One of Carlyle’s best passages is the account in Sartor Resartus of his perambulation of the Rue St. Thomas de L’Enfer, the spiritual conflict that he waged then with himself, the victory that he won in which the everlasting “Yes” answered the everlasting “No.” Under the somewhat melodramatic French name Leith Walk is signified, the most commonplace thoroughfare in a town where the ways are rarely commonplace. Perhaps the name was suggested by a quaint incident that befell him there. He was walking along it when a drunken sailor coming from Leith and “tacking” freely as he walked ran into a countryman going the other way. “Go to hell,” said the sailor, wildly and unreasonably enraged. “Od, man, I’m going to Leith,” said the other, “as if merely pleading a previous engagement, and proceeded calmly on his way.”
I have said the fates were kind in linking together though but for a moment the lives of Burns and Scott, and they were unkind in refusing this to the lives of Scott and Carlyle. You wish that in some way or other they had allowed Carlyle and Robert Louis Stevenson to meet, if but for a moment, so that the last great writer whom Edinburgh has produced might have had the kindly touch of personal intercourse with his predecessors; but it was not to be, nor are there many R.L.S. Edinburgh anecdotes worth the telling. This which he narrates of his grandfather, Robert of Bell Rock fame, is better than any about himself. The elder Stevenson’s wife was a pious lady with a circle of pious if humble friends. One of those, “an unwieldy old woman,” had fallen down one of those steep outside stairs abundant in old Edinburgh, but she crashed on a passing baker and escaped unhurt by what seemed to Mrs. Stevenson a special interposition of Providence. “I would like to know what kind of Providence the baker thought it,” exclaimed her husband.
R.L.S. had certain flirtations with the Edinburgh underworld of his time, for the dreary respectability and precise formalism which has settled like a cloud on the once jovial Auld Reekie was abhorrent to the soul of the bright youth. No doubt he had his adventures, but if they are still known they are not recorded. There is some tradition of a novel, Maggie Arnot, I think it was called, wherein he told strange tales of dark Edinburgh closes, but pious hands consigned it, no doubt wisely and properly, to the flames; and though certain Corinthians were scornful and wrathful, yet you feel his true function was that of the wise and kindly, sympathetic and humane essayist and moralist that we have learned to love and admire, the almost Covenanting writer whom of a surety the men of the Covenant would have thrust out and perhaps violently ended in holy indignation. I gather a few scraps. Of the stories of his childhood this seems admirably characteristic. He was busy once with pencil and paper, and then addressed his mother: “Mamma, I have drawed a man. Shall I draw his soul now?” The makers of the New Town when they planned those wide, long, exposed streets, forgot one thing, and that was the Edinburgh weather, against which, if you think of it, the sheltered ways of the ancient city were an admirable protection. In many a passage R.L.S. has told us how the east wind, and the easterly “haar,” and the lack of sun assailed him like cruel and implacable foes. He would lean over the great bridge that spans what was once the Nor’ Loch, and watch the trains as they sped southward on their way, as it seemed, to lands of sunshine and romance.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
As an Edinburgh Student
It was but the pathetic inconsistency of human nature that in the lands of perpetual sunshine made him think no stars were so splendid as the Edinburgh street lamps, and so the whole romance of his life was bound up with “the huddle of cold grey hills from which we came,” and most of all with that city of the hills, and the winds and the tempest where he had his origin. He was called to the Scots bar; his family were powerful in Edinburgh and so he got a little work—four briefs in all we are told. Even when he was far distant the brass plate on the door of 17 Heriot Row bore the legend “Mr. R. L. Stevenson, Advocate” for many a long day. Probably the time of the practical joker is passed in Edinburgh, or an agent might have been tempted to shove some papers in at the letter-box; but what about the cheque with which it used to be, and still is in theory at any rate, the laudable habit in the north of enclosing as companion to all such documents? Ah! that would indeed have been carrying the joke to an unreasonable length. I will not tell here of the memorable occasion when plain Leslie Stephen, as he then was, took him to the old Infirmary to introduce him to W. E. Henley, then a patient within those grimy walls. It was the beginning of a long story of literary and personal friendship, with strange ups and downs. Writing about Edinburgh as I do, I would fain brighten my page and conclude my chapter with one of his most striking notes on his birthplace. “I was born likewise within the bounds of an earthly city illustrious for her beauty, her tragic and picturesque associations, and for the credit of some of her brave sons. Writing as I do in a strange quarter of the world, and a late day of my age, I can still behold the profile of her towers and chimneys, and the long trail of her smoke against the sunset; I can still hear those strains of martial music that she goes to bed with, ending each day like an act of an opera to the notes of bugles; still recall with a grateful effort of memory, any one of a thousand beautiful and spacious circumstances that pleased me and that must have pleased any one in my half-remembered past. It is the beautiful that I thus actively recall, the august airs of the castle on its rock, nocturnal passages of lights and trees, the sudden song of the blackbird in a suburban lane, rosy and dusky winter sunsets, the uninhabited splendours of the early dawn, the building up of the city on a misty day, house above house, spire above spire, until it was received into a sky of softly glowing clouds, and seemed to pass on and upwards by fresh grades and rises, city beyond city, a New Jerusalem bodily scaling heaven.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE ARTISTS
