Footsteps of Dr. Johnson (Scotland)

by George Birkbeck Norman Hill

EDINBURGH STABLERS.

In the Edinburgh Directory for 1773-4, among the different trades, there is no entry under the heading of inn-keepers. There are vintners, who, I suppose, were also tavern-keepers, and stablers, who kept the inns. It was to this curious appellation that Topham referred when he said that the inn-keepers had the modesty to call themselves stable-keepers.

A few years after Johnson’s visit a good hotel was at last opened in the New Town. The accommodation was elegant, but the charges extravagant.[288] The French traveller, Saint Fond, who stayed in it about the year 1780, said that the house was magnificent and adorned with columns, as his bill was with flourishes and vignettes. Half a sheet of note-paper was charged threepence, with sixpence added for the trouble of fetching it. He paid twice as much for everything as in the best inn on the road from London. In all his journeyings through England and Scotland he was only twice charged exorbitantly—at Dunn’s Hotel in Edinburgh, and at the Bull’s Head in Manchester.[289]

THE HIGH STREET OF EDINBURGH.

Johnson, coming from Berwick by the coast-road, entered Edinburgh by the Canongate. It was on a dusky night in August that, arm in arm with Boswell, he walked up the High Street. “Its breadth and the loftiness of the buildings on each side made,” he acknowledged, “a noble appearance.”[290] In the light of the day he does not seem to have been equally impressed. “Most of the buildings are very mean,” he wrote to Mrs. Thrale; “and the whole town bears some resemblance to the old part of Birmingham.”[291] In his Letters he does not touch on that appearance so unusual to Englishmen which, as we learn from his narrative, generally struck him in the ancient towns of Scotland.[292] Wesley’s attention was caught by this same “peculiar oddness” and “air of antiquity.” They were like no places that he had ever seen in England, Wales, or Ireland.[293] It was not, however, to Birmingham that that great traveller likened the famous High Street. There was nothing, he said, that could compare with it in Great Britain. Defoe’s admiration had risen still higher. In his eyes it ranked as almost the largest, longest, and finest street in the world. Its solidity of stone he contrasted with the slightness of the houses in the South. Lofty though the buildings were, placed, too, on “the narrow ridge of a long ascending mountain,” with storms often raging round them, “there was no blowing of tiles about the streets to knock people on the heads as they passed; no stacks of chimneys and gable-ends of houses falling in to bury the inhabitants in their ruins, as was often found in London and other of our paper-built cities in England.”[294] “The High Street is the stateliest street in the world,” said another writer; “being broad enough for five coaches to drive up a-breast, while the houses are proportionately high.”[295] According to Topham it surpassed “the famous street in Lisle, La Rue Royale.”[296] “It would be undoubtedly one of the noblest streets in Europe,” wrote Smollett, “if an ugly mass of mean buildings, called the Luckenbooths, had not thrust itself into the middle of the way.”[297] Pennant had the same tale to tell. “As fine a street as most in Europe, was spoilt by the Luckenbooth Row and the Guard House.”[298] Carlyle, when he came to Edinburgh as a boy-student, in the year 1809, had seen “the Luckenbooths, with their strange little ins and outs, and eager old women in miniature shops of combs, shoe-laces, and trifles.”[299] One venerable monument had been wantonly removed, while so much that was mean and ugly was left to encumber the street. In 1756 those “dull destroyers,” the magistrates, had pulled down “Dun-Edin’s Cross.”[300] From the bottom of the hill “by the very Palace door,” up to the gates of the Castle the High Street, even so late as Johnson’s time, was the home of men of rank, of wealth, and of learning. It did not bear that look of sullen neglect which chills the stranger who recalls its past glories. The craftsmen and the nobles, the poor clerks and the wealthy merchants, judges, shopkeepers, labourers, authors, physicians, and lawyers, lived all side by side, so that “the tide of existence” which swept up and down was as varied as it was full. The coldness of the grey stone of the tall houses was relieved by the fantastic devices in red or yellow or blue on a ground of black, by which each trader signified the commodities in which he dealt. As each story was a separate abode, there were often seen painted on the front of one tall house half-a-dozen different signs. Here was a quartern loaf over a full-trimmed periwig, and there a Cheshire cheese or a rich firkin of butter over stays and petticoats.[301] To the north, scarcely broken as yet by the scattered buildings of the infant New Town, the outlook commanded that “incomparable prospect” which delighted Colonel Mannering, as he gazed from the window of Counsellor Pleydell’s library on “the Frith of Forth with its islands; the embayment which is terminated by the Law of North Berwick, and the varied shores of Fife, indenting with a hilly outline the clear blue horizon.”[302]

Every Sunday during the hours of service the streets were silent and solitary, as if a plague had laid waste the city. But in a moment the scene was changed. The multitude that poured forth from each church swept everything before it. The stranger who attempted to face it was driven from side to side by the advancing flood. The faithful were so intently meditating on the good things which they had just heard that they had no time to look before them. With their large prayer-books under their arms, their eyes fixed steadily on the ground, and wrapped up in their plaid cloaks, they went on regardless of everything that passed.[303]

Less than thirty years before Johnson, on that August night, “went up streets,”[304] the young Pretender, surrounded by his Highlanders, and preceded by his heralds and trumpeters, had marched from the Palace of his ancestors to the ancient Market Cross, and there had had his father proclaimed King by the title of James the Seventh of Scotland and Third of England. Down the same street in the following Spring his own standard, with its proud motto of Tandem Triumphans, and the banners of thirteen of his chief captains, in like manner preceded by heralds and trumpeters, had been borne on the shoulders of the common hangman and thirteen chimney-sweepers, to the same Cross, and there publicly burnt.[305] Here, too, was seen from time to time the sad and terrible procession, when, from the Tolbooth, some unhappy wretch was led forth to die in the Grass Market. As the clock struck the hour after noon, the City Guard knocked at the prison door. The convict at once came out, dressed in a waistcoat and breeches of white, bound with black ribands, and wearing a night-cap, also bound with black. His hands were tied behind him, and a rope was round his neck. On each side of him walked a clergyman, the hangman followed bemuffled in a great coat, while all around, with their arms ready, marched the Town Guard. Every window in every floor of every house was crowded with spectators.[306] Happily the criminal law of Scotland was far less bloody than that which at this time disgraced England, and executions, except for murder, were rare.[307] There was also much less crime. While the streets and neighbourhood of London were beset by footpads and highwaymen, in Edinburgh a man might go about with the same security at midnight as at noonday. Street robberies were very rare, and a street murder was, it is said, a thing unknown. This general safety was due partly to the Town Guard,[308] partly also to the Society of Cadies, or Cawdies, a fraternity of errand-runners. Each member had to find surety for good behaviour, and the whole body was answerable for the dishonesty of each. Their chief place of stand was at the top of the High Street, where some of them were found all the day and most of the night. They were said to be acquainted with every person and every place in Edinburgh. No stranger arrived but they knew of it at once. They acted as a kind of police, and were as useful as Sir John Fielding’s thief-takers in London.[309] In spite of these safeguards, in the autumn before Johnson’s visit there was an outbreak of crime. A reward of one guinea each was offered for the arrest of forty persons who had been banished the city, and who were suspected of having returned.[310] The worthy Magistrates, it should seem, were like Dogberry, and did not trouble themselves about a thief so long as he stole out of their company.

THE TOLBOOTH.

THE EDINBURGH TOLBOOTH.