Traditions of Edinburgh

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AN ELEGANT MODERN CITY. PAGE 8.

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TRADITIONS OF EDINBURGH

ROBERT CHAMBERS, LL.D.

Illustrated by James Riddel, R.S.W.

London: 38 Soho Square, W.
W. & R. Chambers, Limited
Edinburgh: 339 High Street
J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia
1912

Edinburgh:
Printed by W. & R. Chambers, Limited.

INTRODUCTORY NOTICE.

1868.

I am about to do what very few could do without emotion—revise a book which I wrote forty-five years ago. This little work came out in the Augustan days of Edinburgh, when Jeffrey and Scott, Wilson and the Ettrick Shepherd, Dugald Stewart and Alison, were daily giving the productions of their minds to the public, and while yet Archibald Constable acted as the unquestioned emperor of the publishing world. I was then an insignificant person of the age of twenty; yet, destitute as I was both of means and friends, I formed the hope of writing something which would attract attention. The subject I proposed was one lying readily at hand, the romantic things connected with Old Edinburgh. If, I calculated, a first part or number could be issued, materials for others might be expected to come in, for scores of old inhabitants, even up perhaps to the very ‘oldest,’ would then contribute their reminiscences.

The plan met with success. Materials almost unbounded came to me, chiefly from aged professional and mercantile gentlemen, who usually, at my first introduction to them, started at my youthful appearance, having formed the notion that none but an old person would have thought of writing such a book. A friend gave me a letter to Mr Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, who, I was told, knew the scandal of the time of Charles II. as well as he did the merest gossip of the day, and had much to say regarding the good society of a hundred years ago.

Looking back from the year 1868, I feel that C. K. S. has himself become, as it were, a tradition of Edinburgh. His thin effeminate figure, his voice pitched in alt—his attire, as he took his daily walks on Princes Street, a long blue frock-coat, black trousers, rather wide below, and sweeping over white stockings and neat shoes—something like a web of white cambric round his neck, and a brown wig coming down to his eyebrows—had long established him as what is called a character. He had recently edited a book containing many stories of diablerie, and another in which the original narrative of ultra-presbyterian church history had to bear a series of cavalier notes of the most mocking character. He had a quaint biting wit, which people bore as they would a scratch from a provoked cat. Essentially, he was good-natured, and fond of merriment. He had considerable gifts of drawing, and one caricature portrait by him, of Queen Elizabeth dancing, ‘high and disposedly,’ before the Scotch ambassadors, is the delight of everybody who has seen it. In jest upon his own peculiarity of voice, he formed an address-card for himself consisting simply of the following anagram:

quasi dicitur C sharp. He was intensely aristocratic, and cared nothing for the interests of the great multitude. He complained that one never heard of any gentlefolks committing crimes nowadays, as if that were a disadvantage to them or the public. Any case of a Lady Jane stabbing a perjured lover would have delighted him. While the child of whim, Mr Sharpe was generally believed to possess respectable talents by which, with a need for exerting them, he might have achieved distinction. His ballad of the ‘Murder of Caerlaverock,’ in the Minstrelsy, is a masterly production; and the concluding verses haunt one like a beautiful strain of music:

‘To sweet Lincluden’s haly cells
Fu’ dowie I’ll repair;
There Peace wi’ gentle Patience dwells,
Nae deadly feuds are there.
In tears I’ll wither ilka charm,
Like draps o’ balefu’ yew;
And wail the beauty that cou’d harm
A knight sae brave and true.’

After what I had heard and read of Charles Sharpe, I called upon him at his mother’s house, No. 93 Princes Street, in a somewhat excited frame of mind. His servant conducted me to the first floor, and showed me into what is generally called amongst us the back drawing-room, which I found carpeted with green cloth, and full of old family portraits, some on the walls, but many more on the floor. A small room leading off this one behind, was the place where Mr Sharpe gave audience. Its diminutive space was stuffed full of old curiosities, cases with family bijouterie, &c. One petty object was strongly indicative of the man—a calling-card of Lady Charlotte Campbell, the once adored beauty, stuck into the frame of a picture. He must have kept it at that time about thirty years. On appearing, Mr Sharpe received me very cordially, telling me he had seen and been pleased with my first two numbers. Indeed, he and Sir Walter Scott had talked together of writing a book of the same kind in company, and calling it Reekiana, which plan, however, being anticipated by me, the only thing that remained for him was to cast any little matters of the kind he possessed into my care. I expressed myself duly grateful, and took my leave. The consequence was the appearance of notices regarding the eccentric Lady Anne Dick, the beautiful Susanna, Countess of Eglintoune, the Lord Justice-clerk Alva, and the Duchess of Queensberry (the ‘Kitty’ of Prior), before the close of my first volume. Mr Sharpe’s contributions were all of them given in brief notes, and had to be written out on an enlarged scale, with what I thought a regard to literary effect as far as the telling was concerned.

