PARLIAMENT HOUSE WORTHIES.
Scott has sketched in Peter Peebles the type of a class of crazy and half-crazy litigants who at all times haunt the Parliament House. Usually they are rustic men possessing small properties, such as a house and garden, which they are constantly talking of as their ‘subject.’ Sometimes a faded shawl and bonnet is associated with the case—objects to be dreaded by every good-natured member of the bar. But most frequently it is simple countrymen who become pests of this kind. That is to say, simple men of difficult and captious tempers, cursed with an overstrong sense of right or an overstrong sense of wrong, under which they would, by many degrees, prefer utter ruin to making the slightest concession to a neighbour. Ruined these men often are; and yet it seems ruin well bought, since they have all along had the pleasure of seeing themselves and their little affairs the subject of consideration amongst men so much above themselves in rank.
Peebles was, as we are assured by the novelist himself, a real person, who frequented the Edinburgh courts of justice about the year 1792, and ‘whose voluminous course of litigation served as a sort of essay piece to most young men who were called to the bar.’[129] Many persons recollect him as a tall, thin, slouching man, of homely outworn attire, understood to be a native of Linlithgow. Having got into law about a small house, he became deranged by the cause going against him, and then peace was no more for him on earth. He used to tell his friends that he had at present thirteen causes in hand, but was only going to ‘move in’ seven of them this session. When anxious for a consultation on any of his affairs, he would set out from his native burgh at the time when other people were going to bed, and reaching Edinburgh at four in the morning, would go about the town ringing the bells of the principal advocates, in the vain hope of getting one to rise and listen to him, to the infinite annoyance of many a poor serving-girl, and no less of the Town-guard, into whose hands he generally fell.
Another specimen of the class was Campbell of Laguine, who had perhaps been longer at law than any man of modern times. He was a store-farmer in Caithness, and had immense tracts of land under lease. When he sold his wool, he put the price in his pocket (no petty sum), and came down to waste it in the Court of Session. His custom—an amusing example of method in madness—was to pay every meal which he made at the inns on the road double, that he might have a gratis meal on his return, knowing he would not bring a cross away in his pocket from the courts of justice. Laguine’s figure was very extraordinary. His legs were like two circumflexes, both curving outward in the same direction; so that, relative to his body, they took the direction of the blade of a reaping-hook, supposing the trunk of his person to be the handle. These extraordinary legs were always attired in Highland trews, as his body was generally in a gray or tartan jacket, with a bonnet on his head; and duly appeared he at the door of the Parliament House, bearing a tin case, fully as big as himself, containing a plan of his farms. He paid his lawyers highly, but took up a great deal of their time. One gentleman, afterwards high in official situation, observed him coming up to ring his bell, and not wishing that he himself should throw away his time or Laguine his fee, directed that he should be denied. Laguine, however, made his way to the lady of the learned counsel, and sitting down in the drawing-room, went at great length into the merits of his cause, and exhibited his plans; and when he had expatiated for a couple of hours, he departed, but not without leaving a handsome fee, observing that he had as much satisfaction as if he had seen the learned counsel himself. He once told a legal friend of the writer that his laird and he were nearly agreed now—there was only about ten miles of country contested betwixt them! When finally this great cause was adjusted, his agent said: ‘Well, Laguine, what will ye do now?’ rashly judging that one who had, in a manner, lived upon law for a series of years would be at a loss how to dispose of himself now. ‘No difficulty there,’ answered Laguine; ‘I’ll dispute your account, and go to law with you!’ Possessed as he was by a demon of litigation, Campbell is said to have been, apart from his disputes, a shrewd and sensible, and, moreover, an honourable and worthy man. He was one of the first who introduced sheep-farming into Ross-shire and Caithness, where he had farms as large as some whole Lowland or English counties; and but for litigation, he had the opportunity of making much money.
A person usually called, from his trade, the Heckler was another Parliament House worthy. He used to work the whole night at his trade; then put on a black suit, curled his hair behind and powdered it, so as to resemble a clergyman, and came forth to attend to the great business of the day at the Parliament House. He imagined that he was deputed by Divine Providence as a sort of controller of the Court of Session; but as if that had not been sufficient, he thought the charge of the General Assembly was also committed to him; and he used to complain that that venerable body was ‘much worse to keep in good order’ than the lawyers. He was a little, smart, well-brushed, neat-looking man, and used to talk to himself, smile, and nod with much vivacity. Part of his lunacy was to believe himself a clergyman; and it was chiefly the Teind Court which he haunted, his object there being to obtain an augmentation of his stipend. The appearance and conversation of the man were so plausible that he once succeeded in imposing himself upon Dr Blair as a preacher, and obtained permission to hold forth in the High Church on the ensuing Sunday. He was fortunately recognised when about to mount the pulpit. Some idle boys about the Parliament House, where he was a constant attendant, persuaded him that, as he held two such dignified offices as his imagination shaped out, there must be some salary attached to them, payable, like others upon the Establishment, in the Exchequer. This very nearly brought about a serious catastrophe; for the poor madman, finding his applications slighted at the Exchequer, came there one day with a pistol heavily loaded to shoot Mr Baird, a very worthy man, an officer of that court. This occasioned the Heckler being confined in durance vile for a long time; though, I think, he was at length emancipated.
Other insane fishers in the troubled waters of the law were the following:
Macduff of Ballenloan, who had two cases before the court at once. His success in the one depended upon his showing that he had capacity to manage his own affairs; and in the other, upon his proving himself incapable of doing so. He used to complain, with some apparent reason, that he lost them both!
Andrew Nicol, who was at law thirty years about a midden-stead—Anglicé, the situation of a dunghill. This person was a native of Kinross, a sensible-looking countryman, with a large, flat, blue bonnet, in which guise Kay has a very good portrait of him, displaying, with chuckling pride, a plan of his precious midden-stead. He used to frequent the Register House as well as the courts of law, and was encouraged in his foolish pursuits by the roguish clerks of that establishment, by whom he was denominated Muck Andrew, in allusion to the object of his litigation. This wretched being, after losing property and credit and his own senses in following a valueless phantom, died at last (1817) in Cupar jail, where he was placed by one of his legal creditors.
[CONVIVIALIA.]
‘Auld Reekie! wale o’ ilka toon
That Scotland kens beneath the moon;
Where coothy chields at e’enin’ meet,
Their bizzin’ craigs and mous to weet,
And blithely gar auld care gae by,
Wi’ blinkin’ and wi’ bleerin’ eye.’
Robert Fergusson.
Tavern dissipation, now so rare amongst the respectable classes of the community, formerly prevailed in Edinburgh to an incredible extent, and engrossed the leisure hours of all professional men, scarcely excepting even the most stern and dignified. No rank, class, or profession, indeed, formed an exception to this rule. Nothing was so common in the morning as to meet men of high rank and official dignity reeling home from a close in the High Street, where they had spent the night in drinking. Nor was it unusual to find two or three of His Majesty’s most honourable Lords of Council and Session mounting the bench in the forenoon in a crapulous state. A gentleman one night stepping into Johnnie Dowie’s, opened a side-door, and looking into the room, saw a sort of agger or heap of snoring lads upon the floor, illumined by the gleams of an expiring candle. ‘Wha may thae be, Mr Dowie?’ inquired the visitor. ‘Oh,’ quoth John in his usual quiet way, ‘just twa-three o’ Sir Willie’s drucken clerks!’—meaning the young gentlemen employed in Sir William Forbes’s banking-house, whom of all earthly mortals one would have expected to be observers of the decencies.
Johnnie Dowie.
To this testimony may be added that of all published works descriptive of Edinburgh during the last century. Even in the preceding century, if we are to believe Taylor the Water-poet, there was no superabundance of sobriety in the town. ‘The worst thing,’ says that sly humorist in his Journey (1623), ‘was, that wine and ale were so scarce, and the people such misers of it, that every night, before I went to bed, if any man had asked me a civil question, all the wit in my head could not have made him a sober answer.’
The diurnal of a Scottish judge[130] of the beginning of the last century, which I have perused, presents a striking picture of the habits of men of business in that age. Hardly a night passes without some expense being incurred at taverns, not always of very good fame, where his lordship’s associates on the bench were his boon-companions in the debauch. One is at a loss to understand how men who drugged their understandings so habitually could possess any share of vital faculty for the consideration or transaction of business, or how they contrived to make a decent appearance in the hours of duty. But, however difficult to be accounted for, there seems no room to doubt that deep drinking was compatible in many instances with good business talents, and even application. Many living men connected with the Court of Session can yet look back to a juvenile period of their lives when some of the ablest advocates and most esteemed judges were noted for their convivial habits. For example, a famous counsel named Hay, who became a judge under the designation of Lord Newton, was equally remarkable as a bacchanal and as a lawyer.[131] He considered himself as only the better fitted for business that he had previously imbibed six bottles of claret; and one of his clerks afterwards declared that the best paper he ever knew his lordship dictate was done after a debauch where that amount of liquor had fallen to his share. It was of him that the famous story is told of a client calling for him one day at four o’clock, and being surprised to find him at dinner; when, on the client saying to the servant that he had understood five to be Mr Hay’s dinner-hour—‘Oh, but, sir,’ said the man, ‘it is his yesterday’s dinner!’ M. Simond, who, in 1811, published a Tour in Scotland, mentions his surprise, on stepping one morning into the Parliament House, to find in the dignified capacity of a judge, and displaying all the gravity suitable to the character, the very gentleman with whom he had spent most of the preceding night in a fierce debauch. This judge was Lord Newton.
Contemporary with this learned lord was another of marvellous powers of drollery, of whom it is told, as a fact too notorious at the time to be concealed, that he was one Sunday morning, not long before church-time, found asleep among the paraphernalia of the sweeps, in a shed appropriated to the keeping of these articles at the end of the Town Guard-house in the High Street. His lordship, in staggering homeward alone from a tavern during the night, had tumbled into this place, where consciousness did not revisit him till next day. Of another group of clever but over-convivial lawyers of that age, it is related that, having set to wine and cards on a Saturday evening, they were so cheated out of all sense of time that the night passed before they thought of separating. Unless they are greatly belied, the people passing along Picardy Place next forenoon, on their way to church, were perplexed by seeing a door open, and three gentlemen issue forth, in all the disorder to be expected after a night of drunken vigils, while a fourth, in his dressing-gown, held the door in one hand and a lighted candle in the other, by way of showing them out![132]
The High Jinks of Counsellor Pleydell, in Guy Mannering, must have prepared many for these curious traits of a bypast age; and Scott has further illustrated the subject by telling, in his notes to that novel, an anecdote, which he appears to have had upon excellent authority, respecting the elder President Dundas of Arniston, father of Lord Melville. ‘It had been thought very desirable, while that distinguished lawyer was king’s counsel, that his assistance should be obtained in drawing up an appeal case, which, as occasion for such writings then rarely occurred, was held to be a matter of great nicety. The solicitor employed for the appellant, attended by my informant, acting as his clerk, went to the Lord Advocate’s chambers in the Fishmarket Close, as I think. It was Saturday at noon, the court was just dismissed, the Lord Advocate had changed his dress and booted himself, and his servant and horses were at the foot of the close to carry him to Arniston. It was scarcely possible to get him to listen to a word respecting business. The wily agent, however, on pretence of asking one or two questions, which would not detain him half-an-hour, drew his lordship, who was no less an eminent bon-vivant than a lawyer of unequalled talent, to take a whet at a celebrated tavern, when the learned counsel became gradually involved in a spirited discussion of the law points of the case. At length it occurred to him that he might as well ride to Arniston in the cool of the evening. The horses were directed to be put into the stable, but not to be unsaddled. Dinner was ordered, the law was laid aside for a time, and the bottle circulated very freely. At nine o’clock at night, after he had been honouring Bacchus for so many hours, the Lord Advocate ordered his horses to be unsaddled—paper, pen, and ink were brought—he began to dictate the appeal case, and continued at his task till four o’clock the next morning. By next day’s post the solicitor sent the case to London—a chef-d’œuvre of its kind; and in which, my informant assured me, it was not necessary, on revisal, to correct five words.’
It was not always that business and pleasure were so successfully united. It is related that an eminent lawyer, who was confined to his room by indisposition, having occasion for the attendance of his clerk at a late hour, in order to draw up a paper required on an emergency next morning, sent for and found him at his usual tavern. The man, though remarkable for the preservation of his faculties under severe application to the bottle, was on this night further gone than usual. He was able, however, to proceed to his master’s bedroom, and there take his seat at the desk with the appearance of a sufficiently collected mind, so that the learned counsel, imagining nothing more wrong than usual, began to dictate from his couch. This went on for two or three hours, till, the business being finished, the barrister drew his curtain—to behold Jamie lost in a profound sleep upon the table, with the paper still in virgin whiteness before him!
One of the most notable jolly fellows of the last age was James Balfour, an accountant, usually called Singing Jamie Balfour, on account of his fascinating qualities as a vocalist. There used to be a portrait of him in the Leith Golf-house, representing him in the act of commencing the favourite song of When I ha’e a saxpence under my thoom, with the suitable attitude and a merriness of countenance justifying the traditionary account of the man. Of Jacobite leanings, he is said to have sung The wee German lairdie, Awa, Whigs, awa, and The sow’s tail to Geordie with a degree of zest which there was no resisting.
Report speaks of this person as an amiable, upright, and able man; so clever in business matters that he could do as much in one hour as another man in three; always eager to quench and arrest litigation rather than to promote it; and consequently so much esteemed professionally that he could get business whenever he chose to undertake it, which, however, he only did when he felt himself in need of money. Nature had given him a robust constitution, which enabled him to see out three sets of boon-companions, but, after all, gave way before he reached sixty. His custom, when anxious to repair the effects of intemperance, was to wash his head and hands in cold water; this, it is said, made him quite cool and collected almost immediately. Pleasure being so predominant an object in his life, it was thought surprising that at his death he was found in possession of some little money.
The powers of Balfour as a singer of the Scotch songs of all kinds, tender and humorous, are declared to have been marvellous; and he had a happy gift of suiting them to occasions. Being a great peacemaker, he would often accomplish his purpose by introducing some ditty pat to the purpose, and thus dissolving all rancour in a hearty laugh. Like too many of our countrymen, he had a contempt for foreign music. One evening, in a company where an Italian vocalist of eminence was present, he professed to give a song in the manner of that country. Forth came a ridiculous cantata to the tune of Aiken Drum, beginning: ‘There was a wife in Peebles,’ which the wag executed with all the proper graces, shakes, and appoggiaturas, making his friends almost expire with suppressed laughter at the contrast between the style of singing and the ideas conveyed in the song. At the conclusion, their mirth was doubled by the foreigner saying very simply: ‘De music be very fine, but I no understand de words.’ A lady, who lived in the Parliament Close, told a friend of mine that she was wakened from her sleep one summer morning by a noise as of singing, when, going to the window to learn what was the matter, guess her surprise at seeing Jamie Balfour and some of his boon-companions (evidently fresh from their wonted orgies), singing The king shall enjoy his own again, on their knees, around King Charles’s statue! One of Balfour’s favourite haunts was a humble kind of tavern called Jenny Ha’s, opposite to Queensberry House, where, it is said, Gay had boosed during his short stay in Edinburgh, and to which it was customary for gentlemen to adjourn from dinner-parties, in order to indulge in claret from the butt, free from the usual domestic restraints. Jamie’s potations here were principally of what was called cappie ale—that is, ale in little wooden bowls—with wee thochts of brandy in it. But, indeed, no one could be less exclusive than he as to liquors. When he heard a bottle drawn in any house he happened to be in, and observed the cork to give an unusually smart report, he would call out: ‘Lassie, gi’e me a glass o’ that;’ as knowing that, whatever it was, it must be good of its kind.
Sir Walter Scott says, in one of his droll little missives to his printer Ballantyne: ‘When the press does not follow me, I get on slowly and ill, and put myself in mind of Jamie Balfour, who could run, when he could not stand still.’ He here alludes to a matter of fact, which the following anecdote will illustrate: Jamie, in going home late from a debauch, happened to tumble into the pit formed for the foundation of a house in James’s Square. A gentleman passing heard his complaint, and going up to the spot, was entreated by our hero to help him out. ‘What would be the use of helping you out,’ said the passer-by, ‘when you could not stand though you were out?’ ‘Very true, perhaps; yet if you help me up, I’ll run you to the Tron Kirk for a bottle of claret.’ Pleased with his humour, the gentleman placed him upon his feet, when instantly he set off for the Tron Church at a pace distancing all ordinary competition; and accordingly he won the race, though, at the conclusion, he had to sit down on the steps of the church, being quite unable to stand. After taking a minute or two to recover his breath—‘Well, another race to Fortune’s for another bottle of claret!’ Off he went to the tavern in question, in the Stamp-office Close, and this bet he gained also. The claret, probably with continuations, was discussed in Fortune’s; and the end of the story is, Balfour sent his new friend home in a chair, utterly done up, at an early hour in the morning.
Stamp-office Close.
It is hardly surprising that habits carried to such an extravagance amongst gentlemen should have in some small degree affected the fairer and purer part of creation also. It is an old story in Edinburgh that three ladies had one night a merry-meeting in a tavern near the Cross, where they sat till a very late hour. Ascending at length to the street, they scarcely remembered where they were; but as it was good moonlight, they found little difficulty in walking along till they came to the Tron Church. Here, however, an obstacle occurred. The moon, shining high in the south, threw the shadow of the steeple directly across the street from the one side to the other; and the ladies, being no more clear-sighted than they were clear-headed, mistook this for a broad and rapid river, which they would require to cross before making further way. In this delusion, they sat down upon the brink of the imaginary stream, deliberately took off their shoes and stockings, kilted their lower garments, and proceeded to wade through to the opposite side; after which, resuming their shoes and stockings, they went on their way rejoicing, as before! Another anecdote (from an aged nobleman) exhibits the bacchanalian powers of our ancestresses in a different light. During the rising of 1715, the officers of the crown in Edinburgh, having procured some important intelligence respecting the motions and intentions of the Jacobites, resolved upon despatching the same to London by a faithful courier. Of this the party whose interests would have been so materially affected got notice; and that evening, as the messenger (a man of rank) was going down the High Street, with the intention of mounting his horse in the Canongate and immediately setting off, he met two tall, handsome ladies, in full dress, and wearing black velvet masks, who accosted him with a very easy demeanour and a winning sweetness of voice. Without hesitating as to the quality of these damsels, he instantly proposed to treat them with a pint of claret at a neighbouring tavern; but they said that, instead of accepting his kindness, they were quite willing to treat him to his heart’s content. They then adjourned to the tavern, and sitting down, the whole three drank plenteously, merrily, and long, so that the courier seemed at last to forget entirely the mission upon which he was sent, and the danger of the papers which he had about his person. After a pertinacious debauch of several hours, the luckless messenger was at length fairly drunk under the table; and it is needless to add that the fair nymphs then proceeded to strip him of his papers, decamped, and were no more heard of; though it is but justice to the Scottish ladies of that period to say that the robbers were generally believed at the time to be young men disguised in women’s clothes.[133]
The custom which prevailed among ladies, as well as gentlemen, of resorting to what were called oyster-cellars, is in itself a striking indication of the state of manners during the last century. In winter, when the evening had set in, a party of the most fashionable people in town, collected by appointment, would adjourn in carriages to one of those abysses of darkness and comfort, called in Edinburgh laigh shops, where they proceeded to regale themselves with raw oysters and porter, arranged in huge dishes upon a coarse table, in a dingy room, lighted by tallow candles. The rudeness of the feast, and the vulgarity of the circumstances under which it took place, seem to have given a zest to its enjoyment, with which more refined banquets could not have been accompanied. One of the chief features of an oyster-cellar entertainment was that full scope was given to the conversational powers of the company. Both ladies and gentlemen indulged, without restraint, in sallies the merriest and the wittiest; and a thousand remarks and jokes, which elsewhere would have been suppressed as improper, were here sanctified by the oddity of the scene, and appreciated by the most dignified and refined. After the table was cleared of the oysters and porter, it was customary to introduce brandy or rum-punch—according to the pleasure of the ladies—after which dancing took place; and when the female part of the assemblage thought proper to retire, the gentlemen again sat down, or adjourned to another tavern to crown the pleasures of the evening with unlimited debauch. It is not (1824) more than thirty years since the late Lord Melville, the Duchess of Gordon, and some other persons of distinction, who happened to meet in town after many years of absence, made up an oyster-cellar party, by way of a frolic, and devoted one winter evening to the revival of this almost forgotten entertainment of their youth.[134]
It seems difficult to reconcile all these things with the staid and somewhat square-toed character which our country has obtained amongst her neighbours. The fact seems to be that a kind of Laodicean principle is observable in Scotland, and we oscillate between a rigour of manners on the one hand, and a laxity on the other, which alternately acquire an apparent paramouncy. In the early part of the last century, rigour was in the ascendant; but not to the prevention of a respectable minority of the free-and-easy, who kept alive the flame of conviviality with no small degree of success. In the latter half of the century—a dissolute era all over civilised Europe—the minority became the majority, and the characteristic sobriety of the nation’s manners was only traceable in certain portions of society. Now we are in a sober, perhaps tending to a rigorous stage once more. In Edinburgh, seventy years ago (1847), intemperance was the rule to such an degree that exception could hardly be said to exist. Men appeared little in the drawing-room in those days; when they did, not infrequently their company had better have been dispensed with. When a gentleman gave an entertainment, it was thought necessary that he should press the bottle as far as it could be made to go. A particularly good fellow would lock his outer door to prevent any guest of dyspeptic tendencies or sober inclinations from escaping. Some were so considerate as to provide shake-down beds for a general bivouac in a neighbouring apartment. When gentlemen were obliged to appear at assemblies where decency was enforced, they of course wore their best attire. This it was customary to change for something less liable to receive damage, ere going, as they usually did, to conclude the evening by a scene of conviviality. Drinking entered into everything. As Sir Alexander Boswell has observed:
‘O’er draughts of wine the beau would moan his love,
O’er draughts of wine the cit his bargain drove,
O’er draughts of wine the writer penned the will,
And legal wisdom counselled o’er a gill.’
