It must have been altogether an odd little establishment—the wigs set out upon their blocks, perhaps, who knows, the barber's humbler craft being plied behind backs; the books multiplying daily on shelves and in windows, and the ragged boys with their pennies waiting to see if there was a new piece by Allan Ramsay; while perhaps in the corner, where lay the lists of the new circulating library—the first in Scotland—Miss Lydia Languish with her maid, or my lady's gentlewoman from some fine house in the Canongate, had come in to ask for the last new novel from London, the Scotch capital having not yet begun to produce that article for itself.
One may be sure that Allan, rotund and smiling, was always ready for a crack with the ladies, and to recommend the brand new Pamela, the support of virtue, or some contemporary work of lesser genius. Though the general costume was like that worn in the other parts of the island, perhaps a little behind London fashions, the fair visitors would still be veiled with the plaid, the fine woven screen of varied tartan which covered the head like a hood, and could on occasion conceal the face more effectually than Spanish lace or Indian muslin—a singular peculiarity not ancient and scarcely to be called national, since the tartan came from the still-despised Highlands, and these were Lowland ladies who wore the plaid. This fashion would seem to have begun to be shaken by Ramsay's time, for he pleads its cause with all the fervour of a poetical advocate. There is something grotesque in the arguments, and still more grotesque in the names by which he distinguishes the wearers of the plaid.
"Light as the pinions of the airy fry
Of larks and linnets who traverse the sky,
Is the Tartana, spun so very fine
Its weight can never make the fair repine;
Nor does it move beyond its proper sphere,
But lets the gown in all its shape appear;
Nor is the straightness of her waist denied
To be by every ravished eye surveyed;
For this the hoop may stand at largest bend,
It comes not nigh, nor can its weight offend.
* * * * *
"If shining red Campbella's cheeks adorn,
Our fancies straight conceive the blushing morn,
Beneath whose dawn the sun of beauty lies,
Nor need we light but from Campbella's eyes.
If lined with green Stuarta's plaid we view,
Or thine, Ramseia, edged around with blue,
One shews the spring when nature is most kind,
The other heaven whose spangles lift the mind."
The description of the manner in which this engaging garment is worn has all the more reason to be quoted that it was not only a new piece by Allan Ramsay, but affords a glimpse of the feminine figures that were to be seen in the High Street of Edinburgh going to kirk and market in the beginning of the eighteenth century. There is, too, a pleasant touch of individuality in the musical street cry that wakes the morn.
"From when the cock proclaims the rising day,
And milkmaids sing around sweet curds and whey,
Till grey-eyed twilight, harbinger of night,
Pursues o'er silver mountains sinking light,
I can unwearied from my casements view
The Plaid, with something still about it new.
How are we pleased when, with a handsome air,
We see Hepburna walk with easy care!
One arm half circles round her slender waist,
The other like an ivory pillar placed,
To hold her plaid around her modest face,
Which saves her blushes with the gayest grace;
If in white kids her slender fingers move,
Or, unconfined, jet through the sable glove.
"With what a pretty action Keitha holds
Her plaid, and varies oft its airy folds!
How does that naked space the spirits move,
Between the ruffled lawn and envious glove!
We by the sample, though no more be seen,
Imagine all that's fair within the screen.
"Thus belles in plaids veil and display their charms,
The love-sick youth thus bright Humea warms,
And with her graceful mien her rivals all alarms."
The fair Hepburna, Humea, Campbella, and the rest may tempt the reader to a smile; but the picture has its value, and is a detail of importance in the realisation of that animated and crowded scene. By this time probably Ramsay had removed his shop to the end of the Luckenbooths, which faced "east" to the unencumbered portion of the High Street, where the City Cross stood, and where all the notable persons made their daily promenade. It was here that he was visited by a kindred spirit, the poet Gay, who had been brought to Edinburgh by his patroness the Duchess of Queensberry, and soon formed acquaintance with the local poet. The two little roundabout bards used to stand together at the door of the shop to watch the crowd, in which no doubt Ramsay would be gratified by a friendly nod from the Lord President, and swell with civic and with personal pride to point out to the English visitor that distinguished Scotsman the loyal and the learned Forbes. The Cross, round which this genteel and witty crowd assembled daily, stood then, according to the plans of the period, in the centre of the High Street, where it had been removed for the advantage of greater space in the previous century. And the view from Ramsay's shop—from which by this time the wigs had entirely disappeared, and which was now a refined and cultured bookseller's, adorned outside with medallions of two poets, Scotch and English, Ben Jonson and Drummond of Hawthornden—was bounded by the gate of the Netherbow with its picturesque tower, and glimpses through the open roadway, of the Canongate beyond, and the cross lines of busy traffic leading to Leith. It was thus a wide space between the lines of high houses, more like a Place than a street, upon which the two gossips gazed, no doubt with a complacent thought that their living presence underneath carried out the symbol of the two heads above—the poets of England and of Scotland—and that in the teeming street below them were many who pointed out to each other this new and delightful combination. They were not great poets, either of these round, fat, oily men of verse. And yet the association was pleasant. Perhaps the duchess's coach-and-six, in which the English bard had been conveyed from London, might drive through the open port, as the two stood delighted, watching the pedestrians hurry out of the way and the great lawyers and officials preparing to pay their devoirs to her Grace as she drew up before the bookshop. No doubt they thought it a scene to be remembered in the history of letters. She was at Penicuik House on a visit to the Clerks, who were friends and patrons of Allan, and no doubt had supped or drunk a dish of tea at New Hall, where the Lord President (who was only the Lord Advocate in those days) often took his case in his cousin's house, where Ramsay was a familiar and frequent guest. When Allan made wigs no longer, when all his occupations were about books, and everybody in Edinburgh, gentle and simple, knew him as the poet, he would be still more free to make his jokes and his compliments to all those fine people. But at no time was the genial little poet "blate," as he would himself have said. There was no shyness in him. He "braw'd it," as he says, with no doubt the finest of periwigs, long before he had ceased to be a skull-thatcher, and swaggered through the wynds and about the Cross with the best. The Edinburgh shopkeeper has never been "blate." He has always maintained a freedom of independence which has nothing of the obsequiousness of more common traders, and which gave the greater value to the sly compliment which he would insinuate between two jests. No doubt Campbella and Hamilla would laugh at the little man's compliments, his bows and admiring glances, yet would not object to his exposition of the tartan screen, the delicate silken plaid under which they shielded their radiant complexions and golden locks.