By an introduction from Dr Chalmers, I visited a living lady who might be considered as belonging to the generation at the beginning of the reign of George III. Her husband, Alexander Murray, had, I believe, been Lord North’s Solicitor-general for Scotland. She herself, born before the Porteous Riot, and well remembering the Forty-five, was now within a very brief space of the age of a hundred. Although she had not married in her earlier years, her children, Mr Murray of Henderland and others, were all elderly people. I found the venerable lady seated at a window in her drawing-room in George Street, with her daughter, Miss Murray, taking the care of her which her extreme age required, and with some help from this lady, we had a conversation of about an hour. She spoke with due reverence of her mother’s brother, the Lord Chief-justice Mansfield, and when I adverted to the long pamphlet against him written by Mr Andrew Stuart at the conclusion of the Douglas Cause, she said that, to her knowledge, he had never read it, such being his practice in respect of all attacks made upon him, lest they should disturb his equanimity in judgment. As the old lady was on intimate terms with Boswell, and had seen Johnson on his visit to Edinburgh—as she was the sister-in-law of Allan Ramsay the painter, and had lived in the most cultivated society of Scotland all her long life—there were ample materials for conversation with her; but her small strength made this shorter and slower than I could have wished. When we came upon the poet Ramsay, she seemed to have caught new vigour from the subject: she spoke with animation of the child-parties she had attended in his house on the Castle-hill during a course of ten years before his death—an event which happened in 1757. He was ‘charming,’ she said; he entered so heartily into the plays of children. He, in particular, gained their hearts by making houses for their dolls. How pleasant it was to learn that our great pastoral poet was a man who, in his private capacity, loved to sweeten the daily life of his fellow-creatures, and particularly of the young! At a warning from Miss Murray, I had to tear myself away from this delightful and never-to-be-forgotten interview.

I had, one or two years before, when not out of my teens, attracted some attention from Sir Walter Scott by writing for him and presenting (through Mr Constable) a transcript of the songs of the Lady of the Lake, in a style of peculiar calligraphy, which I practised for want of any better way of attracting the notice of people superior to myself. When George IV. some months afterwards came to Edinburgh, good Sir Walter remembered me, and procured for me the business of writing the address of the Royal Society of Edinburgh to His Majesty, for which I was handsomely paid. Several other learned bodies followed the example, for Sir Walter Scott was the arbiter of everything during that frantic time, and thus I was substantially benefited by his means.

According to what Mr Constable told me, the great man liked me, in part because he understood I was from Tweedside. On seeing the earlier numbers of the Traditions, he expressed astonishment as to ‘where the boy got all the information.’ But I did not see or hear from him till the first volume had been completed. He then called upon me one day, along with Mr Lockhart. I was overwhelmed with the honour, for Sir Walter Scott was almost an object of worship to me. I literally could not utter a word. While I stood silent, I heard him tell his companion that Charles Sharpe was a writer in the Traditions, and taking up the volume, he read aloud what he called one of his quaint bits. ‘The ninth Earl of Eglintoune was one of those patriarchal peers who live to an advanced age—indefatigable in the frequency of their marriages and the number of their children—who linger on and on, with an unfailing succession of young countesses, and die at last leaving a progeny interspersed throughout the whole of Douglas’s Peerage, two volumes, folio, re-edited by Wood.’ And then both gentlemen went on laughing for perhaps two minutes, with interjections: ‘How like Charlie!’—‘What a strange being he is!’—‘Two volumes, folio, re-edited by Wood—ha, ha, ha! There you have him past all doubt;’ and so on. I was too much abashed to tell Sir Walter that it was only an impudent little bit of writing of my own, part of the solution into which I had diffused the actual notes of Sharpe. But, having occasion to write next day to Mr Lockhart, I mentioned Sir Walter’s mistake, and he was soon after good enough to inform me that he had set his friend right as to the authorship, and they had had a second hearty laugh on the subject.

A very few days after this visit, Sir Walter sent me, along with a kind letter, a packet of manuscript, consisting of sixteen folio pages, in his usual close handwriting, and containing all the reminiscences he could at the time summon up of old persons and things in Edinburgh. Such a treasure to me! And such a gift from the greatest literary man of the age to the humblest! Is there a literary man of the present age who would scribble as much for any humble aspirant? Nor was this the only act of liberality of Scott to me. When I was preparing a subsequent work, The Popular Rhymes of Scotland, he sent me whole sheets of his recollections, with appropriate explanations. For years thereafter he allowed me to join him in his walks home from the Parliament House, in the course of which he freely poured into my greedy ears anything he knew regarding the subjects of my studies. His kindness and good-humour on these occasions were untiring. I have since found, from his journal, that I had met him on certain days when his heart was overladen with woe. Yet his welcome to me was the same. After 1826, however, I saw him much less frequently than before, for I knew he grudged every moment not spent in thinking and working on the fatal tasks he had assigned to himself for the redemption of his debts.

