characteristic of great artists, they tell us more of the man than the
actual sight of the man himself does; but again I go beyond my province.
The early life of many Scots artists (and doctors) is connected with
Edinburgh, but the most important part is given to London. Thus Sir
David Wilkie belongs first of all to Fife, for he was born at Cults,
where his father was parish minister. His mother saw him drawing
something with chalk on the floor. The child said he was making “bonnie
Lady Gonie,” referring to Lady Balgonie, who lived near. Obviously this
same story might have been told of many people, not afterwards eminent.
In fact, Wilkie’s development was not rapid. In 1799, when he was
fourteen, he went to the Trustees Academy at Edinburgh. George Thomson,
the Secretary, after examining his drawings declared that they had not
sufficient merit to procure his admission. The Earl of Leven, however,
insisted he must be admitted, and admitted he was. He proceeded to draw
from the antique, not at first triumphantly. His father showed one of
his studies to one of his elders. “What was it?” queried the douce man.
“A foot,” was the answer. “A fute! a fute! it’s mair like a fluke than a
fute.” In 1804 he returned to Cults where he employed himself painting
Pitlessie Fair. At church he saw an ideal character study nodding in one
of the pews. He soon had it transferred to the flyleaf of the Bible. He
had not escaped attention, and was promptly taken to task. He stoutly
asserted that in the sketch the eye and the hand alone were engaged, he
could hear the sermon all the time. The ingenuity or matchless impudence
of this assertion fairly astounded his accusers, and the matter dropped.
I do not tell here how he went to London and became famous. How famous
let this anecdote show. In 1817 he was at Abbotsford making a group of
the Scott family: he went with William Laidlaw to Altrive to see Hogg.
“Laidlaw,” said the shepherd, “this is not the great Mr. Wilkie?” “It’s
just the great Mr. Wilkie, Hogg.” The poet turned to the painter: “I
cannot tell you how pleased I am to see you in my house and how glad I
am to see you are so young a man.”
[Illustration: REV. JOHN THOMSON OF DUDDINGSTON,
From the Engraving by Croll]
This curious greeting is explained thus: Hogg had taken Wilkie for a
horse-couper. What Wilkie would have taken Hogg for we are not told,
possibly for something of the same.
Wilkie, as everybody knows, painted subjects of ordinary life in
Scotland and England, such as _The Village Festival_, _Rent Day_, _The
Penny Wedding_, and so forth. In the prime of life he went to Spain, and
was much impressed with the genius of Velasquez, then little known in
this country. He noticed a similarity to Raeburn, perhaps that peculiar
directness in going straight to the heart of the subject, that putting
on the canvas the very soul of the man, common to both painters. The
story goes that when in Madrid he went daily to the Museo del Prado, set
himself down before the picture _Los Borrachos_, spent three hours
gazing at it in a sort of ecstasy, and then, when fatigue and admiration
had worn him out, he would take up his hat and with a deep sigh leave
the place for the time.
Another son of the manse is more connected with Edinburgh than ever
Wilkie was, and this is the Rev. John Thomson, known as Thomson of
Duddingston, from the fact that he was parish minister there from 1801
till his death in 1840. His father was incumbent of Dailly in Ayrshire,
and here he spent his early years. He received the elements of art from
the village carpenter—at least, so that worthy averred. He was wont to
introduce the subject to a stranger. “Ye’ll ken ane John Thomson, a
minister?” “Why, Thomson of Duddingston, the celebrated painter? Do you
know him?” “_Me_ ken him? It was _me_ that first taught him to pent.” As
in the case of Wilkie, his art leanings got him into difficulty. At a
half-yearly communion he noted a picturesque old hillman, and needs must
forthwith transfer him to paper. The fathers and brethren were not
unnaturally annoyed and disgusted, and they deputed one of their number
to deal faithfully with the offender. Thomson listened in solemn
silence, nay, took what appeared to be some pencil notes of the grave
words of censure, at length he suddenly showed the other a hastily drawn
sketch of himself. “What auld cankered carl do ye think this is?” The
censor could not choose but laugh, and the incident ended. Thomson was
twice married. His second wife was Miss Dalrymple of Fordel. She saw his
picture of _The Falls of Foyers_, and conceived a passion to know the
artist, and the moment he saw her he determined “that woman must be my
wife.” As he afterwards said, “We just drew together.” The manse at
Duddingston became for a time a very muses’ bower; the choicest of
Edinburgh wits, chief among them Scott himself, were constant visitors.
Of illustrious strangers perhaps the greatest was Turner, though his
remarks were not altogether amiable. “Ah, Thomson, you beat me
hollow—in _frames_!” He was more eulogistic of certain pictures. “The
man who did _that_ could paint.” When he took his leave he said, as he
got into the carriage, “By God, though, Thomson, I envy you that loch.”
To-day the prospect is a little spoilt by encroaching houses and too
many people, but Scotland has few choicer views than that placid water,
the old church at the edge, the quaint village, and the mighty Lion Hill
that broods over all. Thomson is said to have diligently attended to his
clerical duties, but he was hard put to it sometimes, for you believe he
was more artist than theologian. He built himself a studio in the manse
garden down by the loch. This he called Edinburgh, so that too
importunate callers might be warded off with the remark that he was at
Edinburgh. “Gone to Edinburgh,” you must know, is the traditional excuse
of everybody in Duddingston who shuts his door. One Sunday John, the
minister’s man, “jowed” the bell long and earnestly in vain—the
well-known figure would not emerge from the manse. John rushed off to
the studio by the loch and found, as he expected, the minister hard at
work with a canvas before him. He admonished him that it was past the
time, that the people were assembled, and the bells “rung in.” “Oh,
John,” said his master, in perplexed entreaty, “just go and ring the
bell for another five minutes till I get in this bonnie wee bit o’ sky.”
An old woman of his congregation was in sore trouble, and went to the
minister and asked for a bit prayer. Thomson gave her two half-crowns.
“Take that, Betty, my good woman, it’s likely to do you more good than
any prayer I’m likely to make,” a kindly but amusingly cynical remark,
in the true vein of the moderates of the eighteenth century. “Here, J.
F.,” he said to an eminent friend who visited him on a Sunday afternoon,
“_you_ don’t care about breaking the Sabbath, gie these pictures a touch
of varnish.” These were the days before the Disruption and the
evangelical revival. You may set off against him the name of Sir George
Harvey, who was made president of the northern Academy in 1864. He was
much in sympathy with Scots religious tradition, witness his _Quitting
the Manse_, his _Covenanting Preaching_, and other deservedly famous
pictures. As Mr. W. D. M‘Kay points out, the Disruption produced in a
milder form a recrudescence of the strain of thought and sentiment of
Covenanting times, and this influenced the choice of subjects. In his
early days when Harvey talked of painting, a friend advised him to look
at Wilkie; he looked and seemed to see nothing that was worth the
looking, but he examined again and again, even as Wilkie himself had
gazed on Velasquez, and so saw in him “the very finest of the wheat.” In
painting the picture _The Wise and Foolish Builders_, he made a child
construct a house on the sand, so that he might see exactly how the
thing was done, not, however, that he fell into the stupid error of
believing that work and care were everything. He would neither persuade
a man nor dissuade him from an artistic career. “If it is in him,” he
was wont to say, “it is sure to come out, whether I advise him or not.”
Of the truth of this saying the life of David Roberts is an example. He
was the son of a shoemaker and was born at Stockbridge, Edinburgh, at
the end of the eighteenth century. Like most town boys of the period he
haunted the Mound, then a favourite stand for wild beast caravans. This
was before the era of Grecian temples and statues and trim-kept gardens,
and “Geordie Boyd’s mud brig” (to recall a long-vanished popular name)
was an unkempt wilderness. He drew pictures of the shows on the wall of
the white-washed kitchen with the end of a burnt stick and a bit of
keel, in order that his mother might see what they were like. When she
had satisfied her curiosity, why—a dash of white-wash and the wall was
as good as ever! His more ambitious after-attempts were exhibited by the
honest cobbler to his customers. “Hoo has the callant learnt it?” was
the perplexed inquiry. With some friends of like inclination he turned a
disused cellar into a life academy: they tried their prentice hands on a
donkey, and then they sat for one another; but this is not the place to
follow his upward struggles. In 1858 he received the freedom of the city
of Edinburgh.
Where there’s a will there’s a way, but ways are manifold and some of
them are negative. Horatio Maculloch, the landscape-painter, in his
_Edinburgh from Dalmeny Park_, had introduced into the foreground the
figure of a woodman lopping the branches of a fallen tree. This figure
gave him much trouble, so he told his friend, Alexander Smith, the poet.
One day he said cheerfully, “Well, Smith, I have done that figure at
last.” “Indeed, and how?” “I have painted it out!” Even genius and hard
work do not always ensure success. If ever there was a painter of genius
that man was David Scott, most pathetic figure among Edinburgh artists.
You scarce know why his fame was not greater, or his work not more
sought after. His life was a short one (1806-1849) and his genius did
not appeal to the mass, for he did not and perhaps could not produce a
great body of highly impressive work. Yet, take the best of his
illustrations to Coleridge’s _Ancient Mariner_. You read the poem with
deeper meaning, with far deeper insight, after you have looked on them;
to me at least they seem greater than William Blake’s illustrations to
_Blair’s Grave_, a work of like nature. Still more wonderful is the
amazing _Puck Fleeing Before the Dawn_. The artist rises to the height
of his great argument; his genius is for the moment equal to
Shakespeare’s; the spirit of unearthly drollery and mischief and impish
humour takes bodily form before your astonished gaze. “His soul was like
a star and dwelt apart;” the few anecdotes of him have a strange, weird
touch. When a boy, he was handed over to a gardener to be taken to the
country. He took a fancy he would never be brought back; the gardener
swore he would bring him back himself; the child, only half convinced,
treated the astonished rustic to a discourse on the commandments, and
warned him if he broke his word he would be guilty of a lie. The
gardener, more irritated than amused, wished to have nothing whatever to
do with him. Going into a room once where there was company, he was much
struck with the appearance of a young lady there; he went up to her,
laid his hand on her knees, “You are very beautiful,” he said. As a
childish prank he thought he would make a ghost and frighten some other
children. With a bolster and a sheet he succeeded only too well; he
became frantic with terror, and fairly yelled the house down in his
calls for help.
A different man altogether was Sir Daniel Macnee, who was R.S.A. in
1876. He was born the same year as David Scott, and lived long after
him. The famous portrait painter, kindly, polished, accomplished, was a
man of the world, widely known and universally popular, except that his
universal suavity of itself now and again excited enmity. “I dinna like
Macnee a bit,” said a sour-grained old Scots dame; “he’s aye everybody’s
freend!” The old lady might have found Sam Bough more to her taste.
Though born in Carlisle he settled in Edinburgh in 1855, and belongs to
the northern capital. In dress and much else he delighted to run tilt at
conventions, and was rather an _enfant terrible_ at decorous functions.
At some dinner or other he noted a superbly got up picture-dealer, whom
he pretended to mistake for a waiter. “John—John, I say, John, bring me
a pint of wine, and let it be of the choicest vintage.” His pranks at
last provoked Professor Blackie, who was present, to declare roundly and
audibly, “I am astonished that a man who can paint like an angel should
come here and conduct himself like a fool.” He delighted in the Lothian
and Fife coasts. The Bass he considered in some sort his own property,
so he jocularly told its owner, Sir Hew Dalrymple, “You get £20 a year
or so out of it; I make two or three hundred.” Bough was the very
picture of a genial Bohemian, perhaps he was rather fitted to shine, a
light of the Savage Club than of the northern capital, where, if
tradition was followed, there was always something grim and fell even
about the merry-making. One or two of his genial maxims are worth
quoting. There had been some row about a disputed succession. “It’s an
awful warning,” he philosophised, “to all who try to save money in this
world. You had far better spend your tin on a little sound liquor,
wherewith to comfort your perishable corps, than have such cursed rows
about it after you have gone.” And again his golden rule of the _Ars
Bibendi_, “I like as much as I can get honestly and carry decently,” on
which profound maxim let us make an end of our chapter.
CHAPTER NINE
THE WOMEN OF EDINBURGH
Anecdotes of the women of Edinburgh are mainly of the eighteenth
century. The events of an earlier period are too tragic for a trivial
story or they come under other heads. Is it an anecdote to tell how, on
the night of Rizzio’s murder (9th March 1566), the conspirators upset
the supper table, and unless Jane, Countess of Argyll, had caught at a
falling candle the rest of the tragedy had been played in total
darkness? And it is only an unusual fact about this same countess that
when she came to die she was enclosed in the richest coffin ever seen in
Scotland; the compartments and inscriptions being all set in solid gold.
The chroniclers ought to have some curious anecdotes as to the
subsequent fate of that coffin, but they have not, it vanishes
unaccountably from history. The tragedies of the Covenant have stories
of female heroism; the women were not less constant than the men, nay,
that learned but malicious gossip, Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe,
insinuates that the husband might have given in at the last minute, ay,
when the rope was round his neck at the Cross or the Grassmarket, but
the wife urged him to be true to the death. The wives of the persecutors
had not seldom a strong sympathy with the persecuted. The Duchess of
Rothes, as Lady Ann Lindsay became, sheltered the Covenanters. Her
husband dropped a friendly hint, “My hawks will be out to-night, my
Lady, so you had better take care of your blackbirds.”
It was natural that a sorely tried and oppressed nation should paint the
oppressor in the blackest of colours. You are pleased with an anecdote
like the above, showing that a gleam of pity sometimes crossed those
truculent faces. The Duke of York (afterwards James VII.) at Holyrood
had his playful and humane hour. There was a sort of informal theatre at
the palace. In one of the pieces the Princess Anne lay dead upon the
stage—such was her part. Mumper, her own and her father’s favourite
dog, was not persuaded, he jumped and fawned on her; she laughed, the
audience loyally obeyed and the tragedy became a farce. “Her Majesty had
_sticked_ the part,” said Morrison of Prestongrange gruffly. The Duke
was shipwrecked on the return voyage to Scotland and Mumper was drowned.
A courtier uttered some suavely sympathetic words about the dog. “How,
sir, can you speak of _him_, when so many fine fellows went to the
bottom?” rejoined His Royal Highness.
Here is a story from the other side. In 1681 the Earl of Argyll was
committed to the Castle for declining the oath required by the Test Act.
On the 12th December he was condemned to death and on the 20th he
learned that his execution was imminent. Lady Sophia Lindsay of
Balcarres, his daughter-in-law, comes, it was given out, to bid him a
last farewell; there is a hurried change of garments in the prison, and
presently Argyll emerges as lacquey bearing her long train. At the
critical moment the sentinel roughly grasped him by the arm. Those Scots
dames had the nerve of iron and resource without parallel. The lady
pulled the train out of his hand into the mud, slashed him across the
face with it till he was all smudged over, and rated him soundly for
stupidity. The soldier laughed, the lady entered the coach, the fugitive
jumped on the footboard behind, and so away into the darkness and
liberty of a December night. Ere long he was safe in Holland, and she
was just as safe in the Tolbooth, for even that age would give her no
other punishment than a brief confinement. Perhaps more stoical
fortitude was required in the Lady Graden’s case. She was sister-in-law
to Baillie of Jerviswood. At his trial in 1684 for treason she kept up
his strength from time to time with cordials, for he was struck with
mortal sickness; she walked with him, as he was carried along the High
Street, to the place of execution at the Cross. He pointed out to her
Warriston’s window (long since removed from the totally altered close of
that name), and told of the high talk he had engaged in with her father,
who had himself gone that same dread way some twenty years before. She
“saw him all quartered, and took away every piece and wrapped it up in
some linen cloth with more than masculine courage.” So says Lauder of
Fountainhall, who had been one of the Crown counsel at the trial.
Even as children the women of that time were brave and devoted. Grizel
Hume, daughter of Sir Patrick Hume of Polwarth, when a child of twelve
was sent by her father from the country to Edinburgh to take important
messages to Baillie as he lay in prison. A hard task for a child of
those years, but she went through it safely; perhaps it was no harder
than conveying food at the dead of night to the family vault in Polwarth
Churchyard where her father was concealed. When visiting the prison she
became acquainted with the son and namesake of Jerviswood: they were
afterwards married. The memories of the Hon. George Baillie of
Jerviswood and of his wife the Lady Grizel Baillie are preserved for us
in an exquisite monograph by their daughter, Lady Grizel Murray of
Stanhope. The name of a distinguished statesman is often for his own age
merely, but the authoress of a popular song has a surer title to fame.
In one of his last years in Dumfries, Burns quoted Lady Grizel Baillie’s
“And werena my heart licht I wad dee” to a young friend who noted the
coldness with which the townsfolk then regarded him.
It is matter of history that Argyll did not escape in the long run. In
1685, three years before the dawn of the Revolution, he made that
unfortunate expedition to Scotland which ended in failure, capture and
death on the old charge. One of his associates was Sir John Cochrane of
Ochiltree; he also was captured and as a “forefaulted traitor” was led
by the hangman through the streets of Edinburgh bound and bareheaded. A
line from London and all was over, so his friends thought, but that line
never arrived. On the 7th of July in that year the English mail was
twice stopped and robbed near Alnwick. The daring highwayman turned out
to be a girl! She was Grizel, Sir John’s daughter, disguised in men’s
clothes and (of course) armed to the teeth. In the end Sir John obtained
his pardon, and lived to be Earl of Dundonald.
In the middle of the next century we have this on the Jacobite side.
