Part 19

I am indebted to a privately printed memoir on the Anchor Close for the following anecdote of Crochallan: ‘A comical gentleman, one of the members of the corps [old Williamson of Cardrona, in Peeblesshire], got rather tipsy one evening after a severe _field-day_. When he came to the head of the Anchor Close, it occurred to him that it was necessary that he should take possession of the Castle. He accordingly set off for this purpose. When he got to the outer gate, he demanded immediate possession of the garrison, to which he said he was entitled. The sentinel, for a considerable time, laughed at him; he, however, became so extremely clamorous that the man found it necessary to apprise the commanding officer, who immediately came down to inquire into the meaning of such impertinent conduct. He at once recognised his friend Cardrona, whom he had left at the festive board of the Crochallan Corps only a few hours before. Accordingly, humouring him in the conceit, he said: ‘Certainly you have every right to the command of this garrison; if you please, I will conduct you to your proper apartment.’ He accordingly conveyed him to a bedroom in his house. Cardrona took formal possession of the place, and immediately afterwards went to bed. His feelings were indescribable when he looked out of his bedroom window next morning, and found himself surrounded with soldiers and great guns. Some time afterwards this story came to the ears of the Crochallans; and Cardrona said he never afterwards had the life of a dog, so much did they tease and harass him about his strange adventure.’

There is a story connected with the air and song of Crochallan which will tell strangely after these anecdotes. The title is properly _Cro Chalien_—that is, ‘Colin’s Cattle.’ According to Highland tradition, Colin’s wife, dying at an early age, _came back_, some months after she had been buried, and was seen occasionally in the evenings milking her cow as formerly, and singing this plaintive air. It is curious thus to find Highland superstition associated with a snug tavern in the Anchor Close and the convivialities of such men as Burns and Smellie.

[Illustration: Dowie’s Tavern.]

_John Dowie’s_, in Liberton’s Wynd, a still more perfect specimen of those taverns which Pitcairn eulogises—

‘Antraque Cocyto penè propinqua’—

enjoyed the highest celebrity during the latter years of the past and early years of the present century. A great portion of this house was literally without light, consisting of a series of windowless chambers, decreasing in size till the last was a mere box, of irregular oblong figure, jocularly, but not inappropriately, designated _the Coffin_. Besides these, there were but two rooms possessing light, and as that came from a deep, narrow alley, it was light little more than in name. Hither, nevertheless, did many of the Parliament House men come daily for their meridian. Here nightly assembled companies of cits, as well as of men of wit and of fashion, to spend hours in what may, by comparison, be described as gentle conviviality. The place is said to have been a howff of Fergusson and Burns in succession. Christopher North somewhere alludes to meetings of his own with Tom Campbell in that couthy mansion. David Herd, the editor of the Scottish songs, Mr Cumming of the Lyon Office, and George Paton the antiquary were regular customers, each seldom allowing a night to pass without a symposium at Johnie Dowie’s. Now, these men are all gone; their very habits are becoming matters of history; while, as for their evening haunt, the place which knew it once knows it no more, the new access to the Lawnmarket, by George IV. Bridge, passing over the area where it stood.

_Johnie Dowie’s_ was chiefly celebrated for ale—_Younger’s Edinburgh ale_—a potent fluid which almost glued the lips of the drinker together, and of which few, therefore, could despatch more than a bottle. John, a sleek, quiet-looking man, in a last-century style of attire, always brought in the liquor himself, decanted it carefully, drank a glass to the health of the company, and then retired. His neat, careful management of the bottle must have entirely met the views of old William Coke, the Leith bookseller, of whom it is told that if he saw a greenhorn of a waiter acting in a different manner, he would rush indignantly up to him, take the ale out of his hands, caress it tenderly, as if to soothe and put it to rights again, and then proceed to the business of decanting it himself, saying: ‘You rascal, is that the way you attend to your business? Sirrah, you ought to handle a bottle of ale as you would do a new-born babe!’