All through the preparation of this book, I was indebted a good deal to a gentleman who was neither a literary man nor an artist himself, but hovered round the outskirts of both professions, and might be considered as a useful adjunct to both. Every votary of pen or pencil amongst us knew David Bridges at his drapery establishment in the Lawnmarket, and many had been indebted to his obliging disposition. A quick, dark-eyed little man, with lips full of sensibility and a tongue unloving of rest, such a man in a degree as one can suppose Garrick to have been, he held a sort of court every day, where wits and painters jostled with people wanting coats, jerkins, and spotted handkerchiefs. The place was small, and had no saloon behind; so, whenever David had got some ‘bit’ to show you, he dragged you down a dark stair to a packing-place, lighted only by a grate from the street, and there, amidst plaster-casts numberless, would fix you with his glittering eye, till he had convinced you of the fine handling, the ‘buttery touches’ (a great phrase with him), the admirable ‘scummling’ (another), and so forth. It was in the days prior to the Royal Scottish Academy and its exhibitions; and it was left in a great measure to David Bridges to bring forward aspirants in art. Did such a person long for notice, he had only to give David one of his best ‘bits,’ and in a short time he would find himself chattered into fame in that profound, the grate of which I never can pass without recalling something of the buttery touches of those old days. The Blackwood wits, who laughed at everything, fixed upon our friend the title of ‘Director-general of the Fine Arts,’ which was, however, too much of a truth to be a jest. To this extraordinary being I had been introduced somehow, and, entering heartily into my views, he brought me information, brought me friends, read and criticised my proofs, and would, I dare say, have written the book itself if I had so desired. It is impossible to think of him without a smile, but at the same time a certain melancholy, for his life was one which, I fear, proved a poor one for himself.

Before the Traditions were finished, I had become favourably acquainted with many gentlemen of letters and others, who were pleased to think that Old Edinburgh had been chronicled. Wilson gave me a laudatory sentence in the Noctes Ambrosianæ. The Bard of Ettrick, viewing my boyish years, always spoke of and to me as an unaccountable sort of person, but never could be induced to believe otherwise than that I had written all my traditions from my own head. I had also the pleasure of enjoying some intercourse with the venerable Henry Mackenzie, who had been born in 1745, but always seemed to feel as if the Man of Feeling had been written only one instead of sixty years ago, and as if there was nothing particular in antique occurrences. The whole affair was pretty much of a triumph at the time. Now, when I am giving it a final revision, I reflect with touched feelings, that all the brilliant men of the time when it was written are, without an exception, passed away, while, for myself, I am forced to claim the benefit of Horace’s humanity:

‘Solve senescentem mature sanus equum, ne
Peccet ad extremum ridendus, et ilia ducat.’

INTRODUCTION TO PRESENT ISSUE.

It has been very shrewdly remarked by a famous essayist and critic that a book is none the worse for having survived a generation or two. Robert Chambers’s Traditions of Edinburgh has survived many generations since its first appearance in 1825, and I have before me a copy of this edition in the original six parts, published at two shillings each, the first of which aroused in Sir Walter Scott so much interest. The work when completed appears to have passed through many reprints, but retained its original form until it was remodelled and almost rewritten in 1846, much new matter being then added, and certain passages altogether omitted. Shortly before his death the author again revised the work, adding a new introduction, in which he reviewed the changes of the preceding forty years. This was in 1868, and since that time old Edinburgh has almost ceased to exist. Many an ancient wynd and close has disappeared, or remains simply as a right of way, on all sides surrounded by modern buildings. The City Improvements Act, obtained by Dr William Chambers when Lord Provost of Edinburgh in 1865 and again in 1868, swept away hundreds of old buildings; and to it is due the disappearance of Leith Wynd, St Mary’s Wynd, Blackfriars Wynd, the Ancient Scottish Mint in the Cowgate, and other landmarks more or less familiar to our grandfathers. These changes are confined not alone to the old town of Edinburgh, but extend to other districts which at the beginning of the nineteenth century were comparatively modern and fashionable. Brown Square and the buildings adjoining it known as ‘the Society’ have passed away, being intersected by the modern Chambers Street. Adam Square, adjoining the College, has been absorbed in South Bridge Street; Park Street and Park Place, where was once a fashionable boarding-school for young ladies, have disappeared to make room for the M’Ewan Hall and other University buildings.

If it is true that the old town of Edinburgh has been modernised out of existence, the remark applies equally to its immediate suburbs. Indeed the all-round changes of the last forty years can fitly be compared to like changes which within the same period have taken place in the city of Rome. Until within very recent times Edinburgh bore some slight resemblance to the Rome of the Popes, with its stately villas and great extent of walled-in garden ground. Much of this aristocratic old-world aspect has passed away, and one can but lament the disappearance of many an eighteenth-century house and grounds, interesting in not a few cases as the former residence of a citizen whose memory extended back to the Edinburgh of Sir Walter Scott and the famous men who were his contemporaries and friends.

