Part 3

The foundation was at length laid of that revolution which has ended in making Edinburgh a kind of double city—_first_, an ancient and picturesque hill-built one, occupied chiefly by the humbler classes; and _second_, an elegant modern one, of much regularity of aspect, and possessed almost as exclusively by the more refined portion of society. The New Town, keeping pace with the growing prosperity of the country, had, in 1790, been extended to Castle Street; in 1800 the necessity for a second plan of the same extent still farther to the north had been felt, and this was after acted upon. Forty years saw the Old Town thoroughly changed as respects population. One after another, its nobles and gentry, its men of the robe, its ‘writers,’ and even its substantial burghers, had during that time deserted their mansions in the High Street and Canongate, till few were left. Even those modern districts connected with it, as St John Street, New Street, George Square, &c., were beginning to be forsaken for the sake of more elegantly circumstanced habitations beyond the North Loch. Into the remote social consequences of this change it is not my purpose to enter, beyond the bare remark that it was only too accordant with that tendency of our present form of civilisation to separate the high from the low, the intelligent from the ignorant—that dissociation, in short, which would in itself run nigh to be a condemnation of all progress, if we were not allowed to suppose that better forms of civilisation are realisable. Enough that I mention the tangible consequences of the revolution—a flooding in of the humbler trading classes where gentles once had been; the houses of these classes, again, filled with the vile and miserable. Now were to be seen hundreds of instances of such changes as Provost Creech indicates in 1783: ‘The Lord Justice-Clerk Tinwald’s house possessed by a French teacher—Lord President Craigie’s house by a rouping-wife or salewoman 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!’ To one who, like myself, was young in the early part of the present century, it was scarcely possible, as he permeated the streets and closes of ancient Edinburgh, to realise the idea of a time when the great were housed therein. But many a gentleman in middle life, then living perhaps in Queen Street or Charlotte Square, could recollect the close or the common stair where he had been born and spent his earliest years, now altogether given up to a different portion of society. And when the younger perambulator inquired more narrowly, he could discover traces of this former population. Here and there a carved coat-armorial, with supporters, perhaps even a coronet, arrested attention amidst the obscurities of some _wynd_ or court. Did he ascend a stair and enter a floor, now subdivided perhaps into four or five distinct dwellings, he might readily perceive, in the massive wainscot of the lobby, a proof that the refinements of life had once been there. Still more would this idea be impressed upon him when, passing into one of the best rooms of the old house, he would find not only a continuation of such wainscoting, but perhaps a tolerable landscape by Norie on a panel above the fireplace, or a ceiling decorated by De la Cour, a French artist, who flourished in Edinburgh about 1740. Even yet he would discover a very few relics of gentry maintaining their ground in the Old Town, as if faintly to show what it had once been. These were generally old people, who did not think it worth while to make any change till the great one. There is a melancholy pleasure in recalling what I myself found about 1820, when my researches for this work were commenced. In that year I was in the house of Governor Fergusson, an ancient gentleman of the Pitfour family, in a floor, one stair up, in the Luckenbooths. About the same time I attended the book-sale of Dr Arrot, a physician of good figure, newly deceased, in the Mint Close. For several years later, any one ascending a now miserable-looking stair in Blackfriars Wynd would have seen a door-plate inscribed with the name MISS OLIPHANT, a member of the Gask family. Nay, so late as 1832, I had the pleasure of breakfasting with Sir William Macleod Bannatyne in Whiteford House, Canongate (afterwards a type-foundry), on which occasion the venerable old gentleman talked as familiarly of the levees of the _sous-ministre_ for Lord Bute in the old villa at the Abbey Hill as I could have talked of the affairs of the Canning administration; and even recalled, as a fresh picture of his memory, his father drawing on his boots to go to make interest in London in behalf of some of the men in trouble for the Forty-five, particularly his own brother-in-law, the Clanranald of that day. Such were the connections recently existing between the past system of things and the present. Now, alas! the sun of Old-Town glory has set for ever. Nothing is left but the decaying and rapidly diminishing masses of ancient masonry, and a handful of traditionary recollections, which be it my humble but not unworthy task to transmit to future generations.[5]

[Illustration: Carved Armorial, with Supporters.]