Then was the time when men, despising and neglecting the company of women, always so civilising in its influence, would yet half-kill themselves with bumpers in order, as the phrase went, to save them. Drinking to save the ladies is said to have originated with a catch-club, which issued tickets for gratuitous concerts. Many tickets with the names of ladies being prepared, one was taken up and the name announced. Any member present was at liberty to toast the health of this lady in a bumper, and this ensured her ticket being reserved for her use. If no one came forward to honour her name in this manner, the lady was said to be damned, and her ticket was thrown under the table. Whether from this origin or not, the practice is said to have ultimately had the following form. One gentleman would give out the name of some lady as the most beautiful object in creation, and, by way of attesting what he said, drink one bumper. Another champion would then enter the field, and offer to prove that a certain other lady, whom he named, was a great deal more beautiful than she just mentioned—supporting his assertion by drinking two bumpers. Then the other would rise up, declare this to be false, and in proof of his original statement, as well as by way of turning the scale upon his opponent, drink four bumpers. Not deterred or repressed by this, the second man would reiterate, and conclude by drinking as much as the challenger, who would again start up and drink eight bumpers; and so on, in geometrical progression, till one or other of the heroes fell under the table; when of course the fair Delia of the survivor was declared the queen supreme of beauty by all present. I have seen a sonnet addressed on the morning after such a scene of contention to the lady concerned by the unsuccessful hero, whose brains appear to have been woefully muddled by the claret he had drunk in her behalf.
It was not merely in the evenings that taverns were then resorted to. There was a petty treat, called a ‘meridian,’ which no man of that day thought himself able to dispense with; and this was generally indulged in at a tavern. ‘A cauld cock and a feather’ was the metaphorical mode of calling for a glass of brandy and a bunch of raisins, which was the favourite regale of many. Others took a glass of whisky, some few a lunch. Scott very amusingly describes, from his own observation, the manner in which the affair of the meridian was gone about by the writers and clerks belonging to the Parliament House. ‘If their proceedings were watched, they might be seen to turn fidgety about the hour of noon, and exchange looks with each other from their separate desks, till at length some one of formal and dignified presence assumed the honour of leading the band; when away they went, threading the crowd like a string of wild-fowl, crossed the square or close, and following each other into the [John’s] coffee-house, drank the meridian, which was placed ready at the bar. This they did day by day; and though they did not speak to each other, they seemed to attach a certain degree of sociability to performing the ceremony in company.’
It was in the evening, of course, that the tavern debaucheries assumed their proper character of unpalliated fierceness and destructive duration. In the words of Robert Fergusson:
‘Now night, that’s cunzied chief for fun,
Is with her usual rites begun.
* * * *
Some to porter, some to punch,
Retire; while noisy ten-hours’ drum
Gars a’ the trades gang danderin’ hame.
Now, mony a club, jocose and free,
Gi’e a’ to merriment and glee;
Wi’ sang and glass they fley the power
O’ care, that wad harass the hour.
* * * *
Chief, O Cape! we crave thy aid,
To get our cares and poortith laid.
Sincerity and genius true,
O’ knights have ever been the due.
Mirth, music, porter deepest-dyed,
Are never here to worth denied.’
All the shops in the town were then shut at eight o’clock; and from that hour till ten—when the drum of the Town-guard announced at once a sort of license for the deluging of the streets with nuisances,[135] and a warning of the inhabitants home to their beds—unrestrained scope was given to the delights of the table. No tradesman thought of going home to his family till after he had spent an hour or two at his club. This was universal and unfailing. So lately as 1824, I knew something of an old-fashioned tradesman who nightly shut his shop at eight o’clock, and then adjourned with two old friends, who called upon him at that hour, to a quiet old public-house on the opposite side of the way, where they each drank precisely one bottle of Edinburgh ale, ate precisely one halfpenny roll, and got upon their legs precisely at the first stroke of ten o’clock.
The Cape Club alluded to by Fergusson aspired to a refined and classical character, comprising amongst its numerous members many men of talents, as well as of private worth. Fergusson himself was a member; as were Mr Thomas Sommers, his friend and biographer; Mr Woods, a player of eminence on the humble boards of Edinburgh, and an intimate companion of the poet; and Mr Runciman the painter. The name of the club had its foundation in one of those weak jokes such as ‘gentle dullness ever loves.’ A person who lived in the Calton was in the custom of spending an hour or two every evening with one or two city friends, and being sometimes detained till after the regular period when the Netherbow Port was shut, it occasionally happened that he had either to remain in the city all night, or was under the necessity of bribing the porter who attended the gate. This difficult pass—partly on account of the rectangular corner which he turned immediately on getting out of the Port, as he went homewards down Leith Wynd—the Calton burgher facetiously called doubling the Cape; and as it was customary with his friends every evening when they assembled to inquire ‘how he turned the Cape last night,’ and indeed to make that circumstance and that phrase, night after night, the subject of their conversation and amusement, ‘the Cape’ in time became so assimilated with their very existence that they adopted it as a title; and it was retained as such by the organised club into which shortly after they thought proper to form themselves. The Cape Club owned a regular institution from 1763. It will scarcely be credited in the present day that a jest of the above nature could keep an assemblage of rational citizens, and, we may add, professed wits, merry after a thousand repetitions. Yet it really is true that the patron-jests of many a numerous and enlightened association were no better than this, and the greater part of them worse. As instance the following:
There was the Antemanum Club, of which the members used to boast of the state of their hands, before-hand, in playing at ‘Brag.’ The members were all men of respectability, some of them gentlemen of fortune. They met every Saturday and dined. It was at first a purely convivial club; but latterly, the Whig party gaining a sort of preponderance, it degenerated into a political association.
The Pious Club was composed of decent, orderly citizens, who met every night, Sundays not excepted, in a pie-house, and whose joke was the équivoque of these expressions—similar in sound, but different in signification. The agreeable uncertainty as to whether their name arose from their piety, or the circumstance of their eating pies, kept the club hearty for many years. At their Sunday meetings the conversation usually took a serious turn—perhaps upon the sermons which they had respectively heard during the day: this they considered as rendering their title of Pious not altogether undeserved. Moreover, they were all, as the saying was, ten o’clock men, and of good character. Fifteen persons were considered as constituting a full night. The whole allowable debauch was a gill of toddy to each person, which was drunk, like wine, out of a common decanter. One of the members of the Pious Club was a Mr Lind, a man of at least twenty-five stone weight, immoderately fond of good eating and drinking. It was generally believed of him that were all the oxen he had devoured ranged in a line, they would reach from the Watergate to the Castle-hill, and that the wine he had drunk would swim a seventy-four. His most favourite viand was a very strange one—salmon skins. When dining anywhere, with salmon on the table, he made no scruple of raking all the skins off the plates of the rest of the guests. He had only one toast, from which he never varied: ‘Merry days to honest fellows.’ A Mr Drummond was esteemed poet-laureate to this club. He was a facetious, clever man. Of his poetical talents, take a specimen in the following lines on Lind:
‘In going to dinner, he ne’er lost his way,
Though often, when done, he was carted away.’
He made the following impromptu on an associate of small figure and equally small understanding, who had been successful in the world:
‘O thou of genius slow,
Weak by nature;
A rich fellow,
But a poor creature.’
The Watergate.
The Spendthrift Club took its name from the extravagance of the members in spending no less a sum than fourpence halfpenny each night! It consisted of respectable citizens of the middle class, and continued in 1824 to exist in a modified state. Its meetings, originally nightly, were then reduced to four a week. The men used to play at whist for a halfpenny—one, two, three—no rubbers; but latterly they had, with their characteristic extravagance, doubled the stake! Supper originally cost no less than twopence; and half a bottle of strong ale, with a dram, stood every member twopence halfpenny; to all which sumptuous profusion might be added still another halfpenny, which was given to the maid-servant—in all, fivepence! Latterly the dram had been disused; but such had been the general increase, either in the cost or the quantity of the indulgences, that the usual nightly expense was ultimately from a shilling to one and fourpence. The winnings at whist were always thrown into the reckoning. A large two-quart bottle or tappit-hen was introduced by the landlady, with a small measure, out of which the company helped themselves; and the members made up their own bill with chalk upon the table. In 1824, in the recollection of the senior members, some of whom were of fifty years’ standing, the house was kept by the widow of a Lieutenant Hamilton of the army, who recollected having attended the theatre in the Tennis Court at Holyroodhouse, when the play was the Spanish Friar, and when many of the members of the Union Parliament were present in the house.
Tappit-hen.
The Boar Club was an association of a different sort, consisting chiefly of wild, fashionable young men; and the place of meeting was not in any of the snug profundities of the Old Town, but in a modern tavern in Shakspeare Square, kept by one Daniel Hogg. The joke of this club consisted in the supposition that all the members were boars, that their room was a sty, that their talk was grunting, and in the double-entendre of the small piece of stone-ware which served as a repository of all the fines being a pig. Upon this they lived twenty years. I have, at some expense of eyesight and with no small exertion of patience, perused the soiled and blotted records of the club, which in 1824 were preserved by an old vintner, whose house was their last place of meeting; and the result has been the following memorabilia. The Boar Club commenced its meetings in 1787, and the original members were J. G. C. Schetky, a German musician; David Shaw; Archibald Crawfuird; Patrick Robertson; Robert Aldridge, a famed pantomimist and dancing-master; James Neilson; and Luke Cross. Some of these were remarkable men, in particular Mr Schetky. He had come to Edinburgh about the beginning of the reign of George III. He used to tell that on alighting at Ramsay’s inn, opposite the Cowgate Port, his first impression of the city was so unfavourable that he was on the point of leaving it again without further acquaintance, and was only prevented from doing so by the solicitations of his fellow-traveller, who was not so much alarmed at the dingy and squalid appearance of this part of Auld Reekie.[136] He was first employed at St Cecilia’s Hall, where the concerts were attended by all the ‘rank, beauty, and fashion’ of which Edinburgh could then boast, and where, besides the professional performers, many amateurs of great musical skill and enthusiasm, such as Mr Tytler of Woodhouselee,[137] were pleased to exhibit themselves for the entertainment of their friends, who alone were admitted by tickets. Mr Schetky composed the march of a body of volunteers called the Edinburgh Defensive Band, which was raised out of the citizens of Edinburgh at the time of the American war, and was commanded by the eminent advocate Crosbie. One of the verses to which the march was set may be given as an admirable specimen of militia poetry:
‘Colonel Crosbie takes the field;
To France and Spain he will not yield;
But still maintains his high command
At the head of the noble Defensive Band.’[138]
‘AULD REEKIE’
from Largo.
Mr Schetky was primarily concerned in the founding of the Boar Club. He was in the habit of meeting every night with Mr Aldridge and one or two other professional men, or gentlemen who affected the society of such persons, in Hogg’s tavern; and it was the host’s name that suggested the idea of calling their society the ‘Boar Club.’ Their laws were first written down in proper form in 1790. They were to meet every evening at seven o’clock; each boar, on his entry, to contribute a halfpenny to the pig. Mr Aldridge was to be perpetual Grand-boar, with Mr Schetky for his deputy; and there were other officers, entitled Secretary, Treasurer, and Procurator-fiscal. A fine of one halfpenny was imposed upon every person who called one of his brother-boars by his proper out-of-club name—the term ‘sir’ being only allowed. The entry-moneys, fines, and other pecuniary acquisitions were hoarded for a grand annual dinner. The laws were revised in 1799, when some new officials were constituted, such as Poet-laureate, Champion, Archbishop, and Chief-grunter. The fines were then rendered exceedingly severe, and in their exaction no one met with any mercy, as it was the interest of all the rest that the pig should bring forth as plenteous a farrow as possible at the grand dinner-day. This practice at length occasioning a violent insurrection in the sty, the whole fraternity was broken up, and never again returned to ‘wallow in the mire.’
The Hell-fire Club, a terrible and infamous association of wild young men about the beginning of the last century, met in various profound places throughout Edinburgh, where they practised orgies not more fit for seeing the light than the Eleusinian Mysteries. I have conversed with old people who had seen the last worn-out members of the Hell-fire Club, which in the country is to this day believed to have been an association in compact with the Prince of Darkness.
Many years afterwards, a set of persons associated for the purpose of purchasing goods condemned by the Court of Exchequer. For what reason I cannot tell, they called themselves the Hell-fire Club, and their president was named the Devil. My old friend, Henry Mackenzie, whose profession was that of an attorney before the Court of Exchequer, wrote me a note on this subject, in which he says very naïvely: ‘In my youngest days, I knew the Devil.’
The Sweating Club flourished about the middle of the last century. They resembled the Mohocks mentioned in the Spectator. After intoxicating themselves, it was their custom to sally forth at midnight, and attack whomsoever they met upon the streets. Any luckless wight who happened to fall into their hands was chased, jostled, pinched, and pulled about, till he not only perspired, but was ready to drop down and die with exhaustion. Even so late as the early years of this century, it was unsafe to walk the streets of Edinburgh at night on account of the numerous drunken parties of young men who then reeled about, bent on mischief, at all hours, and from whom the Town-guard were unable to protect the sober citizen.
A club called the Industrious Company may serve to show how far the system of drinking was carried by our fathers. It was a sort of joint-stock company, formed by a numerous set of porter-drinkers, who thought fit to club towards the formation of a stock of that liquor, which they might partly profit by retailing, and partly by the opportunity thus afforded them of drinking their own particular tipple at the wholesale price. Their cellars were in the Royal Bank Close, where they met every night at eight o’clock. Each member paid at his entry £5, and took his turn monthly of the duty of superintending the general business of the company. But the curse of joint-stock companies—negligence on the part of the managers—ultimately occasioned the ruin of the Industrious Company.
About 1790, a club of first-rate citizens used to meet each Saturday afternoon for a country dinner, in a tavern which still exists in the village of Canonmills, a place now involved within the limits of the New Town. To quote a brief memoir on the subject, handed to me many years ago by a veteran friend, who was a good deal of the laudator temporis acti: ‘The club was pointedly attended; it was too good a thing to miss being present at. They kept their own claret, and managed all matters as to living perfectly well.’ Originally the fraternity were contented with a very humble room; but in time they got an addition built to the house for their accommodation, comprehending one good-sized room with two windows, in one of which is a pane containing an olive-dove; in the other, one containing a wheat-sheaf, both engraved with a diamond. ‘This,’ continues Mr Johnston, ‘was the doing of William Ramsay [banker], then residing at Warriston—the tongue of the trump to the club. Here he took great delight to drink claret on the Saturdays, though he had such a paradise near at hand to retire to; but then there were Jamie Torry, Jamie Dickson, Gilbert Laurie, and other good old council friends with whom to crack [that is, chat]; and the said cracks were of more value in this dark, unseemly place than the enjoyments of home. I never pass these two engraved panes of glass but I venerate them, and wonder that, in the course of fifty years, they have not been destroyed, either from drunkenness within or from misrule without.’[139]
Edinburgh boasted of many other associations of the like nature, which it were perhaps best merely to enumerate in a tabular form, with the appropriate joke opposite each, as
| The Dirty Club | No gentleman to appear in clean linen. | |
| The Black Wigs | Members wore black wigs. | |
| The Odd Fellows | Members wrote their names upside down. | |
| The Bonnet Lairds | Members wore blue bonnets. | |
| The Doctors of Faculty Club | { | Members regarded as Physicians, and sostyled; wearing, moreover, gowns and wigs. |
And so forth. There were the Caledonian Club and the Union Club, of whose foundation history speaketh not. There was the Wig Club, the president of which wore a wig of extraordinary materials, which had belonged to the Moray family for three generations, and each new entrant of which drank to the fraternity in a quart of claret without pulling bit. The Wigs usually drank twopenny ale, on which it was possible to get satisfactorily drunk for a groat; and with this they ate souters’ clods,[140] a coarse, lumpish kind of loaf.[141] There was also the Brownonian System Club, which, oddly enough, bore no reference to the license which that system had given for a phlogistic regimen—for it was a douce citizenly fraternity, venerating ten o’clock as a sacred principle—but in honour of the founder of that system, who had been a constituent member.
The Lawnmarket Club was composed chiefly of the woollen-traders of that street, a set of whom met every morning about seven o’clock, and walked down to the Post-office, where they made themselves acquainted with the news of the morning. After a plentiful discussion of the news, they adjourned to a public-house and got a dram of brandy. As a sort of ironical and self-inflicted satire upon the strength of their potations, they sometimes called themselves the Whey Club. They were always the first persons in the town to have a thorough knowledge of the foreign news; and on Wednesday mornings, when there was no post from London, it was their wont to meet as usual, and, in the absence of real news, amuse themselves by the invention of what was imaginary; and this they made it their business to circulate among their uninitiated acquaintances in the course of the forenoon. Any such unfounded articles of intelligence, on being suspected or discovered, were usually called Lawnmarket Gazettes, in allusion to their roguish originators.