Falcon Hall on the south side of the town, with its great gardens and walled-in parks, has disappeared. So also has the interesting villa of Abbey Hill, occupied until very recent times by the Dowager Lady Menzies. The Clock Mill House adjoining Holyrood Palace and the Duke’s Walk, and surrounded by ancient trees, has gone, as have likewise the many fine old residences with pleasant gardens which adjoined the two main roads between Edinburgh and Leith. All have passed away, giving place to rows of semi-detached villas and endless lines of streets erected for the housing of an ever-increasing population.

One of the few surviving examples of the old Scotch baronial mansion is Coates House, standing within the grounds of St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral at the west end of the city. This house was occupied by Robert Chambers for several years prior to his removal to St Andrews in 1840. It has since been modernised, and is now used for various purposes in connection with the Cathedral.

Although Robert Chambers died so long ago as 1871, no adequate story of his life has since been attempted. This is a matter for regret in view of some comparatively recent discoveries, particularly those relating to the history of the authorship of that famous work, Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, made public for the first time in 1884. Of that work, written between the years 1841-44, in the solitude of Abbey Park, St Andrews, a recent writer has said: ‘This book was almost as great a source of wonder in its time as the Letters of Junius, or Waverley itself. The learning and common-sense of the book, its rare temperateness and common-sense, commanded immediate attention. It was the wonder of the world at that period, nor was the authorship ever acknowledged, I believe.’ The mystery is now solved; but be it said that in the opinion of many Robert Chambers is more interesting as an antiquary than a scientist. It is in the former capacity that his name will be handed down to posterity as author of the standard work on the tradition and antiquities of the Scottish capital. The outstanding feature of the present issue of the Traditions is the series of original drawings which have been provided by Mr James Riddel, R.S.W., and it is hoped they will enable the reader more readily to realise the city’s old world charm, so sympathetically described by Robert Chambers. While a few notes have been added to this edition, it has not been deemed advisable to alter the text, and therefore that fact must be borne in mind where dates and lapses of time are mentioned.

C. E. S. CHAMBERS.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

THE CHANGES OF THE LAST HUNDRED YEARS 1

THE CASTLE-HILL 11

Hugo Arnot—Allan Ramsay—House of the Gordon Family—Sir David Baird—Dr Webster—House of Mary de Guise.

THE WEST BOW 26

The Bowhead—Weigh-house—Anderson’s Pills—Oratories—Colonel Gardiner—‘Bowhead Saints’—‘The Seizers’—Story of a Jacobite Canary—Major Weir—Tulzies—The Tinklarian Doctor—Old Assembly Room—Paul Romieu—‘He that Tholes Overcomes’—Provost Stewart—Donaldsons the Booksellers—Bowfoot—The Templars’ Lands—The Gallows Stone.

JAMES’S COURT 55

David Hume—James Boswell—Lord Fountainhall.

STORY OF THE COUNTESS OF STAIR 63

THE OLD BANK CLOSE 70

The Regent Morton—The Old Bank—Sir Thomas Hope—Chiesly of Dalry—Rich Merchants of the Sixteenth Century—Sir William Dick—The Birth of Lord Brougham.

THE OLD TOLBOOTH 82

SOME MEMORIES OF THE LUCKENBOOTHS 95

Lord Coalstoun and his Wig—Commendator Bothwell’s House—Lady Anne Bothwell—Mahogany Lands and Fore-stairs—The Krames—Creech’s Shop.

SOME MEMORANDA OF THE OLD KIRK OF ST GILES 105

THE PARLIAMENT CLOSE 109

Ancient Churchyard—Booths attached to the High Church—Goldsmiths—George Heriot—The Deid-Chack.

MEMORIALS OF THE NOR’ LOCH 117

THE PARLIAMENT HOUSE 119

Old Arrangements of the House—Justice in Bygone Times—Court of Session Garland—Parliament House Worthies.

CONVIVIALIA 138

TAVERNS OF OLD TIMES 158

THE CROSS—CADDIES 174

THE TOWN-GUARD 179

EDINBURGH MOBS 183

The Blue Blanket—Mobs of the Seventeenth Century—Bowed Joseph.

BICKERS 189

SUSANNA, COUNTESS OF EGLINTOUNE 192

FEMALE DRESSES OF LAST CENTURY 199

THE LORD JUSTICE-CLERK ALVA 204

Ladies Sutherland and Glenorchy—The Pin or Risp.

MARLIN’S AND NIDDRY’S WYNDS 209

Tradition of Marlin the Pavier—House of Provost Edward—Story of Lady Grange.

ABBOT OF MELROSE’S LODGING 223

Sir George Mackenzie—Lady Anne Dick.

BLACKFRIARS WYND 228

Palace of Archbishop Bethune—Boarding-Schools of the Last Century—The Last of the Lorimers—Lady Lovat.