FOOTNOTES

[1] Mr W. B. Blaikie (_The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club_, vol. ii.) gives a list of the occupants of a first-class tenement some years subsequent to the ’45 Rebellion: ‘First-floor, Mrs Stirling, fishmonger; second, Mrs Urquhart, lodging-house keeper; third-floor, the Countess Dowager of Balcarres; fourth, Mrs Buchan of Kelloe; fifth, the Misses Elliot, milliners and mantua-makers; garrets, a variety of tailors and other tradesmen.’

[2] Pamphlet _circa_ 1700, Wodrow Collection, Adv. Lib.

[3] Brown Square finally disappeared with the making of Chambers Street.

[4] Mr William Cowan, in vol. i. of _The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club_, says this exemption applied to the three eastmost tenements in Princes Street.

[5] The late Bruce J. Home drew up in 1908 ‘A Provisional List of Old Houses Remaining in High Street and Canongate,’ which was printed, with accompanying map, in the first volume of _The Old Edinburgh Club Book_. The statement is therein made ‘that since 1860 two-thirds of the ancient buildings in the Old Town of Edinburgh have been demolished.’ The map showed, coloured in red, the remaining buildings of the Old Town which had survived until the beginning of the twentieth century.

THE CASTLE-HILL.

HUGO ARNOT—ALLAN RAMSAY—HOUSE OF THE GORDON FAMILY—SIR DAVID BAIRD—DR WEBSTER—HOUSE OF MARY DE GUISE.

[Illustration: THE CASTLE-HILL.

PAGE 11.]

The saunter which I contemplate through the streets and stories, the lanes and legends, of Old Edinburgh may properly commence at the Castle-hill, as it is a marked extremity of the city as well as its highest ground.

The Castle-hill is partly an esplanade, serving as a parade-ground for the garrison of the Castle, and partly a street, the upper portion of that vertebral line which, under the various names of Lawnmarket, High Street, and Canongate, extends to Holyrood Palace. The open ground—a scene of warfare during the sieges of the fortress, often a place of execution in rude times—the place, too, where, by a curious legal fiction, the Nova Scotia baronets were enfeoffed in their ideal estates on the other side of the Atlantic—was all that Edinburgh possessed as a readily accessible promenade before the extension of the city. We find the severe acts for a strict observance of the Sabbath, which appeared from time to time in the latter part of the seventeenth and early part of the eighteenth century, denouncing the King’s Park, the Pier of Leith, and the _Castle-hill_ as the places chiefly resorted to for the profane sport of walking on ‘the Lord’s Day.’ Denounce as they might, human nature could never, I believe, be altogether kept off the Castle-hill; even the most respectable people walked there in multitudes during the intervals between morning and evening service. We have an allusion to the promenade character of the Castle-hill in Ramsay’s city pastoral, as it may be called, of _The Young Laird and Edinburgh Katy_—

‘Wat ye wha I met yestreen, Coming down the street, my jo? My mistress in her tartan screen, Fu’ bonny, braw, and sweet, my jo.

“My dear,” quoth I, “thanks to the night, That never wished a lover ill, Since ye’re out o’ your mother’s sight, Let’s tak’ a walk up to _the hill_.”’

A memory of these Sunday promenadings here calls me to introduce what I have to say regarding a man of whom there used to be a strong popular remembrance in Edinburgh.

HUGO ARNOT.

The cleverly executed _History of Edinburgh_, published by Arnot in 1779, and which to this day has not been superseded, gives some respectability to a name which tradition would have otherwise handed down to us as only that of an eccentric gentleman, of remarkably scarecrow figure, and the subject of a few _bon-mots_.

