THE SCAVENGING OF EDINBURGH.

There were no water pipes, there were no drain pipes, there were no cess-pools, and there were no covered sewers in the streets. At a fixed hour of the night all the impurities were carried down the common staircase in tubs, and emptied into the street as into a common sewer, or else, in defiance of the law, cast out of the window. “Throwing over the window” was the delicate phrase in which this vile practice was veiled. It was “an obstinate disease which had withstood all the labour of the Magistrates, Acts of Council, Dean of Guild Courts for stencheling,[255] tirlesing,[256] and locking up windows, fines, imprisonments, and banishing the city.”[257] The servants were willing to serve for lower wages in houses where this practice was winked at. It gave rise to numerous quarrels which caused constables more trouble than any other part of their duty.[258] According to the account given by the English maid in Humphry Clinker, when “the throwing over” began, “they called gardy loo to the passengers, which signifies Lord have mercy upon you.”[259] A young English traveller, who, the first night of his arrival in Edinburgh, was enjoying his supper, as he tells us, and good bottle of claret with a merry company in a tavern, heard, as the clock was striking ten, the beat of the city drum, the signal for the scavenging to begin. The company at once began to fumigate the room by lighting pieces of paper and throwing them on the table. Tobacco smoking, it is clear, could not have been in fashion. As his way to his lodgings lay through one of the wynds he was provided “with a guide who went before him, crying out all the way, Hud your Haunde.”[260] The city scavengers cleansed the streets as fast as they could, and by opening reservoirs which were placed at intervals washed the pavement clean.[261]

To this intolerable nuisance the inhabitants generally seemed insensible, and were too apt to imagine the disgust of strangers as little better than affectation.[262] Yet it was not affectation which led John Wesley, in May, 1761, to make the following entry in his Journal:—

“The situation of the city on a hill shelving down on both sides, as well as to the east, with the stately castle upon a craggy rock on the west, is inexpressibly fine. And the main street so broad and finely paved, with the lofty houses on either hand (many of them seven or eight stories high) is far beyond any in Great Britain. But how can it be suffered that all manner of filth should still be thrown, even into this street, continually? Where are the Magistracy, the Gentry, the Nobility of the Land? Have they no concern for the honour of their nation? How long shall the capital city of Scotland, yea and the chief street of it, stink worse than a common sewer?”[263]

Ten years earlier he had described the town as dirtier even than Cologne. According to Wolfe, it was not till after Christmas, when the company had come into it from the country, that it was “in all its perfection of dirt and gaiety.”[264] Gray called it “that most picturesque (at a distance) and nastiest (when near) of all capital cities.”[265] “Pray for me till I see you,” he added, “for I dread Edinburgh and the —.”[266] To add to the insalubrity, the windows would not readily open. In Scotland they neither opened wide on hinges, nor were drawn up and down by weights and pulleys. For the most part the lower sash only could be raised; and when lifted, it was propped open by a stick or by a pin thrust into a hole.[267] “What cannot be done without some uncommon trouble or particular expedient will not often be done at all. The incommodiousness of the Scotch windows keeps them very closely shut.”[268] From this closeness Johnson suffered not a little, for he loved fresh air, “and on the coldest day or night would set open a window and stand before it,” as Boswell knew to his cost.[269] Topham, who sided with his Scotch friends against Johnson, scoffed at these observations on window-frames and pulleys. “Men of the world,” he wrote, “would not have descended to such remarks. A petty and frivolous detail of trifling circumstances are [sic] the certain signs of ignorance or inexperience.”[270] Johnson, in introducing the subject, had guarded himself against such reflections. “These diminutive observations,” he said, “seem to take away something from the dignity of writing. But it must be remembered that the true state of every nation is the state of common life.”[271] This indifference to pure air no doubt spread death far and wide. In Sir Walter Scott’s family we see an instance of the unwholesomeness of the Old Town. His six elder brothers and sisters, who were all born in the College Wynd, died young. It was only by sending him to breathe country air that he was reared. His father’s younger children were born in one of the new squares, and they for the most part were healthy.[272]

ABOLITION OF VAILS.

