Chapter C: E. S. Chambers (8)

[138] The dress of the Edinburgh Defensive Band was as follows: a cocked hat, black stock, hair tied and highly powdered; dark-blue long-tailed coat, with orange facings in honour of the Revolution, and full lapels sloped away to show the white dimity vest; nankeen small-clothes; white thread stockings, ribbed or plain; and short nankeen spatterdashes. Kay has some ingenious caricatures, in miniature, of these redoubted Bruntsfield Links and Heriot’s Green warriors. The last two survivors were Mr John M’Niven, stationer, and Robert Stevenson, painter, who died in 1832.

[139] One of the panes is now (1847) destroyed, the other cracked. [The tavern is now out of existence.]

[140] Souters’ clods and other forms of bread fascinating to youngsters, as well as penny pies of high reputation, were to be had at a shop which all old Edinburgh people speak of with extreme regard and affection—the _Baijen Hole_—situated immediately to the east of Forrester’s Wynd and opposite to the Old Tolbooth. The name—a mystery to later generations—seems to bear reference to the Baijens or Baijen Class, a term bestowed in former days upon the junior students in the college. _Bajan_ or _bejan_ is the French _bejaune_, ‘_bec jaune_,’ ‘greenbill,’ ‘greenhorn,’ ‘freshman.’

[141] The fullest account yet published of this extraordinary coterie is that of Mr H. A. Cockburn in _The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club_, vol. iii. Creech refers to it in ironical terms as ‘the virtuous, the venerable and dignified Wig who so much to their own honour and kind attention always inform the public of their meetings.’ The reputation of the club was very different.

[142] The following were other eighteenth century Edinburgh clubs:

THE POKER CLUB originated in a combination of gentlemen favourable to the establishment of militia in Scotland, and its name, happily hit on by Professor Adam Ferguson, was selected to avoid giving offence to the Government. A history of the club is given in Dugald Stewart’s Life, and also in Carlyle’s _Autobiography_, where he says: ‘Dinner was on the table soon after two o’clock, at one shilling a head, the wine to be confined to sherry and claret, and the reckoning called at six o’clock.’ The minutes of this interesting club are preserved in the University Library.

THE MIRROR CLUB, formed by the contributors to the periodical of that name. It had really existed before under the name of ‘The Tabernacle.’ ‘The Tabernacle,’ or ‘The Feast of Tabernacles,’ as Ramsay of Ochtertyre calls it, was a company of friends and admirers of Henry Dundas, first Viscount Melville.

THE EASY CLUB, founded by Allan Ramsay the poet, consisted of twelve members, each of whom was required to assume the name of some Scottish poet. Ramsay took that of Gawin Douglas.

THE CAPILLAIRE CLUB was ‘composed of all who were inclined to be witty and joyous.’

THE FACER CLUB, which met in Lucky Wood’s tavern in the Canongate, was perhaps not of a high order. If a member did not drain his measure of liquor, he had to throw it at his own face.

THE GRISKIN CLUB also met in the Canongate. Dr Carlyle and those who took part with him in the production of Home’s _Douglas_ at the Canongate playhouse formed this club, and gave it its name from the pork griskins which was their favourite supper dish.

THE RUFFIAN CLUB, ‘composed of men whose hearts were milder than their manners, and their principles more correct than their habits of life.’

THE WAGERING CLUB, instituted in 1775, still meets annually. An account of this club is given in _The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club_, vol. ii.

Others may be mentioned by name only: THE DIVERSORIUM, THE HAVERAL, THE WHIN BUSH, THE SKULL, THE SIX FOOT, THE ASSEMBLY OF BIRDS, THE CARD, THE BORACHED, THE HUMDRUM, THE APICIAN, THE BLAST AND QUAFF, THE OCEAN, THE PIPE, THE KNIGHTS OF THE CAP AND FEATHER, THE REVOLUTIONARY, THE STOIC, and THE CLUB, referred to in Lockhart’s _Life of Scott_.

Of a later period than those mentioned above were THE GOWKS CLUB; THE RIGHT AND WRONG, of which James Hogg gives a short account; and THE FRIDAY CLUB, instituted by Lord Cockburn, who also wrote an interesting history of it, recently printed by Mr H. A. Cockburn, in vol. iii. of _The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club_.

TAVERNS OF OLD TIMES.