He was the son of a Leith shipmaster, named Pollock, and took the name of Arnot from a small inheritance in Fife. Many who have read his laborious work will be little prepared to hear that it was written when the author was between twenty and thirty; and that, antiquated as his meagre figure looks in Kay’s Portraits, he was at his death, in 1786, only thirty-seven. His body had been, in reality, made prematurely old by a confirmed asthma, accompanied by a cough, which he himself said would carry him off like a rocket some day, when a friend remarked, with reference to his known latitudinarianism: ‘Possibly, Hugo, in the contrary direction.’

[Illustration: Hugo Arnot, looking so like his meat.]

Most of the jokes about poor Hugo’s person have been frequently printed—as Harry Erskine meeting him on the street when he was gnawing at a spelding or dried haddock, and congratulating him on _looking so like his meat_; and his offending the piety of an old woman who was cheapening a Bible in Creech’s shop, by some thoughtless remark, when she first burst out with: ‘Oh, you monster!’ and then turning round and seeing him, added: ‘And he’s an anatomy too!’ An epigram by Erskine is less known:

‘The Scriptures assure us that much is forgiven _To flesh and to blood_ by the mercy of Heaven; But I’ve searched the whole Bible, and texts can find none That extend the assurance _to skin and to bone_.’

Arnot was afflicted by a constitutional irritability to an extent which can hardly be conceived. A printer’s boy, handing papers to him over his shoulder, happened to touch his ear with one of them, when he started up in a rage, and demanded of the trembling youth what he meant by insulting him in that manner! Probably from some quarrel arising out of this nervous weakness—for such it really was—the Edinburgh booksellers, to a man, refused to have anything to do with the prospectuses of his _Criminal Trials_, and Arnot had to advertise that they were to be seen in the coffee-houses, instead of the booksellers’ shops.

About the time when he entered at the bar (1772), he had a fancy for a young lady named Hay (afterwards Mrs Macdougall), sister of a gentleman who succeeded as Marquis of Tweeddale, and then a reigning toast. One Sunday, when he contemplated making up to his divinity on the Castle-hill, after forenoon service, he entertained two young friends at breakfast in his lodgings at the head of the Canongate. By-and-by the affairs of the toilet came to be considered. It was then found that Hugo’s washerwoman had played false, leaving him in a total destitution of clean linen, or at least of clean linen that was also _whole_. A dreadful storm took place, but at length, on its calming a little, love found out a way, by taking the hand-ruffles of one cast garment, in connection with the front of another, and adding both to the body of a third. In this eclectic form of shirt the meagre young philosopher marched forth with his friends, and was rewarded for his perseverance by being allowed a very pleasant chat with the young lady on ‘the hill.’ His friends standing by had their own enjoyment in reflecting what the beauteous Miss Hay would think if she knew the struggles which her admirer had had that morning in preparing to make his appearance before her.

Arnot latterly dwelt in a small house at the end of the Meuse Lane in St Andrew Street, with an old and very particular lady for a neighbour in the upper-floor. Disturbed by the enthusiastic way in which he sometimes rang his bell, the lady ventured to send a remonstrance, which, however, produced no effect. This led to a bad state of matters between them. At length a very pressing and petulant message being handed in one day, insisting that he should endeavour to call his servants _in a different manner_, what was the lady’s astonishment next morning to hear a pistol discharged in Arnot’s house! He was simply complying with the letter of his neighbour’s request, by firing, instead of ringing, as a signal for shaving-water.

ALLAN RAMSAY.

On the north side of the esplanade—enjoying a splendid view of the Firth of Forth, Fife and Stirling shires—is the neat little villa of Allan Ramsay, surrounded by its miniature pleasure-grounds. The sober, industrious life of this exception to the race of poets having resulted in a small competency, he built this odd-shaped house in his latter days, designing to enjoy in it the Horatian quiet which he had so often eulogised in his verse. The story goes that, showing it soon after to the clever Patrick, Lord Elibank, with much fussy interest in all its externals and accommodations, he remarked that the wags were already at work on the subject—they likened it to a goose-pie[6] (owing to the roundness of the shape). ‘Indeed, Allan,’ said his lordship, ‘now I see you in it, I think the wags are not far wrong.’