When the Highlanders were in Carlisle in the ’45 a lady called Dacre,
daughter of a gentleman in Cumberland, lay at Rose Castle in the pangs
of childbirth and very ill indeed. A party of Highlanders under
Macdonald of Kinloch Moidart entered her dwelling to occupy it as their
own. When the leader learned what had taken place, the presumed Highland
savage showed himself a considerate and chivalrous gentleman. With
courteous words he drew off his men, took the white cockade from his
bonnet and pinned it on the child’s breast. Thus it served to guard not
merely the child but the whole household. The infant became in after
years the wife of Clerk of Pennicuick, her house was at 100 Princes
Street, she lived far into the last century, known by her erect walk,
which she preserved till over her eightieth year, and by her quaint
dress. Once she was sitting in Constable’s shop when Sir Walter Scott
went by. “Oh, sir Walter, are you really going to pass me?” she called
out in a dudgeon that was only half feigned. But she was easily
pacified. “Sure, my Lady,” said the Wizard in comic apology, “by this
time I might know your back as well as your face.” She was called the
“White Rose of Scotland” from the really beautiful legend of the white
cockade, which she wore on every important occasion. And what of the
Highland Bayard? His estates were forfeited, his home was burned to the
ground, and himself on the Gallows Hill at Carlisle on the 18th October
1746 suffered the cruel and ignominious death of a traitor—_aequitate
deum erga bona malaque documenta_!
The women were on the side of the Jacobites even to the end. “Old maiden
ladies were the last leal Jacobites in Edinburgh. Spinsterhood in its
loneliness remained ever true to Prince Charlie and the vanished dreams
of its youth.” Thus Dame Margaret Sinclair of Dunbeath; and she adds
that in the old Episcopal chapel in the Cowgate the last of those
Jacobite ladies never failed to close her prayer book and stand erect in
silent protest, when the prayer for King George III. and the reigning
family was read in the Church service. Alison Rutherford, born 1712 and
the wife of Patrick Cockburn of Ormiston, was not of this way of
thinking. She lived in the house of, and (it seems) under the rule of,
her father-in-law. She said she was married to a man of seventy-five. He
was Lord Justice-Clerk, and unpopular for his severity to the
unfortunate rebels of the ’15. The nine of diamonds, for some occult
reason, was called the curse of Scotland, and when it turned up at cards
a favourite Jacobite joke was to greet it as the Lord Justice-Clerk.
Mrs. Cockburn is best known as the authoress of one, and not the best,
version of the _Flowers of the Forest_. But this is not her only piece.
When the Prince occupied Edinburgh in the ’45, she wrote a skit on the
specious language of the proclamations which did their utmost to satisfy
every party. It began—
“Have you any laws to mend?
Or have you any grievance?
I’m a hero to my trade
And truly a most leal prince.”
With this in her pocket she set off to visit the Keiths at Ravelston.
They were a strong Jacobite family, which was perhaps an inducement to
the lady to wave it in their faces. She was driven back in their coach,
but at the West Port was stopped by the rough Highland Guard who
threatened to search after treasonable papers. Probably the lady then
thought the squib had not at all a humorous aspect, and she quaked and
feared its discovery. But the coach was recognised as loyal by its
emblazonry and it franked its freight, so to speak. Mrs. Cockburn was a
brilliant letter-writer, strong, shrewd, sensible, sometimes pathetic,
sometimes almost sublime, she gives you the very marrow of old
Edinburgh. Thus she declines an invitation: “Mrs. Cockburn’s compliments
to Mr. and Mrs. Chalmers. Would wait on them with a great deal of
pleasure, but finds herself at a loss, as Mrs. Chalmers sets her an
example of never coming from home, and as there is nobody she admires
more, she wishes to imitate her in everything.” A woman loses her young
child. These are Mrs. Cockburn’s truly Spartan comments: “Should she
lose her husband or another child she would recover: we need sorrowes
often. In the meantime, if she could accept personal severity it would
be well,—a ride in rain, wind and storm until she is fatigued to death,
and spin on a great wheel and never allowed to sit down till weariness
of nature makes her. I do assure you I have gone through all these
exercises, and have reason to bless God my reason was preserved and
health now more than belongs to my age.” And again: “As for me, I sit in
my black chair, weak, old, and contented. Though my body is not
portable, I visit you in my prayers and in my cups.” She tells us that
one of her occasional servants, to wit, the waterwife, so called because
she brought the daily supply of water up those interminable stairs, was
frequently tipsy and of no good repute. She discharged her, yet she
reappeared and was evidently favoured by the other servants; this was
because she had adopted a foundling called Christie Fletcher, as she was
first discovered on a stair in Fletcher’s Land. The child had fine eyes,
and was otherwise so attractive that Mrs. Cockburn got her into the
Orphan Hospital. “By the account,” she grimly remarks, “of that house, I
think if our young ladies were educated there, it would make a general
reform of manners.”
[Illustration: MRS. ALISON COCKBURN,
From a Photograph]
She heard Colonel Reid (afterwards General Reid and the founder of the
chair of Music in the University, where the annual Reid concerts
perpetuate his name) play on the flute. “It thrills to your very heart,
it speaks all languages, it comes from the heart to the heart. I never
could have conceived, it had a dying fall. I can think of nothing but
that flute.” Mrs. Cockburn saw Sir Walter Scott when he was six, and was
astonished at his precocity. He described her as “a virtuoso like
myself,” and defined a virtuoso as “one who wishes and will know
everything.”
The other and superior set of _The Flowers of the Forest_ was written by
Miss Jean Elliot, who lived from 1727 till 1805. The story is that she
was the last Edinburgh lady who kept a private sedan chair in her
“lobby.” In this she was borne through the town by the last of the
caddies. The honour of the last sedan chair is likewise claimed for Lady
Don who lived in George Square; probably there were two “lasts.” Those
Edinburgh aristocratic lady writers had many points in common; they
mainly got fame by one song, they made a dead secret of authorship, half
because they were shy, half because they were proud. Caroline Baroness
Nairne was more prolific than the others, for _The Land of the Leal,
Caller Herrin’_ (the refrain to which was caught from the chimes of St.
Giles’), _The Auld Hoose_, and _John Tod_ almost reach the high level of
masterpieces, but she was as determined as the others to keep it dark.
Her very husband did not know she was an authoress; she wrote as Mrs.
Bogan of Bogan. In another direction she was rather too daring. She was
one of a committee of ladies who proposed to inflict a bowdlerised Burns
on the Scots nation. An emasculated _Jolly Beggars_ had made strange
reading, but the project fell through.
Lady Anne Barnard, one of the Lindsays of Balcarres, was another
Edinburgh poetess. She is known by her one song, indeed only by a
fragment of it, for the continuation or second part of _Auld Robin Gray_
is anti-climax, fortunately so bad, that it has well-nigh dropped from
memory. The song had its origin at Balcarres. There was an old Scots
ditty beginning, “The bridegroom grat when the sun gaed doon.” It was
lewd and witty, but the air inspired the words to the gifted authoress.
She heard the song from Sophy Johnstone—commonly called “Suff” or “the
Suff,” in the words of Mrs. Cockburn—surely the oddest figure among the
ladies of old Edinburgh. Part nature, part training, or rather the want
of it, exaggerated in her the bluntness and roughness of those old
dames. She was daughter of the coarse, drunken Laird of Hilton. One day
after dinner he maintained, in his cups, that education was rubbish, and
that his daughter should be brought up without any. He stuck to this:
she was called in jest the “natural” child of Hilton, and came to pass
as such in the less proper sense of the word. She learned to read and
write from the butler, and she taught herself to shoe a horse and do an
artisan’s work. She played the fiddle, fought the stable boys, swore
like a trooper, dressed in a jockey coat, walked like a man, sang in a
voice that seemed a man’s, and was believed by half Edinburgh to be a
man in disguise. She had strong affections and strong hates, she had
great talent for mimicry, which made her many enemies, was inclined to
be sceptical though not without misgivings and fears. She came to pay a
visit to Balcarres, and stayed there for thirteen years. She had a
choice collection of old Scots songs. One lingered in Sir Walter Scott’s
memory:
“Eh,” quo’ the Tod, “it’s a braw, bricht nicht,
The wind’s i’ the wast and the mune shines bricht.”
She gave her opinion freely. When ill-pleased her dark wrinkled face
looked darker, and the hard lines about her mouth grew harder, as she
planted her two big feet well out, and murmured in a deep bass voice,
“Surely that’s great nonsense.” One evening at Mrs. Cockburn’s in
Crichton Street, the feet of Ann Scott, Sir Walter’s sister, touched by
accident the toes of the irascible Suff, who retorted with a good kick.
“What is the lassie wabster, wabster, wabstering that gait for?” she
growled. When she was an old woman, Dr. Gregory said she must abstain
from animal food unless she wished to die. “Dee, Doctor! odd, I’m
thinking they’ve forgotten an auld wife like me up yonder.” But all her
gaiety vanished near the end. From poverty or avarice she half starved
herself. The younger generation of the Balcarres children brought
tit-bits to her garret every Sunday. “What hae ye brocht? What hae ye
brocht?” she would snap out greedily.
[Illustration: MISS JEAN ELLIOT,
From a Sepia Drawing]
And so the curtain falls on this strange figure of old Edinburgh.
I cannot leave those sweet singers without a passing word on the old
ballad, surely of local origin:
“Now Arthur’s Seat shall be my bed,
The sheets shall ne’er be pressed by me.
St. Anton’s Well shall be my drink
Since my true love’s forsaken me!
Martinmas wind, when wilt thou blaw
An’ shake the green leaves aff the tree?
O! gentle death, when wilt thou come?
For o’ my life I am wearie.”
Is this a woman’s voice? You cannot tell. It is supposed to commemorate
the misfortunes of Lady Barbara Erskine, daughter of the Earl of Mar and
wife of the second Marquis of Douglas. A rejected and malignant suitor
is rumoured to have poisoned her husband’s mind against her, till he
drove her from his company.
Edinburgh has many records of high aristocratic, but very unconventional
or otherwise remarkable, dames. Lady Rosslyn sat in the company of her
friends one day when a woman whose character had been blown upon was
announced. Many of her guests rose in a hurry to be gone. “Sit still,
sit still,” said the old lady, “it’s na catchin’.” Dr. Johnson, on his
visit to Scotland, met Margaret, Duchess of Douglas, at James’s Court.
He describes her as “talking broad Scots with a paralytic voice scarcely
understood by her own countrymen.” It was enviously noted that he
devoted his attention to her exclusively for the whole evening. The
innuendo was that Duchesses in England had not paid much attention to
Samuel, and that he was inclined to make as much of a Scots specimen as
he could. An accusation of snobbery was a good stick wherewith to beat
the sage. The lady was a daughter of Douglas of Maines, and the widow of
Archibald, Duke of Douglas, who died in 1761. A more interesting figure
was the Duchess of Queensberry, daughter of the Earl of Clarendon. The
Act of the eleventh Parliament of James II., providing that “no Scotsman
should marry an Englishwoman without the King’s license under the Great
Seal, under pain of death and escheat of moveables,” was long out of
date. She detested Scots manners, and did everything to render them
absurd. She dressed herself as a peasant girl, to ridicule the stiff
costumes of the day. The Scots made an excessive and almost exclusive
use of the knife at table, whereat she screamed out as if about to
faint. It is to her credit, however, that she was a friend and patron of
Gay the poet, entertained him in Queensberry House, Canongate. Perhaps
his praises of her beauty ought thus to suffer some discount; but Prior
was as warm; and Pope’s couplet is classic:
“If Queensberry to strip there’s no compelling,
’Tis from a handmaid we must take a Helen.”
A little coarse, perhaps, but it was “the tune o’ the time.” “Wild as
colt untamed,” no doubt; and she got herself into some more or less
laughable scrapes; but what would not be pardoned to a beautiful
Duchess? Her pranks were nothing to those of Lady Maxwell of Monreith’s
daughters. They lived in Hyndford’s Close, just above the Netherbow. One
of them, a future Duchess of Gordon, too, chased, captured, and bestrode
a lusty sow, which roamed the streets at will, whilst her sister,
afterwards Lady Wallace, thumped it behind with a stick. In the
mid-eighteenth century, you perceive, swine were free of the High Street
of Edinburgh. In after years Lady Wallace had, like other Edinburgh
ladies, a sharp tongue. The son of Kincaid, the King’s printer, was a
well-dressed dandy—“a great macaroni,” as the current phrase went. From
his father’s lucrative patent, he was nicknamed “young Bibles.” “Who is
that extraordinary-looking young man?” asked some one at a ball. “Only
young Bibles,” quoth Lady Wallace, “bound in calf and gilt, but not
lettered.” Not that she had always the best of the argument. Once she
complained to David Hume that when people asked her age she did not know
what to say. “Tell them you have not yet come to the years of
discretion,” said the amiable philosopher. It was quite in his manner.
He talked to Lady Anne Lindsay (afterwards Barnard) as if they were
contemporaries. She looked surprised. “Have not you and I grown up
together; you have grown tall, and I have grown broad.”
Lady Anne Dick of Corstorphine, granddaughter of “Bluidy” Mackenzie, was
another wild romp. She loved to roam about the town at night in man’s
dress. Every dark close held the possibility of an exciting adventure.
Once she was caught by the heels, and passed the night in the
guard-house which, as Scott tells us, “like a huge snail stretched along
the High Street near the Tron Kirk for many a long day.” She wrote
society verses, light or otherwise. She fancied herself or pretended to
be in love with Sir Peter Murray—at least he was a favourite subject
for her muse. Your Edinburgh fine lady could be high and mighty when she
chose, witness Susanna Countess of Eglinton, wife of Alexander the ninth
Earl, and a Kennedy of the house of Colzean. When she was a girl, a
stray hawk alighted on her shoulder as she walked in the garden at
Colzean; the Eglinton crest or name was on its bells, and she was
entitled to hail the omen as significant. Perhaps the prophecy helped to
bring its own fulfilment: at least she refused Sir John Clerk of Eldin
for my Lord, though he was much her senior. “Susanna and the elder,”
said the wits of the time. She was six feet in height, very handsome and
very stately, and she had seven daughters like unto herself. One of the
great sights of old Edinburgh were the eight gilded sedan chairs that
conveyed those ladies, moving in stately procession from the old Post
Office Close to the Assembly Rooms.
[Illustration: SUSANNAH, COUNTESS OF EGLINTON,
From the Painting by Gavin Hamilton]
Their mansion house, by the way, afterwards served as Fortune’s tavern,
far the most fashionable of its kind in Edinburgh. The Countess has her
connection with letters: Allan Ramsay dedicated his _Gentle Shepherd_ to
her, William Hamilton of Bangour chanted her in melodious verse, and Dr.
Johnson and she said some nice things to one another when he was in
Scotland. She was a devoted Jacobite, had a portrait of Charles Edward
so placed in her bedroom as to be the first thing she saw when she
wakened in the morning. Her last place in Edinburgh was in Jack’s Land
in the Canongate. We have ceased to think it remarkable, that noble
ladies dwelt in those now grimy ways. She had a long innings of fashion
and power, for it was not till 1780, at the ripe age of ninety-one, that
she passed away. She kept her looks even in age. “What would you give to
be as pretty as I?” she asked her eldest daughter, Lady Betty. “Not half
so much as you would give to be as young as I,” was the pert rejoinder.
Another high and mighty dame was Catharine, daughter of John, Earl of
Dundonald, and wife of Alexander, sixth Earl of Galloway. She lived in
the Horse Wynd in the Cowgate, and, it is averred, always went visiting
in a coach and six. It is said—and you quite believe it—that whilst
she was being handed into her coach the leaders were already pawing in
front of the destined door. In youth her beauty, in age her pride and
piety, were the talk of the town. Are they not commemorated in the
_Holyrood Ridotto_? A more pleasing figure is that of Primrose Campbell
of Mamore, widow of that crafty Lord Lovat whose head fell on Tower Hill
in 1747. She dwelt at the top of Blackfriar’s Wynd, where Walter Chepman
the old Edinburgh printer had lived 240 years before. She passed a
pious, peaceable, and altogether beautiful widowhood; perhaps her
happiest years, for old Simon Fraser had given her a bad time. She
looked forward to the end with steady, untroubled eyes, got her
graveclothes ready, and the turnpike stair washed. Was this latter, you
wonder, so unusual a measure? She professed indifference as to her place
of sepulchre “You may lay me beneath that hearthstane.” And so, in 1796,
in her eighty-sixth year, she went to her rest.
Some of those ladies were not too well off. Two of the house of Traquair
lived close by St. Mary’s Wynd. The servant, Jenny, had been out
marketing. “But, Jenny, what’s this in the bottom of the basket?” “Oo,
mem, just a dozen o’ taties that Lucky, the green-wife, wad hae 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.”
A curious story is narrated of Lady Elibank, the daughter of an eminent
surgeon in Edinburgh. She told a would-be suitor, “I do not believe that
you would part with a ‘leith’ of your little finger for my whole body.”
Next day the young man handed her a joint from one of his fingers; she
declined to have anything to do with him. “The man who has no mercy on
his own flesh will not spare mine,” which served _him_ right. She was
called up in church, as the use was, to be examined in the Assembly’s
catechism, as Betty Stirling. “Filthy fellow,” she said; “he might have
called me Mrs. Betty or Miss Betty; but to be called bare Betty is
insufferable.” She was called bare Betty as long as she lived, which
served _her_ right.
The servants of some of those aristocratic ladies were as old-fashioned,
as poor, and as devoted as themselves. Mrs. Erskine of Cardross lived in
a small house at the foot of Merlin’s Wynd, which once stood near the
Tron Kirk. George Mason, her servant, allowed himself much liberty of
speech. On a young gentleman calling for wine a second time at dinner,
George in a whisper, reproachful and audible, admonished him, “Sir, you
have had a glass already.” This strikes a modern as mere impudence, yet
passed as proper enough.
The fashionable life of old Edinburgh had its head-quarters in the
Assembly Rooms, first in the West Bow and then after 1720 south of the
High Street in the Assembly Close. The formalities of the meetings and
dances are beyond our scope. The “famed Miss Nicky Murray,” as Sir
Alexander Boswell called her, presided here for many years; she was
sister of the Earl of Mansfield, and a mighty fine lady. “Miss of What?”
she would ask when a lady was presented. If of nowhere she had short
shrift: a tradesman, however decked, was turned out at once. Her fan was
her sceptre or enchanted wand, with a wave of which she stopped the
music, put out the lights, and brought the day of stately and decorous
proceedings to a close.