When the worship of Bacchus held such sway in our city, his peculiar temples—the taverns—must, one would suppose, have been places of some importance. And so they were, comparatively speaking; and yet, absolutely, an Edinburgh tavern of the last century was no very fine or inviting place. Usually these receptacles were situated in obscure places—in courts or closes, away from the public thoroughfares; and often they presented such narrow and stifling accommodations as might have been expected to repel rather than attract visitors. The truth was, however, that a coarse and darksome snugness was courted by the worshippers. Large, well-lighted rooms, with a look-out to a street, would not have suited them. But allow them to dive through some Erebean alley, into a cavern-like house, and there settle themselves in a cell unvisited of Phœbus, with some dingy flamen of either sex to act as minister, and their views as to circumstances and properties were fulfilled.

The city traditions do not go far back into the eighteenth century with respect to taverns; but we obtain some notion of the principal houses in Queen Anne’s time from the Latin lyrics of Dr Pitcairn, which Ruddiman published, in order to prove that the Italian muse had not become extinct in our land since the days of Buchanan. In an address _To Strangers_, the wit tells those who would acquire some notion of our national manners to avoid the triple church of St Giles’s:

‘Tres ubi Cyclopes fanda nefanda boant’—

where three horrible monsters bellow forth sacred and profane discourse—and seek the requisite knowledge in the sanctuaries of the rosy god, whose worship is conducted by night and by day. ‘At one time,’ says he, ‘you may be delighted with the bowls of Steil of the _Cross Keys_; then other heroes, at the _Ship_, will show you the huge cups which belonged to mighty bibbers of yore. Or you may seek out the sweet-spoken Katy at _Buchanan’s_, or _Tennant’s_ commodious house, where scalloped oysters will be brought in with your wine. But _Hay_ calls us, than whom no woman of milder disposition or better-stored cellar can be named in the whole town. Now it will gratify you to make your way into the Avernian grottoes and caves never seen of the sun; but remember to make friends with the dog which guards the threshold. Straightway Mistress Anne will bring the native liquor. Seek the innermost rooms and the snug seats: these know the sun, at least, when Anne enters. What souls joying in the Lethæan flood you may there see! what frolics, God willing, you may partake of! Mindless of all that goes on in the outer world, joys not to be told to mortal do they there imbibe. But perhaps you may wish by-and-by to get back into the world—which is indeed no easy matter. I recommend you, when about to descend, to take with you a trusty Achates [a caddy]: say to Anne, “Be sure you give him no drink.” By such means it was that Castor and Pollux were able to issue forth from Pluto’s domain into the heavenly spaces. Here you may be both merry and wise; but beware how you toast kings and their French retreats,’ &c. The sites of these merry places of yore are not handed down to us; but respecting another, which Pitcairn shadows forth under the mysterious appellation of _Greppa_, it chances that we possess some knowledge. It was a suite of dark underground apartments in the Parliament Close, opening by a descending stair opposite the oriel of St Giles’s, in a mass of building called the Pillars. By the wits who frequented it, it was called the _Greping-office_, because one could only make way through its dark passages by groping. It is curious to see how Pitcairn works this homely Scottish idea into his Sapphics, talking, for example, by way of a good case of bane and antidote, of

‘Fraudes Egidii, venena Greppæ.’

A venerable person has given me an anecdote of this singular mixture of learning, wit, and professional skill in connection with the Greping-office. Here, it seems, according to a custom which lasted even in London till a later day, the clever physician used to receive visits from his patients. On one occasion a woman from the country called to consult him respecting the health of her daughter, when he gave a shrewd hygienic advice in a pithy metaphor not be mentioned to ears polite. When, in consequence of following the prescription, the young woman had recovered her health, the mother came back to the Greping-office to thank Dr Pitcairn and give him a small present. Seeing him in precisely the same place and circumstances, and surrounded by the same companions as on the former occasion, she lingered with an expression of surprise. On interrogation, she said she had only one thing to speer at him (ask after), and she hoped he would not be angry.

‘Oh no, my good woman.’

‘Well, sir, have you been sitting here ever since I saw you last?’

According to the same authority, small claret was then sold at twentypence the Scottish pint, equivalent to tenpence a bottle. Pitcairn once or twice sent his servant for a regale of this liquor on the Sunday forenoon, and suffered the disappointment of having it intercepted by the _seizers_, whose duty it was to make capture of all persons found abroad in time of service, and appropriate whatever they were engaged in carrying that smelled of the common enjoyments of life. To secure his claret for the future from this interference, the wit caused the wine on one occasion to be drugged in such a manner as to produce consequences more ludicrous than dangerous to those drinking it. The triumph he thus attained over a power which there was no reaching by any appeal to common-sense or justice must have been deeply relished in the Greping-office.