From one burthen that weighed heavily in England the guests in most houses in Scotland were free. It was the Scotch, who, as Boswell boasted, “had the honour of being the first to abolish the unhospitable, troublesome, and ungracious custom of giving vails to servants. ‘Sir,’ said Johnson, ‘you abolished vails, because you were too poor to be able to give them.’”[273] How heavily they weighed on all but the rich is shown by an anecdote that I have read somewhere of a poor gentleman, who refused to dine with his kinsman, a nobleman of high rank, unless with the invitation a guinea were sent him to distribute among the expectant servants, who, with outstretched hands, always thronged the hall and blocked up the doorway as he left. “I paid ten shillings to my host’s servants for my dinner and retired,” is the record of a man who had received the honour of an invitation to the house of an English nobleman of high rank.[274] Even Queen Caroline had complained of “the pretty large expense” to which she had been put in the summer of 1735 in visiting her friends, not at their country houses, but in town. “That is your own fault (said the King), for my father, when he went to people’s houses in town, never was fool enough to be giving away his money.”[275] It was to the gentlemen of the county of Aberdeen that was due the merit of beginning this great reformation. About the year 1759 they resolved at a public meeting that vails should be abolished and wages increased.[276] Early in February, 1760, the Select Society of Edinburgh, following their lead, passed a resolution to which their President, the historian Robertson, seems to have lent the graces of his style. They declared that “this custom, being unknown to other nations and a reproach upon the manners and police of this country, has a manifest tendency to corrupt the hospitality and to destroy all intercourse between families. They resolved that from and after the term of Whitsuntide next every member of the Society would absolutely prohibit his own servants to take vails or drink-money, and that he would not offer it to the servants of any person who had agreed to this resolution.”[277] Like resolutions followed from the Faculty of Advocates, the Society of Clerks to His Majesty’s Signet, the Heritors of Mid-Lothian headed by the Earl of Lauderdale, the Grand Lodge of Freemasons, headed by the Earl of Leven, and the Honourable Company of Scots Hunters headed by the President, the Earl of Errol.[278] The same good change was attempted a few years later in England, but apparently without success. The footmen, night after night, raised a riot at Ranelagh Gardens, and mobbed and ill-treated some gentlemen who had been active in the attempt. “There was fighting with drawn swords for some hours; they broke one chariot all to pieces. The ladies go into fits, scream, run into the gardens, and do everything that is ridiculous.”[279]

That “felicity” which England had in its taverns and inns was not equally enjoyed in Scotland. Certainly it was not in Edinburgh that was to be found “that throne of human felicity a tavern chair.”[280] Yet in the Lowlands generally the fare in the inns was good and the accommodation clean. Along both the eastern and the western roads John Wesley was well pleased with the entertainment with which he met. “We had all things good, cheap, in great abundance, and remarkably well dressed.”[281] In the Gentleman’s Magazine for December, 1771, a curious list is given of the inns and innkeepers in Scotland. According to this account the fare generally was good, while everywhere was found “excellent clean linen both for bed and board.” The traveller did well, however, who had his sheets toasted and his bed warmed, for the natives, used as they were to sleeping in their wet plaids, were careless about a damp bed. Goldsmith, on the other hand, spoke as ill of the Scotch inns as he did of the Scotch landscape. In them, he says, “vile entertainment is served up, complained of, and sent down; up comes worse, and that also is changed, and every change makes our wretched cheer more unsavoury.”[282] The scantiness of his purse, however, would have made him resort to the humblest houses, and probably his experience did not extend much outside of Edinburgh. Of the inns of that city, no one, whether native or stranger, had a good word to say. The accommodation that was provided, writes the historian of Edinburgh, “was little better than that of a waggoner or a carrier.”[283] “The inns are mean buildings,” he continues, “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 sun-burnt wench without shoes or stockings. If he should desire furnished lodgings, he is probably conducted to the third or fourth floor, up dark and dirty stairs, and there shown into apartments meanly fitted up. The taverns in general are dirty and dismal as the inns; an idle profusion of victuals, collected without taste, and dressed without skill or cleanliness, is commonly served up. There are, however, exceptions, and a Scots tavern, if a good one, is the best of all taverns.”[284] Smollett, willing as he was to see the good side of everything in Scotland, yet represents the inn in Edinburgh at which Matthew Bramble alighted as being “so filthy and so disagreeable in every respect, that the old man began to fret.”[285] Perhaps it was the same house which is described by Topham in the following lively passage in his Letters:[286]

“Nov. 15, 1774. There is no inn that is better than an alehouse, nor any accommodation that is decent or cleanly. On my first arrival my companion and myself, after the fatigue of a long day’s journey, were landed at one of these stable-keepers (for they have modesty enough to give themselves no higher denomination) in a part of the town called the Pleasance.[287] We were conducted by a poor devil of a girl, without shoes or stockings, and only a single linsey-wolsey petticoat, which just reached half-way to her ankles, into a room where about twenty Scotch drovers had been regaling themselves with whiskey and potatoes. You may guess our amazement when we were informed that this was the best inn in the metropolis, that we could have no beds, unless we had an inclination to sleep together, and in the same room with the company which a stage-coach had that moment discharged.”