_Dowie’s_ was also famed for its _petits soupers_, as one of its customers has recorded:

‘’Deed, gif ye please, Ye may get a bit toasted cheese, A crumb o’ tripe, ham, dish o’ peas, The season fitting; An egg, or, cauler frae the seas, A fleuk or whiting.’

When the reckoning came to be paid, John’s duty usually consisted simply in counting the empty bottles which stood on a little shelf where he had placed them above the heads of his customers, and multiplying these by the price of the liquor—usually threepence. Studious of decency, he was rigorous as to hours, and, when pressed for additional supplies of liquor at a particular time, would say: ‘No, no, gentlemen; it’s past twelve o’clock, and time to go home.’

Of John’s conscientiousness as to money matters there is some illustration in the following otherwise trivial anecdote: David Herd, being one night prevented by slight indisposition from joining in the malt potations of his friends, called for first one and then another glass of spirits, which he dissolved, _more Scotico_, in warm water and sugar. When the reckoning came to be paid, the antiquary was surprised to find the second glass charged a fraction higher than the first—as if John had been resolved to impose a tax upon excess. On inquiring the reason, however, honest John explained it thus: ‘Whe, sir, ye see, the first glass was out o’ the auld barrel, and the second was out o’ the new; and as the whisky in the new barrel cost me mair than the other, whe, sir, I’ve just charged a wee mair for ’t.’ An ordinary host would have doubtless equalised the price by raising that of the first glass to a level with the second. It is gratifying, but, after this anecdote, not surprising, that John eventually retired with a fortune said to have amounted to six thousand pounds. He had a son in the army, who attained the rank of major, and was a respectable officer.

We get an idea of a class of taverns, humbler in their appointments, but equally comfortable perhaps in their entertainments, from the description which has been preserved of _Mrs Flockhart’s_—otherwise _Lucky Fykie’s_—in the Potterrow. This was a remarkably small, as well as obscure mansion, bearing externally the appearance of a huckstry shop. The lady was a neat, little, thin, elderly woman, usually habited in a plain striped blue gown, and apron of the same stuff, with a black ribbon round her head and lappets tied under her chin. She was far from being poor in circumstances, as her husband, the umquhile John Flucker, or Flockhart, had left her some ready money, together with his whole stock-in-trade, consisting of a multifarious variety of articles—as ropes, tea, sugar, whip-shafts, porter, ale, beer, yellow sand, _calm-stane_, herrings, nails, cotton-wicks, stationery, thread, needles, tapes, potatoes, lollipops, onions, matches, &c., constituting her a very respectable _merchant_, as the phrase was understood in Scotland. On Sundays, too, Mrs Flockhart’s little visage might have been seen in a front-gallery seat in Mr Pattieson’s chapel in the Potterrow. Her abode, situated opposite to Chalmers’s Entry in that suburban thoroughfare, was a square of about fifteen feet each way, divided agreeably to the following diagram:

[Illustration: Potterrow.]

Each forenoon was this place, or at least all in front of the screen, put into the neatest order; at the same time three bottles, severally containing brandy, rum, and whisky, were placed on a bunker-seat in the window of the ‘hotel,’ flanked by a few glasses and a salver of gingerbread biscuits. About noon any one watching the place from an opposite window would have observed an elderly gentleman entering the humble shop, where he saluted the lady with a ‘Hoo d’ye do, mem?’ and then passed into the side space to indulge himself with a glass from one or other of the bottles. After him came another, who went through the same ceremonial; after him another again; and so on. Strange to say, these were men of importance in society—some of them lawyers in good employment, some bankers, and so forth, and all of them inhabitants of good houses in George Square. It was in passing to or from forenoon business in town that they thus regaled themselves. On special occasions Lucky could furnish forth a _soss_—that is, stew—which the votary might partake of upon a clean napkin in the closet, a place which only admitted of one chair being placed in it. Such were amongst the habits of the fathers of some of our present (1824) most distinguished citizens!

This may be the proper place for introducing the few notices which I have collected respecting Edinburgh inns of a past date.