Pitcairn was professedly an Episcopalian, but he allowed himself a latitude in wit which his contemporaries found some difficulty in reconciling with any form of religion. Among the popular charges against him was that he did not believe in the existence of such a place as hell; a point of heterodoxy likely to be sadly disrelished in Scotland. Being at a book-sale, where a copy of Philostratus sold at a good price and a copy of the Bible was not bidden for, Pitcairn said to some one who remarked the circumstance: ‘Not at all wonderful; for is it not written, “_Verbum Dei manet in eternum_”?’ For this, one of the _Cyclopes_, a famous Mr Webster, called him publicly an atheist. The story goes on to state that Pitcairn prosecuted Webster for defamation in consequence, but failed in the action from the following circumstance: The defender, much puzzled what to do in the case, consulted a shrewd-witted friend of his, a Mr Pettigrew, minister of Govan, near Glasgow. Pettigrew came to Edinburgh to endeavour to get him out of the scrape. ‘Strange,’ he said, ‘since he has caught so much at your mouth, if we can catch nothing at his.’ Having laid his plan, he came bustling up to the physician at the Cross, and tapping him on the shoulder, said: ‘Are you Dr Pitcairn the atheist?’

The doctor, in his haste, overlooking the latter part of the query, answered: ‘Yes.’

‘Very good,’ said Pettigrew; ‘I take you all to witness that he has confessed it himself.’

Pitcairn, seeing how he had been outwitted, said bitterly to the minister of Govan, whom he well knew: ‘Oh, Pettigrew, that skull of yours is as deep as hell.’

‘Oh, man,’ replied Pettigrew, ‘I’m glad to find you have come to believe there is a hell.’ The prosecutor’s counsel, who stood by at the time, recommended a compromise, which accordingly took place.

A son of Pitcairn was minister of Dysart; a very good kind of man, who was sometimes consulted in a medical way by his parishioners. He seems to have had a little of the paternal humour, if we may judge from the following circumstance: A lady came to ask what her maid-servant should do for sore or tender eyes. The minister, seeing that no active treatment could be recommended, said: ‘She must do naething wi’ them, but just rub them wi’ her elbucks [elbows].’

Allan Ramsay mentions, of Edinburgh taverns in his day,

‘Cumin’s, Don’s, and Steil’s,’

as places where one may be as well served as at _The Devil_ in London.

‘’Tis strange, though true, he who would shun all evil,
Cannot do better than go to the Devil.’

JOHN MACLAURIN.

One is disposed to pause a moment on Steil’s name, as it is honourably connected with the history of music in Scotland. Being a zealous lover of the divine science and a good singer of the native melodies, he had rendered his house a favourite resort of all who possessed a similar taste, and here actually was formed (1728) the first regular society of amateur musicians known in our country. It numbered seventy persons, and met once a week, the usual entertainments consisting in playing on the harpsichord and violin the concertos and sonatas of Handel, then newly published. Apparently, however, this fraternity did not long continue to use Steil’s house, if I am right in supposing his retirement from business as announced in an advertisement of February 1729, regarding ‘a sale by auction, of the haill pictures, prints, music-books, and musical instruments, belonging to Mr John Steill’ (_Caledonian Mercury_).

Coming down to a later time—1760-1770—we find the tavern in highest vogue to have been _Fortune’s_, in the house which the Earl of Eglintoune had once occupied in the Stamp-office Close. The gay men of rank, the scholarly and philosophical, the common citizens, all flocked hither; and the royal commissioner for the General Assembly held his levees here, and hence proceeded to church with his cortège, then additionally splendid from having ladies walking in it in their court-dresses as well as gentlemen.[143] Perhaps the most remarkable set of men who met here was the POKER CLUB,[144] consisting of Hume, Robertson, Blair, Fergusson, and many others of that brilliant galaxy, but whose potations were comparatively of a moderate kind.

The _Star and Garter_, in Writers’ Court, kept by one Clerihugh (the _Clerihugh’s_ alluded to in _Guy Mannering_), was another tavern of good consideration, the favourite haunt of the magistrates and Town-council, who in those days mixed much more of private enjoyments with public duties than would now be considered fitting.[145] Here the Rev. Dr Webster used to meet them at dinner, in order to give them the benefit of his extensive knowledge and great powers of calculation when they were scheming out the New Town.