St. Margaret, Queen of Malcolm Canmore, has been ingeniously if fancifully claimed as the earliest of Scots artists. At the end of her life she prophesied that Edinburgh Castle would be taken by the English. On the wall of her chapel she pictured a castle with a ladder against the rampart, and on the ladder a man in the act of climbing. In this fashion she intimated the castle would fall; Gardez vous de Français, she wrote underneath. Probably by the French she meant the Normans from whom she herself had fled. They had taken England and would try, she thought, to take Scotland. Thus you read the riddle, if it be worth your while. The years after are blank; the art was ecclesiastical and not properly native. In the century before the Reformation there is reason to believe that Edinburgh was crowded with fair shrines and churches beautifully adorned, but the Reformers speedily changed all that. The first important native name is that of George Jamesone (1586-1644), the Scots Van Dyck, as he is often called, who, though he was born in Aberdeen, finally settled in Edinburgh, and, like everybody else, you might say, was buried in Greyfriars.
In 1729 a fine art association, called the Edinburgh Academy of St. Luke, was formed, but it speedily went to pieces. This is not the place to trace the art history of that or of the Edinburgh Select Society. In 1760 classes were opened at what was called the Trustees Academy; it was supported by an annual grant of £2000, which was part compensation for the increased burdens imposed on Scotland by the union with England. This was successively under the charge of Alexander Runciman, David Allan, called the “Scots Hogarth,” John Graham, and Andrew Wilson. It still exists as a department of the great government art institution at South Kensington. In 1808 a Society of Incorporated Artists was formed, and it began an annual exhibition of pictures which at first were very successful. Then came the institution for the encouragement of fine arts in Scotland, formed in 1819. In 1826 the foundations, so to speak, of the Scottish Academy were laid. In 1837 it received its charter, and was henceforth known as the Royal Scottish Academy; its annual exhibition was the chief art event of the year in Scotland, and since 1855 this exhibition has been held in the Grecian temple on the Mound, which is one of the most prominent architectural effects in Edinburgh. It is a mere commonplace to say there is no art without wealth, and, as far as Edinburgh is concerned, it is only after a new town began that she had painters worth the naming. It is a period of (roughly) 150 years. It is possible that in the future Glasgow maybe more important than Edinburgh, but with this I have nothing to do. I have only to tell a few anecdotes of the chief figures, and first of all there is Jamesone.
Whatever be his merits, we ought to be grateful to this artist because he has preserved for us so many contemporary figures. Pictures in those days were often made to tell a story. After the battle of Langside Lord Seton escaped to Flanders, where he was forced to drive a waggon for his daily bread. He returned in happier times for his party, and entered again into possession of his estates. He had himself painted by Jamesone, represented or dressed as a waggoner driving a wain with four horses attached, and the picture was hung at Seton Palace. When Charles I. came to Scotland in 1633 he dined with my Lord. He was much struck with the painting, could not, in fact, keep his eyes off it. The admiration of an art critic of such rank was fatal. What could a loyal courtier do but beg His Majesty’s acceptance thereof? “Oh,” said the King, “he could not rob the family of so inestimable a jewel.” Royally spoken, and, you may be sure, gratefully heard. It is said the magistrates of Edinburgh employed Jamesone to trick up the Netherbow Port with portraits of the century of ancient Kings of the line of Fergus. Hence possibly the legend that he limned those same mythical royalties we see to-day at Holyrood Palace, though it is certain enough they are not his, but Flemish De Witt’s. Jamesone was in favour with Charles, assuredly a discriminating patron of art and artists. The King stopped his horse at the Bow and gazed long at the grim phantoms in whose reality he, like everybody else, devoutly believed. He gave Jamesone a diamond ring from his own finger, and he afterwards sat for his portrait. He allowed the painter to work with his hat on to protect him from the cold, which so puffed up our artist that he would hardly ever take it off again, no matter what company he frequented. We don’t know his reward, but it seems his ordinary fee was £1 sterling for a portrait. No doubt it was described as £20 Scots, which made it look better but not go farther. You do not wonder that there was a lack of eminent painters when the leader of them all was thus rewarded.