The oldest house known to have been used in the character of an inn is one situated in what is called Davidson’s or the White Horse Close, at the bottom of the Canongate. A sort of _porte-cochère_ gives access to a court having mean buildings on either hand, but facing us a goodly structure of antique fashion, having two outside stairs curiously arranged, and the whole reminding us much of certain houses still numerous in the Netherlands. A date, deficient in the decimal figure (16-3), gives us assurance of the seventeenth century, and, judging from the style of the building, I would say the house belongs to an early portion of that age. The whole of the ground-floor, accessible from the street called North Back of Canongate, has been used as stables, thus reminding us of the absence of nicety in a former age, when human beings were content to sit with only a wooden floor between themselves and their horses.

This house, supposed to have been styled _The White Horse Inn_ or _White Horse Stables_ (for the latter was the more common word), would be conveniently situated for persons travelling to or arriving from London, as it is close to the ancient exit of the town in that direction. The adjacent Water-gate took its name from a horse-pond, which probably was an appendage of this mansion. The manner of procedure for a gentleman going to London in the days of the _White Horse_ was to come booted to this house with saddle-bags, and here engage and mount a suitable roadster, which was to serve all the way. In 1639, when Charles I. had made his first pacification with the Covenanters, and had come temporarily to Berwick, he sent messages to the chief lords of that party, desiring some conversation with them. They were unsuspectingly mounting their horses at this inn, in order to ride to Berwick, when a mob, taught by the clergy to suspect that the king wished only to wile over the nobles to his side, came and forcibly prevented them from commencing their designed journey. Montrose alone broke through this restraint; and assuredly the result in his instance was such as to give some countenance to the suspicion, as thenceforward he was a royalist in his heart.

[Illustration: WHITE HORSE INN.

PAGE 170.]

The _White Horse_ has ceased to be an inn from a time which no ‘oldest inhabitant’ of my era could pretend to have any recollection of. The only remaining fact of interest connected with it is one concerning Dr Alexander Rose, the last Bishop of Edinburgh, and the last survivor of the established Episcopacy of Scotland. Bishop Keith, who had been one of his presbyters, and describes him as a sweet-natured man, of a venerable aspect, states that he died March 20, 1720, ‘in his own sister’s house in the Canongate, in which street he also lived.’ Tradition points to the floor immediately above the _porte-cochère_ by which the stable-yard is entered from the street as the humble mansion in which the bishop breathed his last. I know at least one person who never goes past the place without an emotion of respect, remembering the self-abandoning devotion of the Scottish prelates to their engagements at the Revolution:[147]

‘Amongst the faithless, faithful only found.’

To the elegant accommodations of the best New Town establishments of the present day, the inns of the last century present a contrast which it is difficult by the greatest stretch of imagination to realise. For the west road, there was the _White Hart_ in the Grassmarket; for the east, the _White Horse Inn_ in Boyd’s Close, Canongate; for the south, and partly also the east, Peter Ramsay’s, at the bottom of St Mary’s Wynd. Arnot, writing in 1779, describes them as ‘mean buildings; their apartments dirty and dismal; and if the waiters happen to be out of the way, a stranger will perhaps be shocked with the novelty of being shown into a room by a dirty, sunburnt wench, without shoes or stockings.’ The fact is, however, these houses were mainly used as places for keeping horses. Guests, unless of a very temporary character, were usually relegated to lodging-houses, of which there were several on a considerable scale—as Mrs Thomson’s at the Cross, who advertises, in 1754, that persons not bringing ‘their silver plate, tea china, table china, and tea linen, can be served in them all;’ also in wines and spirits; likewise that persons boarding with her ‘may expect everything in a very genteel manner.’ But hear the unflattering Arnot on these houses. ‘He [the stranger] is probably conducted to the third or fourth floor, up dark and dirty stairs, and there shown into apartments meanly fitted up and poorly furnished.... In Edinburgh, letting of lodgings is a business by itself, and thereby the prices are very extravagant; and every article of furniture, far from wearing the appearance of having been purchased for a happy owner, seems to be scraped together with a penurious hand, to pass muster before a stranger who will never wish to return!’