Another lady directress was the Countess of Panmure. A brewer’s daughter
had come very well dressed, but here fine feathers did not make a fine
bird. Her Ladyship sent her a message not to come again, as she was not
entitled to attend the assemblies. Her justice was even-handed. She
noted her nephew, the Earl of Cassillis, did not seem altogether right
one evening. “You have sat too late after dinner to be proper company
for ladies,” quoth she; she then led him to the door, and calling out,
“My Lord Cassillis’s chair!” wished him “good-night.” Perhaps my Lord
betook himself to the neighbouring Covenant Close, where there was a
famed oyster-seller commemorated by Scott, who knew its merits. Was it
on this account or because the Covenant had lain for signature there
that Sir Walter made it the abode of Nanty Ewart when he studied
divinity at Edinburgh with disastrous results? Unfortunate Covenant
Close! The last time I peered through a locked gate on its grimy ways I
found it used for the brooms and barrows of the city scavengers. But to
resume.
The dancing in the Assembly Room was hedged about with various rites
that made it a solemn function. When a lady was assigned to a gallant he
needs must present her with an orange. To “lift the lady” meant to ask
her to dance. The word was not altogether fortunate; it is the technical
term still used in the north to signify that the corpse has begun its
procession from the house to the grave. “It’s lifted,” whispers the
undertaker’s man to the mourners, as he beckons them to follow. Another
quaint custom was to “save the ladies” by drinking vast quantities of
hot punch to their health or in their honour. If they were not thus
“saved” they were said to be “damned.”
There are as racy stories of folk not so well known, and not so exalted.
Mrs. Dundas lived on Bunker’s Hill (hard by where the Register House now
stands). One of her daughters read from a newspaper to her as to some
lady whose reputation was damaged by the indiscreet talk of the Prince
of Wales. “Oh,” said old fourscore with an indignant shake of her
shrivelled fist and a tone of cutting contempt, “the dawmed villain!
Does he kiss and tell?”
This is quaint enough. Miss Mamie Trotter, of the Mortonhall family,
dreamt she was in heaven, and describes her far from edifying
experience. “And what d’ye think I saw there? De’il ha’it but thousands
upon thousands, and ten thousands upon ten thousands o’ stark naked
weans! That wad be a dreadfu’ thing, for ye ken I ne’er could bide
bairns a’ my days!”
[Illustration: CAROLINE, BARONESS NAIRNE,
From a Lithograph]
“Come away, Bailie, and take a trick at the cairds,” Mrs. Telfer of St.
John Street, Canongate, and sister of Smollett, would exclaim to a
worthy magistrate and tallow chandler who paid her an evening visit.
“Troth, madam, I hae nae siller.” “Then let us play for a p’und of
can’le,” rejoined the gamesome Telfer.
On the other side of the Canongate, in New Street, there lived Christina
Ramsay, a daughter of Allan Ramsay. She was eighty-eight before she
died. If she wrote no songs she inherited, at any rate, her father’s
kindly nature; she was the friend of all animals, she used to
remonstrate with the carters when they ill-treated their horses, and
send out rolls to be given to the poor overburdened beasts that toiled
up the steep street. But she specially favoured cats. She kept a huge
number cosily stowed away in band-boxes, and put out food for others
round about her house; she would not even permit them to be spoken
against, any alleged bad deed of a cat she avowed must have been done
under provocation.
Here are two marriage stories. Dugald Stewart’s second wife was Ellen
D’Arcy Cranstoun, daughter of the Hon. George Cranstoun, and sister of
Lord Corehouse. She had written a poem, which her cousin, the Earl of
Lothian, had shown to the philosopher who was then his tutor. The
criticism was of a highly flattering nature. The professor fell in love
with the poetess, and she loved him for his eulogy; they were married,
and no union ever turned out better. The other is earlier and baser. In
November 1731 William Crawford, the elderly janitor of the High School,
proposed to marry a lady very much his junior. He and his friends
arrived at the church. She did not turn up, but there was a letter from
her. “William you must know I am pre-engaged I never could like a burnt
cuttie I have now by the hand my sensie menseful strapper, with whom I
intend to pass my youthful days. You know old age and youth cannot agree
together. I must then be excused if I tell you I am not your humble
servant.” Crawford took his rebuff quite coolly. “Let us at least,” said
he to his friends, “keep the feast as a feast-day. Let us go drink and
drive care away. May never a greater misfortune attend any man.” An
assemblage numerous, if not choice, graced the banquet; they got up a
subscription among themselves of one hundred marks and presented it to
Crawford, “with which he was as well satisfied as he who got madam.”
From all those clever and witty people it is almost a relief to turn to
some anecdotes of sheer stupidity. Why John Home the poet married Miss
Logan, who was not clever or handsome or rich, was a problem to his
friends. Hume asked him point-blank. “Ah, David, if I had not who else
would have taken her?” was his comic defence. Sir Adam Fergusson told
the aged couple of the Peace of Amiens. “Will it mak’ ony difference in
the price o’ nitmugs?” said Mrs. Home, who meant nutmegs, if indeed she
meant anything at all.
Jean, sister-in-law to Archibald Constable the publisher, had been
educated in France and hesitated to admit that she had forgotten the
language, and would translate coals “collier” and table napkin “table
napkune,” to the amazement and amusement of her hearers. Her ideas
towards the close got a little mixed. “If I should be spared to be taken
away,” she remarked, “I hope my nephew will get the doctor to open my
head and see if anything can be done for my hearing.” This is a
masterpiece of its kind, and perhaps too good to be perfectly true. She
played well; “gars the instrument speak,” it was said. There was one
touch of romance in her life. A French admirer had given her a box of
bonbons, wherein she found “a puzzle ring of gold, divided yet united,”
and with their joint initials. She never saw or heard from her lover,
yet she called for it many times in her last illness. It was a better
way of showing her constancy than that taken by Lady Betty Charteris, of
the Wemyss family. Disappointed in love, she took to her bed, where she
lay for twenty-six years, to the time of her death, in fact. This was in
St. John Street in the latter half of the eighteenth century.
The stage was without much influence in Edinburgh save on rare
occasions. One of them was when Sarah Siddons was in Edinburgh in 1784.
Her first appearance was on the 22nd May of that year, when she scored a
success as Belvedere in _Venice Preserved_. The audience listened in
profound silence, and the lady, used to more enthusiasm, got a little
nervous, till a canny citizen was moved audibly to admit, “That’s no
bad.” A roar of applause followed that almost literally brought down the
galleries. She played Lady Randolph in _Douglas_ twice; “there was not a
dry eye in the whole house,” observed the contemporary _Courant_.
Shakespeare was not acted during her visit; the folk of the time were
daring enough to consider him just so-so after Home! Everybody was mad
to hear her. At any rate, the General Assembly of the Church was
deserted until its meetings were arranged not to clash with her
appearance. There were applications for 2550 places where there were
only 630 of that description on hand. The gallery doors were guarded by
detachments of soldiers with drawn bayonets, which they are said to have
used to some purpose on an all too insistent crowd. Her tragedy manner
was more than skin deep, she could never shake it off; she talked in
blank verse. Scott used to tell how, during a dinner at Ashestiel, she
made an attendant shake with—
“You’ve brought me water, boy—I asked for beer.”
Once in Edinburgh she dined with the Homes, and in her most tragic tones
asked for a “little porter.” John, the old servant-man, took her only
too literally; he reappeared, lugging in a diminutive though stout
Highland caddie, remarking, “I’ve found ane, mem; he’s the least I could
get.” Even Sarah needs must laugh, though Mrs. Home, we are assured, on
the authority of Robert Chambers, never saw the joke.
Another time Mrs. Siddons dined with the Lord Provost, who apologised
for the seasoning.
“Beef cannot be too salt for me, my Lord,”
was the solemn response of the tragic muse.
Such tones once heard were not to be forgotten. A servant-lass, by
patience or audacity, had got into the theatre and was much affected by
the performance. Next day, as she went about the High Street, intent on
domestic business, the deep notes of the inimitable Siddons rang in her
ears; she dropped her basket in uncontrollable agitation and burst
forth, “Eh, sirs, weel do I ken the sweet voice (“vice,” she would say,
in the dulcet dialect of the capital) that garred me greet sae sair
yestre’n.”
After all, Mrs. Siddons does not belong to Edinburgh, though I take her
on the wing, as it were, and here also I take leave both of her and the
subject.
[Illustration: MRS. SIDDONS AS “THE TRAGIC MUSE”,
From an Engraving after Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A.]
CHAPTER TEN
THE SUPERNATURAL
Perhaps the sharpest contrast between old Scotland and the Scotland of
to-day is the decline of belief in the supernatural. Superstitions of
lucky and unlucky things and days and seasons still linger in the south,
nay, the byways of London are rich in a peculiar kind of folklore which
no one thinks it worth while to harvest. A certain dry scepticism
prevails in Scotland, even in the remote country districts; perhaps it
is the spread of education or the hard practical nature of the folk
which is, for the time, uppermost; or is it the result of a violent
reaction? In former days it was far other. Before the Reformation the
Scot accepted the Catholic faith as did the other nations of Europe. And
there was the usual monastic legend, to which, as far as it concerns
Edinburgh, I make elsewhere sufficient reference. Between the
Reformation and the end of the eighteenth century, or even later, the
supernatural had a stronger grip on the Scots than on any other race in
Europe. The unseen world beckoned and made its presence known by
continual signs; portents and omens were of daily occurrence; men like
Peden, the prophet, read the book of the future, every Covenanter lived
a spiritual life whose interest far exceeded that of the material life
present to his senses. As a natural result of hard conditions of
existence, a sombre temperament, and a gloomy creed, the portents were
ever of disaster. The unseen was full of hostile forces. The striking
mottoes, that still remain on some of the Edinburgh houses, were meant
to ward off evil. The law reports are full of the trials and cruel
punishment of wizards and witches, malevolent spirits bent on man’s
destruction were ever on the alert, ghostly appearances hinted at crime
and suffering; more than all, there was the active personality of Satan
himself, one, yet omnipresent, fighting a continual and, for the time,
successful war against the saints. Burns, whose genius preserves for us
in many a graphic touch that old Scotland which even in his time was
fast fading away, pictures, half mirthful, yet not altogether sceptical,
the enemy of mankind:
“Great is thy pow’r an’ great thy fame;
Far ken’d an’ noted is thy name;
An’ tho’ yon lowin’ heuch’s thy hame,
Thou travels far.
An’ faith! thou’s neither lag nor lame,
Nor blate nor scaur.”
[Illustration: JAMES IV.,
From an old Engraving]
And now for some illustrations. After the monkish legends, one of the
earliest, as it is the most famous, story of all is the appearance of
the ghostly heralds in the dead of night at the Cross in Edinburgh,
before the battle of Flodden, and the summons by them of the most
eminent Scotsmen of the day, including King James himself, to appear
before Pluto, Lord of the netherworld. A certain gentleman, Mr. Richard
Lawson, lay that night in his house in the High Street. He was to follow
the King southward, but his heart was heavy with the thought of
impending evil; he could not sleep, and roamed up and down the open
wooden gallery, which was then so marked a feature on the first floor of
Edinburgh houses. It was just in front of the Cross. He saw the dread
apparition, he heard his own name amongst the list of those summoned.
Loudly, he refused obedience, and protested, and appealed to God and
Christ. Lindsay of Pitscottie, whose chronicles preserve many a
picturesque tale of old Scotland, had this story at first hand from
Lawson himself, who assured him that of all those mentioned he alone had
escaped. It is scarce necessary to remind the reader how admirably Scott
has told this story in the fifth canto of _Marmion_. The Cross was the
chief place from which a summons must issue to the absent, and the
heralds were the persons to make it. The appeal and protest by Mr.
Richard Lawson were also quite in order. And there is the figure of St.
John the Apostle which appeared in St. Michael’s Church at Linlithgow to
warn James IV. from his projected expedition. Again Scott has told this
in the fourth canto of _Marmion_. It has been suggested that neither
legend is mere fancy, that both were elaborate devices got up by the
peace party to frighten James. This may be true of the Linlithgow
apparition, but it does not reasonably account for the other.
It strikes you at first as odd that there are no ghost stories about
Holyrood, but there is a substantial reason. These would mar the effect,
the illustrious dead with their profoundly tragic histories leave no
room for other interest. The annals of the Castle are not quite barren.
Here be samples at any rate. It was the reign of Robert III., and the
dawn of the fifteenth century. The Duke of Albany, the King’s brother,
was pacing, with some adherents, the ramparts of the Castle when a
bright meteor flared across the sky. Albany seemed much impressed, and
announced that this portended some calamity as the end of a mighty
Prince in the near future. Albany was already engaged in plots which
resulted, in March 1402, in the imprisonment and death by famine of his
nephew, David, Duke of Rothesay, so it may be said that he only
prophesied because he knew. However, the age believed in astrology; held
as indisputable that the stars influenced man’s life, and that every
sign in the firmament had a meaning for those who watched. Not seldom
were battles seen in the skies portending disasters to come. As you con
over the troubled centuries of old Scots history, it seems that disaster
always did come, there was nothing but wars and sieges, and red ruin and
wasting.
Before the death of James V. dread warnings from the other world were
conveyed to him. Sir James Hamilton, who had been beheaded, appeared
with a drawn sword in his hand, and struck both the King’s arms off.
Certain portents preceded the murder of Darnley. Some of his friends
dreamed he was in mortal danger, and received ghostly admonition to
carry help to him. It is easy to rationalise those stories. Many were
concerned in the murder, and it is not to be supposed that they all kept
quite discreet tongues.
Again, the following picturesque legend is exactly such as a troubled
time would evolve. After the coronation of Charles II. at Scone,
Cromwell marched towards Scotland. The Castle was put in order under
Colonel Walter Dundas. As the sentinel paced his rounds one gloomy night
he heard the beat of a drum from the esplanade, and the steady tramp of
a great host; he fired his musket to give the alarm, and the Governor
hurried to the scene, but there was nothing. The sentinel was punished
and replaced, but the same thing happened, till in the end Dundas
mounted guard himself. He hears the phantom drummer beating a weird
measure, then there is the tramp of innumerable feet and the clank of
armour. A mighty host, audible yet invisible, passes by, and the sound
of their motion dies gradually away. What could these things mean but
wars and rumours of wars? And there followed in quick succession Dunbar
and Worcester, commemorated with the victor in a high passage of English
literature:
“While Derwen stream, with blood of Scots imbued,
And Dunbar field resounds thy praises loud
And Worcester’s laureat wreath,”
but then Milton was the laureate of the other side, and his view was not
that of the Scots.
Time passes on, and brings not merely the Restoration, but the
Revolution; the Castle is true to the old cause under the Duke of
Gordon, yet it gives in finally and becomes a hold for Jacobite
prisoners, among whom was Lord Balcarres. On the night of the 27th of
July 1689, a hand drew aside the curtains of the bed, and there was
Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee, gazing at his startled friend.
Balcarres addressed the vision, but received no answer. The figure
looked steadfastly upon the captive, moved towards the mantelpiece, and
finally disappeared from the room, At that very hour, Dundee was lying
dead at Killiecrankie, the most splendid and most useless of victories.
The silver bullet had found its billet. The Covenanters were absolutely
convinced that the persecutors were in direct league with Satan, who
protected them to the utmost of his power. How else to explain their
charmed lives, when so many hungered and thirsted after their death? How
else to account for that reckless courage that provoked whilst it
avoided the mortal stroke? What the object of those legends thought of
them, we cannot tell, perhaps they were flattered. Dundee could turn his
horse on the slope of a hill like a precipice, and his courage—but then
courage was so cheap a commodity in old Scotland that only when it
failed was there cause for wonder and contemptuous comment. However, the
silver bullet was proof against enchantment, and Dundee ended as surely
himself had wished. Legends gathered about a much grimmer figure, the
very grimmest figure of all, Sir Thomas Dalzell of Binns. The long
beard, the truculent, cruel visage, the martial figure, trained in the
Muscovite service, well made up the man who never knew pity. Is it not
told that he bent forward from his seat in the Privy Council, at a
meeting in 1681, to strike with clenched fist the accused that was there
for examination? “Is there none other hangman in the toun but yourself?”
retorted the undaunted prisoner. Dalzell had the gift of devoted
loyalty, no razor had touched his face since the death of Charles I. The
legends about him are in character. At Rullion Green the Covenanters
feeling their cause lost ere the battle was fought, noted with dismay
that Dalzell was proof against all their shot. The bullets hopped back
from his huge boots as hail from an iron wall. Ah, those terrible boots!
if you filled them with water it seethed and boiled on the instant.
Certain sceptics declare, by the way, he never wore boots at all! Did he
spit on the ground, a hole was forthwith burnt in the earth. And yet,
strange malice of fate, Sir Thomas died peaceably in his bed, even
though his last hours were rumoured as anguished.
I pick up one or two memories of the supernatural from the closes and
ways of old Edinburgh. The “sanctified bends” of the Bow are long
vanished, and to-day nothing is more commonplace than the steps and the
street that bears that memorable name. Its most famous inhabitant was no
saint, except in appearance, for here abode Major Weir. From here he was
hauled to prison in 1670, and thence to his doom at the Gallow Lee. “The
warlock that was burned,” says “Wandering Willie” of him. The legend is
too well known for detailed description. Here he lived long in the odour
of sanctity, and finally, struck by conscience, revealed unmentionable
crimes. This story had a peculiar fascination, both for Sir Walter Scott
and R.L.S., both Edinburgh men, both masters of Scots romance, and they
have dwelt lovingly on the strange details. The staff which used to run
the Major’s errands, which acted as a link-boy to him o’ dark nights,
which answered the door for him, on which he leaned when he prayed, and
yet whereon were carved the grinning heads of Satyrs, only visible,
however, on close inspection, and after the downfall of its master, was
sure the strangest magic property ever wizard possessed. Its “rare
turnings” in the fire wherein it was consumed, along with its master,
were carefully noted. Long after strange sights were seen around his
house. At midnight the Major would issue from the door, mount a fiery
steed, which only wanted the head, and vanish in a whirlwind. His
sister, Grizel Weir, who ended as a witch, span miraculous quantities of
yarn. Perhaps this accounted for the sound as of a spinning-wheel that
echoed through the deserted house for more than a century afterwards;
but how to explain the sound as of dancing, and again as of wailing and
howling, and that unearthly light wherewith the eerie place was flooded?