In the year 1705, when the Duke of Argyll was commissioner in the Scottish parliament, a singular kind of fashionable club, or coterie of ladies and gentlemen, was instituted, chiefly by the exertions of the Earl of Selkirk, who was the distinguished beau of that age. This was called the Horn Order, a name which, as usual, had its origin in the whim of a moment. A horn-spoon having been used at some merry-meeting, it occurred to the club, which was then in embryo, that this homely implement would be a good badge for the projected society; and this being proposed, it was instantly agreed by all the party that the ‘Order of the Horn’ would be a good caricature of the more ancient and better-sanctioned honorary dignities. The phrase was adopted; and the members of the Horn Order met and caroused for many a day under this strange designation, which, however, the common people believed to mean more than met the ear. Indeed, if all accounts of it be true, it must have been a species of masquerade, in which the sexes were mixed and all ranks confounded.[142]
[TAVERNS OF OLD TIMES.]
When the worship of Bacchus held such sway in our city, his peculiar temples—the taverns—must, one would suppose, have been places of some importance. And so they were, comparatively speaking; and yet, absolutely, an Edinburgh tavern of the last century was no very fine or inviting place. Usually these receptacles were situated in obscure places—in courts or closes, away from the public thoroughfares; and often they presented such narrow and stifling accommodations as might have been expected to repel rather than attract visitors. The truth was, however, that a coarse and darksome snugness was courted by the worshippers. Large, well-lighted rooms, with a look-out to a street, would not have suited them. But allow them to dive through some Erebean alley, into a cavern-like house, and there settle themselves in a cell unvisited of Phœbus, with some dingy flamen of either sex to act as minister, and their views as to circumstances and properties were fulfilled.
The city traditions do not go far back into the eighteenth century with respect to taverns; but we obtain some notion of the principal houses in Queen Anne’s time from the Latin lyrics of Dr Pitcairn, which Ruddiman published, in order to prove that the Italian muse had not become extinct in our land since the days of Buchanan. In an address To Strangers, the wit tells those who would acquire some notion of our national manners to avoid the triple church of St Giles’s:
‘Tres ubi Cyclopes fanda nefanda boant’—
where three horrible monsters bellow forth sacred and profane discourse—and seek the requisite knowledge in the sanctuaries of the rosy god, whose worship is conducted by night and by day. ‘At one time,’ says he, ‘you may be delighted with the bowls of Steil of the Cross Keys; then other heroes, at the Ship, will show you the huge cups which belonged to mighty bibbers of yore. Or you may seek out the sweet-spoken Katy at Buchanan’s, or Tennant’s commodious house, where scalloped oysters will be brought in with your wine. But Hay calls us, than whom no woman of milder disposition or better-stored cellar can be named in the whole town. Now it will gratify you to make your way into the Avernian grottoes and caves never seen of the sun; but remember to make friends with the dog which guards the threshold. Straightway Mistress Anne will bring the native liquor. Seek the innermost rooms and the snug seats: these know the sun, at least, when Anne enters. What souls joying in the Lethæan flood you may there see! what frolics, God willing, you may partake of! Mindless of all that goes on in the outer world, joys not to be told to mortal do they there imbibe. But perhaps you may wish by-and-by to get back into the world—which is indeed no easy matter. I recommend you, when about to descend, to take with you a trusty Achates Greppa, it chances that we possess some knowledge. It was a suite of dark underground apartments in the Parliament Close, opening by a descending stair opposite the oriel of St Giles’s, in a mass of building called the Pillars. By the wits who frequented it, it was called the Greping-office, because one could only make way through its dark passages by groping. It is curious to see how Pitcairn works this homely Scottish idea into his Sapphics, talking, for example, by way of a good case of bane and antidote, of
‘Fraudes Egidii, venena Greppæ.’
A venerable person has given me an anecdote of this singular mixture of learning, wit, and professional skill in connection with the Greping-office. Here, it seems, according to a custom which lasted even in London till a later day, the clever physician used to receive visits from his patients. On one occasion a woman from the country called to consult him respecting the health of her daughter, when he gave a shrewd hygienic advice in a pithy metaphor not be mentioned to ears polite. When, in consequence of following the prescription, the young woman had recovered her health, the mother came back to the Greping-office to thank Dr Pitcairn and give him a small present. Seeing him in precisely the same place and circumstances, and surrounded by the same companions as on the former occasion, she lingered with an expression of surprise. On interrogation, she said she had only one thing to speer at him (ask after), and she hoped he would not be angry.
‘Oh no, my good woman.’
‘Well, sir, have you been sitting here ever since I saw you last?’
According to the same authority, small claret was then sold at twentypence the Scottish pint, equivalent to tenpence a bottle. Pitcairn once or twice sent his servant for a regale of this liquor on the Sunday forenoon, and suffered the disappointment of having it intercepted by the seizers, whose duty it was to make capture of all persons found abroad in time of service, and appropriate whatever they were engaged in carrying that smelled of the common enjoyments of life. To secure his claret for the future from this interference, the wit caused the wine on one occasion to be drugged in such a manner as to produce consequences more ludicrous than dangerous to those drinking it. The triumph he thus attained over a power which there was no reaching by any appeal to common-sense or justice must have been deeply relished in the Greping-office.
Pitcairn was professedly an Episcopalian, but he allowed himself a latitude in wit which his contemporaries found some difficulty in reconciling with any form of religion. Among the popular charges against him was that he did not believe in the existence of such a place as hell; a point of heterodoxy likely to be sadly disrelished in Scotland. Being at a book-sale, where a copy of Philostratus sold at a good price and a copy of the Bible was not bidden for, Pitcairn said to some one who remarked the circumstance: ‘Not at all wonderful; for is it not written, “Verbum Dei manet in eternum”?’ For this, one of the Cyclopes, a famous Mr Webster, called him publicly an atheist. The story goes on to state that Pitcairn prosecuted Webster for defamation in consequence, but failed in the action from the following circumstance: The defender, much puzzled what to do in the case, consulted a shrewd-witted friend of his, a Mr Pettigrew, minister of Govan, near Glasgow. Pettigrew came to Edinburgh to endeavour to get him out of the scrape. ‘Strange,’ he said, ‘since he has caught so much at your mouth, if we can catch nothing at his.’ Having laid his plan, he came bustling up to the physician at the Cross, and tapping him on the shoulder, said: ‘Are you Dr Pitcairn the atheist?’
The doctor, in his haste, overlooking the latter part of the query, answered: ‘Yes.’
‘Very good,’ said Pettigrew; ‘I take you all to witness that he has confessed it himself.’
Pitcairn, seeing how he had been outwitted, said bitterly to the minister of Govan, whom he well knew: ‘Oh, Pettigrew, that skull of yours is as deep as hell.’
‘Oh, man,’ replied Pettigrew, ‘I’m glad to find you have come to believe there is a hell.’ The prosecutor’s counsel, who stood by at the time, recommended a compromise, which accordingly took place.
A son of Pitcairn was minister of Dysart; a very good kind of man, who was sometimes consulted in a medical way by his parishioners. He seems to have had a little of the paternal humour, if we may judge from the following circumstance: A lady came to ask what her maid-servant should do for sore or tender eyes. The minister, seeing that no active treatment could be recommended, said: ‘She must do naething wi’ them, but just rub them wi’ her elbucks [elbows].’
Allan Ramsay mentions, of Edinburgh taverns in his day,
‘Cumin’s, Don’s, and Steil’s,’
as places where one may be as well served as at The Devil in London.
‘’Tis strange, though true, he who would shun all evil,
Cannot do better than go to the Devil.’
John Maclaurin.
One is disposed to pause a moment on Steil’s name, as it is honourably connected with the history of music in Scotland. Being a zealous lover of the divine science and a good singer of the native melodies, he had rendered his house a favourite resort of all who possessed a similar taste, and here actually was formed (1728) the first regular society of amateur musicians known in our country. It numbered seventy persons, and met once a week, the usual entertainments consisting in playing on the harpsichord and violin the concertos and sonatas of Handel, then newly published. Apparently, however, this fraternity did not long continue to use Steil’s house, if I am right in supposing his retirement from business as announced in an advertisement of February 1729, regarding ‘a sale by auction, of the haill pictures, prints, music-books, and musical instruments, belonging to Mr John Steill’ (Caledonian Mercury).
Coming down to a later time—1760-1770—we find the tavern in highest vogue to have been Fortune’s, in the house which the Earl of Eglintoune had once occupied in the Stamp-office Close. The gay men of rank, the scholarly and philosophical, the common citizens, all flocked hither; and the royal commissioner for the General Assembly held his levees here, and hence proceeded to church with his cortège, then additionally splendid from having ladies walking in it in their court-dresses as well as gentlemen.[143] Perhaps the most remarkable set of men who met here was the Poker Club,[144] consisting of Hume, Robertson, Blair, Fergusson, and many others of that brilliant galaxy, but whose potations were comparatively of a moderate kind.
The Star and Garter, in Writers’ Court, kept by one Clerihugh (the Clerihugh’s alluded to in Guy Mannering), was another tavern of good consideration, the favourite haunt of the magistrates and Town-council, who in those days mixed much more of private enjoyments with public duties than would now be considered fitting.[145] Here the Rev. Dr Webster used to meet them at dinner, in order to give them the benefit of his extensive knowledge and great powers of calculation when they were scheming out the New Town.
A favourite house for many of the last years of the bygone century was Douglas’s, in the Anchor Close, near the Cross, a good specimen of those profound retreats which have been spoken of as valued in the inverse ratio of the amount of daylight which visited them. You went a few yards down the dark, narrow alley, passing on the left hand the entry to a scale stair, decorated with ‘THE LORD IS ONLY MY SVPORT;’ then passed another door, bearing the still more antique legend: ‘O LORD, IN THE IS AL MY TRAIST;’ immediately beyond, under an architrave calling out ‘BE MERCIFVL TO ME,’ you entered the hospitable mansion of Dawney Douglas, the scene of the daily and nightly orgies of the Pleydells and Fairfords, the Hays, Erskines, and Crosbies, of the time of our fathers. Alas! how fallen off is now that temple of Momus and the Bacchanals! You find it divided into a multitude of small lodgings, where, instead of the merry party, vociferous with toasts and catches, you are most likely to be struck by the spectacle of some poor lone female, pining under a parochial allowance, or a poverty-struck family group, one-half of whom are disposed on sick-beds of straw mingled with rags—the terrible exponents of our peculiar phasis of civilisation.
The frequenter of Douglas’s, after ascending a few steps, found himself in a pretty large kitchen—a dark, fiery Pandemonium, through which numerous ineffable ministers of flame were continually flying about, while beside the door sat the landlady, a large, fat woman, in a towering head-dress and large-flowered silk gown, who bowed to every one passing. Most likely on emerging from this igneous region, the party would fall into the hands of Dawney himself, and so be conducted to an apartment. A perfect contrast was he to his wife: a thin, weak, submissive man, who spoke in a whisper, never but in the way of answer, and then, if possible, only in monosyllables. He had a habit of using the word ‘quietly’ very frequently, without much regard to its being appropriate to the sense; and it is told that he one day made the remark that ‘the Castle had been firing to-day—quietly;’ which, it may well be believed, was not soon forgotten by his customers. Another trait of Dawney was that some one lent him a volume of Clarendon’s history to read, and daily frequenting the room where it lay, used regularly, for some time, to put back the reader’s mark to the same place; whereupon, being by-and-by asked how he liked the book, Dawney answered: ‘Oh, very weel; but dinna ye think it’s gay mickle the same thing o’er again?’ The house was noted for suppers of tripe, rizzared haddocks, mince collops, and hashes, which never cost more than sixpence a head. On charges of this moderate kind the honest couple grew extremely rich before they died.
The principal room in this house was a handsome one of good size, having a separate access by the second of the entries which have been described, and only used for large companies, or for guests of the first importance. It was called the Crown Room, or the Crown—so did the guests find it distinguished on the tops of their bills—and this name it was said to have acquired in consequence of its having once been used by Queen Mary as a council-room, on which occasions the emblem of sovereignty was disposed in a niche in the wall, still existing. How the queen should have had any occasion to hold councils in this place tradition does not undertake to explain; but assuredly, when we consider the nature of all public accommodations in that time, we cannot say there is any decided improbability in the matter. The house appears of sufficient age for the hypothesis. Perhaps we catch a hint on the general possibility from a very ancient house farther down the close, of whose original purpose or owners we know nothing, but which is adumbrated by this legend:
ANGVSTA AD VSVM AVGVSTA[M]
W F B G
The Crown Room, however, is elegant enough to have graced even the presence of Queen Mary, so that she only had not had to reach it by the Anchor Close. It is handsomely panelled, with a decorated fireplace, and two tall windows towards the alley. At present this supposed seat of royal councils, and certain seat of the social enjoyments of many men of noted talents, forms a back-shop to Mr Ford, grocer, High Street, and, all dingy and out of countenance, serves only to store hams, firkins of butter, packages of groceries, and bundles of dried cod.[146]
The gentle Dawney had an old Gaelic song called Crochallan, which he occasionally sang to his customers. This led to the establishment of a club at his house, which, with a reference to the militia regiments then raising, was called the Crochallan Corps, or Crochallan Fencibles, and to which belonged, amongst other men of original character and talent, the well-known William Smellie, author of the Philosophy of Natural History. Each member bore a military title, and some were endowed with ideal offices of a ludicrous character: for example, a lately surviving associate had been depute-hangman to the corps. Individuals committing a fault were subjected to a mock trial, in which such members as were barristers could display their forensic talents to the infinite amusement of the brethren. Much mirth and not a little horse-play prevailed. Smellie, while engaged professionally in printing the Edinburgh edition of the poems of Burns, introduced that genius to the Crochallans, when a scene of rough banter took place between him and certain privileged old hands, and the bard declared at the conclusion that he had ‘never been so abominably thrashed in his life.’ There was one predominant wit, Willie Dunbar by name, of whom the poet has left a characteristic picture:
‘As I came by Crochallan,
I cannily keekit ben—
Rattling roaring Willie
Was sitting at yon board en’—
Sitting at yon board en’,
Amang gude companie;
Rattling roaring Willie,
Ye’re welcome hame to me!’
He has also described Smellie as coming to Crochallan with his old cocked hat, gray surtout, and beard rising in its might:
‘Yet though his caustic wit was biting, rude,
His heart was warm, benevolent, and good.’
The printing-office of this strange genius being at the bottom of the close, the transition from the correction of proofs to the roaring scenes at Crochallan must have been sufficiently easy for Burns.
UPPER BAXTER’S CLOSE.
Where Burns first resided in Edinburgh.
I am indebted to a privately printed memoir on the Anchor Close for the following anecdote of Crochallan: ‘A comical gentleman, one of the members of the corps [old Williamson of Cardrona, in Peeblesshire], got rather tipsy one evening after a severe field-day. When he came to the head of the Anchor Close, it occurred to him that it was necessary that he should take possession of the Castle. He accordingly set off for this purpose. When he got to the outer gate, he demanded immediate possession of the garrison, to which he said he was entitled. The sentinel, for a considerable time, laughed at him; he, however, became so extremely clamorous that the man found it necessary to apprise the commanding officer, who immediately came down to inquire into the meaning of such impertinent conduct. He at once recognised his friend Cardrona, whom he had left at the festive board of the Crochallan Corps only a few hours before. Accordingly, humouring him in the conceit, he said: ‘Certainly you have every right to the command of this garrison; if you please, I will conduct you to your proper apartment.’ He accordingly conveyed him to a bedroom in his house. Cardrona took formal possession of the place, and immediately afterwards went to bed. His feelings were indescribable when he looked out of his bedroom window next morning, and found himself surrounded with soldiers and great guns. Some time afterwards this story came to the ears of the Crochallans; and Cardrona said he never afterwards had the life of a dog, so much did they tease and harass him about his strange adventure.’
There is a story connected with the air and song of Crochallan which will tell strangely after these anecdotes. The title is properly Cro Chalien—that is, ‘Colin’s Cattle.’ According to Highland tradition, Colin’s wife, dying at an early age, came back, some months after she had been buried, and was seen occasionally in the evenings milking her cow as formerly, and singing this plaintive air. It is curious thus to find Highland superstition associated with a snug tavern in the Anchor Close and the convivialities of such men as Burns and Smellie.
Dowie’s Tavern.
John Dowie’s, in Liberton’s Wynd, a still more perfect specimen of those taverns which Pitcairn eulogises—
‘Antraque Cocyto penè propinqua’—
enjoyed the highest celebrity during the latter years of the past and early years of the present century. A great portion of this house was literally without light, consisting of a series of windowless chambers, decreasing in size till the last was a mere box, of irregular oblong figure, jocularly, but not inappropriately, designated the Coffin. Besides these, there were but two rooms possessing light, and as that came from a deep, narrow alley, it was light little more than in name. Hither, nevertheless, did many of the Parliament House men come daily for their meridian. Here nightly assembled companies of cits, as well as of men of wit and of fashion, to spend hours in what may, by comparison, be described as gentle conviviality. The place is said to have been a howff of Fergusson and Burns in succession. Christopher North somewhere alludes to meetings of his own with Tom Campbell in that couthy mansion. David Herd, the editor of the Scottish songs, Mr Cumming of the Lyon Office, and George Paton the antiquary were regular customers, each seldom allowing a night to pass without a symposium at Johnie Dowie’s. Now, these men are all gone; their very habits are becoming matters of history; while, as for their evening haunt, the place which knew it once knows it no more, the new access to the Lawnmarket, by George IV. Bridge, passing over the area where it stood.
Johnie Dowie’s was chiefly celebrated for ale—Younger’s Edinburgh ale—a potent fluid which almost glued the lips of the drinker together, and of which few, therefore, could despatch more than a bottle. John, a sleek, quiet-looking man, in a last-century style of attire, always brought in the liquor himself, decanted it carefully, drank a glass to the health of the company, and then retired. His neat, careful management of the bottle must have entirely met the views of old William Coke, the Leith bookseller, of whom it is told that if he saw a greenhorn of a waiter acting in a different manner, he would rush indignantly up to him, take the ale out of his hands, caress it tenderly, as if to soothe and put it to rights again, and then proceed to the business of decanting it himself, saying: ‘You rascal, is that the way you attend to your business? Sirrah, you ought to handle a bottle of ale as you would do a new-born babe!’
Dowie’s was also famed for its petits soupers, as one of its customers has recorded:
‘’Deed, gif ye please,
Ye may get a bit toasted cheese,
A crumb o’ tripe, ham, dish o’ peas,
The season fitting;
An egg, or, cauler frae the seas,
A fleuk or whiting.’
When the reckoning came to be paid, John’s duty usually consisted simply in counting the empty bottles which stood on a little shelf where he had placed them above the heads of his customers, and multiplying these by the price of the liquor—usually threepence. Studious of decency, he was rigorous as to hours, and, when pressed for additional supplies of liquor at a particular time, would say: ‘No, no, gentlemen; it’s past twelve o’clock, and time to go home.’
Of John’s conscientiousness as to money matters there is some illustration in the following otherwise trivial anecdote: David Herd, being one night prevented by slight indisposition from joining in the malt potations of his friends, called for first one and then another glass of spirits, which he dissolved, more Scotico, in warm water and sugar. When the reckoning came to be paid, the antiquary was surprised to find the second glass charged a fraction higher than the first—as if John had been resolved to impose a tax upon excess. On inquiring the reason, however, honest John explained it thus: ‘Whe, sir, ye see, the first glass was out o’ the auld barrel, and the second was out o’ the new; and as the whisky in the new barrel cost me mair than the other, whe, sir, I’ve just charged a wee mair for ’t.’ An ordinary host would have doubtless equalised the price by raising that of the first glass to a level with the second. It is gratifying, but, after this anecdote, not surprising, that John eventually retired with a fortune said to have amounted to six thousand pounds. He had a son in the army, who attained the rank of major, and was a respectable officer.