_Ramsay’s_ was almost solely a place of stables. General Paoli,[148] on visiting Edinburgh in 1771, came to this house, but was immediately taken home by his friend Boswell to James’s Court, where he lived during his stay in our city; his companion, the Polish ambassador, being accommodated with a bed by Dr John Gregory, in a neighbouring floor. An old gentleman of my acquaintance used to talk of having seen the Duke of Hamilton one day lounging in front of Ramsay’s inn, occasionally chatting with any gay or noble friend who passed. To one knowing the Edinburgh of the present day, nothing could seem more extravagant than the idea of such company at such places. I nevertheless find Ramsay, in 1776, advertising that, exclusive of some part of his premises recently offered for sale, he is ‘possessed of a good house of entertainment, good stables for above one hundred horses, and sheds for above twenty carriages.’ He retired from business about 1790 with £10,000.[149]

The modern _White Horse_ was a place of larger and somewhat better accommodations, though still far from an equality with even the second-rate houses of the present day. Here also the rooms were directly over the stables.

It was almost a matter of course that Dr Johnson, on arriving in Edinburgh, August 17, 1773, should have come to the _White Horse_, which was then kept by a person of the name of Boyd. His note to Boswell informing him of this fact was as follows:

‘_Saturday night._

‘Mr Johnson sends his compliments to Mr Boswell, being just arrived at Boyd’s.’

When Boswell came, he found his illustrious friend in a violent passion at the waiter for having sweetened his lemonade without the ceremony of a pair of sugar-tongs. Mr William Scott, afterwards Lord Stowell, accompanied Johnson on this occasion; and he informs us, in a note to Croker’s edition of Boswell, that when he heard the mistress of the house styled, in Scotch fashion, _Lucky_, which he did not then understand, he thought she should rather have been styled _Unlucky_, for the doctor seemed as if he would destroy the house.[150]

James Boyd, the keeper of this inn, was addicted to horse-racing, and his victories on the turf, or rather on Leith sands, are frequently chronicled in the journals of that day. It is said that he was at one time on the brink of ruin, when he was saved by a lucky run with a white horse, which, in gratitude, he kept idle all the rest of its days, besides setting up its portrait as his sign. He eventually retired from this ‘dirty and dismal’ inn with a fortune of several thousand pounds; and, as a curious note upon the impression which its slovenliness conveyed to Dr Johnson, it may be stated as a fact, well authenticated, that at the time of his giving up the house he possessed _napery_ to the value of five hundred pounds!

A large room in the _White Horse_ was the frequent scene of the marriages of runaway English couples, at a time when these irregularities were permitted in Edinburgh. On one of the windows were scratched the words:

‘JEREMIAH and SARAH BENTHAM, 1768.’

Could this be the distinguished jurist and codificator, on a journey to Scotland in company with a female relation?[151]

FOOTNOTES

[143] The Scottish peers on occasions of election of representatives to the House of Lords frequently brought their meetings to a close by dining at Fortune’s Tavern.

[144] See note, p. 157.

[145] ‘The wags of the eighteenth century used to tell of a certain city treasurer who, on being applied to for a new rope to the Tron Kirk bell, summoned the Council to deliberate on the demand; an adjournment to Clerihugh’s Tavern, it was hoped, might facilitate the settlement of so weighty a matter, but one dinner proved insufficient, and it was not till their third banquet that the application was referred to a committee, who spliced the old rope, and settled the bill!’—Wilson’s _Memorials of Old Edinburgh_.

[146] Since this was written, the whole group of buildings has been taken down, and new ones substituted (1868).

[147] The ‘White Horse’ is introduced in _The Abbot_—it was the scene of Roland Græme’s encounter with young Seton.

[148] The Corsican patriot whose acquaintance Boswell made on his tour abroad. Johnson characterised him as having ‘the loftiest port of any man he had ever seen.’

[149] Peter Ramsay was a brother of William Ramsay of Barnton, the well-known sporting character of the early part of the nineteenth century.