How to explain, indeed! The populace had no difficulty, it was the
Devil!
It would seem that Satan had an unaccountable and, one might say, a
perverse fancy for the West Bow, abode of the righteous as it was. There
are distinct traces of him there in the early part of November 1707. At
that time a certain Mr. John Strahan, W.S., was owner of Craigcrook on
Corstorphine Hill, the house that was to become a literary centre under
Lord Jeffrey. He had left his town mansion under the care of a young
servant-girl called Ellen Bell. On Halloween night, still a popular
festival in Scotland, she had entertained two sweethearts of hers called
Thomson and Robertson. She told them she was going to Craigcrook on the
second morning thereafter, so they arranged to meet her and convoy her
part of the way. At five o’clock on the Monday morning, behold the three
together in the silent streets of the capital. The two youths politely
relieved the girl of the key of the house and some other things she was
carrying, and then, at the three steps at the foot of the Castle rock,
they suddenly threw themselves upon her and beat the life out. They then
returned to rob the house; probably they had gone further than they
intended in committing murder. They were panic-stricken at what they had
done, and each swore that if he informed against the other he was to be
devoted, body and soul, to the Devil. It were better, quoth one, to put
the matter in writing in a bond. “Surely,” echoed a suave voice, and by
their side they found an agreeable smiling gentleman of most obliging
disposition, who offered to write out the bond for them, and suggested
as the most suitable fluid for signature their own blood. The story does
not tell whether the two noticed anything remarkable about their
courteous friend, something not quite normal about the foot, possibly a
gentle hint of a tail. At any rate, they received the advances of the
stranger in anything but an affable spirit, so presently found
themselves alone. Mr. Strahan seems to have been a wealthy gentleman,
for there was £1000 in his abode (sterling, be it observed, not Scots),
with which the robbers made off. Robertson suggested the firing of the
house, but this Thomson would not allow. Mr. Strahan advertised a
substantial reward for the discovery of the criminals, but nothing was
heard for a long time. If we are to believe Wodrow in his agreeable
_Analecta_ it required the supernatural intervention of Providence to
unravel the mystery. Twelve months after, Lady Craigcrook (so Mrs.
Strahan was known, by the courtesy of the time) had a strange dream. She
saw Robertson, who had once been in her service, murder Ellen Bell, rob
the house, and conceal the money in two old barrels under some rubbish.
A search followed, unmistakable evidences of the robbery were found in
Thomson’s possession. He confessed his guilt, and after the usual
formalities made what might almost be called the conventional exit at
the Grassmarket. We are not told whether he was favoured with another
visit from his courteous old friend of the West Bow. The Scots criminal,
like all his countrymen, had abundant courage; he was ready to “dree his
weird,” or, in the popular language of our day, “face the music” with a
certain stoical philosophy, but he almost invariably did so in a pious
and orthodox frame of mind. Nothing could show more strongly the depth
and strength of the popular belief than the frequency with which both
persecutor and criminal turned at the end with whole-hearted conviction
to the creed of the people. There is nothing in Scotland of those jovial
exits which highwaymen like Duval and Sixteen-String Jack made at Tyburn
tree, unless we count M‘Pherson an exception. He was hanged at Banff in
1700. For the last time he played the tune called M‘Pherson’s Rant on
his fiddle, and we know how excellently Burns has written his epitaph;
but he was only a wild Hielandman, so the contemporary Lowlander would
have observed.
The West Bow runs off southward just where the Castle Hill joins the
Lawnmarket. On the north side of the Lawnmarket a little way down there
still stands Lady Stair’s Close and in it Lady Stair’s house, and about
the same time, that is, the early years of the eighteenth century, there
happened to Lady Stair, or Lady Primrose, as she then was, certain
miraculous events which constitute the most romantic tradition of the
Old Town. Scott has written a charming novelette, _My Aunt Margaret’s
Mirror_, on the theme, and I can only present it here in the briefest
possible fashion. Lord Primrose, the lady’s first husband, was, it would
appear, mad, at any rate, he tried to kill his wife, in the which
failing he left Auld Reekie and went abroad. As she wondered and
speculated what had become of him, she heard a gossiping rumour of an
Italian sorcerer possessed of strange power then in Edinburgh. He had a
magic mirror wherein he could show what any absent person was doing at
that precise moment. Lady Stair and her friend presently procured what
we should call a séance. The magician dwelt in a dark recess of some
obscure Canongate close, at least we must suppose so in order to get
sufficient perspective, for all those localities in Edinburgh were so
terribly near to one another. From Lady Stair’s Close to the Canongate
is but a few minutes’ leisurely promenade. After certain preliminary
rites the lady gazed in the magic mirror: it showed forth a bridal, and
the bridegroom was her own husband; the service went on some way, and
then it was interrupted by a person whom she recognised as her own
brother. Presently the figures vanished, and the curtain fell. The lady
took an exact note of the time and circumstances, and when her brother
returned from abroad she eagerly questioned him. It was all true: the
church was in Rotterdam, and her husband was about to commit the
unromantic offence of bigamy with the daughter of a rich merchant when
“the long arm of coincidence” led the brother to the church just in
time. “Excursions and alarums” of an exciting nature at once ensued, but
neither these nor the rest of the lady’s life, though that was
remarkable enough, concern us here.
A little way farther down the street, as it nears the western wall of
the Municipal Buildings, otherwise the Royal Exchange, there stood Mary
King’s Close. I cannot, nor can anybody, it seems, tell who Mary King
was. We have a picture of the close, or what remained of it in 1845;
then the houses were vacant and roofless, the walls ruined, mere
crumbling heaps of stones—weeds, wallflowers rankly flourishing in
every crevice, for as yet the improver was only fitfully in the land. As
far back as 1750 a fire had damaged the south or upper part of the
close, which disappeared in the Royal Exchange. The place had been one
of the spots peculiarly affected by the great plague of 1645; the houses
were then shut up, and it was feared that if they were opened the pest
would stalk forth again, but popular fancy soon peopled the close. If
you lusted after a tremor of delicious horror you had but to step down
its gloomy ways any night after dark and gaze through one of the
windows. You saw a whole family dressed in the garb of a hundred years
earlier and of undeniable ghost-like appearance quietly engaged in their
ordinary avocations; then all of a sudden these vanished, and you spied
a company “linking” it through the mazes of the dance, but not a
mother’s son or daughter of them but wanted his or her head. In the
close itself you might see in the air above you a raw head or an arm
dripping blood. Such and other strange sights are preserved for us in
_Satan’s Invisible World Displayed_ which was published in 1685 by
Professor George Sinclair of Glasgow, afterwards minister of Eastwood.
He tells us wondrous tales of the adventures in this close of Thomas
Coltheart and his spouse. After their entry on the premises there
appeared a human head with a grey floating beard suspended in mid air,
to this was added the phantom of a child, and then an arm, naked from
the elbow and totally unattached, which made desperate but unsuccessful
efforts to shake Mrs. Coltheart by the hand. Mr. Coltheart, in the most
orthodox fashion, begged from the ghosts an account of their wrongs,
that he might speedily procure justice for them; but in defiance of all
precedent they were obstinately silent, yet they grew in number—there
came a dog and a cat, and a number of strange and grotesque beings, for
whom natural history has no names. The flesh-and-blood inhabitants of
the room were driven to kneel on the bed as being the only place left
unoccupied. Finally, with a heart-moving groan, the appearances
vanished, and Mr. Coltheart was permitted to enjoy his house in peace
till the day of his death, but then he must himself begin to play
spectre. He appeared to a friend at Tranent, ten miles off, and when the
trembling friend demanded, “Are you dead? and if so, why come you?” the
ghost, who was unmistakably umquhile Coltheart, shook its head twice and
vanished without remark. The friend proceeded at once to Edinburgh and
(of course) discovered that Mr. Coltheart had just expired. The fact of
the apparition was never doubted, but the why and the wherefore no man
could discover, only the house was again left vacant. In truth, the
ghost must have been rather a trouble to Edinburgh landlords; it was
easy for a story to arise, and immediately it arose the house was
deserted. An old soldier and his wife were persuaded to take up their
abode there, but the very first night the candle burned blue, and the
head, without the body, though with wicked, selfish eyes, was present,
suspended in mid air, and the inmates fled and Mary King’s Close was
given over as an entirely bad business. After all, the old soldier was
not very venturesome, no more so than another veteran, William Patullo
by name, who was induced to take Major Weir’s mansion. He was
effectually frightened by a beast somewhat like a calf which came and
looked at him and his spouse as they lay in bed and then vanished, as
did the prospective tenants forthwith. It was not the age of insurance
companies, else had there been a special clause against spooks!
One is able to smile at some of those stories because there is a
distinctly comic touch about them. No one was the better or the worse
for those quaint visions of the other world, except the landlords who
mourned for the empty houses, against the which we must put the delight
of the “groundlings” whose ears were delicately “tickled”; but the
witches are quite another matter. Old Scots life was ugly in many
respects, in none more so than in the hideous cruelties practised on
hundreds of helpless old women, and sometimes on men, but to a much less
extent. Some half-century ago the scientific world looked on tales of
witchcraft as mere delusion, even though then the chief facts of
mesmerism were known and noted. But phenomena which we now call
“hypnotism” and “suggestion” are accepted to-day as facts of life, they
are thought worthy of scientific treatment, and we now see that they
explain many phenomena of witchcraft. Three hundred years ago everything
was ascribed to Satan, and fiendish tortures were considered the due of
his supposed children. A detailed examination is undesirable. What are
we to learn, for instance, from the story of the Broughton witches who
were burned alive, who, in the extremity of torture, renounced their
Maker and cursed their fellow-men? Some escaped half burned from the
flames and rushed away screaming in their agony, but they were pursued,
seized, and thrown back into the fire, which, more merciful than their
kind, at length terminated their life and suffering together. The
leading case in Scotland was that of the North Berwick witches; it
properly comes within our province, insomuch as James VI. personally
investigated the whole matter at Holyrood. James was the author of a
treatise on witchcraft, and was vastly proud of his gift as a
witch-finder. The story begins with a certain Jeillie Duncan, a
servant-girl at Tranent; she made so many cures that she was presently
suspected of witchcraft. She was treated to orthodox modes of torture;
her fingers were pinched with the pilliwinks, her forehead was wrenched
with a rope, but she would say nothing until the Devil’s mark was found
on her throat, when she gave in and confessed herself a servant of
Satan. Presently there was no end to her confessions! She accused all
the old women in the neighbourhood, especially Agnes Sampson “the eldest
witch of them all resident in Haddington,” and one man, “Dr. Fian alias
John Cunningham, Master of the Schoole at Saltpans in Lowthian.” Agnes
Sampson was taken to Holyrood for personal examination by the King. At
first she was obdurate, but after the usual tortures she developed a
story of the most extraordinary description. She told how she was one of
two hundred witches who sailed over the sea in riddles or sieves, with
flagons of wine, to the old kirk of North Berwick. Jeillie Duncan
preceded them to the kirk dancing and playing on the jews’ harp,
chanting the while a mad rhyme. Nothing would serve the King but to have
Jeillie brought before him. She played a solo accompaniment the while
Agnes Sampson went on with her story. She described how the Devil
appeared in the kirk, and preached a wretched sermon, mixed with obscene
rites and loaded with much abuse of the King of Scotland, “at which time
the witches demanded of the Devill why he did beare such hatred to the
King?” who answered, “by reason the King is the greatest enemie hee hath
in the world.” Solomon listened with mouth and ears agape, and eyes
sticking out of his head in delighted horror, yet even for him the
flattery was a little too gross or the wonders were too astounding.
“They were all extreame lyears,” he roundly declared. But Agnes was
equal to the occasion. She took His Highness aside, and told him the
“verie wordes which passed betweene the Kinges majestie and his queene
at Upslo in Norway, the first night of mariage, with there answere ech
to other, wherat the Kinges majestie wondered greatly and swore by the
living God that he believed that all the devils in hell could not have
discovered the same, acknowledging her words to be most true, and
therefore gave the more credit to the rest that is before declared.”
Thus encouraged she proceeded to stuff James with a choice assortment of
ridiculous details; sometimes fear had the better of her and she
flattered him, then possibly rage filled her heart and she terrorised
him. For her and her “kommers” there was presently the same end. The
King then moved on to Dr. Fian’s case, and he, after a certain amount of
torture, began his extraordinary confessions, which, like his sisters in
misfortune, he embroidered with fantastic details. Here is one incident.
The doctor was enamoured of a young lady, a sister of a pupil. To obtain
her affection he persuaded the boy to bring him three of his sister’s
hairs. The boy’s mother was herself a witch, and thus trumped _his_
cards. She “went to a young heyfer which never had borne calfe,” took
three hairs from it, and sent them to Fian. He practised his
incantations with surprising result. “The heyfer presently appeared
leaping and dancing,” following the doctor about and lavishing upon him
the most grotesque marks of affection.
There is a curious little story of Balzac’s _Une passion dans le desert_
which recalls in an odd way this strange Scots episode, whereof it is
highly improbable Balzac ever heard. Fian, it seems, had acted as
registrar to the Devil in the North Berwick kirk proceedings. With it
all he might possibly have escaped, but having stolen the key of his
prison he fled away by night to the Saltpans. The King felt himself
defrauded, and he soon had the doctor again in safe keeping. He felt
himself still more defrauded when Fian not merely refused to continue
his revelations, but denied those he had already made, and then “a most
straunge torment” was ordered him. All his nails were torn off, one
after another, with a pair of pincers, then under every nail there was
thrust in, two needles up to the heads. He remained obdurate. He was
then subjected to the torture of the “bootes,” “wherein hee continued a
long time and did abide so many blowes in them that his legges were
crusht and beaten together as small as might bee, and the bones and
flesh so bruised that the blood and marrow spouted forth in great
abundance, whereby they were made unserviceable forever.” He still
continued stubborn, and finally was put into a cart, taken to the Castle
Hill, strangled and thrown into a great fire. This was in January 1591.
In trying to bring up the past before us it is necessary to face such
facts, and to remember that James VI. was, with it all, not a cruel or
unkindly man.
I gladly turn to a lighter page. The grimy ways of Leith do not suggest
Fairy land, but two quaint legends of other days are associated
therewith. In front of the old battery, where are now the new docks,
there stood a half-submerged rock which was removed in the course of
harbour operations. This was the abode of a demon named Shellycoat, from
the make of his garments, which you gather were of the most approved
Persian attire. He was a malevolent spirit of great power, a terror to
the urchins of old Leith, and perhaps even to their elders, but like
“the dreaded name of Demogorgon” his reputation was the worst of him. If
he wrought any definite evil, time has obliterated the memory. When his
rock was blasted, poor Shellycoat was routed out, and fled to return no
more.
The other legend is of the fairy boy of Leith who o’ Thursday nights
beat the drum to the fairies in the Calton Hill. Admission thereto was
obtained by a pair of great gates, which opened to them, though they
were invisible to others. The fairies, said the boy, “are entertained
with many sorts of music besides my drum; they have besides plenty of
variety of meats and wine, and many times we are carried into France or
Holland in a night and return again, and whilst we are there we enjoy
all the pleasures the country doth afford.” The fairy boy must at least
be credited with a very vivid imagination. His questioner trysted him
for next Thursday night: the youth duly turned up, apparently got what
money he could, but towards midnight unaccountably disappeared and was
seen no more. When people were so eager to discover the supernatural,
one cannot wonder that they succeeded. In 1702, Mr. David Williamson was
preaching in his own church in Edinburgh when a “rottan” (rat) appeared
and sat down on his Bible. This made him stop, and after a little pause
he told the congregation that this was a message of God to him. He broke
off his sermon and took a formal farewell of his people and went home
and continued sick. This was the time of the Union of the Kingdoms, and
two years later, that is, in 1707, a mighty shoal of whales invaded the
Firth of Forth, “roaring, plunging, and threshing upon one another to
the great terror of all who heard the same.” Thirty-five of them
foundered on the sands of Kirkcaldy, where they made a yet “more
dreadful roaring and tossing, when they found themselves aground so much
that the earth trembled. What the unusual appearance of so great a
number of them at this juncture may portend, shall not be our business
to inquire.” The chronicler is convinced that there must be some deep
connection between such portentous events as the Union of the Crowns and
the appearance of the whales, though with true scientific caution he
does not think it proper to further riddle out the matter!
[Illustration: A BEDESMAN, OR BLUEGOWN,
From a Sketch by Monro S. Orr]
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE STREETS
I collect here a few anecdotes of life on the streets, and among the
people of old Edinburgh. The ancient Scots lived very sparely, yet
sumptuary laws were passed, not to enable them to fare better, but to
keep them down to a low standard. The English were judged mere gluttons;
“pock puddings” the frugal Caledonian deemed them. It was thought the
Southern gentlemen whom James I. and his Queen brought into Scotland
introduced a sumptuous mode of living. In 1533, the Bishop of St.
Andrews raged in the pulpit against the wasteful luxury of later years.
A law was presently passed, fixing how each order should live, and
prohibiting the use of pies and other baked meats to all below the rank
of baron. In fashionable circles there were four meals a day, breakfast,
dinner, supper, and livery, which last was a kind of collation taken in
the bedchamber, before retiring to rest. A century ago it was usual to
furnish the bedroom with liquor, which, perhaps, was a reminiscence of
this old-world meal. The time for breakfast was seven, then came dinner
at ten, supper at four, and livery between eight and nine. This detail
is only of the well-off minority. Legislators need not have alarmed
themselves, grinding poverty was the predominant note of old Scots life.
Pestilence swept the land from time to time—one cause was imperfect
sanitation; a stronger was sheer lack of food.