We get an idea of a class of taverns, humbler in their appointments, but equally comfortable perhaps in their entertainments, from the description which has been preserved of Mrs Flockhart’s—otherwise Lucky Fykie’s—in the Potterrow. This was a remarkably small, as well as obscure mansion, bearing externally the appearance of a huckstry shop. The lady was a neat, little, thin, elderly woman, usually habited in a plain striped blue gown, and apron of the same stuff, with a black ribbon round her head and lappets tied under her chin. She was far from being poor in circumstances, as her husband, the umquhile John Flucker, or Flockhart, had left her some ready money, together with his whole stock-in-trade, consisting of a multifarious variety of articles—as ropes, tea, sugar, whip-shafts, porter, ale, beer, yellow sand, calm-stane, herrings, nails, cotton-wicks, stationery, thread, needles, tapes, potatoes, lollipops, onions, matches, &c., constituting her a very respectable merchant, as the phrase was understood in Scotland. On Sundays, too, Mrs Flockhart’s little visage might have been seen in a front-gallery seat in Mr Pattieson’s chapel in the Potterrow. Her abode, situated opposite to Chalmers’s Entry in that suburban thoroughfare, was a square of about fifteen feet each way, divided agreeably to the following diagram:
Each forenoon was this place, or at least all in front of the screen, put into the neatest order; at the same time three bottles, severally containing brandy, rum, and whisky, were placed on a bunker-seat in the window of the ‘hotel,’ flanked by a few glasses and a salver of gingerbread biscuits. About noon any one watching the place from an opposite window would have observed an elderly gentleman entering the humble shop, where he saluted the lady with a ‘Hoo d’ye do, mem?’ and then passed into the side space to indulge himself with a glass from one or other of the bottles. After him came another, who went through the same ceremonial; after him another again; and so on. Strange to say, these were men of importance in society—some of them lawyers in good employment, some bankers, and so forth, and all of them inhabitants of good houses in George Square. It was in passing to or from forenoon business in town that they thus regaled themselves. On special occasions Lucky could furnish forth a soss—that is, stew—which the votary might partake of upon a clean napkin in the closet, a place which only admitted of one chair being placed in it. Such were amongst the habits of the fathers of some of our present (1824) most distinguished citizens!
This may be the proper place for introducing the few notices which I have collected respecting Edinburgh inns of a past date.
The oldest house known to have been used in the character of an inn is one situated in what is called Davidson’s or the White Horse Close, at the bottom of the Canongate. A sort of porte-cochère gives access to a court having mean buildings on either hand, but facing us a goodly structure of antique fashion, having two outside stairs curiously arranged, and the whole reminding us much of certain houses still numerous in the Netherlands. A date, deficient in the decimal figure (16-3), gives us assurance of the seventeenth century, and, judging from the style of the building, I would say the house belongs to an early portion of that age. The whole of the ground-floor, accessible from the street called North Back of Canongate, has been used as stables, thus reminding us of the absence of nicety in a former age, when human beings were content to sit with only a wooden floor between themselves and their horses.
This house, supposed to have been styled The White Horse Inn or White Horse Stables (for the latter was the more common word), would be conveniently situated for persons travelling to or arriving from London, as it is close to the ancient exit of the town in that direction. The adjacent Water-gate took its name from a horse-pond, which probably was an appendage of this mansion. The manner of procedure for a gentleman going to London in the days of the White Horse was to come booted to this house with saddle-bags, and here engage and mount a suitable roadster, which was to serve all the way. In 1639, when Charles I. had made his first pacification with the Covenanters, and had come temporarily to Berwick, he sent messages to the chief lords of that party, desiring some conversation with them. They were unsuspectingly mounting their horses at this inn, in order to ride to Berwick, when a mob, taught by the clergy to suspect that the king wished only to wile over the nobles to his side, came and forcibly prevented them from commencing their designed journey. Montrose alone broke through this restraint; and assuredly the result in his instance was such as to give some countenance to the suspicion, as thenceforward he was a royalist in his heart.
WHITE HORSE INN.
The White Horse has ceased to be an inn from a time which no ‘oldest inhabitant’ of my era could pretend to have any recollection of. The only remaining fact of interest connected with it is one concerning Dr Alexander Rose, the last Bishop of Edinburgh, and the last survivor of the established Episcopacy of Scotland. Bishop Keith, who had been one of his presbyters, and describes him as a sweet-natured man, of a venerable aspect, states that he died March 20, 1720, ‘in his own sister’s house in the Canongate, in which street he also lived.’ Tradition points to the floor immediately above the porte-cochère by which the stable-yard is entered from the street as the humble mansion in which the bishop breathed his last. I know at least one person who never goes past the place without an emotion of respect, remembering the self-abandoning devotion of the Scottish prelates to their engagements at the Revolution:[147]
‘Amongst the faithless, faithful only found.’
To the elegant accommodations of the best New Town establishments of the present day, the inns of the last century present a contrast which it is difficult by the greatest stretch of imagination to realise. For the west road, there was the White Hart in the Grassmarket; for the east, the White Horse Inn in Boyd’s Close, Canongate; for the south, and partly also the east, Peter Ramsay’s, at the bottom of St Mary’s Wynd. Arnot, writing in 1779, describes them as ‘mean buildings; their apartments dirty and dismal; and if the waiters happen to be out of the way, a stranger will perhaps be shocked with the novelty of being shown into a room by a dirty, sunburnt wench, without shoes or stockings.’ The fact is, however, these houses were mainly used as places for keeping horses. Guests, unless of a very temporary character, were usually relegated to lodging-houses, of which there were several on a considerable scale—as Mrs Thomson’s at the Cross, who advertises, in 1754, that persons not bringing ‘their silver plate, tea china, table china, and tea linen, can be served in them all;’ also in wines and spirits; likewise that persons boarding with her ‘may expect everything in a very genteel manner.’ But hear the unflattering Arnot on these houses. ‘He [the stranger] is probably conducted to the third or fourth floor, up dark and dirty stairs, and there shown into apartments meanly fitted up and poorly furnished.... In Edinburgh, letting of lodgings is a business by itself, and thereby the prices are very extravagant; and every article of furniture, far from wearing the appearance of having been purchased for a happy owner, seems to be scraped together with a penurious hand, to pass muster before a stranger who will never wish to return!’
Ramsay’s was almost solely a place of stables. General Paoli,[148] on visiting Edinburgh in 1771, came to this house, but was immediately taken home by his friend Boswell to James’s Court, where he lived during his stay in our city; his companion, the Polish ambassador, being accommodated with a bed by Dr John Gregory, in a neighbouring floor. An old gentleman of my acquaintance used to talk of having seen the Duke of Hamilton one day lounging in front of Ramsay’s inn, occasionally chatting with any gay or noble friend who passed. To one knowing the Edinburgh of the present day, nothing could seem more extravagant than the idea of such company at such places. I nevertheless find Ramsay, in 1776, advertising that, exclusive of some part of his premises recently offered for sale, he is ‘possessed of a good house of entertainment, good stables for above one hundred horses, and sheds for above twenty carriages.’ He retired from business about 1790 with £10,000.[149]
The modern White Horse was a place of larger and somewhat better accommodations, though still far from an equality with even the second-rate houses of the present day. Here also the rooms were directly over the stables.
It was almost a matter of course that Dr Johnson, on arriving in Edinburgh, August 17, 1773, should have come to the White Horse, which was then kept by a person of the name of Boyd. His note to Boswell informing him of this fact was as follows:
‘Saturday night.
‘Mr Johnson sends his compliments to Mr Boswell, being just arrived at Boyd’s.’
When Boswell came, he found his illustrious friend in a violent passion at the waiter for having sweetened his lemonade without the ceremony of a pair of sugar-tongs. Mr William Scott, afterwards Lord Stowell, accompanied Johnson on this occasion; and he informs us, in a note to Croker’s edition of Boswell, that when he heard the mistress of the house styled, in Scotch fashion, Lucky, which he did not then understand, he thought she should rather have been styled Unlucky, for the doctor seemed as if he would destroy the house.[150]
James Boyd, the keeper of this inn, was addicted to horse-racing, and his victories on the turf, or rather on Leith sands, are frequently chronicled in the journals of that day. It is said that he was at one time on the brink of ruin, when he was saved by a lucky run with a white horse, which, in gratitude, he kept idle all the rest of its days, besides setting up its portrait as his sign. He eventually retired from this ‘dirty and dismal’ inn with a fortune of several thousand pounds; and, as a curious note upon the impression which its slovenliness conveyed to Dr Johnson, it may be stated as a fact, well authenticated, that at the time of his giving up the house he possessed napery to the value of five hundred pounds!
A large room in the White Horse was the frequent scene of the marriages of runaway English couples, at a time when these irregularities were permitted in Edinburgh. On one of the windows were scratched the words:
‘JEREMIAH and SARAH BENTHAM, 1768.’
Could this be the distinguished jurist and codificator, on a journey to Scotland in company with a female relation?[151]
[THE CROSS—CADDIES.]
The Cross, a handsome octagonal building in the High Street, surmounted by a pillar bearing the Scottish unicorn, was the great centre of gossip in former days. The principal coffee-houses and booksellers’ shops were close to this spot. The chief merchants, the leading official persons, the men of learning and talents, the laird, the noble, the clergyman, were constantly clustering hereabouts during certain hours of the day. It was the very centre and cynosure of the old city.
During the reigns of the first and second Georges, it was customary for the magistrates of Edinburgh to drink the king’s health on his birthday on a stage erected at the Cross—loyalty being a virtue which always becomes peculiarly ostentatious when it is under any suspicion of weakness. On one of these occasions the ceremony was interrupted by a shower of rain, so heavy that the company, with one consent, suddenly dispersed, leaving their entertainment half-finished. When they returned, the glasses were found full of water, which gave a Jacobite lady occasion for the following epigram, reported to me by a venerable bishop of the Scottish Episcopal Church:
‘In Cana once Heaven’s king was pleased
With some gay bridal folks to dine,
And then, in honour of the feast,
He changed the water into wine.
But when, to honour Brunswick’s birth,
Our tribunes mounted the Theâtre,
He would not countenance their mirth,
But turned their claret into water!’
FORENOON AT THE CROSS.
As the place where state proclamations were always made, where the execution of noted state criminals took place, and where many important public ceremonials were enacted, the Cross of Edinburgh is invested with numberless associations of a most interesting kind, extending over several centuries. Here took place the mysterious midnight proclamation, summoning the Flodden lords to the domains of Pluto, as described so strikingly in Marmion; the witness being ‘Mr Richard Lawson, ill-disposed, ganging in his gallery fore-stair.’ Here did King James VI. bring together his barbarous nobles, and make them shake hands over a feast partaken of before the eyes of the people. Here did the Covenanting lords read their protests against Charles’s feeble proclamations. Here fell Montrose, Huntly, the Argylls, Warriston, and many others of note, victims of political dissension. Here were fountains set a-flowing with the blood-red wine, to celebrate the passing of kings along the causeway. And here, as a last notable fact, were Prince Charles and his father proclaimed by their devoted Highlanders, amidst screams of pipe and blare of trumpet, while the beautiful Mrs Murray of Broughton sat beside the party on horseback, adorned with white ribbons, and with a drawn sword in her hand! How strange it seems that a time should at length have come when a set of magistrates thought this structure an encumbrance to the street, and had it removed. This event took place in 1756—the ornamental stones dispersed, the pillar taken to the park at Drum.[152]
The Cross was the peculiar citadel and rallying-point of a species of lazzaroni called Caddies or Cawdies, which formerly existed in Edinburgh, employing themselves chiefly as street-messengers and valets de place. A ragged, half-blackguard-looking set they were, but allowed to be amazingly acute and intelligent, and also faithful to any duty entrusted to them. A stranger coming to reside temporarily in Edinburgh got a caddy attached to his service to conduct him from one part of the town to another, to run errands for him; in short, to be wholly at his bidding.
‘Omnia novit,
Græculus esuriens, in cœlum, jusseris, ibit.’
A caddy did literally know everything—of Edinburgh; even to that kind of knowledge which we now only expect in a street directory. And it was equally true that he could hardly be asked to go anywhere, or upon any mission, that he would not go. On the other hand, the stranger would probably be astonished to find that, in a few hours, his caddy was acquainted with every particular regarding himself, where he was from, what was his purpose in Edinburgh, his family connections, and his own tastes and dispositions. Of course for every particle of scandal floating about Edinburgh, the caddy was a ready book of reference. We sometimes wonder how our ancestors did without newspapers. We do not reflect on the living vehicles of news which then existed: the privileged beggar for the country people; for townsfolk, the caddies.
The caddy is alluded to as a useful kind of blackguard in Burt’s Letters from the North of Scotland, written about 1740. He says that although they are mere wretches in rags, lying upon stairs and in the streets at night, they are often considerably trusted, and seldom or never prove unfaithful. The story told by tradition is that they formed a society under a chief called their constable, with a common fund or box; that when they committed any misdemeanour, such as incivility or lying, they were punished by this officer by fines, or sometimes corporeally; and if by any chance money entrusted to them should not be forthcoming, it was made up out of the common treasury. Mr Burt says: ‘Whether it be true or not I cannot say, but I have been told by several that one of the judges formerly abandoned two of his sons for a time to this way of life, as believing it would create in them a sharpness which might be of use to them in the future course of their lives.’ Major Topham, describing Edinburgh in 1774, says of the caddies: ‘In short, they are the tutelary guardians of the city; and it is entirely owing to them that there are fewer robberies and less housebreaking in Edinburgh than anywhere else.’
Another conspicuous set of public servants characteristic of Edinburgh in past times were the Chairmen, or carriers of sedans, who also formed a society among themselves, but were of superior respectability, in as far as none but steady, considerate persons of so humble an order could become possessed of the means to buy the vehicle by which they made their bread. In former times, when Edinburgh was so much more limited than now, and rather an assemblage of alleys than of streets, sedans were in comparatively great request. They were especially in requisition amongst the ladies—indeed, almost exclusively so. From time immemorial the sons of the Gael have monopolised this branch of service; and as far as the business of a sedan-carrier can yet be said to exist amongst us, it is in the possession of Highlanders.
The reader must not be in too great haste to smile when I claim his regard for an historical person among the chairmen of Edinburgh. This was Edward Burke, the immediate attendant of Prince Charles Edward during the earlier portion of his wanderings in the Highlands. Honest Ned had been a chairman in our city, but attaching himself as a servant to Mr Alexander Macleod of Muiravonside, aide-de-camp to the Prince, it was his fortune to be present at the battle of Culloden, and to fly from the field in his Royal Highness’s company. He attended the Prince for several weeks, sharing cheerfully in all his hardships, and doing his best to promote his escape. Thus has his name been inseparably associated with this remarkable chapter of history. After parting with Charles, this poor man underwent some dreadful hardships while under hiding, his fears of being taken having reference chiefly to the Prince, as he was apprehensive that the enemy might torture him to gain intelligence of his late master’s movements. At length the Act of Indemnity placed him at his ease; and the humble creature who, by a word of his mouth, might have gained thirty thousand pounds, quietly returned to his duty as a chairman on the streets of Edinburgh! Which of the venal train of Walpole, which even of the admirers of Pulteney, is more entitled to admiration than Ned Burke? A man, too, who could neither read nor write—for such was actually his case.[153]
One cannot but feel it to be in some small degree a consolatory circumstance, and not without a certain air of the romance of an earlier day, that a bacchanal company came with a bowl of punch, the night before the demolition, and in that mood of mind when men shed ‘smiles that might as well be tears,’ drank the Dredgie of the Cross upon its doomed battlements.
‘Oh! be his tomb as lead to lead,
Upon its dull destroyer’s head!
A minstrel’s malison is said.’[154]
THE TOWN-GUARD.
[THE TOWN-GUARD.]
One of the characteristic features of Edinburgh in old times was its Town-guard, a body of military in the service of the magistrates for the purposes of a police, but dressed and armed in all respects as soldiers. Composed for the most part of old Highlanders, of uncouth aspect and speech, dressed in a dingy red uniform with cocked hats, and often exchanging the musket for an antique native weapon called the Lochaber axe, these men were (at least in latter times) an unfailing subject of mirth to the citizens, particularly the younger ones. In my recollection they had a sort of Patmos in the ground-floor of the Old Tolbooth, where a few of them might constantly be seen on duty, endeavouring to look as formidable as possible to the little boys who might be passing by. On such occasions as executions, or races at Leith, or the meeting of the General Assembly, they rose into a certain degree of consequence; but in general they could hardly be considered as of any practical utility. Their numbers were at that time much reduced—only twenty-five privates, two sergeants, two corporals, and a couple of drummers. Every night did their drum beat through the Old Town at eight o’clock, as a kind of curfew. No other drum, it seems, was allowed to sound on the High Street between the Luckenbooths and Netherbow. They also had an old practice of giving a charivari on the drum on the night of a marriage before the lodgings of the bridegroom; of course not without the expectation of something wherewithal to drink the health of the young couple. A strange remnant of old times altogether were the Town Rats, as the poor old fellows were disrespectfully called by the boys, in allusion to the hue of their uniform.
Previous to 1805, when an unarmed police was established for the protection of the streets, the Town-guard had consisted of three equally large companies, each with a lieutenant (complimentarily called captain) at its head. Then it was a somewhat more respectable body, not only as being larger, but invested with a really useful purpose. The unruly and the vicious stood in some awe of a troop of men bearing lethal weapons, and generally somewhat frank in the use of them. If sometimes roughly handled on kings’ birthdays and other exciting occasions, they in their turn did not fail to treat cavalierly enough any unfortunate roisterer whom they might find breaking the peace. They had, previous to 1785, a guard-house in the middle of the High Street, the ‘black hole’ of which had rather a bad character among the bucks and the frail ladies. One of their sergeants in those days, by name John Dhu, is commemorated by Scott as the fiercest-looking fellow he ever saw. If we might judge from poor Robert Fergusson, they were truly formidable in his time. He says:
‘And thou, great god o’ aquavitæ,
Wha sway’st the empire o’ this city; ...
Be thou prepared
To hedge us frae that black banditti,
The City-guard.’
He adds, apostrophising the irascible veterans:
‘Oh, soldiers, for your ain dear sakes,
For Scotland’s love—the land o’ cakes—
Gi’e not her bairns sae deadly paiks,
Nor be sae rude,
Wi’ firelock and Lochaber axe,
As spill their blude!’
The affair at the execution of Wilson the smuggler in 1736, when, under command of Porteous, they fired upon and killed many of the mob, may be regarded as a peculiarly impressive example of the stern relation in which they stood to the populace of a former age.
The great bulk of the corps was drawn either from the Highlands directly or from the Highland regiments. A humble Highlander considered it as getting a berth when he was enlisted into the Edinburgh Guard. Of this feeling we have a remarkable illustration in an anecdote which I was told by the late Mr Alexander Campbell regarding the Highland bard, Duncan Macintyre, usually called Donacha Bhan. This man, really an exquisite poet to those understanding his language, became the object of a kind interest to many educated persons in Perthshire, his native county. The Earl of Breadalbane sent to let him know that he wished to befriend him, and was anxious to procure him some situation that might put him comparatively at his ease. Poor Duncan returned his thanks, and asked his lordship’s interest—to get him into the Edinburgh Town-guard—pay, sixpence a day! What sort of material these men would have proved in the hands of the magistrates if Provost Stewart had attempted by their means and the other forces at his command to hold out the city against Prince Charlie seems hardly to be matter of doubt. I was told the following anecdote of a member of the corps, on good authority. Robert Stewart, a descendant of the Stewarts of Bonskeid in Athole, was then a private in the City-guard. When General Hawley left Edinburgh to meet the Highland army in the west country, Stewart had just been relieved from duty for the customary period of two days. Instantly forming his plan of action, he set off with his gun, passed through the English troops on their march, and joined those of the Prince. Stewart fought next day like a hero in the battle of Falkirk, where the Prince had the best of it; and next morning our Town-guardsman was back to Edinburgh in time to go upon duty at the proper hour. The captain of his company suspected what business Robert and his gun had been engaged in, but preserved a friendly silence.