THE COWGATE 240

House of Gavin Douglas the Poet—Skirmish of Cleanse-the-Causeway —College Wynd—Birthplace of Sir Walter Scott—The Horse Wynd—Tam o’ the Cowgate—Magdalen Chapel.

ST CECILIA’S HALL 249

THE MURDER OF DARNLEY 256

MINT CLOSE 260

The Mint—Robert Cullen—Lord Chancellor Loughborough.

MISS NICKY MURRAY 265

THE BISHOP’S LAND 269

JOHN KNOX’S MANSE 271

HYNDFORD’S CLOSE 275

HOUSE OF THE MARQUISES OF TWEEDDALE—THE BEGBIE TRAGEDY 279

THE LADIES OF TRAQUAIR 286

GREYFRIARS CHURCHYARD 288

Signing of the Covenant—Henderson’s Monument—Bothwell Bridge Prisoners—A Romance.

STORY OF MRS MACFARLANE 291

THE CANONGATE 295

Distinguished Inhabitants in Former Times—Story of a Burning—Morocco’s Land—New Street.

ST JOHN STREET 302

Lord Monboddo’s Suppers—The Sister of Smollett—Anecdote of Henry Dundas.

MORAY HOUSE 306

THE SPEAKING HOUSE 312

PANMURE HOUSE—ADAM SMITH 318

JOHN PATERSON THE GOLFER 320

LOTHIAN HUT 323

HENRY PRENTICE AND POTATOES 325

THE DUCHESS OF BUCCLEUCH AND MONMOUTH 327

CLAUDERO 330

QUEENSBERRY HOUSE 336

TENNIS COURT 344

Early Theatricals—The Canongate Theatre—Digges and Mrs Bellamy—A Theatrical Riot.

MARIONVILLE—STORY OF CAPTAIN MACRAE 351

ALISON SQUARE 358

LEITH WALK 360

GABRIEL’S ROAD 366

INDEX 369

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE

An Elegant Modern City Frontispiece

Map of Edinburgh, Old and New xxvi

A series of towers rising from a palace on the plain to a castle in the air Colour Drawing 1

White Hart Inn, Grassmarket ” ” 2

Newhaven Fishwife ” ” 4

Rouping-Wife ” ” 9

The Castle-Hill ” ” 11

Duke of Gordon’s House ” ” 18

The Bowhead ” ” 27

Grassmarket, from west end of Cowgate ” ” 50

Edinburgh, from the Calton Hill ” ” 83

St Giles, West Window ” ” 105

Heriot’s Hospital, from Greyfriars Churchyard ” ” 113

A Suggestion of the North Loch and St Cuthbert’s, from Allan Ramsay’s Garden ” ” 117

The Parliament House ” ” 128

‘Auld Reekie,’ from Largo ” ” 152

Upper Baxter’s Close, where Burns first resided in Edinburgh ” ” 164

White Horse Inn ” ” 170

Forenoon at the Cross ” ” 174

The Town-Guard ” ” 179

The Castle, from Princes Street ” ” 214

Blackfriars Wynd ” ” 228

The Cowgate ” ” 240

Old Houses, College Wynd (near here Sir Walter Scott was born) ” ” 242

John Knox’s Manse ” ” 274

Greyfriars Churchyard ” ” 288

St John’s Close, Entrance to Canongate Kilwinning Mason Lodge ” ” 305

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The objects of interest between the Castle and Holyrood are grouped topographically in the following list, with references to the Map.

West Bow CC| LAWNMARKET D| Mylne’s Court 8 Angle of Bow Z| Tolbooth e| James’s Court 10 Riddel’s Close 7| Luckenbooths f| Lady Stair’s Close 12 Brodie’s Close 9| St Giles’ | Upper Baxter’s 14 Old Bank Close 11| {Haddo’s Hole Church g| Close Liberton’s Wynd 13| {Tolbooth Church h| Wardrop’s Court 16 | {Old Church | Paterson’s Court 18 | {New Church |

EDINBURGH OLD AND NEW.

In the map the streets and buildings printed in black represent the historic Old Town; those in red indicate not merely the ‘New Town’ to the north, specifically so called, but some part of the alterations, additions, and extensions round the ancient nucleus that have gone to constitute the Edinburgh of the present day.

Map

KEY TO THE STREETS AND BUILDINGS NOT NAMED ON MAP.

