Edinburgh was at this period much more than the scene of the foremost medical and surgical teaching of the day in the world. It was a striking centre of intellectual activity. Sir Walter Scott, Cockburn, and Jeffrey were famous in literature and politics; Chalmers and Moncrieff in Church affairs; and Aytoun, John Wilson, Sir William Hamilton, and Sir David Brewster were names that attracted men from far and wide to the modern Athens. English and foreign advocates, scholars, artists, squires, and noblemen mingled together to hear or see some of 28 these men. Lord John Russell, Henry Temple—subsequently Lord Palmerston—and Lord Melbourne were amongst the young Englishmen who attended university classes for a session or two; and H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, and his brother the Duke of Edinburgh, each matriculated in later days. When Simpson began his studies Knox was the great lion, without a visit to whose class-room no sojourn in Edinburgh was complete; just as in later years Simpson’s house in Queen Street was the resort of all sorts and conditions of distinguished people.
The University had little control over her students once they were outside the gates of the quadrangle. There were no residential colleges; each youth found lodgings for himself suitable to his means, and led a perfectly independent life. So long as he conducted himself with propriety within her walls his Alma Mater cared little how he conducted himself or how he fared outside. Before 1858, when the Town Council controlled University affairs, there were sometimes attempts to order the comings and goings of students. It is recorded that in 1635 the Town Council discovered that the scholars of the College were much withdrawn from their studies by “invitations to burials,” which “prejudiced their advancement in learning,” and they enacted that no student was to be permitted to attend burials except those of University or city worthies. This was at a time when some of the students were provided with residences 29 inside the University, but by the beginning of the eighteenth century College residence had ceased. From time to time attempts have been made to render the students conspicuous in the city by the wearing of red gowns, but without success; and those of all faculties continue to be their own masters, in marked contrast to the mode of government in force at Oxford and Cambridge. Recently, in the eighties, a batch of students who had figured in the police-court after a riot in the gallery of a theatre were surprised to find themselves summoned before the Senatus Academicus and rusticated for varying periods; this, however, was but a spasmodic exercise of power. The chief advantage claimed for this custom of leaving the student to his own devices is that it encourages independence and develops each man’s individuality better than a system of discipline and control. In men of Simpson’s calibre it certainly has had a good effect.
Although the family in Bathgate strained every nerve to keep James well supplied with the necessary funds as a student, they were not able to place him in such a pecuniary position as to make it unnecessary for him to exercise economy: He appears to have been very careful indeed of the money which he had; much more careful than when he reckoned his income by thousands. He kept methodical accounts of his expenses down to the most trivial items, and regularly submitted them to his family. His cash-book opened with the following quotation 30 from a small book called the “Economy of Life,” which figures at a cost of ninepence:—“Let not thy recreations be expensive lest the pain of purchasing them exceed the pleasure thou hast in their enjoyment”; and to this he added:—
“No trivial gain nor trivial loss despise;
Mole-hills, if often heaped, to mountains rise.
Weigh every small expense and nothing waste;
Farthings long saved amount to pounds at last.”
It is easy to see here the imprint of a well-known national characteristic, from which, however, he completely shook himself free when prosperity came to him.
His share of the rent of the Adam Street lodging amounted to only three shillings a week. The entries in the cash-book show how frugally he lived and how every spare sum was devoted to the purchase of books. His library, the foundation of much of his encyclopedic knowledge, was a curious mixture. Adam’s “Antiquities,” Milton’s Poems, Byron’s “Giaour” and “Childe Harold,” a Church Bible, Paley’s “Natural Theology,” Fife’s “Anatomy,” and “The Fortunes of Nigel,” were amongst those entered as purchased. The daily entries were such as the following:—“Subject (anatomical), £2; spoon, 6d.; bread and tart, 1s. 8d. Duncan’s Therapeutics, 9d.; snuff; 1½d.; Early Rising, 9½d.”
He followed out the usual student’s custom of the day of learning dispensing by serving for a time in a chemist’s shop. The late Dr. Keiller, of Edinburgh, 31 used to relate how, while he himself was so employed in a chemist’s shop in Dundas Street, one day “a little fellow with a big head” was brought in and entered as a pupil by a relative. The little fellow was Simpson, and no sooner was he left in the shop than he sat down with a book upon drugs, and turning to the shelves took down drug after drug to read up. The prompt industry of the big-headed fellow deeply impressed Keiller.