The Gutter-blood people of Edinburgh had an extravagant idea of the antiquity of the Guard, led probably by a fallacy arising from the antiquity of the individual men. They used to have a strange story—too ridiculous, one would have thought, for a moment’s credence anywhere—that the Town-guard existed before the Christian era. When the Romans invaded Britain, some of the Town-guard joined them; and three were actually present in Pilate’s guard at the Crucifixion! In reality, the corps took its rise in the difficulties brought on by bad government in 1682, when, at the instigation of the Duke of York, it was found necessary to raise a body of 108 armed men, under a trusty commander, simply to keep the people in check.[155]
Fifty years ago (1824) the so-called captaincies of the Guard were snug appointments, in great request among respectable old citizens who had not succeeded in business. Kay has given us some illustrations of these extraordinary specimens of soldier-craft, one of whom was nineteen stone. Captain Gordon of Gordonstown, representative of one of the oldest families in Scotland, found himself obliged by fortune to accept of one of these situations.
Scott, writing his Heart of Mid-Lothian in 1817, says: ‘Of late, the gradual diminution of these civic soldiers reminds one of the abatement of King Lear’s hundred knights. The edicts of each set of succeeding magistrates have, like those of Goneril and Regan, diminished this venerable band with similar question—“What need have we of five-and-twenty?—ten?—five?” and now it is nearly come to: “What need we one?” A spectre may indeed here and there still be seen of an old gray-headed and gray-bearded Highlander, with war-worn features, but bent double by age; dressed in an old-fashioned cocked-hat, bound with white tape instead of silver lace, and in coat, waistcoat, and breeches of a muddy-coloured red; bearing in his withered hand an ancient weapon, called a Lochaber axe—a long pole, namely, with an axe at the extremity, and a hook at the back of the hatchet. Such a phantom of former days still creeps, I have been informed, round the statue of Charles II. in the Parliament Square, as if the image of a Stuart were the last refuge for any memorial of our ancient manners,’ &c. At the close of this very year, the ‘What need we one?’ was asked, and answered in the negative; and the corps was accordingly dissolved. ‘Their last march to do duty at Hallow Fair had something in it affecting. Their drums and fifes had been wont, in better days, to play on this joyous occasion the lively tune of
“Jockey to the fair;”
but on this final occasion the afflicted veterans moved slowly to the dirge of
“The last time I came owre the muir.”’[156]
The half-serious pathos of Scott regarding this corps becomes wholly so when we learn that a couple of members survived to make an actual last public appearance in the procession which consecrated his richly deserved monument, August 15, 1846.
[EDINBURGH MOBS.]
The Blue Blanket—Mobs of the Seventeenth Century—Bowed Joseph.
The Edinburgh populace was noted, during many ages, for its readiness to rise in tumultuary fashion, whether under the prompting of religious zeal or from inferior motives. At an early time they became an impromptu army, each citizen possessing weapons which he was ready and willing to use. Thus they are understood to have risen in 1482 to redeem James III. from restraint in the Castle; for which service, besides certain privileges, ‘he granted them,’ says Maitland, ‘a banner or standard, with a power to display the same in defence of their king, country, and their own right.’ The historian adds: ‘This flag, at present denominated the Blue Blanket, is kept by the Convener of the Trades; at whose appearance therewith, ’tis said that not only the artificers of Edinburgh are obliged to repair to it, but all the artisans or craftsmen within Scotland are bound to follow it, and fight under the Convener of Edinburgh, as aforesaid.’ The Blue Blanket, I may mention, has become a sort of myth in Edinburgh, being magnified by the popular imagination into a banner which the citizens carried with them to the Holy Land in one of the Crusades—expeditions which took place before Edinburgh had become a town fit to furnish any distinct corps of armed men.[157]
When the Protestant faith came to stir up men’s minds, the lower order of citizens became a formidable body indeed. James VI., who had more than once experienced their violence, and consequently knew them well, says very naïvely in his Basilicon Doron, or ‘Book of Instruction’ to his son: ‘They think we should be content with their work, how bad and dear soever it be; and if they be in anything controuled, up goeth the Blue Blanket!’
The tumults at the introduction of the Service-book, in 1637, need only be alluded to. So late as the Revolution there appears a military spirit of great boldness in the Edinburgh populace, reminding us of that of Paris in our own times: witness the bloody contests which took place in accomplishing the destruction of the papistical arrangements at the Abbey, December 1688. The Union mobs were of unexampled violence; and Edinburgh was only kept in some degree of quiet, during the greater part of that crisis, by a great assemblage of troops. Finally, in the Porteous mob we have a singular example of popular vengeance, wreaked out in the most cool but determined manner. Men seem to have been habitually under an impression in those days that the law was at once an imperfect and a partial power. They seem to have felt themselves constantly liable to be called upon to supplement its energy, or control or compensate for its errors. The mob had at that time a part in the state.
‘General’ Joe Smith laying down the Law to the Magistrates.
In this ‘fierce democracy’ there once arose a mighty Pyrrhus, who contrived, by dint of popular qualifications, to subject the rabble to his command, and to get himself elected, by acclamation, dictator of all its motions and exploits. How he acquired his wonderful power is not recorded; but it is to be supposed that his activity on occasions of mobbing, his boldness and sagacity, his strong voice and uncommonly powerful whistle, together with the mere whim or humour of the thing, conspired to his promotion. His trade was that of a cobbler, and he resided in some obscure den in the Cowgate. His person was low and deformed, with the sole good property of great muscular strength in the arms. Yet this wretch, miserable and contemptible as he appeared, might be said to have had at one time the command of the Scottish metropolis. The magistrates, it is true, assembled every Wednesday forenoon to manage the affairs and deliberate upon the improvements of the city; but their power was merely that of a viceroyalty. Bowed Joseph, otherwise called General Joseph Smith, was the only true potentate; and their resolutions could only be carried into effect when not inconsistent with his views of policy.
In exercising the functions of his perilous office, it does not appear that he ever drew down the vengeance of the more lawfully constituted authorities of the land. On the contrary, he was in some degree countenanced by the magistracy, who, however, patronised him rather from fear than respect. They frequently sent for him in emergencies, in order to consult with him regarding the best means of appeasing and dispersing the mob. On such occasions nothing could equal the consequential air which he assumed. With one hand stuck carelessly into his side, and another slapped resolutely down upon the table—with a majestic toss of the head, and as much fierceness in his little gray eye as if he were himself a mob—he would stand before the anxious and feeble council, pleading the cause of his compeers, and suggesting the best means of assuaging their just fury. He was generally despatched with a promise of amendment and a hogshead of good ale, with which he could easily succeed in appeasing his men, whose dismissal, after a speech from himself and a libation from the barrel, was usually accomplished by the simple words: ‘Now disperse, my lads!’
Joseph was not only employed in directing and managing the mobs, but frequently performed exploits without the co-operation of his greasy friends, though always for their amusement and in their behalf. Thus, for instance, when Wilkes by his celebrated Number 45 incensed the Scottish nation so generally and so bitterly, Joseph got a cart, fitted up with a high gallows, from which depended a straw-stuffed effigy of North Britain’s arch-enemy, with the devil perched upon his shoulder; and this he paraded through the streets, followed by the multitude, till he came to the Gallow Lee in Leith Walk, where two criminals were then hanging in chains, beside whom he exposed the figures of Wilkes and his companion. Thus also, when the Douglas cause was decided against the popular opinion in the Court of Session, Joseph went up to the chair of the Lord President as he was going home to his house, and called him to account for the injustice of his decision. After the said decision was reversed by the House of Lords, Joseph, by way of triumph over the Scottish court, dressed up fifteen figures in rags and wigs, resembling the judicial attire, mounted them on asses, and led them through the streets, telling the populace that they saw the fifteen senators of the College of Justice!
When the craft of shoemakers used, in former times, to parade the High Street, West Bow, and Grassmarket, with inverted tin kettles on their heads and schoolboys’ rulers in their hands, Joseph—who, though a leader and commander on every other public occasion, was not admitted into this procession on account of his being only a cobbler—dressed himself in his best clothes, with a royal crown painted and gilt and a wooden truncheon, and marched pompously through the city till he came to the Netherbow, where he planted himself in the middle of the street to await the approach of the procession, which he, as a citizen of Edinburgh, proposed to welcome into the town. When the royal shoemaker came to the Netherbow Port, Joseph stood forth, removed the truncheon from his haunch, flourished it in the air, and pointing it to the ground, with much dignity of manner, addressed his paste-work majesty in these words: ‘O great King Crispianus! what are we in thy sight but a parcel of puir slaister-kytes—creeshy cobblers—sons of bitches?’ And I have been assured that this ceremony was performed in a style of burlesque exhibiting no small artistic power.
Joseph had a wife, whom he would never permit to walk beside him, it being his opinion that women are inferior to the male part of creation, and not entitled to the same privileges. He compelled his spouse to walk a few paces behind him; and when he turned, she was obliged to make a circuit so as to maintain the precise distance from his person which he assigned to her. When he wished to say anything to her, he whistled as upon a dog, upon which she came up to him submissively and heard what he had to say; after which she respectfully resumed her station in the rear.
After he had figured for a few years as an active partisan of the people, his name waxed of such account with them that it is said he could in the course of an hour collect a crowd of not fewer than ten thousand persons, all ready to obey his high behests, or to disperse at his bidding. In collecting his troops he employed a drum, which, though a general, he did not disdain to beat with his own hands; and never, surely, had the fiery cross of the Highland chief such an effect upon the warlike devotion of his clan as Bowed Joseph’s drum had upon the spirit of the Edinburgh rabble. As he strode along, the street was cleared of its loungers, every close pouring forth an addition to his train, like the populous glens adjacent to a large Highland strath giving forth their accessions to the general force collected by the aforesaid cross. The Town Rats, who might peep forth like old cautious snails on hearing his drum, would draw in their horns with a Gaelic execration, and shut their door, as he approached; while the Lazy Corner was, at sight of him, a lazy corner no longer; and the West Bow ceased to resound as he descended.
It would appear, after all, that there was a moral foundation for Joseph’s power, as there must be for that of all governments of a more regular nature that would wish to thrive or be lasting. The little man was never known to act in a bad cause, or in any way to go against the principles of natural justice. He employed his power in the redress of such grievances as the law of the land does not or cannot easily reach; and it was apparent that almost everything he did was for the sake of what he himself designated fair-play. Fair-play, indeed, was his constant object, whether in clearing room with his brawny arms for a boxing-match, insulting the constituted authorities, sacking the granary of a monopolist, or besieging the Town-council in their chamber.
An anecdote which proves this strong love of fair-play deserves to be recorded. A poor man in the Pleasance having been a little deficient in his rent, and in the country on business, his landlord seized and rouped his household furniture, turning out the family to the street. On the poor man’s return, finding the house desolate and his family in misery, he went to a neighbouring stable and hanged himself.[158] Bowed Joseph did not long remain ignorant of the case; and as soon as it was generally known in the city, he shouldered on his drum, and after beating it through the streets for half-an-hour, found himself followed by several thousand persons, inflamed with resentment at the landlord’s cruelty. With this army he marched to an open space of ground now covered by Adam Street, Roxburgh Street, &c., named in former times Thomson’s Park, where, mounted upon the shoulders of six of his lieutenant-generals, he proceeded to harangue them, in Cambyses’s vein, concerning the flagrant oppression which they were about to revenge. He concluded by directing his men to sack the premises of the cruel landlord, who by this time had wisely made his escape; and this order was instantly obeyed. Every article which the house contained was brought out to the street, where, being piled up in a heap, the general set fire to them with his own hand, while the crowd rent the air with their acclamations. Some money and bank-notes perished in the blaze, besides an eight-day clock, which, sensible to the last, calmly struck ten just as it was consigned to the flames.
On another occasion, during a scarcity, the mob, headed by Joseph, had compelled all the meal-dealers to sell their meal at a certain price per peck, under penalty of being obliged to shut up their shops. One of them, whose place of business was in the Grassmarket, agreed to sell his meal at the price fixed by the general, for the good of the poor, as he said; and he did so under the superintendence of Joseph, who stationed a party at the shop-door to preserve peace and good order till the whole stock was disposed of, when, by their leader’s command, the mob gave three hearty cheers, and quietly dispersed. Next day, the unlucky victualler let his friends know that he had not suffered so much by this compulsory trade as might be supposed; because, though the price was below that of the market, he had taken care to use a measure which gave only about three-fourths instead of the whole. It was not long ere this intelligence came to the ears of our tribune, who, immediately collecting a party of his troops, beset the meal-dealer before he was aware, and compelled him to pay back a fourth of the price of every peck of meal sold; then giving their victim a hearty drubbing, they sacked his shop, and quietly dispersed as before.
Some foreign princes happening to visit Edinburgh during Joseph’s administration, at a period of the year when the mob of Edinburgh was wont to amuse itself with an annual burning of the pope, the magistrates felt anxious that this ceremony should for once be dispensed with, as it might hurt the feelings of their distinguished visitors. The provost, in this emergency, resolved not to employ his own authority, but that of Joseph, to whom, accordingly, he despatched his compliments, with half a guinea, begging his kind offices in dissuading the mob from the performance of their accustomed sport. Joseph received the message with the respect due to the commission of ‘his friend the Lord Provost,’ and pocketed the half-guinea with a complacent smile; but standing up to his full height, and resolutely shaking his rough head, he gave for answer that ‘he was highly gratified by his lordship’s message; but, everything considered, the pope must be burnt!’ And so the pope, honest man, was burnt with all the honours accordingly.
Joseph was at last killed by a fall from the top of a Leith stage-coach, in returning from the races, while in a state of intoxication, about the year 1780. It is to be hoped, for the good of society, that ‘we ne’er shall look upon his like again.’[159]
[BICKERS.]
Amongst the social features of a bygone age in Edinburgh were the bickers in which the boys were wont to indulge—that is, street conflicts, conducted chiefly with stones, though occasionally with sticks also, and even more formidable weapons. One cannot but wonder that, so lately as the period when elderly men now living were boys, the powers for preserving peace in the city should have been so weak as to allow of such battles taking place once or twice almost every week. The practice was, however, only of a piece with the general rudeness of those old days; and, after all, there was more appearance than reality of danger attending it. It was truly, as one who had borne a part in it has remarked, ‘only a rough kind of play.’[160]
The most likely time for a bicker was Saturday afternoon, when the schools and hospitals held no restraint over their tenants. Then it was almost certain that either the Old Town and New Town boys, the George Square and Potterrow boys, the Herioters and the Watsoners, or some other parties accustomed to regard themselves as natural enemies, would meet on some common ground, and fall a-pelting each other. There were hardly anywhere two adjoining streets but the boys respectively belonging to them would occasionally hold encounters of this kind; and the animosity assumed a darker tinge if there was any discrepancy of rank or condition between the parties, as was apt to be the case when, for instance, the Old Town lads met the children of the aristocratic streets to the north. Older people looked on with anxiety, and wondered what the Town-guard was about, and occasionally reports were heard that such a boy had got a wound in the head, while another had lost a couple of his front teeth; it was even said that fatal cases had occurred in the memory of aged citizens. Yet, to the best of my recollection—for I do remember something of bickers—there was little likelihood of severe damage. The parties somehow always kept at a good distance from each other, and there was a perpetual running in one direction or another; certainly nothing like hand-to-hand fighting. Occasionally attempts were made to put down the riot, but seldom with much success; for it was one of the most ludicrous features of these contests that whenever the Town-guard made its appearance on the ground, the belligerent powers instantly coalesced against the common foe. Besides, they could quickly make their way to other ground, and there continue the war.
Bickers must have had a foundation in human nature: from no temporary effervescence of the boy-mind did they spring; pleasant, though wrong, had they been from all time. Witness the following act of the Town-council so long ago as 1529: ‘Bikkyrringis betwix Barnis.—It is statut and ordainit be the prouest ballies and counsall Forsamekle as ther has bene gret bikkyrringis betwix barnis and followis in tymes past and diuerse thar throw hurt in perell of ther lyffis and gif sik thingis be usit thar man diuerse barnis and innocentis be slane and diuisione ryse amangis nychtbouris theirfor we charge straitlie and commandis in our Souerane Lord the Kingis name the prouest and ballies of this burgh that na sic bykkyrringis be usit in tymes to cum. Certifing that and ony persone be fund bykkyrrand that faderis and moderis sall ansuer and be accusit for thar deidis and gif thai be vagabondis thai to be scurgit and bannist the toune.’
An anecdote which Scott has told of his share in the bickers which took place in his youth between the George Square youth and the plebeian fry of the neighbouring streets is so pat to this occasion that its reproduction may be excusable. ‘It followed,’ he says, ‘from our frequent opposition to each other, that, though not knowing the names of our enemies, we were yet well acquainted with their appearance, and had nicknames for the most remarkable of them. One very active and spirited boy might be considered as the principal leader in the cohort of the suburbs. He was, I suppose, thirteen or fourteen years old, finely made, tall, blue-eyed, with long fair hair, the very picture of a youthful Goth. This lad was always first in the charge and last in the retreat—the Achilles, at once, and Ajax, of the Crosscauseway. He was too formidable to us not to have a cognomen, and, like that of a knight of old, it was taken from the most remarkable part of his dress, being a pair of old green livery breeches, which was the principal part of his clothing; for, like Pentapolin, according to Don Quixote’s account, Green Breeks, as we called him, always entered the battle with bare arms, legs, and feet.
‘It fell that, once upon a time, when the combat was at the thickest, this plebeian champion headed a sudden charge, so rapid and furious that all fled before him. He was several paces before his comrades, and had actually laid his hands on the patrician standard, when one of our party, whom some misjudging friend had entrusted with a couteau de chasse, or hanger, inspired with a zeal for the honour of the corps worthy of Major Sturgeon himself, struck poor Green Breeks over the head with strength sufficient to cut him down. When this was seen, the casualty was so far beyond what had ever taken place before that both parties fled different ways, leaving poor Green Breeks, with his bright hair plentifully dabbled in blood, to the care of the watchman, who (honest man) took care not to know who had done the mischief. The bloody hanger was flung into one of the Meadow ditches, and solemn secrecy was sworn on all hands; but the remorse and terror of the actor were beyond all bounds, and his apprehensions of the most dreadful character. The wounded hero was for a few days in the Infirmary, the case being only a trifling one. But though inquiry was strongly pressed on him, no argument could make him indicate the person from whom he had received the wound, though he must have been perfectly well known to him. When he recovered, and was dismissed, the author and his brother opened a communication with him, through the medium of a popular gingerbread baker, of whom both parties were customers, in order to tender a subsidy in name of smart-money. The sum would excite ridicule were I to name it; but sure I am that the pockets of the noted Green Breeks never held as much money of his own. He declined the remittance, saying that he would not sell his blood; but at the same time reprobated the idea of being an informer, which he said was clam—that is, base or mean. With much urgency he accepted a pound of snuff for the use of some old woman—aunt, grandmother, or the like—with whom he lived. We did not become friends, for the bickers were more agreeable to both parties than any more pacific amusement; but we conducted them ever after under mutual assurances of the highest consideration for each other.’[161]
[SUSANNA, COUNTESS OF EGLINTOUNE.]