[150] A punning friend, remarking on the old Scottish practice of styling elderly landladies by the term _Lucky_, said: ‘Why not?—_Felix qui pot_——’

[151] The following curious advertisement, connected with an inn in the Canongate, appeared in the _Edinburgh Evening Courant_ for July 1, 1754. The advertisement is surmounted by a woodcut representing the stage-coach, a towering vehicle, protruding at top—the coachman a stiff-looking, antique little figure, who holds the reins with both hands, as if he were afraid of the horses running away—a long whip streaming over his head and over the top of the coach, and falling down behind—six horses, like starved rats in appearance—a postillion upon one of the leaders, with a whip:

‘The Edinburgh Stage-Coach, for the better accommodation of Passengers, will be altered to a new genteel two-end Glass Machine, hung on Steel Springs, exceeding light and easy, to go in ten days in summer and twelve in winter; to set out the first Tuesday in March, and continue it from Hosea Eastgate’s, the _Coach and Horses_ in Dean Street, Soho, London, and from John Somerville’s in the Canongate, Edinburgh, every other Tuesday, and meet at Burrowbridge on Saturday night, and set out from thence on Monday morning, and get to London and Edinburgh on Friday. In the winter to set out from London and Edinburgh every other [alternate] Monday morning, and to go to Burrowbridge on Saturday night; and to set out from thence on Monday morning, and get to London and Edinburgh on Saturday night. Passengers to pay as usual. Performed, if God permits, by your dutiful servant,

HOSEA EASTGATE.

‘Care is taken of small parcels _according to their value_.’

THE CROSS—CADDIES.

The Cross, a handsome octagonal building in the High Street, surmounted by a pillar bearing the Scottish unicorn, was the great centre of gossip in former days. The principal coffee-houses and booksellers’ shops were close to this spot. The chief merchants, the leading official persons, the men of learning and talents, the laird, the noble, the clergyman, were constantly clustering hereabouts during certain hours of the day. It was the very centre and cynosure of the old city.

During the reigns of the first and second Georges, it was customary for the magistrates of Edinburgh to drink the king’s health on his birthday on a stage erected at the Cross—loyalty being a virtue which always becomes peculiarly ostentatious when it is under any suspicion of weakness. On one of these occasions the ceremony was interrupted by a shower of rain, so heavy that the company, with one consent, suddenly dispersed, leaving their entertainment half-finished. When they returned, the glasses were found full of water, which gave a Jacobite lady occasion for the following epigram, reported to me by a venerable bishop of the Scottish Episcopal Church:

‘In Cana once Heaven’s king was pleased With some gay bridal folks to dine, And then, in honour of the feast, He changed the water into wine.

But when, to honour Brunswick’s birth, Our tribunes mounted the Theâtre, He would not countenance their mirth, But turned their claret into water!’

[Illustration: FORENOON AT THE CROSS.

PAGE 174.]

As the place where state proclamations were always made, where the execution of noted state criminals took place, and where many important public ceremonials were enacted, the Cross of Edinburgh is invested with numberless associations of a most interesting kind, extending over several centuries. Here took place the mysterious midnight proclamation, summoning the Flodden lords to the domains of Pluto, as described so strikingly in _Marmion_; the witness being ‘Mr Richard Lawson, ill-disposed, ganging in his gallery fore-stair.’ Here did King James VI. bring together his barbarous nobles, and make them shake hands over a feast partaken of before the eyes of the people. Here did the Covenanting lords read their protests against Charles’s feeble proclamations. Here fell Montrose, Huntly, the Argylls, Warriston, and many others of note, victims of political dissension. Here were fountains set a-flowing with the blood-red wine, to celebrate the passing of kings along the causeway. And here, as a last notable fact, were Prince Charles and his father proclaimed by their devoted Highlanders, amidst screams of pipe and blare of trumpet, while the beautiful Mrs Murray of Broughton sat beside the party on horseback, adorned with white ribbons, and with a drawn sword in her hand! How strange it seems that a time should at length have come when a set of magistrates thought this structure an encumbrance to the street, and had it removed. This event took place in 1756—the ornamental stones dispersed, the pillar taken to the park at Drum.[152]