POVERTY OF THE COMMON PEOPLE.
This dirtiness would offend an Englishman more than a man of any other nation, for “high and low, rich and poor, they were remarkable for cleanness all the world over.”[230] Matthew Bramble, in Smollett’s Humphry Clinker, notices the same change. “The boors of Northumberland,” he wrote, “are lusty fellows, fresh-complexioned, cleanly and well-clothed; but the labourers in Scotland are generally lank, lean, hard-featured, sallow, soiled and shabby. The cattle are much in the same style with their drivers, meagre, stunted, and ill-equipt.”[231] Topham, in his Letters from Edinburgh, asserts the misery, but denies the idleness. Temperance and labour were, he says, in the extreme; nevertheless, on all sides were seen, “haggard looks, meagre complexions, and bodies weakened by fatigue and worn down by the inclemency of the seasons.” Neither were the poor of the capital any better off. Their wretchedness and poverty exceeded, he thought, what was to be found anywhere else in the whole world. But though as a nation the Scotch were very poor, yet they were very honest.[232] A traveller through the country in 1766 goes so far as to maintain that the common people in outward appearance would not at first be taken to be of the human species. Though their indigence was extreme, yet they would rather suffer poverty than labour. Their nastiness was greater than could be reported. Happily their rudeness was beginning to wear off, and in the trading towns where the knowledge of the use of money was making them eager enough to acquire it, they were already pretty well civilized and industrious.[233] Wages were miserably low. The Scotch labourer received little more than half what was paid to the Englishman; yet grain was dearer in Scotland than in England.[234] The historian of Edinburgh thus sums the general condition of the labouring poor:—
“The common people have no ideas of the comforts of life. The labourers and low mechanics live in a very wretched style. Their houses are the receptacles of nastiness, where the spider may in peace weave his web from generation to generation. A garden, where nothing is to be seen but a few plants of coleworts or potatoes, amidst an innumerable quantity of weeds, surrounds his house. A bit of flesh will not be within his door twice a year. He abhors industry, and has no relish for the comforts arising from it.”[235]
Lord Elibank’s famous reply to Johnson’s definition of oats had every merit but a foundation of fact. “Oats,” wrote Johnson, “a grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.” “Very true,” replied his lordship, “and where will you find such men and such horses?”[236]
The natural result of this general poverty was seen in the number of beggars who thronged the streets and roads. Scotland was neither blessed with a good poor-law nor cursed with a bad one. The relief of want was left altogether to charity. In Edinburgh Johnson thought that the proportion of beggars was not less than in London. “In the smaller places it was far greater than in English towns of the same extent.” The mendicants were not, however, of the order of sturdy vagabonds. They were neither importunate nor clamorous. “They solicit silently, or very modestly.”[237] Smollett went so far as to maintain in his Humphry Clinker, which was published only two years before Johnson’s visit, that “there was not a beggar to be seen within the precincts of Edinburgh.”[238] For some years, indeed, the streets had been free of them, for a charity workhouse had been erected, to which they were all committed. But the magistrates had grown careless, and the evil had broken out afresh. “The streets are crowded with begging poor,” wrote one writer. “We see the whole stairs, streets, and public walks swarming with beggars every day,” wrote another.[239]
HOUSES AND MEALS.
The general neglect of the decencies of life was due chiefly to poverty, but partly, no doubt, to that violent outburst against all that is beautiful and graceful which accompanied the Reformation in Scotland. A nation which, as a protest against popery, “thought dirt and cob-webs essential to the house of God,”[240] was not likely in their homes to hold that cleanliness was next to godliness. The same coarseness of living had been found in all classes, though it was beginning to yield before English influence. Dr. Alexander Carlyle, in the year 1742, notices as a sign of increasing refinement, that at the tavern in Haddington, where the Presbytery dined, knives and forks were provided for the table. A few years earlier each guest had brought his own. There was, however, only one glass, which went round with the bottle.[241] The same custom had prevailed in Edinburgh when Lord Kames was a young man. French wine was placed on the table, he said, in a small tin vessel, which held about an English pint. A single drinking-glass served a company the whole evening, and the first persons who called for a new glass with every new pint were accused of luxury.[242] Boswell could remember the time when a carving knife was looked upon as a novelty. One of his friends was rated by his father, “a gentleman of ancient family and good literature, for introducing such a foppish superfluity.” In the previous generation whatever food was eaten with a spoon, such as soup, milk, or pudding, used to be taken by every person dipping his spoon into the common dish.[243] When an old laird was complimented on the accomplishments which his son had brought home from his travels, “he answered that he knew nothing he had learnt but to cast a sark (change a shirt) every day, and to sup his kail twice.”[244] Of the food that was served up, there was not much greater variety than of the dishes in which it was served. When Wesley first visited Scotland, even at a nobleman’s table, he had only one kind of meat, and no vegetables whatever. By the year 1788, however, vegetables were, he recorded, as plentiful as in England.[245] The butter in these early days made in country houses, “would have turned stomachs the least squeamish.” But by the introduction of tea a great improvement had been made. Bread and butter was taken with it, and a demand arose for butter that was sweet and clean. Wheaten bread, too, began to be generally eaten. So great a delicacy had it been, that the sixpenny loaf and the sugar used to be kept “locked up in the lady’s press.”[246] In the Highlands, at all events, there was a great variety as well as abundance of food. The following was the breakfast which in Argyleshire was set before the travellers in Humphry Clinker:—
“One kit of boiled eggs; a second full of butter; a third full of cream; an entire cheese made of goat’s milk; a large earthen pot full of honey; the best part of a ham; a cold venison pasty; a bushel of oatmeal made in thin cakes and bannocks, with a small wheaten loaf in the middle for the strangers; a large stone bottle full of whisky, another of brandy, and a kilderkin of ale. There was a ladle chained to the cream kit, with curious wooden bickers to be filled from this reservoir. The spirits were drunk out of a silver quaff, and the ale out of horns. Finally a large roll of tobacco was presented by way of desert, and every individual took a comfortable quid, to prevent the bad effects of the morning air.”[247]
Knox, in his Tour through the Highlands,[248] gives a still vaster bill of fare. The houses of the country gentlemen were for the most part small. “It was only on festivals or upon ceremonious occasions, that the dining-room was used. People lived mostly in the family bed-chamber, where friends and neighbours were received without scruple. Many an easy, comfortable meal,” writes Ramsay, of Ochtertyre, “had I made in that way.”[249] It was to this custom that the Scotch had of turning a bed-room into an eating-room that an English traveller refers, when he says that the Edinburgh taverns are the worst in the world, for “you sup underground in a bed-chamber.”[250] Even at the modern houses there was generally a total absence of an accommodation such as would not at the present day be tolerated in a labourer’s cottage by a sanitary inspector in any district in England.[251]
The state of the capital was far worse even than the state of the country. It was one of the last places in the world on which would have been bestowed that favourite and almost exalted epithet of praise—neat.[252] The houses, indeed, were solidly built, and the rooms of the well-to-do people were comfortable and clean, and often spacious. “Nothing could form a stronger contrast than the difference between the outside and the inside of the door.” Within all was decency and propriety, without was a filthy staircase leading down into a filthy street. Every story was a complete house, occupied by a separate family. The steep and dark staircase was common to all, and was kept clean by none. It was put to the basest uses.[253] The gentry did not commonly occupy the lowest stories or the highest. The following is the list of the inhabitants of a good house in the High Street:—