[Illustration: Allan Ramsay’s Villa.]

The splendid reputation of Burns has eclipsed that of Ramsay so effectually that this pleasing poet, and, upon the whole, amiable and worthy man, is now little regarded. Yet Ramsay can never be deprived of the credit of having written the best pastoral poem in the range of British literature—if even that be not too narrow a word—and many of his songs are of great merit.

Ramsay was secretly a Jacobite, openly a dissenter from the severe manners and feelings of his day, although a very decent and regular attender of the Old Church in St Giles’s. He delighted in music and theatricals, and, as we shall see, encouraged the Assembly. It was also no doubt his own taste which led him, in 1725, to set up a circulating library, whence he diffused plays and other works of fiction among the people of Edinburgh. It appears, from the private notes of the historian Wodrow, that, in 1728, the magistrates, moved by some meddling spirits, took alarm at the effect of this kind of reading on the minds of youth, and made an attempt to put it down, but without effect. One cannot but be amused to find amongst these self-constituted guardians of morality Lord Grange, who kept his wife in unauthorised restraint for several years, and whose own life was a scandal to his professions. Ramsay, as is well known, also attempted to establish a theatre in Edinburgh, but failed. The following advertisement on this subject appears in the _Caledonian Mercury_, September 1736: ‘The New Theatre in Carrubber’s Close being in great forwardness, will be opened the 1st of November. These are to advertise the gentlemen and ladies who incline to purchase annual tickets, to enter their names before the 20th of October next, on which day they shall receive their tickets from Allan Ramsay, on paying 30s.—no more than forty to be subscribed for; after which none will be disposed of under two guineas.’

The late Mrs Murray of Henderland knew Ramsay for the last ten years of his life, her sister having married his son, the celebrated painter. She spoke of him to me in 1825, with kindly enthusiasm, as one of the most amiable men she had ever known. His constant cheerfulness and lively conversational powers had made him a favourite amongst persons of rank, whose guest he frequently was. Being very fond of children, he encouraged his daughters in bringing troops of young ladies about the house, in whose sports he would mix with a patience and vivacity wonderful in an old man. He used to give these young friends a kind of ball once a year. From pure kindness for the young, he would help to make dolls for them, and cradles wherein to place these little effigies, with his own hands.[7] But here a fashion of the age must be held in view; for, however odd it may appear, it is undoubtedly true that to make and dispose of dolls, such as children now alone are interested in, was a practice in vogue amongst grown-up ladies who had little to do about a hundred years ago.

Ramsay died in 1757. An elderly female told a friend of mine that she remembered, when a girl, living as an apprentice with a milliner in the Grassmarket, being sent to Ramsay Garden to assist in making _dead-clothes_ for the poet. She could recall, however, no particulars of the scene but the roses blooming in at the window of the death-chamber.

The poet’s house passed to his son, of the same name, eminent as a painter—portrait-painter to King George III. and his queen—and a man of high mental culture; consequently much a favourite in the circles of Johnson and Boswell. The younger Allan enlarged the house, and built three additional houses to the eastward, bearing the title of Ramsay Garden. At his death, in 1784, the property went to his son, General John Ramsay, who, dying in 1845, left this mansion and a large fortune to Mr Murray of Henderland. So ended the line of the poet. His daughter Christian, an amiable, kind-hearted woman, said to possess a gift of verse, lived for many years in New Street. At seventy-four she had the misfortune to be thrown down by a hackney-coach, and had her leg broken; yet she recovered, and lived to the age of eighty-eight. Leading a solitary life, she took a great fancy for cats. Besides supporting many in her own house, curiously disposed in bandboxes, with doors to go in and out at, she caused food to be laid out for others on her stair and around her house. Not a word of obloquy would she listen to against the species, alleging, when any wickedness of a cat was spoken of, that the animal must have acted under provocation, for by nature, she asserted, cats are harmless. Often did her maid go with morning messages to her friends, inquiring, with her compliments, after their pet cats. Good Miss Ramsay was also a friend to horses, and indeed to all creatures. When she observed a carter ill-treating his horse, she would march up to him, tax him with cruelty, and, by the very earnestness of her remonstrances, arrest the barbarian’s hand. So also, when she saw one labouring on the street, with the appearance of defective diet, she would send rolls to its master, entreating him to feed the animal. These peculiarities, although a little eccentric, are not unpleasing; and I cannot be sorry to record them of the daughter of one whose heart and head were an honour to his country.

