To turn to some lesser figures. Hugo Arnot, advocate, is still remembered as author of one of the two standard histories of Edinburgh. No man better known in the streets of the old capital: he was all length and no breadth. That incorrigible joker, Harry Erskine, found him one day gnawing a speldrin—a species of cured fish chiefly used to remove the trace of last night’s debauch, and prepare the stomach for another bout. It is vended in long thin strips. “You are very like your meat,” said the wit. The Edinburgh populace called a house which for some time stood solitary on Moutries Hill, afterwards Bunkers Hill, where is now the Register House, “Hugo Arnot,” because the length was out of all proportion to the breadth. One day he found a fishwife cheapening a Bible in Creech’s shop; he had some semi-jocular remarks, probably not in the best taste, at the purchase and the purchaser. “Gude ha mercy on us,” said the old lady, “wha wad hae thocht that ony human-like cratur wud hae spokan that way; but you,” she went on with withering scorn—“a perfect atomy.” He was known to entertain sceptical opinions, and he was pestered with chronic asthma, and panted and wheezed all day long. “If I do not get quit of this,” he said, “it will carry me off like a rocket.” “Ah, Hugo, my man,” said an orthodox but unkind friend, “but in a contrary direction.” He could joke at his own infirmities. A Gilmerton carter passed him bellowing “sand for sale” with a voice that made the street echo. “The rascal,” said the exasperated author, “spends as much breath in a minute as would serve me for a month.” Like other Edinburgh folk he migrated to the New Town, to Meuse Lane, in fact, hard by St. Andrew Square. What with his diseases and other natural infirmities, Hugo’s temper was of the shortest. He rang his bell in so violent a manner that a lady on the floor above complained. He took to summoning his servant by firing a pistol; the remedy was worse than the disease. The caustic, bitter old Edinburgh humour was in the very bones of him. He was, as stated, an advocate by profession, and his collection of criminal trials, by the way, is still an authority. Once he was consulted in order that he might help in some shady transaction. He listened with the greatest attention. “What do you suppose me to be?” said he to the client. “A lawyer, an advocate,” stammered the other. “Oh, I thought you took me for a scoundrel,” sneered Arnot as he showed the proposed client the door. A lady who said she was of the same name asked how to get rid of an importunate suitor. “Why, marry him,” said Hugo testily. “I would see him hanged first,” rejoined the lady. The lawyer’s face contorted to a grin. “Why, marry him, and by the Lord Harry he will soon hang himself.” All very well, but not by such arts is British Themis propitiated. Arnot died in November 1786 when he was not yet complete thirty-seven. He had chosen his burial-place in the churchyard at South Leith, and was anxious to have it properly walled in ere the end, which he clearly foresaw, arrived. It was finished just in time, and with a certain stoical relief this strange mortal departed to take possession.
HENRY MACKENZIE, “THE MAN OF FEELING”
From an Engraving after Andrew Geddes
Another well-known Edinburgh character was Henry Mackenzie. Born in 1745 he lived till 1831, and connects the different periods of Edinburgh literary splendour. His best service to literature was his early appreciation of Burns, but in his own time the Man of Feeling was one of the greatest works of the day, and the Man of the World and Julia de Roubigné followed not far behind. To this age all seems weak, stilted, sentimental to an impossible degree, but Scott and Lockhart, to name but these, read and admired with inexplicable admiration. In ordinary life Mackenzie was a hard-headed lawyer, and as keen an attendant at a cock main, it was whispered, as Deacon Brodie himself. He told his wife that he’d had a glorious night. “Where?” she queried. “Why, at a splendid fight.” “Oh Harry, Harry,” said the good lady, “you have only feeling on paper.”
Tobias Smollett, though not an Edinburgh man, had some connection with the place. His sister, Mrs. Telfer, lived in the house yet shown in the Canongate, at the entrance to St. John Street. Here, after long absence, his mother recognised him by his smile. Ten years afterwards he again went north, and again saw his mother; he told her that he was very ill and that he was dying. “We’ll no’ be very lang pairted onie way. If you gang first, I’ll be close on your heels. If I lead the way, you’ll no’ be far ahint me, I’m thinking,” said this more than Spartan parent. But when you read the vivacious Mrs. Winifred Jenkins in the Expedition of Humphrey Clinker, you recognise how good a thing it was for letters that Smollett visited Edinburgh.
It is a little odd, but I have no anecdotes to tell (the alleged meeting between him and old John Brown in Haddington Churchyard is a wild myth) of that characteristic Edinburgh figure, Robert Fergusson, the Edinburgh poet, the native and the lover. He struck a deeper note than Allan Ramsay, has a more intimate touch than Scott, is scarcely paralleled by R. L. Stevenson, who half believed himself a reincarnation of “my unhappy predecessor on the causey of old Edinburgh” . . . “him that went down—my brother, Robert Fergusson.”
“Auld Reekie! thou’rt the canty hole,
A bield for mony a cauldrife soul
Wha’ snugly at thine ingle loll
Baith warm and couth,