But for another reason the year 1712 is as interesting to us as students of his career as it was important to him. In the early months of it he was introduced to the 'Easy Club,' one of those politico-convivial societies that sprang into existence early in the century, and were conspicuous features in the social customs of the period, until its eighth and ninth decades, when, consequent upon the expansion of the city north and south, the tavern conviviality of 1740 was succeeded by the domestic hospitality of 1790.
At the time of which we write, the capital of Scotland was virtually represented by the one long street called the High Street, or 'Edinburgh Street,' which crowned the summit of the ridge extending from the Castle to Holyrood Palace, the ancient home of the Stuarts. From this main artery of traffic, smaller veins, in the shape of narrow darksome closes, branched out, leading to a second artery in the Cowgate, and to yet a third one in the Grassmarket. During the panic that prevailed after the Battle of Flodden, a wall of defence was drawn around the town. By it the area of Edinburgh was grievously circumscribed. Only what might be termed the heart of the city was included, all lying beyond falling within the anomalous designation of suburbs. For two hundred years this seemingly impassable girdle sternly checked the natural overflow of the city's life. To reside outside the ports or gates was not only considered dangerous—it was unfashionable. And as there was not accommodation for a tenth part of the inhabitants in the houses of two, or at most three, storeys which prevailed about the time of the Reformation, the architects of the Restoration period commenced the erection of those towering tenements, or lands,—twelve, fourteen, and even sixteen storeys high,—for which Edinburgh has been celebrated among the cities of Europe. Thus the families of the Scottish metropolis were packed together, one on the top of the other, like herrings in a barrel, in those quaint old houses, with their grim timber fronts, their crow-stepped gables and dormer windows, that remain even until to-day to show us the circumstances under which our fathers lived and loved.
In circumstances such as these, domestic comfort and the sweet seclusion of home were out of the question. So criminally overcrowded was the town that well-born gentlemen and their households were content with two or three rooms, wherein all the manifold duties of social and domestic life had to be performed. Robert Chambers, in his charming Traditions of Edinburgh, relates how the family of Mr. Bruce of Kennet, a leading lawyer, afterwards raised to the Bench, lived in a house of three rooms and a kitchen—a parlour, a consulting-room for Mr. Bruce, and a bedroom. The children, with their maid, had beds laid down for them at night in their father's room, the housemaid slept under the kitchen dresser, and the one man-servant was turned at night out of the house. Even a more striking example of the lack of accommodation was to be found in connection with the household arrangements of Mr. Kerr, the eminent goldsmith of Parliament Square, who 'stowed his ménage in a couple of small rooms above his booth-like shop, plastered against the wall of St. Giles Church; the nursery and kitchen, however, being in a cellar under the level of the street, where the children are said to have rotted off like sheep.... The town was, nevertheless, a funny, familiar, compact, and not unlikable place. Gentle and semple living within the compass of a single close, or even a single stair, knew and took an interest in each other.'
Such was the kind of home to which Allan Ramsay brought his bride. Two rooms, with a closet and a kitchen, for many a long year were the extent of their household accommodation. Such a state of things was not favourable to the development of the virtues purely domestic. Hence with Ramsay, as with other men, tavern life was accepted as a substitute for those comforts the sterner sex could not get at home. As Grant remarks in his Old and New Edinburgh: 'The slender house accommodation in the turnpike stairs compelled the use of taverns more than now. There the high-class advocate received his clients, and the physician his patients—each practitioner having his peculiar howff. There, too, gentlemen met in the evening for supper and conversation, without much expense, a reckoning of a shilling being a high one—so different then was the value of money and the price of viands.'
Mr. Logie Robertson, in his graphic and admirable introduction to the Poems of Allan Ramsay in the Canterbury Series, adds: 'Business lingered on all over the town to a much later period than is customary now, but by eight o'clock every booth was deserted and every shop closed, and the citizens for the most part gave themselves up to cheap conviviality and pastime for the next hour or two. Almost every tradesman had his favourite place in his favourite tavern, where, night after night, he cracked a quiet bottle and a canny joke before going home to his family. It was first business, then friendship; and the claims of family after that.'
Out of this general spirit of conviviality arose those numberless Clubs wherein, upon the convivial stem, were graffed politics, literature, sport, science, as well as many other pursuits less worthy and less beneficial. No custom, no usage, no jest, in fact, seemed too trivial to be seized upon as the pretext to give a colour of excuse for founding a Club. Some of them were witty, others wise, others degrading. Such designations as the Cape Club,—so called from doubling the Cape of Leith Wynd, when half-seas over, to get home to the burgh of Low Calton, where several of the members lived; the Pious Club, because the brethren met regularly to consume pies; the Spendthrift Club, because no habitué was permitted to spend more than fourpence halfpenny, and others, were harmless in their way, and promoted a cheap bonhomie without leading the burghers into disgraceful excesses. But the Hell-fire Club, the Sweating Club, the Dirty Club, and others of a kindred order, were either founded to afford an opportunity for indulgence in riot and licence of every kind, or were intended to encourage habits as disgusting as they were brutal.
Not to be supposed is it that Ramsay had lived six-and-twenty years of his life without having practised, and we have no doubt enjoyed, the widespread conviviality of the period. Hence, though the Easy Club was the first of the social gatherings wherewith he actually informs us he was connected, we have no reason to doubt he had been associated with several of them before. In fact, in that poetical 'Essay' of his which stands first in the chronological order of composition, though not of publication, the Elegy on Maggy Johnston, who died anno 1711—an alewife whose little farm and hotel were situated in the village of Morningside, just beyond the Bruntsfield Links,—he seems to imply that a club of some kind met there. The third stanza runs as follows—
'And there by dizens we lay down;
Syne sweetly ca'd the healths aroun',
To bonny lasses, black or brown,
As we loo'd best:
In bumpers we dull cares did drown,
An' took our rest.'
But to the Easy Club[1] must be assigned the honour of having stimulated the nascent genius of the poet to achieve something that would convey to its members the fact that it was no ordinary tradesman who solicited admission into the charmed circle of the Society. James Ross, whose zeal for the poetic young wigmaker's social recognition was now materially increased, used all his influence to obtain for his son-in-law an entrée into the Club of which he was himself a member. Questionable, indeed, it is, when we consider the exclusive character of the association in question, the high social position of its members, and their avowed Jacobitical tenets, if even the influence of James Ross, powerful though it was, would alone have secured for Ramsay admission. But an inspiration, as happy as it was original, prompted him to embody his petition for admission into the Club in a poetical address. Such a course was of itself sufficient to recommend him to men like Dr. Ruddiman and Dr. Pitcairn. The poem, addressed to 'The Most Happy Members of the Easy Club,' proceeded, in a felicitous strain of gentle satire, blended with genial humour not unlike Gay at his best, to plead his own cause why he should be admitted as 'an Easy fellow.' His application was successful, and he was duly enrolled as a member. The following lines extracted from it will exhibit the character of the piece, which takes rank as the earliest of his published poems—
'Were I but a prince or king,
I'd advance ye, I'd advance ye;
Were I but a prince or king,
So highly I'd advance ye!
Great wit and sense are ever found
Among ye always to abound;
Much like the orbs that still move round,
No ways constrained, but easy.
Were I but, etc.