The house on the west side of the Old Stamp-office Close, High Street, formerly Fortune’s Tavern, was, in the early part of the last century, the family mansion of Alexander, Earl of Eglintoune. It is a building of considerable height and extent, accessible by a broad scale stair. The alley in which it is situated bears great marks of former respectability, and contained, till the year 1821, the Stamp-office, then removed to the Waterloo Buildings.[162]
The ninth Earl of Eglintoune[163] was one of those patriarchal peers who live to an advanced age—indefatigable in the frequency of their marriages and the number of their children—who linger on and on, with an unfailing succession of young countesses, and die at last leaving a progeny interspersed throughout the whole of Douglas’s Peerage, two volumes, folio, re-edited by Wood. His lordship, in early life, married a sister of Lady Dundee, who brought him a large family, and died just about that happy period when she could not have greatly increased it. His next wife was a daughter of Chancellor Aberdeen, who only added one daughter to his stock, and then paused, in a fit of ill-health, to the great vexation of his lordship, who, on account of his two sons by the first countess having died young, was anxious for an heir. This was a consummation to his nuptial happiness which Countess Anne did not seem at all likely to bring about, and the chagrin of his lordship must have been increased by the longevity which her very ill-health seemed to confer upon her; for her ladyship was one of those valetudinarians who are too well acquainted with death, being always just at his door, ever to come to closer quarters with him. At this juncture the blooming Miss Kennedy was brought to Edinburgh by her father, Sir Archibald, the rough old cavalier, who made himself so conspicuous in the Persecution and in Dundee’s wars.
Susanna Kennedy, though the daughter of a lady considerably under the middle size—one of the three co-heiresses of the Covenanting general, David Leslie (Lord Newark), whom Cromwell overthrew at Dunbar—was six feet high, extremely handsome, elegant in her carriage, and had a face and complexion of most bewitching loveliness. Her relations and nurses always anticipated that she was to marry the Earl of Eglintoune, in spite of their disparity of age;[164] for, while walking one day in her father’s garden at Culzean, there alighted upon her shoulder a hawk, with his lordship’s name upon its bells, which was considered an infallible omen of her fate. Her appearance in Edinburgh, which took place about the time of the Union, gained her a vast accession of lovers among the nobility and gentry, and set all the rhyming fancies of the period agog. Among her swains was Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, a man of learning and talent in days when such qualities were not common. As Miss Kennedy was understood to be fond of music, he sent her a flute as a love-gift; from which it may be surmised that this instrument was played by females in that age, while as yet the pianoforte was not. When the young lady attempted to blow the instrument, something was found to interrupt the sound, which turned out to be a copy of verses in her praise:
‘Harmonious pipe, I languish for thy bliss,
When pressed to Silvia’s lips with gentle kiss!
And when her tender fingers round thee move
In soft embrace, I listen and approve
Those melting notes which soothe my soul in love.
Embalmed with odours from her breath that flow,
You yield your music when she’s pleased to blow;
And thus at once the charming lovely fair
Delights with sounds, with sweets perfumes the air.
Go, happy pipe, and ever mindful be
To court bewitching Silvia for me;
Tell all I feel—you cannot tell too much—
Repeat my love at each soft melting touch—
Since I to her my liberty resign,
Take thou the care to tune her heart to mine.’
Unhappily for this accomplished and poetical lover, Lord Eglintoune’s sickly wife happened just about this time to die, and set his lordship again at large among the spinsters of Scotland. Admirers of a youthful, impassioned, and sonnet-making cast might have trembled at his approach to the shrine of their divinity; for his lordship was one of those titled suitors who, however old and horrible, are never rejected, except in novels and romances. It appears that poor Clerk had actually made a declaration of his passion for Miss Kennedy, which her father was taking into consideration, a short while before the death of Lady Eglintoune. As an old friend and neighbour, Sir Archibald thought he would consult the earl upon the subject, and he accordingly proceeded to do so. Short but decisive was the conference. ‘Bide a wee, Sir Archy,’ said his lordship; ‘my wife’s very sickly.’ With Sir Archibald, as with Mrs Slipslop, the least hint sufficed: the case was at once settled against the elegant baronet of Penicuik. The lovely Susanna accordingly became in due time the Countess of Eglintoune.
Even after this attainment of one of the greatest blessings that life has to bestow,[165] the old peer’s happiness was like to have been destroyed by another untoward circumstance. It was true that he had the handsomest wife in the kingdom, and she brought him as many children as he could desire. One after another came no fewer than seven daughters. But then his lordship wanted a male heir; and every one knows how poor a consolation a train of daughters, however long, proves in such a case. He was so grieved at the want of a son that he threatened to divorce his lady. The countess replied that he need not do that, for she would readily agree to a separation, provided he would give back what he had with her. His lordship, supposing she alluded only to pecuniary matters, assured her she should have her fortune to the last penny. ‘Na, na, my lord,’ said she, ‘that winna do: return me my youth, beauty, and virginity, and dismiss me when you please.’ His lordship, not being able to comply with this demand, willingly let the matter drop; and before the year was out her ladyship brought him a son, who established the affection of his parents on an enduring basis. Two other male children succeeded. The countess was remarkable for a manner quite peculiar to herself, and which was remembered as the Eglintoune air, or the Eglintoune manner, long after her death. A Scottish gentleman, writing from London in 1730, says: ‘Lady Eglintoune has set out for Scotland, much satisfied with the honour and civilities shown her ladyship by the queen and all the royal family: she has done her country more honour than any lady I have seen here, both by a genteel and a prudent behaviour.’[166] Her daughters were also handsome women. It was a goodly sight, a century ago, to see the long procession of sedans, containing Lady Eglintoune and her daughters, devolve from the close and proceed to the Assembly Rooms, where there was sure to be a crowd of plebeian admirers congregated to behold their lofty and graceful figures step from the chairs on the pavement. It could not fail to be a remarkable sight—eight beautiful women, conspicuous for their stature and carriage, all dressed in the splendid though formal fashions of that period, and inspired at once with dignity of birth and consciousness of beauty! Alas! such visions no longer illuminate the dark tortuosities of Auld Reekie!
Many of the young ladies found good matches, and were the mothers of men more or less distinguished for intellectual attainments. Sir James Macdonald, the Marcellus of the Hebrides, and his two more fortunate brothers, were the progeny of Lady Margaret; and in various other branches of the family talent seems to be hereditary.
The countess was herself a blue-stocking—at that time a sort of prodigy—and gave encouragement to the humble literati of her time. The unfortunate Boyse dedicated a volume of poems to her; and I need scarcely remind the Scottish reader that the Gentle Shepherd was laid at her ladyship’s feet. The dedication prefixed to that pastoral drama contains what appears the usual amount of extravagant praise; yet it was perhaps little beyond the truth. For the ‘penetration, superior wit, and profound judgment’ which Allan attributes to her ladyship, she was perhaps indebted in some degree to the lucky accident of her having exercised it in the bard’s favour; but he assuredly overstrained his conscience very little when he said she was ‘possessed of every outward charm in the most perfect degree.’ Neither was it too much to speak of ‘the unfading beauties of wisdom and piety’ which adorned her ladyship’s mind.’[167] Hamilton of Bangour’s prefatory verses, which are equally laudatory and well bestowed, contain the following beautiful character of the lady, with a just compliment to her daughters:
‘In virtues rich, in goodness unconfined,
Thou shin’st a fair example to thy kind;
Sincere, and equal to thy neighbours’ fame,
How swift to praise, how obstinate to blame!
Bold in thy presence bashfulness appears,
And backward merit loses all its fears.
Supremely blest by Heaven, Heaven’s richest grace
Confest is thine—an early blooming race;
Whose pleasing smiles shall guardian wisdom arm—
Divine instruction!—taught of thee to charm,
What transports shall they to thy soul impart
(The conscious transports of a parent’s heart),
When thou behold’st them of each grace possessed,
And sighing youths imploring to be blest
After thy image formed, with charms like thine,
Or in the visit or the dance[168] to shine:
Thrice happy who succeed their mother’s praise,
The lovely Eglintounes of other days!’
It may be remarked that her ladyship’s thorough-paced Jacobitism, which she had inherited from her father, tended much to make her the friend of Ramsay, Hamilton, and other Cavalier bards. She was, it is believed, little given to patronising Whig poets.
The patriarchal peer who made Susanna so happy a mother died in 1729, leaving her a dowager of forty, with a good jointure. Retiring to the country, she employed her widowhood in the education of her children, and was considered a perfect example to all mothers in this useful employment. In our days of freer manners, her conduct might appear too reserved. The young were taught to address her by the phrase ‘Your ladyship;’ and she spoke to them in the same ceremonious style. Though her eldest son was a mere boy when he succeeded to the title, she constantly called him Lord Eglintoune; and she enjoined all the rest of the children to address him in the same manner. When the earl grew up, they were upon no less formal terms; and every day in the world he took his mother by the hand at the dinner-hour, and led her downstairs to her chair at the head of his table, where she sat in state, a perfect specimen of the stately and ostentatious politeness of the last age.
All this ceremony was accompanied with so much affection that the countess was never known to refuse her son a request but one—to walk as a peeress at the coronation of King George III. Lord Eglintoune, then a gentleman of the bedchamber, was proud of his mother, and wished to display her noble figure on that occasion. But she jestingly excused herself by saying that it was not worth while for so old a woman to buy new robes.
The unhappy fate of her eldest and favourite son—shot by a man of violent passions, whom he was rashly treating as a poacher (1769)—gave her ladyship a dreadful shock in her old age. The earl, after receiving the fatal wound, was brought to Eglintoune Castle, when his mother was immediately sent for from Auchans. What her feelings must have been when she saw one so dear to her thus suddenly struck down in the prime of his days may be imagined. The tenderness he displayed towards her and others in his last hours is said to have been to the last degree noble and affecting.
When Johnson and Boswell returned from their tour to the Hebrides, they visited Lady Eglintoune at Auchans. She was so well pleased with the doctor, his politics, and his conversation that she embraced and kissed him at parting, an honour of which the gifted tourist was ever afterwards extremely proud. Boswell’s account of the interview is interesting. ‘Lady Eglintoune,’ says he, ‘though she was now in her eighty-fifth year, and had lived in the country almost half a century, was still a very agreeable woman. Her figure was majestic, her manners high-bred, her reading extensive, and her conversation elegant. She had been the admiration of the gay circles, and the patroness of poets. Dr Johnson was delighted with his reception here. Her principles in church and state were congenial with his. In the course of conversation, it came out that Lady Eglintoune was married the year before Dr Johnson was born; upon which she graciously said to him that she might have been his mother, and she now adopted him.’
This venerable woman amused herself latterly in taming and patronising rats. She kept a vast number of these animals in her pay at Auchans, and they succeeded in her affections to the poets and artists whom she had loved in early life. It does not reflect much credit upon the latter that her ladyship used to complain of never having met with true gratitude except from four-footed animals. She had a panel in the oak wainscot of her dining-room, which she tapped upon and opened at meal-times, when ten or twelve jolly rats came tripping forth and joined her at table. At the word of command, or a signal from her ladyship, they retired again obediently to their native obscurity—a trait of good sense in the character and habits of the animals which, it is hardly necessary to remark, patrons do not always find in two-legged protégés.
Her ladyship died in 1780, at the age of ninety-one, having preserved her stately mien and beautiful complexion to the last. The latter was a mystery of fineness to many ladies not the third of her age. As her secret may be of service to modern beauties, I shall, in kindness to the sex, divulge it. She never used paint, but washed her face periodically with SOW’S MILK! I have seen a portrait, taken in her eighty-first year, in which it is observable that her skin is of exquisite delicacy and tint. Altogether, the countess was a woman of ten thousand!
The jointure-house of this fine old country-gentlewoman—Auchans Castle, a capital specimen of the Scottish manor-house of the seventeenth century, situated near Irvine—is now uninhabited, and the handsome wainscoted rooms in which she entertained Johnson and Boswell are fast hastening to decay. One last trait may now be recorded; in her ladyship’s bedroom at this place was hung a portrait of her sovereign de jure, the ill-starred Charles Edward, so situated as to be the first object which met her sight on awaking in the morning.
[FEMALE DRESSES OF LAST CENTURY.]
Ladies in the last century wore dresses and decorations many of which were of an inconvenient nature; yet no one can deny them the merit of a certain dignity and grace. How fine it must have been to see, as an old gentleman told me he had seen, two hooped ladies moving along the Lawnmarket in a summer evening, and filling up the whole footway with their stately and voluminous persons!
Amongst female articles of attire in those days were calashes, bongraces, capuchins, negligées, stomachers, stays, hoops, lappets, pinners, plaids, fans, busks, rumple-knots, &c., all of them now forgotten.
The calash was a species of hood, constructed of silk upon a framework of cane, and was used as a protection to a cap or head-dress in walking out or riding in a carriage. It could be folded back like the hood of a carriage, so as to lie gathered together behind the neck.
The bongrace was a bonnet of silk and cane, in shape somewhat like a modern bonnet.
The capuchin was a short cloak, reaching not below the elbows. It was of silk, edged with lace, or of velvet. Gentlemen also wore capuchins. The first Sir William Forbes frequently appeared at the Cross in one. A lady’s mode tippet was nearly the same piece of dress.
The negligée was a gown, projecting in loose and ample folds from the back. It could only be worn with stays. It was entirely open in front, so as to show the stomacher, across which it was laced with flat silk cords, while below it opened more widely and showed the petticoat. This latter, though shorter, was sometimes more splendid than the gown, and had a deep flounce. Ladies in walking generally carried the skirt of the gown over the arm, and exhibited the petticoat; but when they entered a room, they always came sailing in, with the train sweeping full and majestically behind them.
The stomacher was a triangular piece of rich silk, one corner pointing downwards and joining the fine black lace-bordered apron, while the other two angles pointed to the shoulders. Great pains were usually discovered in the adornment of this beautiful and most attractive piece of dress. Many wore jewels upon it; and a lady would have thought herself poor indeed if she could not bedizen it with strings of bugles or tinsel.
Stays were made so long as to touch the chair, both in front and rear, when a lady sat. They were calculated to fit so tightly that the wearers had to hold by the bedpost while the maid was lacing them. There is a story told of a lady of high rank in Scotland, about 1720, which gives us a strange idea of the rigours and inconvenience of this fashion. She stinted her daughters as to diet, with a view to the improvement of their shapes; but the young ladies, having the cook in their interest, used to unlace their stays at night, after her ladyship went to bed, and make a hearty meal. They were at last discovered, by the smell of a roast goose, carried upstairs to their bedchamber; as unluckily their lady-mother did not take snuff,[169] and was not asleep.
The hoop was contemporary with, and a necessary appendage of, the stays. There were different species of hoops, being of various shapes and uses. The pocket-hoop, worn in the morning, was like a pair of small panniers, such as one sees on an ass. The bell-hoop was a sort of petticoat, shaped like a bell and made with cane or rope for framework. This was not quite full-dress. There was also a straw petticoat, a species of hoop such as is so common in French prints. The full-sized evening hoop was so monstrous that people saw one-half of it enter the room before the wearer. This was very inconvenient in the Old Town, where doorways and closes were narrow. In going down a close or a turnpike stair, ladies tilted them up and carried them under their arms. In case of this happening, there was a show petticoat below; and such care was taken of appearances that even the garters were worn fine, being either embroidered or having gold and silver fringes and tassels.
The French silks worn during the last century were beautiful, the patterns were so well drawn and the stuff of such excellent quality. The dearest common brocade was about a guinea a yard; if with gold or silver, considerably more.
The lappet was a piece of Brussels or point lace, hanging in two pieces from the crown of the head and streaming gracefully behind.
Pinners, such as the celebrated Egyptian Sphinx wears, were pinned down the stomacher.
Plaids were worn by ladies to cover their heads and muffle their faces when they went into the street. The council records of Edinburgh abound in edicts against the use of this piece of dress, which, they said, confounded decent women with those who were the contrary.
Fans were large, the sticks curiously carved, and if of leather, generally very well painted—being imported from Italy or Holland. In later times these have been sometimes framed like pictures and hung on the walls.
All women, high and low, wore enormous busks, generally with a heart carved at the upper end. In low life this was a common present to sweethearts; if from carpenters, they were artificially veneered.
The rumple-knot was a large bunch of ribbons worn at the peak of the waist behind. Knots of ribbons were then numerous over the whole body. There were the breast-knots, two hainch-knots (at which there were also buttons for looping up the gown behind), a knot at the tying of the beads behind the neck, one in front and another at the back of the head-gear, and knots upon the shoes. It took about twelve yards or upwards to make a full suit of ribbons.[170]
Other minor articles of dress and adornment were the befong handkerchief (spelt at random), of a stuff similar to what is now called net, crossed upon the breast; paste ear-rings and necklace; broad black bracelets at the wrists; a pong pong—a jewel fixed to a wire with a long pin at the end, worn in front of the cap, and which shook as the wearer moved. It was generally stuck in the cushion over which the hair was turned in front. Several were frequently worn at once. A song in the Charmer, 1751, alludes to this bijou:
‘Come all ye young ladies whose business and care
Is contriving new dresses, and curling your hair;
Who flirt and coquet with each coxcomb who comes
To toy at your toilets, and strut in your rooms;
While you’re placing a patch, or adjusting pong pong,
Ye may listen and learn by the truth of my song.’
Fly-caps, encircling the head, worn by young matrons, and mob-caps, falling down over the ears, used only by old ones; pockets of silk or satin, of which young girls wore one above their other attire; silk or linen stockings—never of cotton, which is a modern stuff—slashed with pieces of a colour in strong contrast with the rest, or gold or silver clocks, wove in. The silk stockings were very thick, and could not be washed on account of the gold or silver. They were frequently of scarlet silk, and (1733) worn both by ladies and gentlemen. High-heeled shoes, set off with fine lace or sewed work, and sharply pointed in front.
To give the reader a more picturesque idea of the former dresses of the ladies of Edinburgh, I cite a couple of songs, the first wholly old, the second a revivification:
‘I’ll gar our guidman trow that I’ll sell the ladle,
If he winna buy to me a new side-saddle—
To ride to the kirk, and frae the kirk, and round about the toun—
Stand about, ye fisher jades, and gi’e my goun room!
I’ll gar our guidman trow that I’ll tak the fling-strings,
If he winna buy to me twelve bonnie goud rings,
Ane for ilka finger, and twa for ilka thumb—
Stand about, ye fisher jades, and gi’e my goun room!
I’ll gar our guidman trow that I’m gaun to dee,
If he winna fee to me twa valets or three,
To beir my tail up frae the dirt and ush me through the toun—
Stand about, ye fisher jades, and gi’e my goun room!’
‘As Mally Lee cam’ down the street, her capuchin did flee;
She coost a look behind her, to see her negligee.
And we’re a’ gaun east and wast, we’re a’ gaun agee,
We’re a’ gaun east and wast, courtin’ Mally Lee.[171]
She had twa lappets at her head, that flaunted gallantlie,
And ribbon knots at back and breast of bonnie Mally Lee.
And we’re a’ gaun, &c.
A’ down alang the Canongate were beaux o’ ilk degree;
And mony are turned round to look at bonnie Mally Lee.
And we’re a’ gaun, &c.
And ilka bab her pong pong gi’ed, ilk lad thought that’s to me;
But feint a ane was in the thought of bonnie Mally Lee.
And we’re a’ gaun, &c.
Frae Seton’s Land a countess fair looked owre a window hie,
And pined to see the genty shape of bonnie Mally Lee.
And we’re a’ gaun, &c.
And when she reached the palace porch, there lounged erls three;
And ilk ane thought his Kate or Meg a drab to Mally Lee.
And we’re a’ gaun, &c.
The dance gaed through the palace ha’, a comely sight to see;
But nane was there sae bright or braw as bonnie Mally Lee.
And we’re a’ gaun, &c.