Acheson House 67 Allan Ramsay’s House a Anchor Close 32 Angle of Bow Z Assembly Close 25 Back Stairs 21 Bailie Fife’s Close 44 Bank of Scotland red F Beith’s or Bess Wynd 17 Bell’s Wynd 27 Blackfriars Wynd 41 Blair’s or Baird’s Close 1 Blyth’s Close 2 Bristo N Bristo Port O Brodie’s Close 9 Brown’s Close 3 Byres’s Close 22 Calton Burying-Ground t Candlemaker Row T Canongate Church 58 Canongate Churchyard q Cant’s Close 37 Carrubber’s Close 42 Castlehill B Castlehill Walk or Esplanade A Castle Wynd 74 Chalmers’ Close 46 Chessels’s Court 53 College Wynd 71 Council Chambers red G County Buildings red I Court of Session red K Cowgate J J Cowgate Port L Cross x Dickson’s Close 35 Dunbar’s Close 20 Established Church Assembly Hall red h Fishmarket Close 23 Fleshmarket m Fleshmarket Close 88 Free Library red L General Post-Office red E Golfers’ Land 62 Gordon’s (Duke of) House b Greenmarket n Guard House i Halkerston’s Wynd 40 Heriot’s Hospital V Heriot-Watt College red n n High School Wynd 72 High Street E E Holyrood G Hope’s Close 15 Horse Wynd 70 Hyndford’s Close 47 Jack’s Land 54 Jackson’s Close 36 James’s Court 10 John Knox’s Manse p Lady Stair’s Close 12 Lauriston M M Lawnmarket D Leith Wynd 48 Liberton’s Wynd 13 Luckenbooths f Lyon Close 34 Magdalen Chapel 66 Marlin’s Wynd 31 Mary King’s Close 28 Mary of Guise’s House, Site of c Mint Close 45 Mint, The Old o Moray House 63 Morocco’s Land 50 Mutrie’s Hill u Mylne’s Court 8 Nairn’s Close 4 Nether Bow Port F New Street 52 Niddry’s Wynd 33 Old Bank Close 11 Old Playhouse Close 57 Panmure House 60 Parliament Close 19 Parliament House k Paterson’s Court 18 Peebles Wynd 29 Pleasance R Portsburgh H Post-Office Close 80 Potterrow P Potterrow Port Q Queensberry House 69 Register House red A Riddel’s Close 7 Royal Exchange 26 Royal Infirmary K Royal Scottish Academy Galleries red B St Cecilia’s Hall, Site of l St Giles’— Haddo’s Hole Church g Tolbooth Church h St John’s Close 59 St John’s Street 61 St Mary’s Wynd 51 Scottish National Gallery red C Scott’s (Sir Walter) Monument red D Sheriff Court House red M Speaking House 65 S.S.C. Library red J Strichen’s Close 39 Surgeons’ Hall red o Tailors’ Hall 68 Todrick’s Wynd 43 Tod’s Close 6 Tolbooth e Tolbooth Wynd 56 Trinity College Church S Tron Church j Tweeddale Court 49 Upper Baxter’s Close 14 Wardrop’s Court 16 Water Gate r Webster’s Close 5 Weigh-House d Weir’s Close 55 West Bow C C West Port I White Hart Inn 73 White Horse Inn 64 Writers’ Court 24

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A series of towers rising from a palace on the plain to a castle in the air. PAGE 1.

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TRADITIONS OF EDINBURGH.

THE CHANGES OF THE LAST HUNDRED YEARS.

[1745-1845.]

Fortified Gate, Nether Bow Port, from Canongate.

Edinburgh was, at the beginning of George III.’s reign, a picturesque, odorous, inconvenient, old-fashioned town, of about seventy thousand inhabitants. It had no court, no factories, no commerce; but there was a nest of lawyers in it, attending upon the Court of Session; and a considerable number of the Scotch gentry—one of whom then passed as rich with a thousand a year—gave it the benefit of their presence during the winter. Thus the town had lived for some ages, during which political discontent and division had kept the country poor. A stranger approaching the city, seeing it piled ‘close and massy, deep and high’—a series of towers, rising from a palace on the plain to a castle in the air—would have thought it a truly romantic place; and the impression would not have subsided much on a near inspection, when he would have found himself admitted by a fortified gate through an ancient wall, still kept in repair. Even on entering the one old street of which the city chiefly consisted, he would have seen much to admire—houses of substantial architecture and lofty proportions, mingled with more lowly, but also more arresting wooden fabrics; a huge and irregular, but venerable Gothic church, surmounted by an aërial crown of masonry; finally, an esplanade towards the Castle, from which he could have looked abroad upon half a score of counties, upon firth and fell, yea, even to the blue Grampians. Everywhere he would have seen symptoms of denseness of population; the open street a universal market; a pell-mell of people everywhere. The eye would have been, upon the whole, gratified, whatever might be the effect of the clangor strepitusque upon the ear, or whatever might have been the private meditations of the nose. It would have only been on coming to close quarters, or to quarters at all, that our stranger would have begun to think of serious drawbacks from the first impression. For an inn, he would have had the White Horse, in a close in the Canongate; or the White Hart, a house which now appears like a carrier’s inn, in the Grassmarket. Or, had he betaken himself to a private lodging, which he would have probably done under the conduct of a ragged varlet, speaking more of his native Gaelic than English, he would have had to ascend four or five stories of a common stair, into the narrow chambers of some Mrs Balgray or Luckie Fergusson, where a closet-bed in the sitting-room would have been displayed as the most comfortable place in the world; and he would have had, for amusement, a choice between an extensive view of house-tops from the window and the study of a series of prints of the four seasons, a sampler, and a portrait of the Marquis of Granby, upon the wall.

