Mr Cullen entered at the Scottish bar in 1764, and, distinguishing himself highly as a lawyer, was raised to the bench in 1796, when he took the designation of Lord Cullen. He cultivated elegant literature, and contributed some papers of acknowledged merit to the Mirror and Lounger; but it was in conversation that he chiefly shone.
The close adjoining to the Mint contains several old-fashioned houses of a dignified appearance. In a floor of one bearing the date 1679, and having a little court in front, Alexander Wedderburn, Earl of Rosslyn and Lord Chancellor of England, resided while at the Scottish bar. This, as is well known, was a very brief interval; for a veteran barrister having one day used the term ‘presumptuous boy’ with reference to him, and his own caustic reply having drawn upon him a rebuke from the bench, he took off his gown, and making a bow, said he would never more plead where he was subjected to insult, but would seek a wider field for his exertions. His subsequent rapid rise at the English bar is matter of history. It is told that, returning to Edinburgh at the end of his life, after an absence of many years, he wished to see the house where he had lived while a Scotch advocate. Too infirm to walk, he was borne in a chair to the foot of the Mint Close to see this building. One thing he was particularly anxious about. While residing here, he had had five holes made in the little court to play at some bowling game of which he was fond. He wished, above all things, to see these holes once more, and when he found they were still there, he expressed much satisfaction. Churchill himself might have melted at such an anecdote of the old days of him who was
‘Pert at the bar, and in the senate loud.’
About midway up the close is a turreted mansion, accessible from Hyndford’s Close, and having a tolerably good garden connected with it. This was, in 1742, the residence of the Earl of Selkirk; subsequently it was occupied by Dr Daniel Rutherford, professor of botany. Sir Walter Scott, who, being a nephew of that gentleman, was often in the house in his young days, communicated to me a curious circumstance connected with it. It appears that the house immediately adjacent was not furnished with a stair wide enough to allow of a coffin being carried down in decent fashion. It had, therefore, what the Scottish law calls a servitude upon Dr Rutherford’s house, conferring the perpetual liberty of bringing the deceased inmates through a passage into that house and down its stair into the lane.
[MISS NICKY MURRAY.]
The dancing assemblies of Edinburgh were for many years, about the middle of the last century, under the direction and dictatorship of the Honourable Miss Nicky Murray, one of the sisters of the Earl of Mansfield. Much good sense, firmness, knowledge of the world and of the histories of individuals, as well as a due share of patience and benevolence, were required for this office of unrecognised though real power; and it was generally admitted that Miss Murray possessed the needful qualifications in a remarkable degree, though rather more marked by good manners than good-nature. She and her sisters lived for many years in a floor of a large building at the head of Bailie Fife’s Close—a now unhallowed locality, where, I believe, Francis Jeffrey attended his first school. In their narrow mansion, the Miss Murrays received flights of young lady-cousins from the country, to be finished in their manners and introduced into society. No light task must theirs have been, all things considered. I find a highly significant note on the subject inserted by an old gentleman in an interleaved copy of my first edition: ‘It was from Miss Nicky Murray’s—a relation of the Gray family—that my father ran off with my mother, then not sixteen years old.’
The Assembly Room of that time was in the close where the Commercial Bank was afterwards established.[221] First there was a lobby, where chairs were disburdened of their company, and where a reduced gentleman, with pretensions to the title of Lord Kirkcudbright—descendant of the once great Maclellans of Galloway—might have been seen selling gloves; this being the person alluded to in a letter written by Goldsmith while a student in Edinburgh: ‘One day, happening to slip into Lord Kilcobry’s—don’t be surprised, his lordship is only a glover!’ The dancing-room opened directly from the lobby, and above stairs was a tea-room. The former had a railed space in the centre, within which the dancers were arranged, while the spectators sat round on the outside; and no communication was allowed between the different sides of this sacred pale. The lady-directress had a high chair or throne at one end. Before Miss Nicky Murray, Lady Elliot of Minto and Mrs Brown of Coalstoun, wives of judges, had exercised this lofty authority, which was thought honourable on account of the charitable object of the assemblies. The arrangements were of a rigid character, and certainly tending to dullness. There being but one set allowed to dance at a time, it was seldom that any person was twice on the floor in one night. The most of the time was spent in acting the part of lookers-on, which threw great duties in the way of conversation upon the gentlemen. These had to settle with a partner for the year, and were upon no account permitted to change, even for a single night. The appointment took place at the beginning of the season, usually at some private party or ball given by a person of distinction, where the fans of the ladies were all put into a gentleman’s cocked hat; the gentlemen put in their hands and took a fan, and to whomsoever the fan belonged, that was to be his partner for the season. In the general rigours of this system, which sometimes produced ludicrous combinations, there was, however, one palliative—namely, the fans being all distinguishable from each other, and the gentleman being in general as well acquainted with the fan as the face of his mistress, and the hat being open, it was possible to peep in, and exercise, to a certain extent, a principle of selection, whereby he was perhaps successful in procuring an appointment to his mind. All this is spiritedly given in a poem of Sir Alexander Boswell:
‘Then were the days of modesty of mien!