Though some had jewels in their hair, like stars ’mang cluds did shine,
Yet Mally did surpass them a’ wi’ but her glancin’ eyne.
And we’re a’ gaun, &c.
A prince cam’ out frae ’mang them a’, wi’ garter at his knee,
And danced a stately minuet wi’ bonnie Mally Lee.
And we’re a’ gaun, &c.’
[THE LORD JUSTICE-CLERK ALVA.][172]
Ladies Sutherland and Glenorchy—The Pin or Risp.
Mylne’s Court, where some of the Mylne family resided.
This eminent person—a cadet of the ancient house of Mar (born 1680, died 1763)—had his town mansion in an obscure recess of the High Street called Mylne Square,[173] the first place bearing such a designation in our northern capital: it was, I may remark, built by one of a family of Mylnes, who are said to have been master-masons to the Scottish monarchs for eight generations, and some of whom are at this day architects by profession.[174] Lord Alva’s residence was in the second and third floors of the large building on the west side of the square. Of the same structure, an Earl of Northesk occupied another flat. And, to mark the character of Lord Alva’s abode, part of it was afterwards, in the hands of a Mrs Reynolds, used as a lodging-house of the highest grade. The Earl of Hopetoun, while acting as Commissioner to the General Assembly, there held viceregal state. But to return to Lord Alva: it gives a curious idea of the habits of such a dignitary before the rise of the New Town that we should find him content with this dwelling while in immediate attendance upon the court, and happy during the summer vacation to withdraw to the shades of his little villa at Drumsheugh, standing on a spot now surrounded by town. Lord Lovat, who, on account of his numerous law-pleas, was a great intimate of Lord Alva’s, frequently visited him here; and Mrs Campbell of Monzie, Lord Alva’s daughter, used to tell that when she met Lord Lovat on the stair he always took her up in his arms and kissed her, to her great annoyance and horror—he was so ugly. During one of his law-pleas, he went to a dancing-school ball, which Misses Jean and Susanna, Lord Alva’s daughters, attended. He had his pocket full of sweeties, as Mrs Campbell expressed it; and so far did he carry his exquisitely refined system of cunning, that—in order no doubt to find favour with their father—he devoted the greater share of his attentions and the whole of his comfits to them alone. Those who knew this singular man used to say that, with all his duplicity, faithlessness, and cruelty, his character exhibited no redeeming trait whatever: nobody ever knew any good of him.
In his Mylne Square mansion Lord Alva’s two step-daughters were married; one to become Countess of Sutherland, the other Lady Glenorchy. There was something very striking in the fate of Lady Sutherland and of the earl, her husband—a couple distinguished as much by personal elegance and amiable character as by lofty rank. Lady Sutherland was blessed with a temper of extraordinary sweetness, which shone in a face of so much beauty as to have occasioned admiration where many were beautiful—the coronation of George III. and his queen. The happiness of the young pair had been increased by the birth of a daughter. One unlucky day his lordship, coming after dinner into the drawing-room at Dunrobin a little flushed with wine, lifted up the infant above his head by way of frolic, when, sad to tell, he dropped her by accident on the floor, and she received injuries from which she never recovered. This incident had such an effect upon his lordship’s spirits that his health became seriously affected, so as finally to require a journey to Bath, where he was seized with an infectious fever. For twenty-one successive days and nights he was attended by his wife, then pregnant, till she herself caught the fatal distemper. The countess’s death was concealed from his lordship; nevertheless, when his delirium left him, the day before he died, he frequently said: ‘I am going to join my dear wife;’ appearing to know that she had ‘already reached the goal with mended pace!’ Can it be that we are sometimes able to penetrate the veil which hangs, in thick and gloomy folds, between this world and the next; or does the ‘mortal coil’ in which the light of mind is enveloped become thinner and more transparent by the wearing of deadly sickness? The bodies of the earl and countess were brought to Holyrood House, where they had usually resided when in town, and lay in state for some time previous to their interment in one grave in the Abbey Chapel. The death of a pair so young, so good, and who had stood in so distinguished a position in society—leaving one female infant to a disputed title—made a deep impression on the public, and was sincerely lamented in their own immediate circle. Of much poetry written on the occasion, a specimen may be seen in Evans’s Old Ballads. Another appears in Brydges’s Censura Literaria, being the composition of Sir Gilbert Elliot of Minto:
‘In pity, Heaven bestowed
An early doom: lo, on the self-same bier,
A fairer form, cold by her husband’s side,
And faded every charm. She died for thee,
For thee, her only love. In beauty’s prime,
In youth’s triumphant hour, she died for thee.
Bring water from the brook, and roses spread
O’er their pale limbs; for ne’er did wedded love
To one sad grave consign a lovelier pair,
Of manners gentler, or of purer heart!’
Lady Glenorchy, the younger sister of Lady Sutherland, was remarkable for her pious disposition. Exceedingly unfortunate in her marriage, she was early taught to seek consolation from things ‘not of this world.’ I have been told that nothing could have been more striking than to hear this young and beautiful creature pouring forth her melodious notes and hymns, while most of her sex and age at that time exercised their voices only upon the wretched lyrics imported from Vauxhall and Ranelagh, or the questionable verses of Ramsay and his contemporaries. She met with her rich reward, even in this world; for she enjoyed the applause of the wealthy and the blessings of the poor, with that supreme of all pleasures—the conviction that the eternal welfare of those in whose fate she was chiefly interested was forwarded, if not perfected, by her precepts and example.[175]
Old Risps.
It is not unworthy of notice, in this record of all that is old and quaint in our city, that the Lord Justice-clerk’s house was provided with a pin or risp, instead of the more modern convenience—a knocker. The Scottish ballads, in numberless passages, make reference to this article: no hero in those compositions ever comes to his mistress’s door but he tirles at the pin. What, then, was a pin? It was a small slip or bar of iron, starting out from the door vertically, serrated on the side towards the door, and provided with a small ring, which, being drawn roughly along the serrations or nicks, produced a harsh and grating sound, to summon the servant to open. Another term for the article was a crow. In the fourth eclogue of Edward Fairfax, a production of the reign of James VI. and I., quoted in the Muses’ Library, is this passage:
‘Now, farewell Eglon! for the sun stoops low,
And calling guests before my sheep-cot’s door;
Now clad in white, I see my porter-crow;
Great kings oft want these blessings of the poor;’
with the following note: ‘The ring of the door, called a crow, and when covered with white linen, denoted the mistress of the house was in travel.’ It is quite appropriate to this explanation that a small Latin vocabulary, published by Andrew Simpson in 1702, places among the parts of a house, ‘Corvex—a clapper or ringle.’ Hardly one specimen of the pin, crow, or ringle now survives in the Old Town. They were almost all disused many years ago, when knockers were generally substituted as more stylish. Knockers at that time did not long remain in repute, though they have never been altogether superseded, even by bells, in the Old Town. The comparative merit of knockers and pins was for a long time a controversial point, and many knockers got their heads twisted off in the course of the dispute. Pins were, upon the whole, considered very inoffensive, decent, old-fashioned things, being made of a modest metal, and making little show upon a door; knockers were thought upstart, prominent, brazen-faced articles, and received the full share of odium always conferred by Scotsmen of the old school upon tasteful improvements. Every drunken fellow, in reeling home at night, thought it good sport to carry off all the knockers that came in his way; and as drunken gentlemen were very numerous, many acts of violence were committed, and sometimes a whole stair was found stripped of its knockers in the morning; when the voice of lamentation raised by the servants of the sufferers might have reminded one of the wailings of the Lennox dairy-women after a creagh in the days of old. Knockers were frequently used as missile weapons by the bucks of that day against the Town-guard; and the morning sun sometimes saw the High Street strewed with them. The aforesaid Mrs Campbell remembered residing in an Old Town house, which was one night disturbed in the most intolerable manner by a drunken party at the knocker. In the morning the greater part of it was found to be gone; and it was besides discovered, to the horror of the inmates, that part of a finger was left sticking in the fragments, with the appearance of having been forcibly wrenched from the hand.
[MARLIN’S AND NIDDRY’S WYNDS.]
Tradition of Marlin the Pavier—House of Provost Edward—Story of Lady Grange.
Where South Bridge Street now stands, there formerly existed two wynds, or alleys, of the better class, named Marlin’s and Niddry’s Wynds. Many persons of importance lived in these obscurities. Marlin’s Wynd, which extended from behind the Tron Church, and contained several bookshops and stalls, the favourite lounge of the lovers of old literature, was connected with a curious tradition, which existed at the time when Maitland wrote his History of Edinburgh (1753). It was said that the High Street was first paved or causewayed by one Marlin, a Frenchman, who, thinking that specimen of his ingenuity the best monument he could have, desired to be buried under it, and was accordingly interred at the head of this wynd, which derived its name from him. The tradition is so far countenanced by there having formerly been a space in the pavement at this spot, marked by six flat stones, in the shape of a grave. According, however, to more authentic information, the High Street was first paved in 1532[176] by John and Bartoulme Foliot, who appear to have had nothing in common with this legendary Marlin, except country. The grave of at least Bartoulme Foliot is distinctly marked by a flat monument in the Chapel-Royal at Holyrood House. It is possible, nevertheless, that Marlin may have been the more immediate executor or superintendent of the work.
Niddry’s Wynd abounded in curious antique houses, many of which had been the residences of remarkable persons. The most interesting bit was a paved court, about half-way down, on the west side, called Lockhart’s Court, from its having latterly been the residence of the family of Lockhart of Carnwath.[177] This was, in reality, a quadrangular palace, the whole being of elegant old architecture in one design, and accessible by a deep arched gateway. It was built by Nicol Edward, or Udward, who was provost of Edinburgh in 1591; a wealthy citizen, and styled in his writts, ‘of old descent in the burgh.’ On a mantelpiece within the house his arms were carved, along with an anagram upon his name:
VA D’UN VOL À CHRIST—
Go with one flight to Christ; which, the reader will find, can only be made out by Latinising his name into Nicholaus Eduartus. We learn from Moyses’s Memoirs that, in January 1591, this house was the temporary residence of James VI. and his queen, then recently arrived from Denmark; and that, on the 7th of February, the Earl of Huntly passed hence, out of the immediate royal presence, when he went to murder the Bonny Earl of Moray at Donibrissle; which caused a suspicion that His Majesty was concerned in that horrid outburst of feudal hate. Lockhart’s Court was latterly divided into several distinct habitations, one of which, on the north side of the quadrangle, was occupied by the family of Bruce of Kinnaird, the celebrated traveller. In the part on the south side, occupied by the Carnwath family, there was a mantelpiece in the drawing-room of magnificent workmanship, and reaching to the ceiling. The whole mansion, even in its reduced state, bore an appearance of security and strength which spoke of other times; and there was, moreover, a profound dungeon underground, which was only accessible by a secret trap-door, opening through the floor of a small closet, the most remote of a suite of rooms extending along the south and west sides of the court. Perhaps, at a time when to be rich was neither so common nor so safe as now, Provost Edward might conceal his hoards in this massy more.
Alexander Black of Balbirney, who was provost of Edinburgh from 1579 to 1583, had a house at the head of the wynd. King James lodged in this house on the 18th of August 1584, and walked from it in state next day to hold a parliament in the Tolbooth. Here also lodged the Chancellor Thirlstain, in January 1591, while the king and queen were the guests of Nicol Edward.[178] It must be understood that these visits of royalty were less considered in the light of an honour than of a tax. The king in those times went to live at the board of a wealthy subject when his own table happened to be scantily furnished; which was too often the case with poor King James.
On the east side of the wynd, nearly opposite to Lockhart’s Court, was a good house,[179] which, early in the last century, was possessed by James Erskine of Grange, best known by his judicial title of Lord Grange, and the brother of John, Earl of Mar. This gentleman has acquired an unhappy notoriety in consequence of his treatment of his wife. He was externally a professor of ultra-evangelical views of religion, and a patron of the clergy on that side, yet in his private life is understood to have been far from exemplary. The story of Lady Grange, as Mrs Erskine was called, had a character of romance about it which has prevented it from being forgotten. It also reflects a curious light upon the state of manners in Scotland in the early part of the eighteenth century. The lady was a daughter of that Chiesly of Dalry whom we have already seen led by an insane violence of temper to commit one of the most atrocious of murders.
STORY OF LADY GRANGE.[180]
Lord and Lady Grange had been married upwards of twenty years, and had had several children, when, in 1730, a separation was determined on between them. It is usually difficult in such cases to say in what degree the parties are respectively blamable; how far there have been positive faults on one side, and want of forbearance on the other, and so forth. If we were to believe the lady in this instance, there had been love and peace for twenty years, when at length Lord Grange took a sudden dislike to his wife, and would no longer live with her. He, on the other hand, speaks of having suffered long from her ‘unsubduable rage and madness,’ and of having failed in all his efforts to bring her to a reasonable conduct. There is too much reason to believe that the latter statement is in the main true; although, were it more so, it would still leave Lord Grange unjustifiable in the measures which he took with respect to his wife. It is traditionally stated that in their unhappy quarrels the lady did not scruple to remind her husband whose daughter she was—thus hinting at what she was capable of doing if she thought herself deeply aggrieved. However all this might be, in the year 1730 a separation was agreed to (with great reluctance on the part of the lady), his lordship consenting to give her a hundred a year for her maintenance so long as she should continue to live apart from him.
After spending some months in the country, Lady Grange returned to Edinburgh, and took a lodging near her husband’s house, for the purpose, as she tells us, of endeavouring to induce him to take her back, and that she might occasionally see her children. According to Lord Grange, she began to torment him by following him and the children on the street ‘in a scandalous and shameful manner,’ and coming to his house, and calling reproaches to him through the windows,[181] especially when there was company with him. He thus writes: ‘In his house, at the bottom of Niddry’s Wynd, where there is a court through which one enters the house, one time among others, when it was full of chairs, chairmen, and footmen, who attended the company that were with himself, or his sister Lady Jane Paterson, then keeping house together, she came into this court, and among that mob shamelessly cried up to the windows injurious reproaches, and would not go away, though entreated, till, hearing the late Lord Lovat’s voice, who was visiting Mr E——, and seeing two of his servants among the other footmen, “Oh,” said she, “is your master here?” and instantly ran off.’ He speaks of her having attacked him one day in church; at another time she forced him to take refuge with his son in a tavern for two hours. She even threatened to assault him on the bench, ‘which he every day expected; for she professed that she had no shame.’
The traditionary account of Lady Grange represents her fate as having been at last decided by her threatening to expose her husband to the government for certain treasonable practices. It would now appear that this was partially true. In his statement, Lord Grange tells us that he had some time before gone to London to arrange the private affairs of the Countess of Mar, then become unable to conduct them herself, and he had sent an account of his procedure to his wife, including some reflections on a certain great minister (doubtless Walpole), who had thwarted him much, and been of serious detriment to the interests of his family in this matter. This document she retained, and she now threatened to take it to London and use it for her husband’s disadvantage, being supported in the design by several persons with whom she associated. While denying that he had been concerned in anything treasonable, Lord Grange says, ‘he had already too great a load of that great minister’s wrath on his back to stand still and see more of it fall upon him by the treachery and madness of such a wife and such worthy confederates.’ The lady had taken a seat in a stage-coach for London.[182] Lord Grange caused a friend to go and make interest to get her money returned, and the seat let to another person; in which odd proceeding he was successful. Thus was the journey stayed for the meantime; but the lady declared her resolution to go as soon as possible. ‘What,’ says Lord Grange, ‘could a man do with such a wife? There was great reason to think she would daily go on to do mischief to her family, and to affront and bring a blot on her children, especially her daughters. There were things that could not be redressed in a court of justice, and we had not then a madhouse to lock such unhappy people up in.’
The result of his lordship’s deliberations was a plan for what he calls ‘sequestrating’ his wife. It appears to have been concerted between himself and a number of Highland chiefs, including, above all, the notorious Lord Lovat.[183] We now turn to the lady’s narrative, which proceeds to tell that, on the evening of the 22nd of January 1732, a party of Highlandmen, wearing the livery of Lord Lovat, made their way into her lodgings, and forcibly seized her, throwing her down and gagging her, then tying a cloth over her head, and carrying her off as if she had been a corpse. At the bottom of the stair was a chair containing a man, who took the hapless lady upon his knees, and held her fast in his arms till they had got to a place in the outskirts of the town. Then they took her from the chair, removed the cloth from her head, and mounted her upon a horse behind a man, to whom she was tied; after which the party rode off ‘by the lee light of the moon,’ to quote the language of the old ballads, whose incidents the present resembles in character.
The treatment of the lady by the way was, if we can believe her own account, by no means gentle. The leader, although a gentleman (Mr Forster of Corsebonny), disregarded her entreaties to be allowed to stop on account of cramp in her side, and only answered by ordering a servant to renew the bandages over her mouth. She observed that they rode along the Long Way (where Princes Street now stands), past the Castle, and so to the Linlithgow road. After a ride of nearly twenty miles, they stopped at Muiravonside, the house of Mr John Macleod, advocate, where servants appeared waiting to receive the lady—and thus showed that the master of the house had been engaged to aid in her abduction. She was taken upstairs to a comfortable bedroom; but a man being posted in the room as a guard, she could not go to bed nor take any repose. Thus she spent the ensuing day, and when it was night, she was taken out and remounted in the same fashion as before; and the party then rode along through the Torwood, and so to the place called Wester Polmaise, belonging to a gentleman of the name of Stewart, whose steward or factor was one of the cavalcade. Here was an old tower, having one little room on each floor, as is usually the case in such buildings; and into one of these rooms, the window of which was boarded over, the lady was conducted. She continued here for thirteen or fourteen weeks, supplied with a sufficiency of the comforts of life, but never allowed to go into the open air; till at length her health gave way, and the factor began to fear being concerned in her death. By his intercession with Mr Forster, she was then permitted to go into the court, under a guard; but such was the rigour of her keepers that the garden was still denied to her.
THE CASTLE
from Princes Street.
Thus time passed drearily on until the month of August, during all which time the prisoner had no communication with the external world. At length, by an arrangement made between Lord Lovat and Mr Forster, at the house of the latter, near Stirling, Lady Grange was one night forcibly brought out, and mounted again as formerly, and carried off amidst a guard of horsemen. She recognised several of Lovat’s people in this troop, and found Forster once more in command. They passed by Stirling Bridge, and thence onward to the Highlands; but she no longer knew the way they were going. Before daylight they stopped at a house, where she was lodged during the day, and at night the march was resumed. Thus they journeyed for several days into the Highlands, never allowing the unfortunate lady to speak, and taking the most rigid care to prevent any one from becoming aware of her situation. During this time she never had off her clothes: one day she slept in a barn, another in an open enclosure. Regard to delicacy in such a case was impossible. After a fortnight spent at a house on Lord Lovat’s ground (probably in Stratherrick, Inverness-shire), the journey was renewed in the same style as before; only Mr Forster had retired from the party, and the lady found herself entirely in the hands of Frasers.
They now crossed a loch into Glengarry’s land, where they lodged several nights in cow-houses or in the open air, making progress all the time to the westward, where the country becomes extremely wild. At Lochourn, an arm of the sea on the west coast, the unfortunate lady was transferred to a small vessel which was in waiting for her. Bitterly did she weep, and pitifully implore compassion; but the Highlanders understood not her language; and though they had done so, a departure from the orders which had been given them was not to be expected from men of their character. In the vessel, she found that she was in the custody of one Alexander Macdonald, a tenant of one of the Western Islands named Heskir, belonging to Sir Alexander Macdonald of Sleat; and here we have a curious indication of the spirit in which the Highlanders conducted such transactions. ‘I told him,’ says the lady, ‘that I was stolen at Edinburgh, and brought there by force, and that it was contrary to the laws what they were doing. He answered that he would not keep me, or any other, against their will, except Sir Alexander Macdonald were in the affair.’ While they lay in Lochourn, waiting for a wind, the brother and son of Macdonald of Scothouse came to see but not to relieve her. Other persons visited the sloop, and among these one William Tolmy, a tenant of the chief of Macleod, and who had once been a merchant at Inverness. This was the first person she had seen who expressed any sympathy with her. He undertook to bear information of her retreat to her friend and ‘man of business,’ Mr Hope of Rankeillor, in Edinburgh; but it does not appear that he fulfilled his promise.