A favourite house for many of the last years of the bygone century was _Douglas’s_, in the Anchor Close, near the Cross, a good specimen of those profound retreats which have been spoken of as valued in the inverse ratio of the amount of daylight which visited them. You went a few yards down the dark, narrow alley, passing on the left hand the entry to a scale stair, decorated with ‘THE LORD IS ONLY MY SVPORT;’ then passed another door, bearing the still more antique legend: ‘O LORD, IN THE IS AL MY TRAIST;’ immediately beyond, under an architrave calling out ‘BE MERCIFVL TO ME,’ you entered the hospitable mansion of Dawney Douglas, the scene of the daily and nightly orgies of the Pleydells and Fairfords, the Hays, Erskines, and Crosbies, of the time of our fathers. Alas! how fallen off is now that temple of Momus and the Bacchanals! You find it divided into a multitude of small lodgings, where, instead of the merry party, vociferous with toasts and catches, you are most likely to be struck by the spectacle of some poor lone female, pining under a parochial allowance, or a poverty-struck family group, one-half of whom are disposed on sick-beds of straw mingled with rags—the terrible exponents of our peculiar phasis of civilisation.

The frequenter of Douglas’s, after ascending a few steps, found himself in a pretty large kitchen—a dark, fiery Pandemonium, through which numerous ineffable ministers of flame were continually flying about, while beside the door sat the landlady, a large, fat woman, in a towering head-dress and large-flowered silk gown, who bowed to every one passing. Most likely on emerging from this igneous region, the party would fall into the hands of Dawney himself, and so be conducted to an apartment. A perfect contrast was he to his wife: a thin, weak, submissive man, who spoke in a whisper, never but in the way of answer, and then, if possible, only in monosyllables. He had a habit of using the word ‘quietly’ very frequently, without much regard to its being appropriate to the sense; and it is told that he one day made the remark that ‘the Castle had been firing to-day—_quietly_;’ which, it may well be believed, was not soon forgotten by his customers. Another trait of Dawney was that some one lent him a volume of Clarendon’s history to read, and daily frequenting the room where it lay, used regularly, for some time, to put back the reader’s mark to the same place; whereupon, being by-and-by asked how he liked the book, Dawney answered: ‘Oh, very weel; but dinna ye think it’s gay mickle the same thing o’er again?’ The house was noted for suppers of tripe, rizzared haddocks, mince collops, and _hashes_, which never cost more than sixpence a head. On charges of this moderate kind the honest couple grew extremely rich before they died.

The principal room in this house was a handsome one of good size, having a separate access by the second of the entries which have been described, and only used for large companies, or for guests of the first importance. It was called _the Crown Room_, or _the Crown_—so did the guests find it distinguished on the tops of their bills—and this name it was said to have acquired in consequence of its having once been used by Queen Mary as a council-room, on which occasions the emblem of sovereignty was disposed in a niche in the wall, still existing. How the queen should have had any occasion to hold councils in this place tradition does not undertake to explain; but assuredly, when we consider the nature of all public accommodations in that time, we cannot say there is any decided improbability in the matter. The house appears of sufficient age for the hypothesis. Perhaps we catch a hint on the general possibility from a very ancient house farther down the close, of whose original purpose or owners we know nothing, but which is adumbrated by this legend:

ANGVSTA AD VSVM AVGVSTA[M]
W F B G

The Crown Room, however, is elegant enough to have graced even the presence of Queen Mary, so that she only had not had to reach it by the Anchor Close. It is handsomely panelled, with a decorated fireplace, and two tall windows towards the alley. At present this supposed seat of royal councils, and certain seat of the social enjoyments of many men of noted talents, forms a back-shop to Mr Ford, grocer, High Street, and, all dingy and out of countenance, serves only to store hams, firkins of butter, packages of groceries, and bundles of dried cod.[146]

The gentle Dawney had an old Gaelic song called Crochallan, which he occasionally sang to his customers. This led to the establishment of a club at his house, which, with a reference to the militia regiments then raising, was called the Crochallan Corps, or Crochallan Fencibles, and to which belonged, amongst other men of original character and talent, the well-known William Smellie, author of the _Philosophy of Natural History_. Each member bore a military title, and some were endowed with ideal offices of a ludicrous character: for example, a lately surviving associate had been _depute-hangman_ to the corps. Individuals committing a fault were subjected to a mock trial, in which such members as were barristers could display their forensic talents to the infinite amusement of the brethren. Much mirth and not a little horse-play prevailed. Smellie, while engaged professionally in printing the Edinburgh edition of the poems of Burns, introduced that genius to the Crochallans, when a scene of rough banter took place between him and certain privileged old hands, and the bard declared at the conclusion that he had ‘never been so abominably thrashed in his life.’ There was one predominant wit, Willie Dunbar by name, of whom the poet has left a characteristic picture:

‘As I came by Crochallan,
I cannily keekit ben—
Rattling roaring Willie
Was sitting at yon board en’—
Sitting at yon board en’,
Amang gude companie;
Rattling roaring Willie,
Ye’re welcome hame to me!’

