On the other side of the Canongate, in New Street, there lived Christina Ramsay, a daughter of Allan Ramsay. She was eighty-eight before she died. If she wrote no songs she inherited, at any rate, her father’s kindly nature; she was the friend of all animals, she used to remonstrate with the carters when they ill-treated their horses, and send out rolls to be given to the poor overburdened beasts that toiled up the steep street. But she specially favoured cats. She kept a huge number cosily stowed away in band-boxes, and put out food for others round about her house; she would not even permit them to be spoken against, any alleged bad deed of a cat she avowed must have been done under provocation.
Here are two marriage stories. Dugald Stewart’s second wife was Ellen D’Arcy Cranstoun, daughter of the Hon. George Cranstoun, and sister of Lord Corehouse. She had written a poem, which her cousin, the Earl of Lothian, had shown to the philosopher who was then his tutor. The criticism was of a highly flattering nature. The professor fell in love with the poetess, and she loved him for his eulogy; they were married, and no union ever turned out better. The other is earlier and baser. In November 1731 William Crawford, the elderly janitor of the High School, proposed to marry a lady very much his junior. He and his friends arrived at the church. She did not turn up, but there was a letter from her. “William you must know I am pre-engaged I never could like a burnt cuttie I have now by the hand my sensie menseful strapper, with whom I intend to pass my youthful days. You know old age and youth cannot agree together. I must then be excused if I tell you I am not your humble servant.” Crawford took his rebuff quite coolly. “Let us at least,” said he to his friends, “keep the feast as a feast-day. Let us go drink and drive care away. May never a greater misfortune attend any man.” An assemblage numerous, if not choice, graced the banquet; they got up a subscription among themselves of one hundred marks and presented it to Crawford, “with which he was as well satisfied as he who got madam.”
From all those clever and witty people it is almost a relief to turn to some anecdotes of sheer stupidity. Why John Home the poet married Miss Logan, who was not clever or handsome or rich, was a problem to his friends. Hume asked him point-blank. “Ah, David, if I had not who else would have taken her?” was his comic defence. Sir Adam Fergusson told the aged couple of the Peace of Amiens. “Will it mak’ ony difference in the price o’ nitmugs?” said Mrs. Home, who meant nutmegs, if indeed she meant anything at all.
Jean, sister-in-law to Archibald Constable the publisher, had been educated in France and hesitated to admit that she had forgotten the language, and would translate coals “collier” and table napkin “table napkune,” to the amazement and amusement of her hearers. Her ideas towards the close got a little mixed. “If I should be spared to be taken away,” she remarked, “I hope my nephew will get the doctor to open my head and see if anything can be done for my hearing.” This is a masterpiece of its kind, and perhaps too good to be perfectly true. She played well; “gars the instrument speak,” it was said. There was one touch of romance in her life. A French admirer had given her a box of bonbons, wherein she found “a puzzle ring of gold, divided yet united,” and with their joint initials. She never saw or heard from her lover, yet she called for it many times in her last illness. It was a better way of showing her constancy than that taken by Lady Betty Charteris, of the Wemyss family. Disappointed in love, she took to her bed, where she lay for twenty-six years, to the time of her death, in fact. This was in St. John Street in the latter half of the eighteenth century.
The stage was without much influence in Edinburgh save on rare occasions. One of them was when Sarah Siddons was in Edinburgh in 1784. Her first appearance was on the 22nd May of that year, when she scored a success as Belvedere in Venice Preserved. The audience listened in profound silence, and the lady, used to more enthusiasm, got a little nervous, till a canny citizen was moved audibly to admit, “That’s no bad.” A roar of applause followed that almost literally brought down the galleries. She played Lady Randolph in Douglas twice; “there was not a dry eye in the whole house,” observed the contemporary Courant. Shakespeare was not acted during her visit; the folk of the time were daring enough to consider him just so-so after Home! Everybody was mad to hear her. At any rate, the General Assembly of the Church was deserted until its meetings were arranged not to clash with her appearance. There were applications for 2550 places where there were only 630 of that description on hand. The gallery doors were guarded by detachments of soldiers with drawn bayonets, which they are said to have used to some purpose on an all too insistent crowd. Her tragedy manner was more than skin deep, she could never shake it off; she talked in blank verse. Scott used to tell how, during a dinner at Ashestiel, she made an attendant shake with—
“You’ve brought me water, boy—I asked for beer.”
Once in Edinburgh she dined with the Homes, and in her most tragic tones asked for a “little porter.” John, the old servant-man, took her only too literally; he reappeared, lugging in a diminutive though stout Highland caddie, remarking, “I’ve found ane, mem; he’s the least I could get.” Even Sarah needs must laugh, though Mrs. Home, we are assured, on the authority of Robert Chambers, never saw the joke.
Another time Mrs. Siddons dined with the Lord Provost, who apologised for the seasoning.
“Beef cannot be too salt for me, my Lord,”
was the solemn response of the tragic muse.