The spectator is looking east towards the Scott Monument, which rises in the centre of the picture; to the right of the monument is a portion of the Royal Institution, while to the left is the tower of the North British Railway Hotel, with the top of the Nelson Monument appearing over the window shade. Down the steps of the New Club a page boy is carrying golf clubs. The time is a sunny afternoon in September.
simple living within the compass of a single close, or even a single stair, knew and took an interest in each other. Acquaintances might not only be formed, Pyramus-and-Thisbe fashion, through party walls, but from window to window across alleys, narrow enough in many cases to allow of hand coming to hand, and even lip to lip.... The jostle and huddlement was extreme everywhere.” And the overcrowding!
“A country gentleman and a lawyer, not long after raised to the Bench, lived with his wife and children and servants in three rooms and a kitchen. A wealthy goldsmith had a dwelling of two small rooms above his booth, the nursery and kitchen, however, being placed in a cellar under the level of the street, where the children are said to have rotted off like sheep.”[55] Edinburgh citizens came to consider the highest storeys in their tall “lands” the most desirable; and the tale is told of one old Edinburgh gentleman who, on a visit to London, expressed pleased surprise that the top flat where he had perched himself was the cheapest in the house. On being gently enlightened that this was in consequence of its being also the least thought of, he replied that he kent fine what gentility was, and after having lived sixteen storeys up all his life, was not going to come down in the world.
The first efforts at extension of the town were due to a private commercial speculation. The open country beyond the Nor’ Loch and the “Lang Dykes” was inaccessible till an Act of Parliament could be passed and drastic measures taken; and, where Acts of Parliament are necessary, progress is slow. Whilst time was passing, and others were talking and scheming for the public good, a builder named George Brown saw that the tide had come in his affairs, and took it at the flood and made his fortune. He built, with stones from Craigmillar Quarry, two squares of substantial dwelling-houses. The first built and bigger of these was George Square, whose site had formerly been part of the park of Ross House, the suburban residence of the Lords Ross, where later—after 1753—the famous George Lockhart of Carnwath had lived. The smaller square, Brown Square, was built after the first had proved a success, and several of the houses in it been taken by well-known citizens. George Square is still, though hemmed in by poor localities on three sides, a favourite place of residence, with a pleasant garden in the centre, and “the Meadows” near at hand. Here it was, at number 25, that Scott’s father lived, and part of Scott’s boyhood was spent. Brown Square has not survived socially, though it, too, has had its notable residents. It was from Brown Square that Lord Glenlee, the last person to use a sedan-chair in Edinburgh, used to sally forth in wig and cocked hat, in knee-breeches and silk stockings and buckled shoes; and in Brown Square there once lived the author of “The Flowers of the Forest,” Miss Jeanie Elliott of Minto, one of the many gifted Jacobite ladies of Jacobite Edinburgh. These two squares formed a little southern colony by themselves, confined their hospitalities to themselves, and, in fact, as the Scottish phrase says, “kept themselves to themselves.”
At last, in 1767, the Act of Parliament for extending the city over the northern fields was passed, and the North Bridge was built from the High Street across the valley. And then, suddenly, as with the touch of a magician’s wand, the beginnings of the New Town of Edinburgh came into being: stately squares and noble buildings, wide, broad streets that put London thoroughfares to shame, graceful curved terraces and crescents; all the cold dignity of unlimited grey stone—stone pavements, stone roads, stone houses; and, nestling in every crevice of the stone, the green of the invaded country. New Edinburgh, like Jonah’s gourd, sprang up in a night, to shade many a prophet.
And who wielded the magician’s wand? The name of Lord Provost Drummond ought to be remembered in Edinburgh, of which, like a veritable Dick Whittington, he was six times Lord Provost. He was a man of public spirit and large enterprise, who brought dignity on himself and his office and his city. The New Town dates from his Provostship. At first, however, as all pioneers must do, he saw men look askance at the triumphs of his energy. He was probably called extravagant, and accused of squandering public money. “The scheme was at first far from popular,” Mr. Robert Chambers tells his readers. “The exposure to the north and east winds was felt as a grievous disadvantage, especially while houses were few. So unpleasant even was the North Bridge considered, that a lover told a New Town mistress—to be sure only in an epigram—that when he visited her he felt as performing an adventure not much short of that of Leander. The aristocratic style of the place alarmed a number of pockets, and legal men trembled lest their clients and other employers should forget them, if they removed so far from the centre of things as Princes Street and St. Andrew Square. Still, the move was unavoidable, and behoved to be made.”[56]
And then the bees swarmed.
Those of the Scottish nobles whom the Union had left in the capital took their persons and their households across the valley to the New Town, and left their family mansions and their family traditions behind them in the Old. All the legal dignitaries—Lord President, Lord Justice Clerk, Lord Advocate, Dean of Faculty, Solicitor-General, Lords of Council and Session—all those “carls” whom James VI. had made “lairds,” accompanied by the “carlins” whom he had declined to make “leddies”; the advocates, the “writers”; all the old Scottish “gentry,” the wealthy burghers: all hurried out of their closes and took up their residences in the big new houses across the Nor’ Loch.
Nature, however, abhors a vacuum, and so do landlords; and the deserted High Street and Canongate filled up rapidly with humbler citizens. “The Lord Justice Clerk Tinwald’s house possessed by a French teacher, Lord President Craigie’s house by a rouping wife or saleswoman of old furniture, and Lord Drummore’s house left by a chairman for want of accommodation; ... the house of the Duke of Douglas at the Union, now possessed by a wheelwright!”[57]