House-tops.

WHITE HART INN, GRASSMARKET. PAGE 2.

On being introduced into society, our stranger might have discovered cause for content with his lodging on finding how poorly off were the first people with respect to domestic accommodations. I can imagine him going to tea at Mr Bruce of Kennet’s, in Forrester’s Wynd—a country gentleman and a lawyer (not long after raised to the bench), yet happy to live with his wife and children in a house of fifteen pounds of rent, in a region of profound darkness and mystery, now no more. Had he got into familiar terms with the worthy lady of the mansion, he might have ascertained that they had just three rooms and a kitchen; one room, ‘my lady’s’—that is, the kind of parlour he was sitting in; another, a consulting-room for the gentleman; the third, 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. Had our friend chanced to get amongst tradespeople, he might have found Mr Kerr, the eminent goldsmith in the Parliament Square, stowing his ménage into a couple of small rooms above his booth-like shop, plastered against the wall of St Giles’s Church; 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.

But indeed everything was on a homely and narrow scale. The College—where Munro, Cullen, and Black were already making themselves great names—was to be approached through a mean alley, the College Wynd. The churches were chiefly clustered under one roof; the jail was a narrow building, half-filling up the breadth of the street; the public offices, for the most part, obscure places in lanes and dark entries. The men of learning and wit, united with a proportion of men of rank, met as the Poker Club in a tavern, the best of its day, but only a dark house in a close, to which our stranger could scarcely have made his way without a guide. In a similar situation across the way, he would have found, at the proper season, the Assembly; that is, a congregation of ladies met for dancing, and whom the gentlemen usually joined rather late, and rather merry. The only theatre was also a poor and obscure place in some indescribable part of the Canongate.

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.[1] 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. There was little elegance, but a vast amount of cheap sociality. Provokingly comical clubs, founded each upon one joke, were abundant. The ladies had tea-drinkings at the primitive hour of six, from which they cruised home under the care of a lantern-bearing, patten-shod lass; or perhaps, if a bad night, in Saunders Macalpine’s sedan-chair. Every forenoon, for several hours, the only clear space which the town presented—that around the Cross—was crowded with loungers of all ranks, whom it had been an amusement to the poet Gay to survey from the neighbouring windows of Allan Ramsay’s shop. The jostle and huddlement was extreme everywhere. Gentlemen and ladies paraded along in the stately attire of the period; tradesmen chatted in groups, often bareheaded, at their shop-doors; caddies whisked about, bearing messages, or attending to the affairs of strangers; children filled the kennel with their noisy sports. Add to all this, corduroyed men from Gilmerton, bawling coals or yellow sand, and spending as much breath in a minute as could have served poor asthmatic Hugo Arnot for a month; fishwomen crying their caller haddies from Newhaven; whimsicals and idiots going along, each with his or her crowd of listeners or tormentors; sootymen with their bags; town-guardsmen with their antique Lochaber axes; water-carriers with their dripping barrels; barbers with their hair-dressing materials; and so forth—and our stranger would have been disposed to acknowledge that, though a coarse and confused, it was a perfectly unique scene, and one which, once contemplated, was not easily to be forgotten.

A change at length began. Our northern country had settled to sober courses in the reign of George II., and the usual results of industry were soon apparent. Edinburgh by-and-by felt much like a lady who, after long being content with a small and inconvenient house, is taught, by the money in her husband’s pockets, that such a place is no longer to be put up with. There was a wish to expatiate over some of the neighbouring grounds, so as to get more space and freer air; only it was difficult to do, considering the physical circumstances of the town, and the character of the existing outlets. Space, space!—air, air! was, however, a strong and a general cry, and the old romantic city did at length burst from its bounds, though not in a very regular way, or for a time to much good purpose.

NEWHAVEN FISHWIFE. PAGE 4.

