Poor Sir William Dick—for he had been made a baronet by Charles I.—went to London to endeavour to recover some part of his lost means. When he represented the indigence to which he had been reduced, he was told that he was always able to procure pie-crust when other men could not get bread. There was, in fact, a prevalent idea that he possessed some supernatural means—such as the philosopher’s stone—of acquiring money. (Pie-crust came to be called Sir William Dick’s Necessity.) The contrary was shown when the unfortunate man died soon after in a prison in Westminster. There is a picture in Prestonfield House, near Edinburgh, the seat of his descendant, representing him in this last retreat in a mean dress, surrounded by his numerous hapless family. A rare pamphlet, descriptive of his case, presents engravings of three such pictures; one exhibiting him on horseback, attended by guards as Lord Provost of Edinburgh, superintending the unloading of one of his rich ships at Leith; another as a prisoner in the hands of the bailiffs; the third as dead in prison. A more memorable example of the instability of fortune does not occur in our history. It seems completely to realise the picture in Job (chap. xxvii.): ‘The rich man shall lie down, but he shall not be gathered: he openeth his eyes, and he is not. Terrors take hold on him as waters, a tempest stealeth him away in the night. The east wind carrieth him away, and he departeth: and as a storm, hurleth him out of his place. For God shall cast upon him, and not spare: he would fain flee out of his hand. Men shall clap their hands at him, and shall hiss him out of his place.’
The fortunes of the family were restored by Sir William’s grandson, Sir James, a remarkably shrewd man, who was likewise a merchant in Edinburgh. There is a traditionary story that this gentleman, observing the utility of manure, and that the streets of Edinburgh were loaded with it, to the detriment of the comfort of the inhabitants, offered to relieve the town of this nuisance on condition that he should be allowed, for a certain term of years, to carry it away gratis. Consent was given, and the Prestonfield estate became, in consequence, like a garden. The Duke of York had a great affection for Sir James Dick, and used to walk through the Park to visit him at his house very frequently. Hence, according to the report of the family, the way his Royal Highness took came to be called The Duke’s Walk; afterwards a famous resort for the fighting of duels. Sir James became Catholic, and, while provost in 1681, had his house burned over his head by the collegianers; but it was rebuilt at the public expense. His grandson, Sir Alexander Dick, is referred to in kindly terms in Boswell’s Tour to the Hebrides as a venerable man of studious habits and a friend of men of letters. The reader will probably learn with some surprise that though Sir William’s descendants never recovered any of the money lent by him to the State, a lady of his family, living in 1844, was in the enjoyment of a pension with express reference to that ancient claim.
THE BIRTH OF LORD BROUGHAM.
[1868.—It has been remarked elsewhere that, for a great number of years after the general desertion of the Old Town by persons of condition, there were many denizens of the New who had occasion to look back to the Canongate and Cowgate as the place of their birth. The nativity of one person who achieved extraordinary greatness and distinction, and whose death was an occurrence of yesterday, Henry, Lord Brougham, undoubtedly was connected with the lowly place last mentioned.
The Edinburgh tradition on the subject was that Henry Brougham, younger, of Brougham Hall, in the county of Cumberland, in consequence of a disappointment in love, came to Edinburgh for the diversion of his mind. Principal Robertson, to whom he bore a letter of introduction, recommended the young man to the care of his sister—Mrs Syme, widow of the minister of Alloa—who occupied what was then considered as a good and spacious house at the head of the Cowgate—strictly the third floor of the house now marked No. 8—a house desirable from its having an extraordinary space in front. Here, it would appear, Mr Brougham speedily consoled himself for his former disappointment by falling in love with Eleonora, the daughter of Mrs Syme; and a marriage, probably a hurried one, soon united the young pair. They set up for themselves (Whitsunday 1778) in an upper floor of a house in the then newly built St Andrew Square, where, in the ensuing September, their eldest son, charged with so illustrious a destiny, first saw the light.[61]
Mr Brougham conclusively settled in Edinburgh; he subsequently occupied a handsome house in George Street. He was never supposed to be a man of more than ordinary faculties; but any deficiency in this respect was amply made up for by his wife, who is represented by all who remember her as a person of uncommon mental gifts. The contrast of the pair drew the attention of society, and was the subject of a gently satiric sketch in Henry Mackenzie’s Lounger, No. 45, published on the 10th December 1785, which, however, would vainly be looked for in the reprinted copies, as it was immediately suppressed.]