Here is James Melville’s account of plague-torn Edinburgh in November
1585:—“On the morn we made haste and coming to Losterrick (Restalrig)
disjoined, and about eleven hours came riding in at the Water-gate up
through the Canongate, and rode in at the Nether Bow through the great
street of Edinburgh, _in all whilk way we saw not three persons_, sae
that I miskenned Edinburgh, and almost forgot that I had ever seen sic a
town.”
One effect of poverty was innumerable beggars. Naturally they thronged
Edinburgh, where they made themselves a well-nigh intolerable nuisance.
The Privy Council formulated edicts against “the strang and idle
vagabonds” who lay all day on the causeway of the Canongate, and bullied
the passers-by into giving them alms. Perhaps it was to regulate an
abuse which could not be entirely checked, that the King’s bedesmen, or
Bluegowns, as they were called, from their dress, were established or
re-formed as licensed beggars. These assembled yearly on the King’s
birthday to receive an annual dole of bread and ale and blue gown, and
to hear service in St. Giles’. More welcome than all was the gift of a
penny for every year of the King’s reign, which was given in a leather
purse. The place was the north side of the Tolbooth, hence called “The
Puir Folks’ Purses,” or more briefly, “The Purses.” The scene was
afterwards transferred to the Canongate Church, and then it was done
away with altogether. The analogous Maundy money is still distributed
annually at Westminster Abbey. The classic example of this picturesque
figure of old Scots life is Edie Ochiltree in _The Antiquary_, but in
Scott’s time Bluegowns still adorned Edinburgh streets; hence the
following anecdote. Scott, as he went to and fro from college, was in
the habit of giving alms to one of those gentlemen. It turned out that
he kept a son Willy, as a divinity student at college, and he made bold
to ask Scott to share a humble meal with them in their cottage at St.
Leonards, at the base of Arthur’s Seat. “Please God I may live to see my
bairn wag his head in a pulpit yet.” At the time appointed Scott partook
of the meal with father and son, the latter at first not unnaturally a
little shamefaced. The fare was simple, but of the very best; there was
a “gigot” of mutton, potatoes, and whisky. “Dinna speak to your father
about it,” said Mrs. Scott to Walter; “if it had been a shoulder he
might have thought less, but he will say that gigot was a sin.” The old
Edinburgh beggars were no doubt a droll lot, though particulars of their
pranks are sadly lacking. When Sir Richard Steele, known to his
familiars as Dickie Steele, was in Edinburgh in 1718, he collected the
oldest and oddest of them to some obscure “howf” in Lady Stair’s Close;
he feasted them to their heart’s content and avowed “he found enough
native drollery to compose a comedy.” Well, he didn’t, but the same
century was to give us a greater than Steele and—_The Jolly Beggars!_
The folk of old Edinburgh were used to scenes of bloodshed—I tell
elsewhere the story of “Cleanse the Causey,” as the historic street
fight between the Douglases and the Hamiltons was called. It was almost
a matter of necessity that men should go armed. Wild dissipation was a
common incident, passions were high, and people did not hold either
their own lives or those of others at any great rate. Here is a story
from 1650, when the English were in occupation of Edinburgh, and so for
the time the predominant party. An English officer had a squabble with
some natives; he mounted his horse and said to them disdainfully, “With
my own hands I killed that Scot which ought this horse and this case of
pistols and who dare say that in this I wronged him?” He paid bitterly
for his rashness. “I dare say it,” said one of his audience, “and thus
shall avenge it.” He stabbed him with a sword right through the body so
that he fell dead. The Scot threw himself into the vacant saddle, dashed
over the stones to the nearest Port, and was lost for ever to pursuit.
The measures against those acts of violence were ludicrously
ineffectual. In the houses the firearms were chained down lest they
should be used in accidental affrays; but the streets were not policed
at all, and gentlemen did much as they liked. It is told of Hugh
Somerville of Drum, who died in 1640, that he went one day to St. Giles’
with Lady Ross, his sister-in-law. A gentleman happened by chance, it
would seem, to push against him, there was a scuffle and Somerville had
his dagger out on the instant, and would have stuck it into the intruder
had not Lady Ross seized and held him; the while she begged the stranger
to go away. A duel was like to ensue, but in cold blood the affair no
doubt seemed ridiculous, and was made up. Quarrels about equally small
matters often led to duels. In January 1708, two friends, young Baird of
Saughtonhall and Robert Oswald, were drinking in a tavern at Leith, when
they had a dispute; they accommodated it, and drove to Edinburgh
together, they leave the coach at the Netherbow, when Baird revives the
quarrel, and in a few minutes, or perhaps seconds, kills his friend with
his sword. A reaction followed, and the assassin expressed his deep
regret, which did not bring the dead man to life again; the other fled,
but finally escaped without punishment as the act was not premeditated.
One of the last incidents of this class was a duel between Captain
Macrae of Marionville and Sir George Ramsay of Bamff in 1790. It arose
out of a quarrel caused by the misconduct of a servant. Macrae shot his
opponent dead, and then fled to France, and he never thought it safe to
return to Scotland. Duelling was considered proper for gentlemen, but
only for gentlemen, and not to be permitted to all and sundry. Towards
the end of the sixteenth century a barber challenged a chimney sweep,
and they had a very pretty “set to” with swords at which neither was
hurt. The King presently ordered the barber to summary execution because
he presumed to take the revenge of a gentleman. The upper classes did
not set a good example to their inferiors. One need not discuss whether
the Porteous mob was really a riot of the common people. The _Heart of
Midlothian_, if nothing else, has made it a very famous affair. The
Edinburgh mob, which was very fierce and determined according to Scott,
had one or two remarkable maxims. At an Irish fair the proper course is
to bring down your shillelagh on any very prominent head. Here the rule
was to throw a stone at every face that looked out of a window. Daniel
Defoe was in Edinburgh in 1705, on a special mission from Government, to
do all he could to bring about the Union. From his window in the High
Street he was gazing upon the angry populace and only just dodged a
large stone. He afterwards discovered not merely the rule but the reason
thereof, that there might be no recognition of faces. As the old cock
crows the young cock learns, even the children were fighters. I have
already told how the boys of the High School killed Bailie Macmorran in
a barring out business. There is a legend of the famous Earl of
Haddington, “Tam of the Coogate,” that when a fight was on between the
lads of the High School and the students of the College, he took
strenuously the side of the former. Nay, he drove the students out of
the West Port, locked the gate in their faces, that they might cool
themselves by a night in the fields, and placidly retired to his
studies. The fighting tradition lasted through the centuries. Scott
tells us of the incessant bickers between the High School and street
callants, which, however lawless, had yet their own laws. During one of
those fights a youth known from his dress as Green-breeks, a leader of
the town, was stuck with a knife, and somewhat seriously wounded. He was
tended in the Infirmary and in due time recovered, but nothing would
prevail upon him to give any hint whereby his assailant might be
discovered. The High Schoolboys took means to reward him, but the fights
were continued with unabated vigour.
Student riots are a chapter by themselves, and in Edinburgh were almost
to be looked upon as a matter of course, and to a mild extent still are,
on such occasions as Rectorial elections. In past times no occasion was
lost for burning the Pope in effigy, that was always a safe card to
play. Even the piety of old Edinburgh served to stimulate its brawls.
The famous commotion at the reading of the service book in St Giles’ on
23rd July 1637 is a case in point. Jenny Geddes is to-day commemorated
within the Cathedral itself, and she lives in history by her classic
pleasantry, on the Dean announcing the collect for the day: “Deil colic
the wame o’ thee fause thief, wilt thou say mass at my lug?” There is
one other story about Jenny to be told. On 19th June 1660 there were
great rejoicings in Edinburgh upon the Restoration. There was service at
the Church, banquet of sweetmeats and wine at the Cross, which ran
claret for the benefit of the populace; at night there were fireworks at
the Castle, effigies of Cromwell and the Devil were paraded through the
streets, bonfires blazed everywhere, and as fuel for these last Jenny is
reported to have contributed her stool. No doubt much water had run
under the bridge since 1637; Jenny may or may not have changed her
views, but she was nothing if not enthusiastic, and there was really no
inconsistency in her conduct. Other folk than Jenny had a difficulty to
reconcile their various devotions!
The people of Edinburgh had a strong aversion from bishops. On 4th June
1674, as the members of the Council were going to their meeting-place in
the Parliament Close, fifteen ladies appeared with a petition for a free
ministry. Archbishop Sharp was pointedly described as Judas, and
Traitor. Indeed one of the ladies struck him on the neck, screaming that
he should yet pay for it ere all was done. Any scandal against a bishop
was readily circulated. Bishop Patterson of Edinburgh was lampooned as a
profligate and loose liver. In the midst of a seemingly impassioned
discourse he is said to have kissed, in the pulpit, his bandstrings,
that being the signal agreed upon between him and his lady-love to prove
that he could think upon her even in the midst of solemn duties. He was
nicknamed “Bishop Bandstrings.” The bishops of the persecuting Church
disappear from history in a rather undignified manner. Patrick Walker
tells with great glee how at the Revolution, as the convention grew more
and more enthusiastic for the new order, they, fourteen in number, “were
expelled at once and stood in a crowd with pale faces in the Parliament
Close.” Some daring members of the crowd knocked the heads of the poor
prelates “hard upon each other,” the bishops slunk off, and presently
were seen no more in the streets. “But some of us,” continues Patrick,
“would have rejoiced still more to have seen the whole cabalsie sent
closally down the Bow that they might have found the weight of their
tails in a tow to dry their stocking soles, and let them know what
hanging was.”
Villon had long before sung on a near prospect of the gallows—
“Or d’une corde d’une toise
Saura mon col que mon cul poise.”
But you are sure Patrick had never heard of François, and the same
dismally ludicrous idea had occurred independently.
[Illustration: ALLAN RAMSAY, POET,
From an Engraving after William Aikman]
Certain picturesque figures or rather classes of men lent a quaint or
comic touch to the streets of old Edinburgh, but all are long swept into
Time’s dustbin. One of these consisted of the chairmen. The Old Town was
not the place for carriages; cabs were not yet, and even to-day they do
not suit its steep and narrow ways; but the sedan chair was the very
thing, you could trundle it commodiously up and down hill, and narrow
must have been the close through which it could not pass. The chairmen
who bore the burden of the chair were mainly Highlanders, who flocked to
Edinburgh as the Irish did afterwards, and in early days formed a
distinct element in city life. They are reported as of insatiable greed,
but their earnings probably were but small and uncertain. Still such was
their reputation, and it was once put to the test to decide a wager.
Lord Panmure hired a chair and proceeded a short way down the Canongate.
When he got out he handed the chairman a guinea. Millionaires were not
yet in the land, possibly the chairman imagined he had found a
benevolent lunatic, or he may even have smelt a wager. “But could her
honour no’ shuist gie the ither sixpence to get a gill?” The coin was
duly handed over, then Donald thought he might do something for his
companion and preferred a modest request for “three bawbees of odd
change to puy snuff.” But even the chairmen had another side. Among them
was Edmund Burke, who died in 1751. He had been an attendant on Prince
Charlie, and had as easily as you like netted £30,000 by treachery, for
such was the handsome price fixed for the young chevalier, “dead or
alive”; but it never crossed his mind to earn it!
Of much the same class were the caddies, whose name still lingers as the
attendants on golf-players; the caddie was the man-of-all-work of old
Edinburgh, for various indeed were his functions. Even to-day, if you
look at some of the high houses, you remember how much time inhabitants
must have spent in going up and down stairs; load the climber with
burdens and life were scarce worth living. The chief burden was water,
and the caddies were the class who bore the stoups containing it up and
down. These water-carriers soon acquired a pronounced and characteristic
stoop; they were dressed in the cast-off red jackets of the City Guard,
the women among them had thick felt great-coats and hats like the men,
their fee was a penny a barrel. The same name was applied to a division
that worked with their brains rather than their hands; they knew every
man in the town, and the name, residence, and condition of every
stranger to whom they acted as guides and even companions. You sought
your caddie at the Cross, where he would lounge of a morning on a wooden
bench till some one was good enough to employ him. You remember the
interesting account Scott gives of the caddies in the part of _Guy
Mannering_ which treats of the visit to Edinburgh of the Colonel.
Still more characteristic of old Edinburgh was the Town Guard, who for
many a long day acted most inefficiently as police and guardians of the
peace to the city. They are, so to speak, embalmed in the pages of Scott
and Fergusson. The first treats them with a touch of comic contempt, the
other calls them “the black banditti,” and deprecates their brutal
violence. He had some cause, personal or otherwise. One of their number,
Corporal John Dhu, a gigantic Highlander, as short of temper as he was
long of body, during a city row with one fell stroke stretched a member
of the mob lifeless on the pavement. The populace told wondrous legends
of this corps. They existed, it was averred, before the Christian era,
nay, some of them were present at the Crucifixion as Pilate’s guard! In
truth they only dated from the seventeenth century, at any rate as a
regularly constituted corps, and they came to an end early in the
nineteenth. They attended all civic ceremonies and civic functions,
their drums beat every night at eight o’clock in the High Street. Their
guard-house long stood opposite the Tron Church. There was always a
collision between them and the populace on occasion of rejoicing, as
witness Fergusson’s _Hallow Fair_:
“Jock Bell gaed forth to play his freaks,
Great cause he had to rue it,
For frae a stark Lochaber aix
He gat a _clamihewit_
Fu’ sair that night.”
The unfortunate wretch received a still worse blow, nor even then were
his troubles ended:
“He, peching on the causey, lay
O’ kicks an’ cuffs well sair’d.
A highland aith the serjeant gae
She maun pe see our guard.
Out spak the warlike corporal,
‘Pring in ta drunken sot!’
They trail’d him ben, an’ by my saul
He paid his drucken groat
For that neist day.”
Once in the year, at any rate, the populace got their own back
again—that was the King’s birthday, when the authorities assembled in
the Parliament House to honour the occasion. Thereafter the mob went
with one accord for the Guard, and always routed them after a desperate
resistance. Scott jocosely laments the disappearance of those
picturesque figures, with their uniform of rusty red, their Lochaber
axes, their huge cocked hats. But two survived to be present at the
inauguration of his monument on 15th August 1846. Their pay was sixpence
a day. The Gaelic poet, Duncan Macintyre, was once asked if anything
could be done to improve his worldly prospects. He confessed a modest
ambition to be enrolled in the Edinburgh Town Guard! After this Burns’s
post as a Dumfries exciseman might seem princely. All competent critics
agree that Macintyre was the sweetest of singers, a poet of true genius,
and that his laudatory epitaph in old Greyfriars was justly earned.
Captain James Burnet, who died on the 24th August 1814, was the last
commander of this ancient corps. If not so famous as some of his
predecessors, Major Weir or Captain Porteous, for instance, he was still
a prominent Edinburgh character. He weighed nineteen stones, yet, for a
wager, climbed Arthur’s Seat in a quarter of an hour. You do not wonder
that he lay panting on the earth “like an expiring porpoise.” He was one
of the “Turners,” as those were scornfully called who assembled on
Sunday afternoons, _not_ to go to church, but to take a walk or turn. At
an earlier day he and his fellows had been promptly pounced upon by the
seizers, who were officials appointed to promenade the streets during
the hours of divine service. These would apprehend the ungodly wanderer
and even joints of mutton frizzling and turning with indecent levity on
the roasting-jacks. In or about 1735 the blackbird of a Jacobite barber,
in horrid defiance of the powers that were, civil and ecclesiastical,
and to the utter subversion of Kirk and State, touched “the trembling
ears” of the seizers with “The King shall enjoy his own again,” most
audaciously whistled. The songster was forthwith taken into custody and
transported to the guard-house.
Once the “seizers” got emphatically the worst of it. Dr. Archibald
Pitcairne, poet, scholar, Jacobite, latitudinarian, was not in sympathy
in many points with the Edinburgh of Queen Anne’s day, but he loved his
glass as well as any of them. He had sent for some claret one Sunday
forenoon, which the seizers had confiscated ere it reached his thirsty
palate. The wit was furious, but he had his revenge. He doctored a few
bottles of the wine with some strong drug of disagreeable operation, and
then he procured its capture by the seizers. As he expected, the stuff
went speedily down their throats; the result was all he could have
wished. But Burnet came too late for all this, and a nickname was the
only punishment for him and his fellows. He was also a prominent member
of the Lawnmarket Club—the popular name for certain residents who met
every morning about seven to discuss the news of the day, and to take
their morning draught of brandy together. Nothing was done in old
Edinburgh without the accompaniment of a dram; the “meridian” followed
the “morning” (the very bells of St. Giles that chime the hour were
known as the “gill” bells), as a matter of course, and both only
sustained the citizen for the serious business of the evening. True, a
great deal of the drinking was claret, indeed, huge pewter jugs or
stoups of that wine were to be seen moving up and down the streets of
Edinburgh in all directions, as ale jugs in London. When a ship arrived
from Bordeaux the claret hogsheads were carted through the streets, and
vessels were filled from the spigot at a very cheap rate. There was
always a native-brewed “tippeny.” The curtain was already falling on old
Edinburgh ere whisky was introduced as a regular article of consumption.
A thin veil of decency was thrown over the dissipation; it was made a
matter of aggravation in the charge against a gentleman of rank that he
had allowed his company to get drunk in his house before it was dark in
the month of July. The peculiar little separate boxes wherein the guests
revelled in the Edinburgh taverns threw an air of secrecy and mystery
over the proceedings. One of the most famous taverns was Johnny Dowie’s,
in Libberton’s Wynd, where George IV. Bridge now stands. Its memories of
Burns and Fergusson and a hundred other still famous names make it the
_Mermaid_ of Edinburgh. It had many baser clients. A visitor opens a
door and finds a room, the floor covered with snoring lads. “Oh,”
explains mine host with a tolerant grin, “just twa-three o’ Sir Wullie’s
drucken clerks!” (Sir William Forbes the banker is meant). “The clartier
the cosier,” says a wicked old Scots apothegm. Wolfe, the hero of
Quebec, says that it was not till after Christmas, when the better folk
had come into it from the country, that Edinburgh was “in all its
perfection of dirt and gaiety.” There could not have been anything like
sufficient water wherewith to wash, and all sorts of filth were hurled
from the lofty houses into the street, “_Gardy loo_” was the
conventional word of warning, uttered not seldom _after_ and not
_before_ the event. Whether it was from the French “_Gare à l’eau_” may
or may not be true. The delightful Mrs. Winifred Jenkins aptly
translates it as: “May the Lord have mercy on your souls.”