A project for a new street on the site of Halkerston’s Wynd, leading by a bridge to the grounds of Mutrie’s Hill, where a suburb might be erected, was formed before the end of the seventeenth century.[2] It was a subject of speculation to John, Earl of Mar, during his years of exile, as were many other schemes of national improvement which have since been realised—for example, the Forth and Clyde Canal. The grounds to the north lay so invitingly open that the early formation of such a project is not wonderful. Want of spirit and of means alone could delay its execution. After the Rebellion of 1745, when a general spirit of improvement began to be shown in Scotland, the scheme was taken up by a public-spirited provost, Mr George Drummond, but it had to struggle for years with local difficulties. Meanwhile, a sagacious builder, by name James Brown, resolved to take advantage of the growing taste; he purchased a field near the town for £1200, and feued it out for a square. The speculation is said to have ended in something like giving him his own money as an annual return. This place (George Square) became the residence of several of the judges and gentry. I was amused a few years ago hearing an old gentleman in the country begin a story thus: ‘When I was in Edinburgh, in the year ’67, I went to George Square, to call for Mrs Scott of Sinton,’ &c. To this day some relics of gentry cling to its grass-green causeways, charmed, perhaps, by its propinquity to the Meadows and Bruntsfield Links. Another place sprang into being, a smaller quadrangle of neat houses, called Brown’s Square.[3] So much was thought of it at first that a correspondent of the Edinburgh Advertiser, in 1764, seriously counsels his fellow-citizens to erect in it an equestrian statue of the then popular young king, George III.! This place, too, had some distinguished inhabitants; till 1846, one of the houses continued to be nominally the town mansion of a venerable judge, Lord Glenlee. We pass willingly from these traits of grandeur to dwell on the fact of its having been the residence of Miss Jeanie Elliot of Minto, the authoress of the original song, The Flowers of the Forest; and even to bethink ourselves that here Scott placed the ideal abode of Saunders Fairford and the adventure of Green Mantle. Sir Walter has informed us, from his own recollections, that the inhabitants of these southern districts formed for a long time a distinct class of themselves, having even places of polite amusement for their own recreation, independent of the rest of Edinburgh. He tells us that the society was of the first description, including, for one thing, most of the gentlemen who wrote in the Mirror and the Lounger. There was one venerable inhabitant who did not die till half the New Town was finished, yet he had never once seen it!

The exertions of Drummond at length procured an act (1767) for extending the royalty of the city over the northern fields; and a bridge was then erected to connect these with the elder city. The scheme was at first far from popular. 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.

It is curious to cast the eye over the beautiful city which now extends over this district, the residence of as refined a mass of people as could be found in any similar space of ground upon earth, and reflect on what the place was a hundred years ago. The bulk of it was a farm, usually called Wood’s Farm, from its tenant (the father of a clever surgeon, well known in Edinburgh in the last age under the familiar appellation of Lang Sandy Wood). Henry Mackenzie, author of the Man of Feeling, who died in 1831, remembered shooting snipes, hares, and partridges about that very spot to which he alludes at the beginning of the paper on Nancy Collins in the Mirror (July 1779): ‘As I walked one evening, about a fortnight ago, through St Andrew Square, I observed a girl meanly dressed,’ &c. Nearly along the line now occupied by Princes Street was a rough enclosed road, called the Lang Gait or Lang Dykes, the way along which Claverhouse went with his troopers in 1689, when he retired in disgust from the Convention, with the resolution of raising a rebellion in the Highlands. On the site of the present Register House was a hamlet or small group of houses called Mutrie’s Hill; and where the Royal Bank now stands was a cottage wherein ambulative citizens regaled themselves with fruit and curds and cream. Broughton, which latterly has been surprised and swamped by the spreading city, was then a village, considered as so far afield that people went to live in it for the summer months, under the pleasing idea that they had got into the country. It is related that Whitefield used to preach to vast multitudes on the spot which by-and-by became appropriated for the Theatre Royal. Coming back one year, and finding a playhouse on the site of his tub, he was extremely incensed. Could it be, as Burns suggests,

‘There was rivalry just in the job!’

James Craig, a nephew of the poet Thomson, was entrusted with the duty of planning the new city. In the engraved plan, he appropriately quotes from his uncle:

‘August, around, what PUBLIC WORKS I see! Lo, stately streets! lo, squares that court the breeze! See long canals and deepened rivers join Each part with each, and with the circling main, The whole entwined isle.’

The names of the streets and squares were taken from the royal family and the tutelary saints of the island. The honest citizens had originally intended to put their own local saint in the foreground; but when the plan was shown to the king for his approval, he cried: ‘Hey, hey—what, what—St Giles Street!—never do, never do!’ And so, to escape from an unpleasant association of ideas, this street was called Princes Street, in honour of the king’s two sons, afterwards George IV. and the Duke of York. So difficult was it at the very first to induce men to build that a premium of twenty pounds was offered by the magistrates to him who should raise the first house; it was awarded to Mr John Young, on account of a mansion erected by him in Rose Court, George Street. An exemption from burghal taxes was granted to the first house in the line of Princes Street, built by Mr John Neale, haberdasher (afterwards occupied by Archibald Constable, and then as the Crown Hotel), in consequence of a bargain made by Mr Graham, plumber, who sold this and the adjoining ground to the town.[4] Mr Shadrach Moyes, when having a house built for himself in Princes Street, in 1769, took the builder bound to rear another farther along besides his, to shield him from the west wind! Other quaint particulars are remembered; as, for instance: Mr Wight, an eminent lawyer, who had planted himself in St Andrew Square, finding he was in danger of having his view of St Giles’s clock shut up by the advancing line of Princes Street, built the intervening house himself, that he might have it in his power to keep the roof low for the sake of the view in question; important to him, he said, as enabling him to regulate his movements in the morning, when it was necessary that he should be punctual in his attendance at the Parliament House.

ROUPING-WIFE. PAGE 9.