[Illustration: Happy.]

[Illustration: Contented.]

[Illustration: Repose.]

[Illustration: Convivial.]

[1868.—It seems to have been unknown to the biographers of Allan Ramsay the painter that he made a romantic marriage. In his early days, while teaching the art of drawing in the family of Sir Alexander Lindsay of Evelick, one of the young ladies fell in love with him, captivated probably by the tongue which afterwards gave him the intimacy of princes, and was undoubtedly a great source of his success in life. The father of the enamoured girl was an old proud baronet; her mother, a sister of the Chief-Justice, Earl of Mansfield. A marriage with consent of parents was consequently impossible. The young people, nevertheless, contrived to get themselves united in wedlock.

[Illustration: Allan Ramsay’s Monument, Princes Street Gardens.]

The speedily developed talent of Ramsay, the illustrious patronage they secured to him, and the very considerable wealth which he acquired must have in time made him an acceptable relation to those proud people. A time came when their descendants held the connection even as an honour. The wealth of the painter ultimately, on the death of his son in 1845, became the property of Mr Murray of Henderland, a grandson of Sir Alexander Lindsay and nephew of Mrs Allan Ramsay; thence it not long after passed to Mr Murray’s brother, Sir John Archibald Murray, better known by his judicial name of Lord Murray. This gentleman admired the poet, and resolved to raise a statue to him beside his goose-pie house on the Castlehill; but the situation proved unsuitable, and since his own lamented death, in 1858, the marble full-length of worthy Allan, from the studio of John Steell, has found a noble place in the Princes Street Gardens, resting on a pedestal, containing on its principal side a medallion portrait of Lord Murray, on the reverse one of General Ramsay, on the west side one of the General’s lady, and on the east similar representations of the General’s two daughters, Lady Campbell and Mrs Malcolm. Thus we find—owing to the esteem which genius ever commands—the poet of the _Gentle Shepherd_ in the immortality of marble, surrounded by the figures of relatives and descendants who so acknowledged their aristocratic rank to be inferior to his, derived from mind alone.]

HOUSE OF THE GORDON FAMILY.

[Illustration: Doorway of Duke of Gordon’s House. Now built into School in Boswell’s Court.]

Tradition points out, as the residence of the Gordon family, a house, or rather range of buildings, situated between Blair’s and Brown’s Closes, being almost the first mass of building in the Castle-hill Street on the right-hand side. The southern portion is a structure of lofty and massive form, battlemented at top, and looking out upon a garden which formerly stretched down to the old town-wall near the Grassmarket, but is now crossed by the access from the King’s Bridge.[8] From the style of building, I should be disposed to assign it a date a little subsequent to the Restoration. There are, however, no authentic memorials respecting the alleged connection of the Gordon family with this house,[9] unless we are to consider as of that character a coronet resembling that of a marquis, flanked by two deer-hounds, the well-known supporters of this noble family, which figures over a finely moulded door in Blair’s Close.[10] The coronet will readily be supposed to point to the time when the _Marquis of Huntly_ was the principal honour of the family—that is, previous to 1684, when the title of Duke of Gordon was conferred.[11]

[Illustration: DUKE OF GORDON’S HOUSE.

PAGE 18.]