Until imprisonment for debt was abolished the precincts of Holyrood were
inhabited by fugitive debtors, for there these had the privilege of
sanctuary. They were called Abbey lairds, and many were the stories told
of the dodges to get them out of the bounds or to remain after Sunday
was finished, for that was a free day for them. Two anecdotes may be
quoted. On a certain Sunday in July 1709, Patrick Haliburton, one of
those Abbey lairds, was induced to visit a creditor, by whom he was
received with the utmost geniality. The bottle was produced and Patrick
quaffed to his heart’s content; as he staggered from the door _after_
midnight, a messenger seized him under a Writ of Caption and haled him
off to prison. In 1724 Mrs. Dilkes, a debtor, had an invitation to a
tavern within the verge, but to enter it she had to go a few paces
beyond the Girth Cross. The moment she was outside she was nabbed; but
this was too much for the women of the place, who rose in their might
and rescued her.
The wit of old Edinburgh was satirical, bitter, scornful, and the
practical jokes not in the best of taste. The Union, we know, was
intensely unpopular, nowhere more than in the Canongate.
“London and death gar thee look dool,”
sings Allan Ramsay. Holyrood was at an end, save for the election of
representative Peers. At the first after the Union it was noted that all
elected were loyal to the English government, “a plain evidence of the
country’s slavery to the English Court.” A fruit-woman paraded the
courts of the palace bawling most lustily, “Who would buy good pears,
old pears, new pears, fresh pears—rotten pears, sixteen of them for a
plack.” Remember that pears is pronounced “peers” in Scots and the point
of the joke is obvious.
In the suburb of the Pleasance a tailor called Hunter had erected a
large house which folk named Hunter’s Folly, or the Castle of Clouts.
Gillespie, the founder of Gillespie’s Hospital, was a snuff merchant;
when he started a carriage the incorrigible Harry Erskine suggested as a
motto:
“Wha wad hae thocht it
That noses had bocht it?”
Harry was usually more good-humoured. A working man complained to him of
the low value of a dollar, which he showed him. Now, from the scarcity
of silver at the time, a number of Spanish dollars were in circulation,
on which the head of George III. had been stamped over the neck of the
Spanish King; the real was some sixpence less than the nominal value.
Erskine gravely regretted that two such mighty persons had laid their
heads together to do a poor man out of a sixpence. Not that the lawyers
always had the best of it. Crosby, the original Counsellor Pleydell in
_Guy Mannering_, was building a spacious mansion in St. Andrew Square.
His home in the country was a thatched cottage. “Ah, Crosby,” said
Principal Robertson to him one day at dinner, “were your town and
country house to meet, how they would stare at one another.”
[Illustration: ANDREW CROSBIE, “PLEYDELL”,
From a Painting in the Advocates’ Library,
by permission of the Faculty of Advocates]
Nor did the people always get the laugh. Walter Ross, an Edinburgh
character of the eighteenth century, had built a square tower in his
property on the north side of the New Town; in this were all the curious
old stones he could procure. The people called it Ross’s Folly, and
notwithstanding his prominently displayed threats of man-traps and
spring guns they roamed at will over his domain. Somehow or other he
procured a human leg from the dissecting room, dressed it up with
stocking, shoe, and buckle and sent the town-crier with it, announcing
that “it had been found that night in Walter Ross’s policy at
Stockbridge,” and offering to restore it to the owner!
A more innocent pleasantry is ascribed to Burns. A lady of title, with
whom he had the slightest acquaintance, asked him to a party in what was
no doubt a very patronising manner. Burns never lost his head or his
independence in Edinburgh. He replied that he would come if the Learned
Pig was invited also. The animal in question was then one of the
attractions of the Grassmarket. To balance this is a story of a snub by
a lady. Dougal Geddie, a successful silversmith, had donned with much
pride the red coat of a Town Guard officer. He observed with concern a
lady at the door of the Assembly Rooms without an attendant beau. He
courteously suggested himself “if the arm of an old soldier could be of
any use to her.” “Hoot awa’, Dougal, an auld tinkler you mean,” said the
lady.
One constantly recurring street scene in old Edinburgh was the execution
of criminals. Not a mere case of decorous hanging, but a man, as like as
not, dismembered in sight of the gaping crowd, and that man was often
one who had been within the memory of all a great personage in the
State, to whom every knee had been bowed, and every cap doffed. Great
executions were famous events, and were distinguished by impressive and
remarkable incidents; but I shall not attempt to record these. Some
little remembered events must serve for illustration. In 1661 Archibald
Cornwall, town officer, was hanged at the Cross. He had “poinded” an
honest man’s house, wherein was a picture of the King and Queen. These,
from carelessness or malice or misplaced sense of humour, he had stuck
on the gallows at the Cross from which as noted he presently dangled. In
1667 Patrick Roy Macgregor and some of his following were condemned at
Edinburgh for sorning, fire-raising, and murder. Those caterans were
almost outside the law, and they were duly hanged, the right hand being
previously cut off—a favourite old-time addition to capital punishment.
Macgregor was a thick-set, strongly-built man of fierce face, in which
gleamed his hawk-like eye, a human wolf the crowd must have thought him.
He was “perfectly undaunted” though the hangman bungled the amputation
business so badly that he was turned out of office the next day.
Executions were at different periods carried out on the Castle Hill, at
the Cross, the Gallow Lee, on the road to Leith, and at various places
throughout the city, but the ordinary spot was, from about 1660 till
1785, in the Grassmarket, at the foot of the West Bow, after that at the
west end of the Tolbooth, till its destruction in 1817, then at the head
of Libberton’s Wynd, near where George IV. Bridge now is, till 1868,
when such public spectacles were abolished. An old Edinburgh rhyme
commemorates the old-time progress of the criminal.
“Up the Lawnmarket, And doun the West Bow,
Up the big ladder, And doun the wee tow.”
As the clock struck the hour after noon, the City Guard knocked at the
door of the Tolbooth. It was flung open and the condemned man marched
forth. The correct costume was a waistcoat and breeches of white, edged
with black ribbon, wherewith the nightcap on his head was also trimmed.
His hands were tied behind him, and a rope was round his neck. On each
side was a parson, behind shuffled the hangman, disguised in an
overcoat, round were the City Guard, with their arms ready. Among the
fierce folk of that violent town a rescue was always a possibility, and
so the gruesome figure went to his doom. One other case and I leave the
subject. It was a popular belief in Edinburgh that a man could not be
hanged later than four o’clock afternoon. A certain John Young had been
convicted of forgery, and condemned to death. The time appointed for his
execution was the 17th December 1750, between two and four in the
afternoon. Under the pretence of private devotion he locked himself in
the inner room of the prison, and nothing would persuade him to come
out. He was only got at by breaking the floor of the room overhead, and
even then there was difficulty. A gun was presented at his head; it
happened to be unloaded. On a calculation of probabilities he even then
refused to surrender; he was finally seized and dragged headlong
downstairs. He anxiously inquired if it were not yet four o’clock, and
was assured he would be hanged, however late the hour. As a matter of
fact, it was already after four, though not by the clock, which had been
stopped by the authorities. He refused to move, declined, as he said, to
be accessory to his own murder, but was hanged all the same about
half-past four. His pranks had only given him another half-hour of life.
There were numerous lesser punishments: flogging, mutilation, branding,
all done in public, to the disgust or entertainment of the populace. I
tell one story, farce rather than tragedy. On the 6th of November 1728,
Margaret Gibson, for the crime of theft, was drummed through the town;
over her neck was fixed a board provided with bells which chimed at each
step she made, a little from her face there was attached a false face
adorned with a fox’s tail, “In short she was a very odd spectacle.” No
doubt; but where did the edification come in? I ought to mention that
the officials who attended an execution were wont thereafter to regale
themselves at what was called the Deid Chack. The cheerful Deacon
Brodie, just before his violent exit from life, took leave of a town
official in this fashion, “Fare ye weel, Bailie! Ye need na be surprised
if ye see me amang ye yet, to tak’ my share o’ the Deid Chack.” Perhaps
he meant his ghost would be there, or—but it is not worth speculating.
This gruesome feast was abolished through the influence of Provost
Creech, who did much for the city.
“Auld Reekie aye he keepit tight
And trig an’ braw.”
The crook in Creech’s lot was an old soldier, Lauchlin M‘Bain, who
pretended to sell roasting-jacks. He had a street call of
“R-r-r-roasting toasting-jacks,” which was found perfectly unbearable,
even by the not too nice ears of the citizens. He blackmailed various
parties, and then attached himself like a burr to Creech. He bellowed
before his door with such fell intent that the civic dignitary was
frantic. He had Lauchlin up before the local courts, but the old
soldier, who had fought on the government side at Culloden, produced his
discharge which clearly gave him a right to practise his business in
Edinburgh. Creech had to submit and buy the intruder off. Creech himself
played pranks just as mischievous on a certain drunken Writer to the
Signet called William Macpherson, a noted character of the day. He lived
in the West Bow with his two sisters, whom he, with quaint barbarity,
nicknamed Sodom and Gomorrah. He was not above taking fees in kind. Once
he thus procured an armful of turnips, with which he proceeded
homewards; but he was tipsy, and the West Bow was near the
perpendicular, and ere long he was flat on his face, and the turnips
flying in every direction. He staggered after them and recovered most.
The Governor of the Castle had asked Creech to procure him a cook; he
became so insistent in his demands that the bookseller got angry, and
happening to meet Macpherson, he coolly told him that the Governor
wished to see him on important business. Macpherson could not understand
why everybody treated him in such a cavalier manner, and a comical
conversation took place, which was brought to a head by the Governor
demanding his character. At last he blurted out in rage that he was a
Writer to the Signet. “Why, I wanted a cook,” said the Governor.
Macpherson retired in wrath to comfort himself with that unfailing
remedy, the bottle.
These were not the days of care for the insane, the “natural” was
allowed to run about the streets untouched. Jamie Duff was one of the
most famous of those. In old Scotland a funeral was a very pompous and
very solemn function. Duff made it a point to be present at as many as
possible, with cape, cravat, and weepers of the most orthodox pattern,
however shabby the material, even paper not being disdained. He commonly
marched at the head of the procession—a hideous burlesque of the whole
affair. His pranks met with strange and unexpected tolerance; instead of
being driven away, he was fed and encouraged. He appears at the funeral
of Miss Bertram in _Guy Mannering_. Scott has gathered many such
memories into his works. One adventure of Duff’s was not a success. He
had got together, or aped the cast-off suit of a bailie, and assumed the
title of that mighty functionary. The authorities interfered and
stripped him, thus making themselves the butt of many a local witticism.
He subsisted on stray gifts of all kinds, but he refused silver money.
He thought it was a trick to enlist him. Another feature of the street
was the Highland gentleman. The memory of one, Francis M‘Nab, Esq. of
M‘Nab, still lingers. Once a Lowland friend inquired if Mr. M‘Nab was at
home. “No,” was the answer, and the door was shut in his face, not
before he had heard the tones of the chieftain in the background.
Apprised of his error, he called next day, and asked for “The M‘Nab,”
and was received with open arms. It happened on the way to Leith races
that the chieftain’s horse dropped down dead under him. “M‘Nab, is that
the same horse you had last year?” said an acquaintance at the next
race-meeting. “No, py Cot,” replied the Laird; “but this is the same
whip”—the other made off at full speed. When in command of the
Breadalbane Fencibles, he allowed his men to smuggle a huge quantity of
whisky from the Highlands. A party of excisemen laid hands on the
baggage of the corps. M‘Nab pretended to believe they were robbers. He
was a big man, with a powerful voice; he thundered out to his men
“Prime, load”—the gaugers took to their heels, and the whisky was
saved.
Smuggling might almost be called the first of Highland virtues.
Archibald Campbell, the city officer, had the misfortune to lose his
mother. He procured a hearse, and reverently carried away the body to
the Highlands for burial. He brought the hearse back again, not empty,
but full of smuggled whisky. This fondness for a trick or practical joke
was a feature of old Edinburgh. It lived on to later times. In 1803 or
1804, Playfair, Thomas Thomson, and Sydney Smith instigated by Brougham,
proceeded one night to George Street, with the intention of filching the
Galen’s Head, which stood over the door of Gardiner, the apothecary. By
one climbing on the top of the others their object was all but attained,
when, by the dim light of the oil-lamps, Brougham was descried leading
the city watch to the spot, his design being to play a trick within a
trick. There was a hasty scramble, and all got off. None save Brougham
was very young, and even he was twenty-six, and to-day the people are
decorous and the place is decorous. Who can now recall what the Mound
was like, when it was the chosen locus of the menageries of the day?
Fergusson, Lord Hermand, was proceeding along it just having heard of
the fall of the “ministry of all the talents”; he could not contain
himself. “They are out—by the Lord, they are all out, every mother’s
son of them!” A passing lady heard him with absolute horror. “Good Lord,
then we shall all be devoured!” she screamed, not doubting but that the
wild beasts had broken loose.
A word as to weather. The east coast of Scotland is exposed to the
chilling fog or mist called haar, and to bitter blasts of east wind, as
well as to the ordinary rain and cloud. Edinburgh, being built on hills,
is peculiarly affected by those forces, and the broad streets and open
spaces of the New Town worst of all. The peculiar build of the old part
was partly, at least, meant as a defence from weather. Fergusson boldly
says so.
“Not Boreas that sae snelly blows
Dare here pap in his angry nose,
Thanks to our dads, whase biggin stands
A shelter to surrounding lands.”
But there is no shelter in Princes Street. On the 24th of January 1868 a
great storm raged. Chimney-pots and portions of chimney-stacks came down
in all directions. Fifty police carts were filled with the rubbish. Cabs
were blown over, an instance of the force of the east wind which
impressed James Payn the novelist exceedingly. A gentleman had opened
Professor Syme’s carriage door to get out. The door was completely blown
away; a man brought it up presently, with the panel not even scratched
and the glass unbroken. Another eminent doctor, Sir Robert Christison,
was hurled along Princes Street at such a rate, that when, to prevent an
accident, he seized hold of a lamp-post he was dashed violently into the
gutter and seriously hurt his knee. The street was deserted, people were
afraid to venture out of doors. Even on a moderately gusty night the
noise of the wind amidst the tall lands and narrow closes of the Old
Town, as heard from Princes Street, is a sound never to be forgotten; it
has a tragic mournful dignity in its infinite wail, the voice of old
Edinburgh touched with pity and terror! Some one has said what a
charming place Edinburgh would be if you could only put up a screen
against the east wind. As that is impossible it may be held to excuse
everything from flight to dissipation!
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE CITY
I continue the subjects of my last chapter, though this deals rather
with things under cover and folk of a better position than the common
objects of the street. I pass as briefly as may be the more elaborate
legends of Edinburgh, they are rather story than anecdote. I have
already dealt with Lady Stair and her close. It is on the north side of
the Lawnmarket. If you go down that same street till it becomes the
Canongate, on the same side, you have Morocco Land with its romantic
legend of young Gray, who showed a clean pair of heels to the hangman,
only to turn up a few years after as a bold bad corsair. But he came to
bless and not to rob, for by his eastern charms or what not he cured the
Provost’s daughter, sick well-nigh to death of the plague, and then
married her. They lived very happily together in Morocco Land, outside
the Netherbow be it noted, and so outside old Edinburgh, for Gray had
vowed he would never again enter the city. If you find a difficulty in
realising this tale of eastern romance amid the grimy surroundings of
the Canongate of to-day, lift up your eyes to Morocco Land, and there is
the figure of the Moor carved on it, and how can you doubt the story
after that? On the opposite side is Queensberry House, which bears many
a legend of the splendour and wicked deeds of more than one Duke of
Queensberry. Chief of them was that High Commissioner who presided over
the Union debates, he whom the Edinburgh mob hated with all the bitter
hatred of their ferocious souls. They loved to tell how when he was
strangling the liberties of his country in the Parliament House, his
idiot son and heir was strangling the poor boy that turned the spit in
Queensberry House, and was roasting him upon his own fire so that when
the family returned to their mansion a cannibal orgie was already in
progress. You are glad that history enables you to doubt the story just
as you are sorry you must doubt the others.
Edinburgh has had a Provost for centuries (since 1667 he has been
entitled by Royal command to the designation of Lord Provost), Bailies,
Dean of Guild, Town Council, and so forth, but you must not believe for
a moment that these were ever quite the same offices. The old municipal
constitution of Edinburgh was curious and complicated. I shall not
attempt to explain it, or how the various deacons of the trades formed
part of it. When it was reformed and the system of self-election
abolished, the city officer, Archibald Campbell, is said to have died
out of sheer grief, it seemed to him defiling the very Ark of God. The
old-time magistrates were puffed up with a sense of their own
importance, that of itself invited a “taking down.” It was the habit of
those dignitaries to pay their respects to every new President of the
Court of Session. President Dundas, who died in 1752, was thus honoured.
He was walking with his guests in the park at Arniston, when the
attention of Bailie M‘Ilroy, one of their number, was attracted by a
fine ash tree lately blown to the ground. He was a wood merchant, and
thought the occasion too good to be lost. He there and then proposed to
buy it, and not accepting the curt refusals of the President, finally
offered to pay a half-penny a foot above the ordinary price. “Sir,” said
Dundas in a burst of rage, “rather than cut up that tree, I would see
you and all the magistrates of Edinburgh hanging on it.” But the roll of
civic dignitaries contains more illustrious names.
