‘’Tis strange, though true, he who would shun all evil,
Cannot do better than go to the Devil.’
John Maclaurin.
One is disposed to pause a moment on Steil’s name, as it is honourably connected with the history of music in Scotland. Being a zealous lover of the divine science and a good singer of the native melodies, he had rendered his house a favourite resort of all who possessed a similar taste, and here actually was formed (1728) the first regular society of amateur musicians known in our country. It numbered seventy persons, and met once a week, the usual entertainments consisting in playing on the harpsichord and violin the concertos and sonatas of Handel, then newly published. Apparently, however, this fraternity did not long continue to use Steil’s house, if I am right in supposing his retirement from business as announced in an advertisement of February 1729, regarding ‘a sale by auction, of the haill pictures, prints, music-books, and musical instruments, belonging to Mr John Steill’ (Caledonian Mercury).
Coming down to a later time—1760-1770—we find the tavern in highest vogue to have been Fortune’s, in the house which the Earl of Eglintoune had once occupied in the Stamp-office Close. The gay men of rank, the scholarly and philosophical, the common citizens, all flocked hither; and the royal commissioner for the General Assembly held his levees here, and hence proceeded to church with his cortège, then additionally splendid from having ladies walking in it in their court-dresses as well as gentlemen.[143] Perhaps the most remarkable set of men who met here was the Poker Club,[144] consisting of Hume, Robertson, Blair, Fergusson, and many others of that brilliant galaxy, but whose potations were comparatively of a moderate kind.
The Star and Garter, in Writers’ Court, kept by one Clerihugh (the Clerihugh’s alluded to in Guy Mannering), was another tavern of good consideration, the favourite haunt of the magistrates and Town-council, who in those days mixed much more of private enjoyments with public duties than would now be considered fitting.[145] Here the Rev. Dr Webster used to meet them at dinner, in order to give them the benefit of his extensive knowledge and great powers of calculation when they were scheming out the New Town.
A favourite house for many of the last years of the bygone century was Douglas’s, in the Anchor Close, near the Cross, a good specimen of those profound retreats which have been spoken of as valued in the inverse ratio of the amount of daylight which visited them. You went a few yards down the dark, narrow alley, passing on the left hand the entry to a scale stair, decorated with ‘THE LORD IS ONLY MY SVPORT;’ then passed another door, bearing the still more antique legend: ‘O LORD, IN THE IS AL MY TRAIST;’ immediately beyond, under an architrave calling out ‘BE MERCIFVL TO ME,’ you entered the hospitable mansion of Dawney Douglas, the scene of the daily and nightly orgies of the Pleydells and Fairfords, the Hays, Erskines, and Crosbies, of the time of our fathers. Alas! how fallen off is now that temple of Momus and the Bacchanals! You find it divided into a multitude of small lodgings, where, instead of the merry party, vociferous with toasts and catches, you are most likely to be struck by the spectacle of some poor lone female, pining under a parochial allowance, or a poverty-struck family group, one-half of whom are disposed on sick-beds of straw mingled with rags—the terrible exponents of our peculiar phasis of civilisation.
The frequenter of Douglas’s, after ascending a few steps, found himself in a pretty large kitchen—a dark, fiery Pandemonium, through which numerous ineffable ministers of flame were continually flying about, while beside the door sat the landlady, a large, fat woman, in a towering head-dress and large-flowered silk gown, who bowed to every one passing. Most likely on emerging from this igneous region, the party would fall into the hands of Dawney himself, and so be conducted to an apartment. A perfect contrast was he to his wife: a thin, weak, submissive man, who spoke in a whisper, never but in the way of answer, and then, if possible, only in monosyllables. He had a habit of using the word ‘quietly’ very frequently, without much regard to its being appropriate to the sense; and it is told that he one day made the remark that ‘the Castle had been firing to-day—quietly;’ which, it may well be believed, was not soon forgotten by his customers. Another trait of Dawney was that some one lent him a volume of Clarendon’s history to read, and daily frequenting the room where it lay, used regularly, for some time, to put back the reader’s mark to the same place; whereupon, being by-and-by asked how he liked the book, Dawney answered: ‘Oh, very weel; but dinna ye think it’s gay mickle the same thing o’er again?’ The house was noted for suppers of tripe, rizzared haddocks, mince collops, and hashes, which never cost more than sixpence a head. On charges of this moderate kind the honest couple grew extremely rich before they died.
The principal room in this house was a handsome one of good size, having a separate access by the second of the entries which have been described, and only used for large companies, or for guests of the first importance. It was called the Crown Room, or the Crown—so did the guests find it distinguished on the tops of their bills—and this name it was said to have acquired in consequence of its having once been used by Queen Mary as a council-room, on which occasions the emblem of sovereignty was disposed in a niche in the wall, still existing. How the queen should have had any occasion to hold councils in this place tradition does not undertake to explain; but assuredly, when we consider the nature of all public accommodations in that time, we cannot say there is any decided improbability in the matter. The house appears of sufficient age for the hypothesis. Perhaps we catch a hint on the general possibility from a very ancient house farther down the close, of whose original purpose or owners we know nothing, but which is adumbrated by this legend:
ANGVSTA AD VSVM AVGVSTA[M]