Lady Grange remained in Macdonald’s charge at Heskir nearly two years—during the first year without once seeing bread, and with no supply of clothing; obliged, in fact, to live in the same miserable way as the rest of the family; afterwards some little indulgence was shown to her. This island was of desolate aspect, and had no inhabitant besides Macdonald and his wife. The wretchedness of such a situation for a lady who had been all her life accustomed to the refined society of a capital may of course be imagined. Macdonald would never allow her to write to any one; but he went to his landlord, Sir Alexander, to plead for the indulgences she required. On one of these occasions, Sir Alexander expressed his regret at having been concerned in such an affair, and wished he were quit of it. The wonder is how Erskine should have induced all these men to interest themselves in the ‘sequestration’ of his wife. One thing is here remarkable: they were all of them friends of the Stuart family, as was Macleod of Macleod, into whose hands the lady subsequently fell. It therefore becomes probable that Erskine had at least convinced them that her seclusion from the world was necessary in some way for the preservation of political secrets important to them.
In June 1734 a sloop came to Heskir to take away the lady; it was commanded by a Macleod, and in it she was conveyed to the remotest spot of ground connected with the British Islands—namely, the isle of St Kilda, the property of the chief of Macleod, and remarkable for the simple character of the poor peasantry who occupy it. There cannot, of course, be a doubt that those who had an interest in the seclusion of Lady Grange regarded this as a more eligible place than Heskir, in as far as it was more out of the way, and promised better for her complete and permanent confinement. In some respects it was an advantageous change for the lady: the place was not uninhabited, as Heskir very nearly was; and her domestic accommodation was better. In St Kilda, she was placed in a house or cottage of two small apartments, tolerably well furnished, with a girl to wait upon her, and provided with a sufficiency of good food and clothing. Of educated persons the island contained not one, except for a short time a Highland Presbyterian clergyman, named Roderick Maclennan. There was hardly even a person capable of speaking or understanding the English language within reach. No books, no intelligence from the world in which she had once lived. Only once a year did a steward come to collect the rent paid in kind by the poor people; and by him was the lady regularly furnished with a store of such articles, foreign to the place, as she needed—usually a stone of sugar, a pound of tea, six pecks of wheat, and an anker of spirits.[184] Thus she had no lack of the common necessaries of life; she only wanted society and freedom. In this way she spent seven dreary years in St Kilda. How she contrived to pass her time is not known. We learn, however, some particulars of her history during this period from the testimony of those who had a charge over her. If this is to be believed, she made incessant efforts, though without effect, to bribe the islanders to assist in liberating her. Once a stray vessel sent a boat ashore for water; she no sooner heard of it than she despatched the minister’s wife to apprise the sailors of her situation, and entreat them to rescue her; but Mrs Maclennan did not reach the spot till after they had departed. She was kind to the peasantry, giving them from her own stores, and sometimes had the women to come and dance before her; but her temper and habits were not such as to gain their esteem. Often she drank too much; and whenever any one near her committed the slightest mistake, she would fly into a furious passion, and even resort to violence. Once she was detected in an attempt, during the night, to obtain a pistol from above the steward’s bed, in the room next to her own. On his awaking and seeing her, she ran off to her own bed. One is disposed, of course, to make all possible allowances for a person in her wretched circumstances; yet there can be little doubt, from the evidence before us, that it was a natural and habitual violence of temper which displayed itself during her residence in St Kilda.
Meanwhile it was known in Edinburgh that Lady Grange had been forcibly carried away and placed in seclusion by orders of her husband; but her whereabouts was a mystery to all besides a few who were concerned to keep it secret. During the years which had elapsed since her abduction, Mr Erskine had given up his seat on the bench, and entered into political life as a friend of the Prince of Wales and opponent of Sir Robert Walpole. The world had wondered at the events of his domestic life, and several persons denounced the singular means he had adopted for obtaining domestic peace. But, in the main, he stood as well with society as he had ever done. At length, in the winter of 1740-41, a communication from Lady Grange for the first time reached her friends. It was brought by the minister Maclennan and his wife, who had left the island in discontent, after quarrelling with Macleod’s steward. The idea of a lady by birth and education being immured for a series of years in an outlandish place where only the most illiterate peasantry resided, and this by the command of a husband who could only complain of her irritable temper, struck forcibly upon public feeling, and particularly upon the mind of Lady Grange’s legal agent, Mr Hope of Rankeillor, who had all along felt a keen interest in her fate. Of Mr Hope it may be remarked that he was also a zealous Jacobite; yet, though all the persons engaged in the lady’s abduction were of that party, he hesitated not to take active measures on the contrary side. He immediately applied to the Lord Justice-clerk (supreme criminal judge) for a warrant to search for and liberate Lady Grange. This application was opposed by the friends of Mr Erskine, and eventually it was defeated; yet he was not on that account deterred from hiring a vessel, and sending it with armed men to secure the freedom of the lady—a step which, as it was illegal and dangerous, obviously implied no small risk on his own part. This ship proceeded no farther than the harbour called the Horse-shoe, in Lorn (opposite to the modern town of Oban), where the master quarrelled with and set on shore Mrs Maclennan, his guide. Apparently the voyage was not prosecuted in consequence of intelligence being received that the lady had been removed to another place, where she was kept in more humane circumstances. If so, its object might be considered as in part at least, though indirectly, accomplished.
I have seen a warrant, signed in the holograph of Normand Macleod—the same insular chief who, a few years after, lost public respect in consequence of his desertion of the Jacobite cause, and showing an active hostility to Prince Charles when in hiding. The document is dated at Dunvegan, February 17, 1741, and proceeds upon a rumour which has reached the writer that a certain gentlewoman, called Lady Grange, was carried to his isle of St Kilda in 1734, and has ever since been confined there under cruel circumstances. Regarding this as a scandal which he is bound to inquire into (as if it could have hitherto been a secret to him), he orders his baron-bailie of Harris, Donald Macleod of Bernera (this was a gallant fellow who went out in the ’Forty-five), to proceed to that island and make the necessary investigations. I have also seen the original precognition taken by honest Donald six days thereafter, when the various persons who had been about Lady Grange gave evidence respecting her. The general bearing of this testimony, besides establishing the fact of her confinement as a prisoner, is to the effect that she was treated well in all other respects, having a house forty feet long, with an inner room and a chimney to it, a curtained bed, arm-chair, table, and other articles; ample store of good provisions, including spirits; and plenty of good clothes; but that she was addicted to liquor, and liable to dreadful outbreaks of anger. Evidence was at the same time taken regarding the character of the Maclennans, upon whose reports Mr Hope had proceeded. It was Mr Erskine’s interest to establish that they were worthless persons, and to this effect strong testimony was given by several of the islanders, though it would be difficult to say with what degree of verity. The whole purpose of these precognitions was to meet the clamours raised by Mr Hope as to the barbarities to which Lady Grange had been subjected. They had the effect of stopping for a time the legal proceedings threatened by that gentleman; but he afterwards raised an action in the Court of Session for payment of the arrears of aliment or allowance due to the lady, amounting to £1150, and obtained decreet or judgment in the year 1743 against the defender in absence, though he did not choose to put it in force.
The unfortunate cause of all these proceedings ceased to be a trouble to any one in May 1745. Erskine, writing from Westminster, June 1, in answer to an intimation of her death, says: ‘I most heartily thank you, my dear friend, for the timely notice you gave me of the death of that person. It would be a ridiculous untruth to pretend grief for it; but as it brings to my mind a train of various things for many years back, it gives me concern. Her retaining wit and facetiousness to the last surprises me. These qualities none found in her, no more than common-sense or good-nature, before she went to these parts; and of the reverse of all which, if she had not been irrecoverably possest, in an extraordinary and insufferable degree, after many years’ fruitless endeavours to reclaim her, she had never seen these parts. I long for the particulars of her death, which, you are pleased to tell me, I am to have by next post.’
Mr Hope’s wife and daughters being left as heirs of Lady Grange, an action was raised in their name for the £1150 formerly awarded, and for three years additional of her annuity; and for this compound sum decreet was obtained, which was followed by steps for forcing payment. The Hopes were aware, however, of the dubious character of this claim, seeing that Mr Erskine, from whatever causes, had substituted an actual subsistence since 1732. They accordingly intimated that they aimed at no personal benefit from Lady Grange’s bequest; and the affair terminated in Mr Erskine reimbursing Mr Hope for all the expenses he had incurred on behalf of the lady, including that for the sloop which he had hired to proceed to St Kilda for her rescue.
It is humbly thought that this story casts a curious and faithful light upon the age of our grandfathers, showing things in a kind of transition from the sanguinary violence of an earlier age to the humanity of the present times. Erskine, not to speak of his office of a judge in Scotland, moved in English society of the highest character. He must have been the friend of Lyttelton, Pope, Thomson, and other ornaments of Frederick’s court; and as the brother-in-law of the Countess of Mar, who was sister of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, he would figure in the brilliant circle which surrounded that star of the age of the second George. Yet he does not appear to have ever felt a moment’s compunction at leaving the mother of his children to pine and fret herself to death in a half-savage wilderness—
‘Placed far amidst the melancholy main;’
for in a paper which expresses his feelings on the subject pretty freely, he justifies the ‘sequestration’ as a step required by prudence and decency; and in showing that the gross necessaries of life were afforded to his wife, seems to have considered that his whole duty towards her was discharged. Such an insensibility could not be peculiar to one man: it indicates the temper of a class and of an age. While congratulating ourselves on the improved humanity of our own times, we may glance with satisfaction to the means which it places in our power for the proper treatment of patients like Mrs Erskine. Such a woman would now be regarded as the unfortunate victim of disease, and instead of being forcibly carried off under cloud of night by a band of Highlanders, and committed to confinement on the outskirts of the world, she would, with proper precautions, be remitted to an asylum, where, by gentle and rational management, it might be hoped that she would be restored to mental health, or, at the worst, enabled to spend the remainder of her days in the utmost comfort which her state admitted of.
[1868.—About the middle of Cant’s Close,[185] on the west side, there exists a remarkable edifice, different from all others in the neighbourhood. It is two stories in height, the second story being reached by an outside stone stair within a small courtyard, which had originally been shut in by a gate. The stone pillars of the gateway are decorated with balls at the top, as was the fashion of entrances to the grounds of a country mansion. The building is picturesque in character, in the style of the sixteenth century in Scotland. As it resembles a neat, old-fashioned country-house, one wonders to find it jammed up amidst tall edifices in this confined alley. Ascending the stair, we find that the interior consists of three or four apartments, with handsome panelled walls and elaborately carved stucco ceilings. The principal room has a double window on the west to Dickson’s Close.[186]
Old Mansion, Cant’s Close.
Daniel Wilson, in his Memorials of Edinburgh, speaks of this building in reference to Dickson’s Close. He says: ‘A little lower down the close on the same side, an old and curious stone tenement bears on its lower crow-step the Haliburton arms, impaled with another coat, on one shield. It is a singularly antique and time-worn edifice, evidently of considerable antiquity. A curious double window projects on a corbelled base into the close, while the whole stone-work is so much decayed as greatly to add to its picturesque character. In the earliest deed which exists, bearing date 1582, its first proprietor, Master James Halyburton—a title then of some meaning—is spoken of in indefinite terms as umqle, or deceased; so that it is a building probably of the early part of the sixteenth century.’ It is known that the adjoining properties on the north once pertained to the collegiate church of Crichton; while those on the east, in Strichen’s Close, comprehended the town residence of the Abbot of Melrose, 1526.
The adjoining woodcut [[p. 221]] will give some idea of this strange old mansion in Cant’s Close, with its gateway and flight of steps. In looking over the titles, we find that the tenement was conveyed in 1735 from Robert Geddes of Scotstoun, Peeblesshire, to George Wight, a burgess of Edinburgh, since which period it has gradually deteriorated; every apartment, from the ground to the garret, is now a dwelling for a separate family; and the whole surroundings are most wretched. The edifice formed one of the properties removed under the Improvement Act of 1867.]
[ABBOT OF MELROSE’S LODGING.]
Sir George Mackenzie—Lady Anne Dick.
In Catholic times several of the great dignitaries of the Church had houses in Edinburgh, as the Archbishop of St Andrews at the foot of Blackfriars Wynd, the Bishop of Dunkeld in the Cowgate, and the Abbot of Cambuskenneth in the Lawnmarket.[187] The Abbot of Melrose’s ‘lodging’ appears from public documents to have been in what is now called Strichen’s Close, in the High Street, immediately to the west of Blackfriars Wynd. It had a garden extending down to the Cowgate and up part of the opposite slope.
Strichen’s Close.
A successor of the abbot in this possession was Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh, king’s advocate in the reigns of Charles II. and James II., and author of several able works in Scottish law, as well as a successful cultivator of miscellaneous literature. He got a charter of the property from the magistrates in 1677. The house occupied by Sir George still exists,[188] and appears to have been a goodly enough mansion for its time. It is now, however, possessed by a brass-founder as a place of business. From Sir George the alley was called Rosehaugh’s Close, till, this house falling by marriage connection into the possession of Lord Strichen, it got the name of Strichen’s Close, which it still bears. Lord Strichen was a judge of the Court of Session for forty-five years subsequent to 1730. He was the direct ancestor of the present Lord Lovat of the British peerage.
Back of Mackenzie’s House, looking into Cant’s House.
Mackenzie has still a place in the popular imagination in Edinburgh as the Bluidy Mackingie, his office having been to prosecute the unruly Covenanters. It therefore happens that the founder of our greatest national library,[189] one whom Dryden regarded as a friend, and who was the very first writer of classic English prose in Scotland, is a sort of Raw-head and Bloody-bones by the firesides of his native capital. He lies in a beautiful mausoleum, which forms a conspicuous object in the Greyfriars Churchyard, and which describes him as an ornament to his age, and a man who was kind to all, ‘except a rebellious crew, from whose violence, with tongue and pen, he defended his country and king, whose virulence he stayed by the sword of justice, and whose ferocity he, by the force of reason, blunted, and only did not subdue.’ This monument was an object of horror to the good people of Edinburgh, as it was almost universally believed that the spirit of the persecutor could get no rest in its superb but gloomy tenement. It used to be ‘a feat’ for a set of boys, in a still summer evening, to march up to the ponderous doors, bedropt with white tears upon a black ground, and cry in at the keyhole:—
‘Bluidy Mackingie, come out if ye daur,
Lift the sneck, and draw the bar!’
after which they would run away as if some hobgoblin were in chase of them, probably not looking round till they were out of the churchyard.
Sir George Mackenzie had a country-house called Shank, about ten miles to the south of Edinburgh,[190] now a ruin. One day the Marquis of Tweeddale, having occasion to consult him about some law business, rode across the country, and arrived at so early an hour in the morning that the lawyer was not yet out of bed. Soliciting an immediate audience, he was admitted to the bedroom, where he sat down and detailed the case to Sir George, who gave him all necessary counsel from behind the curtains. When the marquis advanced to present a fee, he was startled at the apparition of a female hand through the curtains, in an attitude expressive of a readiness to receive, while no hand appeared on the part of Sir George. The explanation was that Sir George’s lady, as has been the case with many a weaker man, took entire charge of his purse.[191]
Several of the descendants of this great lawyer have been remarkable for their talents. None, perhaps, possessed more of the vivida vis animi than his granddaughter, Lady Anne Dick of Corstorphine (also granddaughter, by the father’s side, to the clever but unscrupulous ‘Tarbat Register,’ the first Earl of Cromarty).[192] This lady excited much attention in Edinburgh society by her eccentric manners and her droll pasquinade verses: one of those beings she was who astonish, perplex, and fidget their fellow-creatures, till at last the world feels a sort of relief when they are removed from the stage. She made many enemies by her lampoons; and her personal conduct only afforded them too good room for revenge. Sometimes she would dress herself in men’s clothes, and go about the town in search of adventures. One of her frolics ended rather disgracefully, for she and her maid, being apprehended in their disguise, were lodged all night in the Town Guard-house. It may be readily imagined that by those whom her wit had exasperated such follies would be deeply relished and made the most of. We must not, therefore, be surprised at Scandal telling that Lady Anne had at one period lain a whole year in bed, in a vain endeavour—to baffle himself.
Through private channels have oozed out at this late day a few specimens of Lady Anne’s poetical abilities; less brilliant than might be expected from the above character of her, yet having a certain air of dash and espièglerie which looks appropriate. They are partly devoted to bewailing the coldness of a certain Sir Peter Murray of Balmanno, towards whom she chose to act as a sort of she-Petrarch, but apparently in the mere pursuit of whim. One runs in the following tender strain:
‘Oh, when he dances at a ball,
He’s rarely worth the seeing;
So light he trips, you would him take
For some aërial being!
While pinky-winky go his een,
How blest is each bystander!
How gracefully he leads the fair,
When to her seat he hands her!
But when in accents saft and sweet,
He chants forth Lizzie Baillie,
His dying looks and attitude
Enchant, they cannot fail ye.
The loveliest widow in the land,
When she could scarce disarm him,
Alas! the belles in Roxburghshire
Must never hope to charm him!
O happy, happy, happy she,
Could make him change his plan, sir,
And of this rigid bachelor,
Convert the married man, sir:
O happy, and thrice happy she,
Could make him change his plan, sir,
And to the gentle Benedick
Convert the single man, sir,’ &c.
In another, tired, apparently, of the apathy of this sweet youth, she breaks out as follows:
‘Oh, wherefore did I cross the Forth,
And leave my love behind me?
Why did I venture to the north,
With one that did not mind me?
Had I but visited Carin!
It would have been much better,
Than pique the prudes, and make a din
For careless, cold Sir Peter!
I’m sure I’ve seen a better limb,
And twenty better faces;
But still my mind it ran on him,
When I was at the races.
At night, when we went to the ball,
Were many there discreeter;
The well-bred duke, and lively Maule,
Panmure behaved much better.
They kindly showed their courtesy,
And looked on me much sweeter;
Yet easy could I never be,
For thinking on Sir Peter.
I fain would wear an easy air,
But, oh, it looked affected,
And e’en the fine ambassador
Could see he was neglected.
Though Powrie left for me the spleen,
My temper grew no sweeter;
I think I’m mad—what do I mean,
To follow cold Sir Peter!’
Her ladyship died, without issue, in 1741.
[BLACKFRIARS WYND.]
Palace of Archbishop Bethune—Boarding-schools of the Last Century—The Last of the Lorimers—Lady Lovat.
Those who now look into Blackfriars Wynd—passing through it is out of the question—will be surprised to learn that, all dismal and wretched as it is in all respects, it was once a place of some respectability and even dignity. On several of its tall old lands may be seen inscriptions implying piety on the part of the founder—one, for example:
PAX INTRANTIBUS,
SALUS EXEUNTIBUS;
another:
MISERERE MEI, DEUS;
this last containing in its upper floor all that the adherents of Rome had forty years ago as a place of worship in Edinburgh—the chapel to which, therefore, as a matter of course, the late Charles X. resorted with his suite, when residing as Comte d’Artois in Holyrood House. The alley gets its name from having been the access to the Blackfriars’ Monastery on the opposite slope, and being built on their land.