Provost Drummond, who may be called the founder of the New Town, had
long cherished and developed the scheme in his mind. Dr. Jardine, his
son-in-law, lived in part of a house in the north corner of the Royal
Exchange from which there was a wide prospect away over the Nor’ Loch to
the fields beyond. It was plain countryside in those days. The swans
used to issue from under the Castle rock, swim across the Nor’ Loch,
cross the Lang Gate and Bearford’s Park, and make sad havoc of the
cornfields of Wood’s farm. Bearford’s Park was called after Bearford in
East Lothian, which had the same owner. Perhaps you remember the wish of
Richard Moniplies in _The Fortunes of Nigel_, that he had his opponent
in Bearford’s Park. But to return to Provost Drummond. He was once with
Dr. Thomas Somerville, then a young man, in Dr. Jardine’s house, above
mentioned. They were looking at the prospect, perhaps watching the
vagaries of the audacious swans. “You, Mr. Somerville,” said the
Provost, “are a young man and may probably live, though I will not, to
see all these fields covered with houses, forming a splendid and
magnificent city,” all which in due time was to come about. Dr.
Somerville tells us this story in his _My Own Life and Times_, a work
still important for the history of the period. All this building has not
destroyed the peculiar characteristic of Edinburgh scenery. It is still
true that “From the crowded city we behold the undisturbed dwellings of
the Hare and the Heath fowl; from amidst the busy hum of men we look on
recesses where the sound of the human voice has but rarely penetrated,
on mountains surrounding a great metropolis, which rear their mighty
heads in solitude and silence.
[Illustration: REV. THOMAS SOMERVILLE,
From a Photograph in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery]
What pleases me more in this scenery is that it is so perfectly
characteristic of the country, so purely Scottish . . . No man in
Edinburgh can for a moment forget that he is in Scotland.” It is almost
startling to look up from the grime of the Canongate to the solitary
nooks of Arthur’s Seat, though the sea of houses spreads miles around.
Whatever scenic effects remain, the historical effects of the landscape
are vanished. With what various emotions the crowd from every point of
vantage must have watched Dundee’s progress along the Lang Gate to his
interview with the Duke of Gordon on the Castle rock! And the town was
not much changed when, rather more than half a century afterwards, the
citizens, some of them the same, watched, after the affair at
Coltbridge, the dragoons gallop along the same north ridge in headlong
flight, a sight which promptly disposed the townsfolk’s minds in the
direction of surrender. One gloomy tragedy of the year 1717 affords a
curious illustration of this command of prospect. A road called
Gabriel’s Road once ran from the little hamlet of Silvermills on the
Water of Leith southward to where the Register House now stands.
Formerly you crossed the dam which bounded the east end of the Nor’
Loch, and by the port at the bottom of Halkerston’s Wynd you entered old
Edinburgh just as you might enter it now by the North Bridge, though at
a very different level. To-day Gabriel’s Road still appears in the
street directory, but it is practically a short flight of steps and a
back way to a collection of houses. In the year mentioned a certain
Robert Irvine, a probationer of the church, on or near this road,
cruelly murdered his two pupils, little boys, and sons of Mr. Gordon of
Ellom, whose only offence was some childish gossip about their
preceptor. The instrument was a penknife, and the second boy fled
shrieking when he saw the fate of his brother, but was pursued and
killed by Irvine, whom you might charitably suppose to be at least
partially insane were not deeds of ferocious violence too common in old
Scots life. The point of the story for us is that the tragedy was
clearly seen by a great number from the Old Town, though they were
powerless to prevent. The culprit was forthwith seized, and as he was
taken red-handed, was executed two days after by the authorities of
Broughton, within whose territory the crime had occurred. His hands were
previously hacked off with the knife, the instrument of his crime. The
reverend sinner made a specially edifying end, not unnaturally a mark of
men of his cloth. In 1570, John Kelloe, minister of Spott, near Dunbar,
had, for any or no reason, murdered his wife. So well had he managed the
affair that no one suspected him, but after six weeks his conscience
forced him to make a clean breast of the matter. He was strangled and
burned at the Gallow Lee, between Edinburgh and Leith. His behaviour at
the end was all that could be desired. It strikes you as overdone, but
from the folk of the time it extorted a certain admiration. The
authorities were as cruel as the criminals. A boy burns down a house and
he is himself burned alive at the Cross as an example. In 1675 two
striplings named Clarke and Ramsay, seventeen and fifteen years old,
robbed and poisoned their master, an old man named Anderson. His nephew,
Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, warned by a recurring dream, set off for
Edinburgh, and instituted investigations which led to the discovery of
the crime. The youthful culprits were hanged “both in regard to the
theft clearly proven and for terror that the Italian trick of sending
men to the other world in figs and possits might not come overseas to
our Island.” Now and again there is a redeeming touch in the dark story.
In 1528 there was an encounter between the Douglases and the Hamiltons
at Holyrood Palace. A groom of the Earl of Lennox spied Sir James
Hamilton of Finnart, who had slain his master, among the crowd. He
presently attacked Sir James in a narrow gallery, and wounded him in six
places, though none was mortal. The groom was discovered and dragged off
to torture and mutilation. His right hand was hacked off; whereupon “he
observed with a sarcastic smile that it was punished less than it
deserved for having failed to revenge his beloved master.” I have
mentioned the Gallow Lee between Edinburgh and Leith. It was the chosen
spot for the execution of witches, and for the hanging in chains of
great criminals. The hillock was composed of very excellent sand. When
the New Town was built it had been long disused as a place of execution,
and the owner of the soil had no difficulty in disposing of a long
succession of cartloads to the builders. He insisted on immediate
payment and immediately spent the money at an adjacent tavern,
maintained if not instituted for his special benefit. He drank to the
last grain as well as to the last drop and vanishes from history, the
most extreme and consistent of countless Edinburgh topers!
I have still something illustrative to say of prisoners. When Deacon
Brodie was executed, 1st October 1788, his abnormal fortitude was
supposed to ground itself on an expectation that he would only be half
hanged, would be resuscitated, and conveyed away a free man. He seems to
have devised some plan to this end, but “the best laid schemes o’ mice
an’ men,” we are told on good authority, “aft gang agley,” and so it was
here. Edinburgh has one or two instances of revival. On the 18th
February 1594-95, Hercules Stewart was hanged at the Cross for his
concern in the crimes of his relative the Earl of Bothwell. He was an
object of popular sympathy, as believed to be “ane simple gentleman and
not ane enterpriser.” The body, after being cut down, was carried to the
Tolbooth to be laid out, “but within a little space he began to recover,
and moved somewhat, and might by appearance have lived. The ministers
being advertised hereof went to the King to procure for his life, but
they had already given a new command to strangle him with all speed, so
that no man durst speak in the contrary.” There was not much
encouragement to be got from this story. Yet a woman some generations
afterwards had better fortune—the very name of “half-hangit Maggie
Dixon” of itself explains the legend. She was strung up for child-murder
in the Grassmarket, and her body had a narrow escape from being carried
off by a party of medical students to the dissecting room, as it was put
in a cart and jolted off landward. Those in charge stopped before a
little change-house for refreshment, however, and when they came forth,
Maggie sat upright in the cart, very much alive and kicking. Apparently
she lived happy ever after. She was married, had children, and, no
doubt, looked upon herself as a public character. Was it only popular
imagination that perceived a certain twist in the neck of the good lady?
Many famous men perished on Edinburgh scaffolds, and many more filled
the Edinburgh prisons, were they Castle or Tolbooths, namely, the Heart
of Midlothian cheek by jowl with St. Giles’, or the quaint smaller one,
which still stands in the Canongate. The anecdotes of prisoners are
numerous. Here is one lighter and less grimy than the bulk. When
Principal Carstares was warded in the Castle in 1685, a charming youth
of twelve years, son of Erskine of Cambo, came to his prison daily, and
brought him fruit to relieve the monotony of the fare, and what to a
scholar was just as essential, pen, ink, and paper. He ran his errands
and sat by the open grating for hours. After the revolution “the
Cardinal” was all-powerful in Scots matters; he did not forget his young
friend, and procured him the post of Lord Lyon King at Arms, but the
family were out in the ’15, and the dignity was forfeit. You gather from
this pleasing story that prison life in Edinburgh had its alleviations,
also escapes were numerous. In 1607, Lord Maxwell was shut up in the
Castle, and there also was Sir James Macdonald from the Hebrides. They
made the keepers drunk, got their swords from them by a trick, and
locked them safely away. The porter made a show of resistance. “False
knave,” cried Maxwell, “open the yett, or I shall hew thee in bladds”
(pieces), and he would have done it you believe! They got out of the
Castle, climbed over the town wall at the West Port, and hid in the
suburbs. Macdonald could not get rid of his fetters, and was
ignominiously taken in a dung-hill where he was lurking; Maxwell made
for the Border on a swift horse, and remained at large, in spite of the
angry proclamations of the King. James Grant of Carron had committed so
many outrages on Speyside that the authorities, little as they recked of
what went on “benorth the mont,” determined to “gar ane devil ding
another.” Certain men, probably of the same reputation as himself, had
undertaken to bring him in dead or alive. He and his fellows were in
fact captured. The latter were speedily executed, but he was kept for
two years in the Castle, and you cannot now guess wherefor. One day he
observed from his prison window a former neighbour, Grant of
Tomnavoulen, passing by. “What news from Speyside?” asked the captive.
“None very particular,” was the reply; “the best is that the country is
rid of you.” “Perhaps we shall meet again,” quoth James cheerfully.
Presently his wife conveyed to him what purported to be a cask of
butter, in fact it held some very serviceable rope, and so in the night
of the 15th October 1632 the prisoner lowered himself over the Castle
wall, and was soon again perambulating Speyside, where, you guess, his
reception was of a mixed description.
Among the escapes of the eighteenth century I pick out two, both from
the Heart of Midlothian. One was that of Catherine Nairn in 1766. She
had poisoned her husband, and was the mistress of his brother. She was
brought to Leith from the north in an open boat, and shut up in the
Tolbooth. The brother, who had been an officer in the army, was executed
in the Grassmarket, but judgment was respited in the case of the lady on
the plea of pregnancy. She escaped by changing clothes with the midwife,
who was supposed to be suffering from severe toothache. She howled so
loudly as she went out, that she almost overdid the part. The keeper
cursed her for a howling old Jezebel, and wished he might never see her
again. Possibly he was in the business himself. The lady had various
exciting adventures before she reached a safe hiding-place, almost
blundered, in fact, into the house of her enemies. She finally left the
town in a postchaise, whose driver had orders, if he were pursued, to
drive into the sea and drown his fare as if by accident, and thus make a
summary end of one whose high-placed relatives were only assisting her
for the sake of the family name. The levity of her conduct all through
excited the indignation and alarm of those who had charge of her;
perhaps she was hysterical. She got well off to France, where she
married a gentleman of good position, and ended “virtuous and
fortunate.” This seems the usual fate of the lady criminal; either her
experience enables her to capture easily the male victim, or her
adventures give her an unholy attraction in the eyes of the multitude.
She is rarely an inveterate law-breaker, as she learns from bitter
experience that honesty and virtue are the more agreeable policies.
Other than wealthy and well-connected criminals escaped. In 1783 James
Hay lay in the condemned hold for burglary. Hay and his father filled
the keeper drunk. Old Hay, by imitating the drawl of the keeper uttering
the stereotyped formula of ‘turn your hand,’ procured the opening of the
outer door, and the lad was off like a hare into the night. With a fine
instinct of the romantic he hid himself in “Bluidy Mackenzie’s” tomb,
held as haunted by all Edinburgh. He was an “auld callant” of Heriot’s
Hospital, which rises just by old Greyfriars’, and the boys supplied him
with food in the night-time. When the hue and cry had quieted down, he
crawled out, escaped, and in due time, it was whispered, began a new
life under other skies. Probably the ghostly reputation of that stately
mausoleum in Greyfriars’ Churchyard was more firmly established than
ever. What could be the cause of those audible midnight mutterings, if
not the restless ghost of the persecuting Lord Advocate?
As drinking was _the_ staple amusement of old Edinburgh, “the Ladies”
was naturally the most popular toast: a stock one was, “All absent
friends, all ships at sea, and the auld pier at Leith.” This last was
not so ridiculous as might be supposed, for it was famous in Scott’s
song, _teste_ the only Robin, to name but him, and Scots law, for it was
one of the stock places at which fugitives were cited, as witness godly
Mr. Alexander Peden himself. The toastmakers were hard put to it
sometimes for sentiments. A well-known story relates how one unfortunate
gentleman could think of nothing better than “the reflection of the mune
on the calm bosom o’ the lake.” As absurd is the story of the antiquary
who sat at his potations in a tavern in the old Post Office Close on the
night of 8th February 1787. Suddenly he burst into tears; he had just
remembered on that very day “twa hunner year syne Queen Mary was
beheaded.” His plight was scarce so bad as that of the shadow or
hanger-on of Driver clerk to the famous Andrew Crosbie, otherwise
Counsellor Pleydell. The name of this satellite was Patrick Nimmo. He
was once mistaken, when found dead drunk in the morning after the King’s
birthday, for the effigy of Johnnie Wilkes which had been so loyally and
thoroughly kicked about by the mob on the previous evening. One of his
cronies wrote or rather spoke his epitaph in this fashion: “Lord, is he
dead at last! Weel, that’s strange indeed. I drank sax half mutchkins
wi’ him doun at the Hens only three nichts syn! Bring us a biscuit wi’
the next gill, mistress. Rab was aye fond o’ bakes.” Of course the scene
was a tavern, and the memory of poor Rob was at least an excuse for
another dram.
This is not very genial merry-making, but geniality is never the
characteristic note of Scots humour from the earliest times. In 1575 the
Regent Morton kept a fool named Patrick Bonney, who, seeing his master
pestered by a crowd of beggars, advised him to throw them all into one
fire. Even Morton was horrified. “Oh,” said the jester coolly, “if all
these poor people were burned you would soon make more poor people out
of the rich.” No wonder the old-time fools were frequently whipped. The
precentor and the beadle were in some ways successors of the old-time
fool.
[Illustration: WILLIAM SMELLIE,
From an Engraving after George Watson]
Thomas Neil fulfilled the first office in old Greyfriars’ in the time of
Erskine and Robertson. He could turn out a very passable coffin, and did
some small business that way which made him look forward to the decease
of friends with a not unmixed sorrow. “Hech, man, but ye smell sair o’
earth,” was his cheerful greeting to a sick friend. One forenoon the
then Nisbet of Dirleton met him in the High Street rather tipsy. Even
the dissipation of old Edinburgh had its laws, and the country gentleman
pointed out that the precentor’s position made such conduct improper. “I
just tak’ it when I can get it,” said Neil, with a leer.
All the wits of old Edinburgh hit hard. Alexander Douglas, W.S., was
known as “dirty Douglas.” He spoke about going to a ball, but he did not
wish it reported that he attended such assemblies. “Why, Douglas,” said
Patrick Robertson, “put on a well-brushed coat and a clean shirt and
nobody will know you.” Andrew Johnson, a teacher of Greek and Hebrew,
combined in himself many of the characteristics of Dominie Sampson. He
averred that Job never was a schoolmaster, otherwise we should not have
heard so much about his patience. He was on principle against the
sweeping of rooms. “Cannot you let the dust lie quietly?” he would say.
“Why wear out the boards rubbing them so?” He wished to marry the
daughter of rich parents though he had no money himself. The father
objected his want of means. “Oh dear, that is nothing,” was the
confident answer. “You have plenty.”
The stage occupied a very small place in the history of old Edinburgh.
We know that a company from London were there in the time of James VI.
It is just possible that Shakespeare may have been one of its members,
and again when the Duke of York, afterwards James VII. and II., was in
Edinburgh a company of English actors were at his court. Dryden has
various satiric lines on their performances, in which he has some more
or less passable gibes at that ancient theme, so sadly out of date in
our own day, the poverty of the Scots nation. It is but scraps of stage
anecdotes that you pick up. Once when a barber was shaving Henry Erskine
he received the news that his wife had presented him with a son. He
forthwith decreed that the child should be called Henry Erskine Johnson.
The boy afterwards became an actor, and was known as the Scottish
Roscius; his favourite part was young Norval—of course from _Douglas_.
The audience beheld with sympathy or derision the venerable author
blubbering in the boxes, and declaring that only now had his conception
of the character been realised.
At the time of the French Revolution one or two of the Edinburgh
sympathisers attempted a poor imitation of French methods. A decent
shopkeeper rejoicing to be known as “Citizen M.” had put up at “The
Black Bull.” He told the servant girl to call him in time for the Lauder
coach. “But mind ye,” says he, “when ye chap at the door, at no hand
maun ye say ‘Mr. M., its time to rise,’ but ye maun say, ‘Ceetizan,
equal rise’.” The girl had forgotten the name by the morning, and could
only call out, “Equal rise.” Of one like him it was reported, according
to the story of an old lady, that he “erekit a gulliteen in his back
court and gulliteen’d a’ his hens on’t.”
The silly conceited fool is not rare anywhere, but only occasionally are
his sayings or doings amusing. Harry Erskine’s elder brother the Earl of
Buchan was as well known in Edinburgh as himself. He certainly had
brains, but was very pompous and puffed up. When Sir David Brewster was
a young man and only beginning to make his name a paper of his on optics
was highly spoken of. “You see, I revised it,” said the Earl with
sublime conceit. Asked if he had been at the church of St. George’s in
the forenoon, “No,” he said, “but my mits are left on the front pew of
the gallery. When the congregation see them they are pleased to think
that the Earl of Buchan is there.” He believed himself irresistible with
the other sex. He thus addressed a handsome young lady: “Good-bye, my
dear, but pray remember that Margaret, Countess of Buchan, is not
immortal.” An article in the _Edinburgh Review_ once incurred his
displeasure, so he laid the offending number down in the hall, ordered
his footmen to open the front door of his house in George Street, and
then solemnly kicked out the offending journal. When Scott was ill,
Lockhart tells us the Earl composed a discourse to be read at his
funeral and brought it down to read to the sick man, but he was denied
admittance.
The Scots have always been noted for taking themselves seriously. _Nemo
me impune lacessit_ is no empty boast. In Charles the Second’s time the
Bishop of St. Asaph had written a treatise to show that the antiquity of
the royal race was but a devout imagination; that the century and more
of monarchs of the royal line of Fergus were for the most part mere myth
and shadow. Sir George Mackenzie grimly hinted that had my Lord been a
Scots subject, it might have been his unpleasant duty to indict him for
high treason.
An earlier offender felt the full rigour of the law. In 1618 Thomas Ross
had gone from the north to study at Oxford. He wrote a libel on the
Scots nation and pinned it to the door of St. Mary’s Church. He was good
enough to except the King and a few others, but the remaining
Caledonians were roundly, not to say scurrilously, rated. Possibly the
thing was popular with those about him, but the King presently
discovered in it a deep design to stir up the English to massacre the
Scots. Ross was seized and packed off to Edinburgh for trial. Too late
the unfortunate man saw his error or his danger. His plea of partial
temporary insanity availed him not, his right hand was struck off and
then he was beheaded and quartered, his head was stuck on the Netherbow
Port and his hand at the West Port. To learn him for his tricks, no
doubt!
A great feature of old Edinburgh from the days of Allan Ramsay to those
of Sir Walter Scott was the Clubs. These, you will understand, were not
at all like the clubs of to-day, of which the modern city possesses a
good number, political and social—institutions that inhabit large and
stately premises with all the usual properties. The old Edinburgh club
was a much simpler affair. It was a more or less formal set who met in a
favourite tavern, ate, drank, and talked for some hours and then went
their respective ways. Various writers have preserved the quaint names
of many of these clubs, and given us a good deal of information on the
subject. When you think of the famous men that were members, the talk,
you believe, was worth hearing, but the memory of it has well-nigh
perished, even as the speakers themselves, and bottle wit is as
evanescent as that which produced it. The extant jokes seem to us of the
thinnest. The Cape Club was named, it is said, from the difficulty one
of its members found in reaching home. When he got out at the Netherbow
Port he had to make a sharp turn to the left, and so along Leith Wynd.
He was confused with talk and liquor, and he found some difficulty in
“doubling the cape,” as it was called. Perhaps the obstacle lay on the
other side of the Netherbow. The keeper had a keen eye for small
profits, and was none too hasty in making the way plain either out of or
into the city. Allan Ramsay felt the difficulty when he and his fellows
lingered too long at Luckie Wood’s—
“Which aften cost us mony a gill
To Aikenhead.”
Of this club Fergusson the poet was a member. Is it not commemorated in
his verse? Fergusson was catholic in his tastes. Johnnie Dowie’s in
Libberton’s Wynd has been already mentioned in these pages. Here was to
be met Paton the antiquary, and here in later days came Robert Burns,
but indeed who did not at some time or other frequent this famous
tavern? noted for its Nor’ Loch trout and its ale—that justly lauded
Edinburgh ale of Archibald Younger, whose brewery was in Croft-an-righ,
hard by Holyrood. The Crochallan Fencibles which met in the house of
Dawney Douglas in the Anchor Close is chiefly known for its memories of
Burns. Here he had his famous wit contest with Smellie, his printer,
whose printing office was in the same close, so that neither Burns nor
he had far to go after the compounding or correcting of proofs. We
picture Smellie to ourselves as a rough old Scot, unshaven and unshorn,
with rough old clothes—his “caustic wit was biting rude,” and Burns
confessed its power. The poet praises the warmth and benevolence of his
heart, and we need not rake in the ashes to discover his long-forgotten
failings. William Smellie was another William Nicol. There was a touch
of romance about the name of the club. It meant in Gaelic Colin’s
cattle; there was a mournful Gaelic air and song and tradition attached
to it. Colin’s wife had died young, but returned from the spirit world,
and was seen on summer evenings, a scarce mortal shape, tending his
cattle. Perhaps some antiquarian Scot or learned German will some day
delight the curious with a monograph on the word Crochallan, but as yet
the legend awaits investigation. Some of the clubs were “going strong”
in the early years of the nineteenth century. There was a Friday Club
founded in June 1803 which met at various places in the New Town.
Brougham made the punch, and it was fearfully and wonderfully made. Lord
Cockburn is its historian. He has some caustic sentences, as when he
talks of Abercrombie’s “contemptible stomach,” and says George
Cranstoun, Lord Corehouse, “is one of the very few persons who have not
been made stupid by being made a Judge.” This Friday Club was imitated
in the Bonally Friday Club, which met twice a year at Bonally House,
where Lord Cockburn lived. It was in its prime about 1842. Candidates
for admission were locked up in a dark room well provided with stools
and chairs—not to sit on, but to tumble over! The members dressed
themselves up in skins of tigers and leopards and what not, and each had
a penny trumpet. Among these the candidate was brought in blindfold, had
first to listen to a solemn, pompous address, “then the bandage was
removed and a spongeful of water dashed in his face. In a moment the
wild beasts capered about, the masked actors danced around him, and the
penny trumpets were lustily blown. The whole scene was calculated to
strike awe and amazement into the mind of the new member.” It would
require a good deal of witty talk to make up for such things. I shall
not pursue this tempting but disappointing subject further. I have
touched sufficiently on the proceedings of the Edinburgh clubs.
Here let fall the curtain.
INDEX
Adam, Dr. Alexander, 70.
Anne, Queen, 11, 196.
Argyll, Earl of, 196, 197, 198.
Argyll, Marquis of, 9.
Arnot, Hugo, 151, 152.
Art Associations, 177, 178, 184.
Arthur’s Seat, 67, 186, 243, 252, 272.
Assembly Rooms, 210, 211, 212, 257.
Auchinleck, Lord, 47, 145, 146.
Aytoun, Professor, 66, 67, 163, 166.
Baillie of Jerviswood, 9, 197.
Baillie, Matthew, 95, 96.
Barclay, Dr. John, 75, 76, 77, 78.
Barnard, Lady Anne, 203.
Bells, the, surgeons, 97, 98.
Bennet, John, surgeon, 92, 93.
Blackie, Professor, 50, 65, 66, 191.
_Blackwood’s Magazine_, 162, 163, 167.
Blair, Dr. Hugh, 45, 46, 138.
Blair, Lord President, 3, 20.
“Blue Blanket,” the, 104.
Bluegowns, the, 242.
Body-snatching, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85.
Boswell, James, 18, 67, 145, 146, 147, 148.
Botanical Gardens, Royal, 74.
Bough, Sam, 191.
Braxfield, Lord, 3, 15, 16, 22, 23, 182.
Brodie, Deacon, 22, 58, 260, 275.
Brougham, Lord, 263.
Brown, Dr. John, 52.
Buchan, Earl of, 282, 283.
Buchanan, George, 57, 58, 59, 108, 112, 116.
Burke and Hare murders, 85, 86.
Burnet, Bishop, 41.
Burns, Robert, 14, 19, 24, 93, 139, 156, 167, 171, 220, 228, 243, 254,
257, 279, 285.
Caddies, the, 249, 250.
Calton Hill, 236.
Cameron, Richard, 40.
Campbell, Thomas, 159, 160.
Candlish, Dr., 49, 50.
Canongate, the, 6, 13, 43, 135, 145, 147, 157, 161, 206, 208, 212, 213,
229, 242, 249, 255, 269, 272, 276.
Carlyle, Dr. Alexander, 138, 142, 143.
Carlyle, Thomas, 21, 126, 168, 169, 170.
Carstares, Principal, 61, 62, 276.
Castle, the, 38, 51, 110, 115, 123, 124, 140, 177, 221, 222, 223, 226,
228, 247, 261, 272, 276, 277.
Chairmen, the, 248, 249.
Chalmers, Dr., 49.
Chambers, Robert, 118, 158, 216.
Charles I., 112, 118, 119, 120, 179.
Charles II., 119, 120, 121, 222, 283.
Charles, Prince, 104, 121, 134, 180, 199, 208, 249.
Chiesly of Dalry, 10.
Christison, Sir Robert, 66, 76, 99, 264, 265.
Claverhouse. _See_ Dundee.
Clerks of Eldin, the, 21.
Clerks of Penicuik, the, 198, 199, 274.
Clubs and taverns, Edinburgh, 135, 284, 285, 286, 287.
Cockburn, Lord, 5, 15, 23, 24, 25, 49, 286.
Cockburn, Mrs., 200, 201, 202, 204, 221.
Coltheart, Thomas, 230, 231.
Constable, publisher, 126, 155, 156, 160, 214.
Covenant, the, 37, 38, 39, 195, 211.
Creech, Lord Provost, 57, 133, 134, 151, 260, 261.
Cromwell, 120, 222, 247.
Cross, the, of Edinburgh, 39, 41, 121, 122, 137, 197, 220, 221, 247, 250,
258, 273, 275.
Cullen, Dr., 43, 44, 94.
Cullen, Lord, 43, 44.
Dalzel, Professor, 64.
Dalzell of Binns, 224, 225.
Darnley, 36, 37, 113, 115, 222.
David I., 31, 103.
Deas, Lord, 28.
Deid Chack, the, 260.
De Quincey, 86, 166, 167.
Douglas, Gawin, 32, 131.
Douglas, Margaret, Duchess of, 205, 206.
Dowie, Johnnie, 139, 140, 156, 254, 285.
Drinking habits, 22, 23, 47, 253, 254, 279, 280, 281, 285.
Drummond of Hawthornden, 119, 133.
Duels, 244, 245.
Duff, Jamie, 262.
Dunbar, Professor, 64, 65, 68.
Dundee, Viscount, 8, 223, 224, 272.
_Edinburgh Review_, 162, 163.
Edinburgh underworld, 134, 154, 155, 172.
Eldin, Lord, 17, 18, 21, 22, 182.
Elliot, Miss Jean, 202.
Erskine, Henry, 3, 17, 18, 19, 20, 151, 256, 282.
Erskine, Dr. John, 44, 45.
Eskgrove, Lord, 17.
Executions, 39, 257, 258, 259, 260, 273, 274, 275, 276.
Fergusson, Robert, 153, 154, 155, 157, 250, 251, 254, 285.
Fergusson, Sir William, 96, 97.
Flodden Wall, 105.
Forbes, Lord President, 3.
Fountainhall, Lord, 5, 78, 197.
Gabriel’s Road, 272, 273.
Geddes, Jenny, 246, 247.
George III., 18, 180, 181.
George IV., 107, 125, 126, 127.
George Street, 74, 161, 183.
Grassmarket, 38, 85, 227, 257, 258, 275, 278.
Gregory, Dr., 95.
Greyfriars, 8, 33, 37, 44, 58, 59, 252, 279, 280.
Guard, Town, 250, 251, 252, 257, 259.
Guthrie, the Covenanter, 38, 39, 40.
Guthrie, the preacher, 49.
Haddington, Earl of, 5, 6, 116, 246.
Hailes, Lord, 145.
Hamilton, Sir William, 59, 63, 68, 163.
Harvey, Sir George, 187, 188.
Heart of Midlothian. _See_ Tolbooth.
Henley, W. E., 166, 173.
Heriot, George, 116, 279.
Hermand, Lord, 22, 23, 263, 264.
High School, 24, 69, 70, 73, 213, 246.
High Street, 6, 33, 69, 70, 133, 162, 197, 207, 216, 220, 245, 246, 251,
281.
Hogg, Ettrick Shepherd, 158, 159, 163, 184, 185.
Holyrood, 103, 113, 118, 120, 123, 179, 221, 233, 255, 256, 274, 285.
Home, John, 139, 143, 214, 215, 216.
Hume, David, 64, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 158, 214.
Infirmary, Royal, 89, 90.
Inglis, Lord President, 27, 28.
Irving, Edward, 168.
James I., 103, 131, 241.
James II., 103, 104.
James III., 104, 105.
James IV., 105, 106.
James V., 4, 103, 106, 107, 108, 109, 131, 222.
James VI. and I., 5, 55, 104, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 131, 233, 234, 235,
236, 245, 275, 281.
James VII. and II., 12, 119, 120, 196, 281.
Jamesone, George, 177, 178, 179.
Jeffrey, Lord, 4, 23, 24, 25, 160, 162, 168, 226.
Johnson, Dr., 14, 18, 45, 67, 146, 147, 205, 208.
Johnstone, Sophy, 203, 204, 205.
Jonson, Ben, 133.
Kames, Lord, 12, 13, 14, 15, 144, 145, 146, 155.
Knox, Dr., anatomist, 80, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89.
Knox, John, 32, 33, 35, 36, 37, 109, 110, 114, 131.
Laing, Dr. David, 76.
Lang Gate, the, 271, 272.
Lawnmarket, the, 228, 253, 259, 269.
Leighton, Archbishop, 59, 60.
Leith, 51, 61, 92, 109, 110, 152, 171, 236, 244, 258, 273, 274, 279.
Leith, legends of, 236, 237.
Leslie, Sir John, 67.
Leyden, John, 159, 160.
Lindsay, David, 108.
Liston, Robert, surgeon, 81, 82, 83, 96.
Lockhart, J. G., 153, 155, 156, 158, 159, 165, 283.
Lockhart, Lord President, 6, 10, 11, 162, 163, 165.
Logan, Sheriff, 26.
Luckenbooths, the, 133.
Macintyre, Duncan, 252.
Mackenzie, Sir George, 3, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 38, 279, 283.
Mackenzie, Henry, 152, 153.
Macmorran, Bailie, 69, 70, 246.
M‘Nab of M‘Nab, 262, 263.
Macnee, Sir Daniel, 190, 191.
Maitland, Secretary, 37, 109.
Margaret, St., 31, 103, 177.
Mary of Guise, 33, 34, 109, 110, 111, 112.
Mary, Queen, 35, 36, 109, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 164.
Masson, Professor, 169.
Melville, James, 131, 132, 241, 242.
Melville, Lord, 18, 25.
Monboddo, Lord, 12, 13, 14, 144, 155.
Monros, the, 74, 75.
Morton, Earl of, 37, 280.
Nairne, Lady, 202, 203.
Netherbow, 39, 40, 123, 179, 242, 244, 269, 284, 285.
Newton, Lord, 15.
Nimmo, Peter, 169, 170.
Nisbet of Dirleton, 6, 7.
Nor’ Loch, 33, 74, 140, 172, 271, 272, 285.
North Berwick witches, 233, 234, 235, 236.
North, Christopher (Professor Wilson), 66, 67, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166,
170.
Parliament House, 3, 4, 88, 89, 120, 126, 145, 162, 247, 269.
Physicians, Royal College of, 73, 74.
Pitcairne, Dr. Archibald, 90, 91, 120, 136, 253.
Pleydell, Counsellor, 80, 256, 280.
Porteous, Captain, 144, 245, 252.
Prestonpans, the battle of, 74, 75.
Queensberry, Duchess of, 206.
Queensberry, Duke of, 269, 270.
Queen’s Maries, 35, 118.
Raeburn, Sir Henry, 20, 182, 183.
Ramsay, Allan, painter, 180, 181, 182.
Ramsay, Allan, poet, 123, 133, 134, 135, 136, 154, 180, 208, 213, 255,
284, 285.
Reformation, the, 32, 219.
Reformers, political, 16.
Restoration, the, 6, 120, 121, 247.
Rizzio, 112, 113, 195.
Roberts, David, 188, 189.
Robertson, Lord, 57, 162, 165, 281.
Robertson, Principal, 43, 44, 45, 62, 138, 143, 256.
Ross, Thomas, 283, 284.
Ross, Walter, 256, 257.
Royal Exchange, the, 229, 230, 271.
Ruddiman, Thomas, 64, 136.
Rule, Principal, 60.
Sanctuary, 255.
Scott, David, 189, 190.
Scott, Sir Walter, 31, 107, 108, 125, 126, 147, 153, 154, 156, 157, 158,
159, 160, 161, 162, 165, 167, 171, 184, 199, 204, 221, 225, 242, 243, 250,
251, 252, 262, 283, 284.
Seizers, the, 252, 253.
Sharp, Archbishop, 7, 41, 42, 247.
Siddons, Mrs., 93, 215, 216.
Simpson, Sir James Y., 98, 99.
Smellie, William, 285, 286.
Smith, Adam, 14, 141, 142.
Smith, Sydney, 137, 263.
Smollett, Tobias, 153.
St. Giles, church of, 36, 120, 147, 170, 242, 244, 246, 247, 253, 276.
Stair, Lady, 228, 229, 269.
Stair, Lord, 6.
Stevenson, R. L., 16, 83, 154, 157, 171, 172, 173, 174, 225.
Stewart, Dugald, 94, 213.
Stewart, Sir James, 11, 12, 41.
Strange, Sir Robert, 180.
Street fights, 31, 32.
Students, 55, 56.
Surgeons, Royal College of, 73, 92.
Susanna, Countess of Eglinton, 208.
Sweet singers, the, 42, 43.
Syme, James, 96.
“Syntax, Dr.,” 170.
Telfer, Mrs., 153.
Theatre, the, 93, 126, 139, 162, 215, 216, 281, 282.
Thomson of Duddingston, 185, 186, 187.
Tolbooth, the (Heart of Midlothian), 19, 40, 58, 242, 245, 258, 259, 275,
276, 277, 278, 279.
Town Council, the, 55, 57, 58, 67, 73, 74, 270, 271.
Tron Kirk, the, 132, 138, 207, 210, 251.
Union, the, 237, 255.
University, the, 55, 56, 58, 67, 68, 69, 83, 147, 169, 170, 246.
Velasquez, 185, 188.
Victoria, Queen, 127.
Walker, Patrick, 40, 42, 248.
Wallace, Lady, 27.
Warriston, Johnston of, 6, 38, 41, 197.
Weather, the, 264, 265.
Webster, Dr. Alexander, 46, 47.
Wedderburn, 25, 26.
Weir, Major, 225, 226, 232, 252.
West Bow, the, 225, 226, 228, 248, 258, 261.
West Port, the, 38, 85, 200, 246, 284.
White Rose of Scotland, the, 198, 199.
Wilkie, Sir David, 183, 184, 185, 188.
William III., 11, 61.
Wilson, Professor. _See_ North, Christopher.
Wodrow, the historian, 39, 134, 227.
Wood, Alexander, 93, 94.
SONGS & POEMS OF BURNS
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