He has also described Smellie as coming to Crochallan with his old cocked hat, gray surtout, and beard rising in its might:

‘Yet though his caustic wit was biting, rude,
His heart was warm, benevolent, and good.’

The printing-office of this strange genius being at the bottom of the close, the transition from the correction of proofs to the roaring scenes at Crochallan must have been sufficiently easy for Burns.

PAGE 164.]

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.

_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:

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.

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!’

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]

The Cross was the peculiar citadel and rallying-point of a species of lazzaroni called _Caddies_ or _Cawdies_, which formerly existed in Edinburgh, employing themselves chiefly as street-messengers and _valets de place_. A ragged, half-blackguard-looking set they were, but allowed to be amazingly acute and intelligent, and also faithful to any duty entrusted to them. A stranger coming to reside temporarily in Edinburgh got a caddy attached to his service to conduct him from one part of the town to another, to run errands for him; in short, to be wholly at his bidding.

‘Omnia novit,
Græculus esuriens, in cœlum, jusseris, ibit.’

A caddy _did_ literally know everything—of Edinburgh; even to that kind of knowledge which we now only expect in a street directory. And it was equally true that he could hardly be asked to go anywhere, or upon any mission, that he would not go. On the other hand, the stranger would probably be astonished to find that, in a few hours, his caddy was acquainted with every particular regarding himself, where he was from, what was his purpose in Edinburgh, his family connections, and his own tastes and dispositions. Of course for every particle of scandal floating about Edinburgh, the caddy was a ready book of reference. We sometimes wonder how our ancestors did without newspapers. We do not reflect on the living vehicles of news which then existed: the privileged beggar for the country people; for townsfolk, the caddies.

The caddy is alluded to as a useful kind of blackguard in Burt’s _Letters from the North of Scotland_, written about 1740. He says that although they are mere wretches in rags, lying upon stairs and in the streets at night, they are often considerably trusted, and seldom or never prove unfaithful. The story told by tradition is that they formed a society under a chief called their constable, with a common fund or box; that when they committed any misdemeanour, such as incivility or lying, they were punished by this officer by fines, or sometimes corporeally; and if by any chance money entrusted to them should not be forthcoming, it was made up out of the common treasury. Mr Burt says: ‘Whether it be true or not I cannot say, but I have been told by several that one of the judges formerly abandoned two of his sons for a time to this way of life, as believing it would create in them a sharpness which might be of use to them in the future course of their lives.’ Major Topham, describing Edinburgh in 1774, says of the caddies: ‘In short, they are the tutelary guardians of the city; and it is entirely owing to them that there are fewer robberies and less housebreaking in Edinburgh than anywhere else.’

Another conspicuous set of public servants characteristic of Edinburgh in past times were the _Chairmen_, or carriers of sedans, who also formed a society among themselves, but were of superior respectability, in as far as none but steady, considerate persons of so humble an order could become possessed of the means to buy the vehicle by which they made their bread. In former times, when Edinburgh was so much more limited than now, and rather an assemblage of alleys than of streets, sedans were in comparatively great request. They were especially in requisition amongst the ladies—indeed, almost exclusively so. From time immemorial the sons of the Gael have monopolised this branch of service; and as far as the business of a sedan-carrier can yet be said to exist amongst us, it is in the possession of Highlanders.

The reader must not be in too great haste to smile when I claim his regard for an historical person among the chairmen of Edinburgh. This was Edward Burke, the immediate attendant of Prince Charles Edward during the earlier portion of his wanderings in the Highlands. Honest Ned had been a chairman in our city, but attaching himself as a servant to Mr Alexander Macleod of Muiravonside, aide-de-camp to the Prince, it was his fortune to be present at the battle of Culloden, and to fly from the field in his Royal Highness’s company. He attended the Prince for several weeks, sharing cheerfully in all his hardships, and doing his best to promote his escape. Thus has his name been inseparably associated with this remarkable chapter of history. After parting with Charles, this poor man underwent some dreadful hardships while under hiding, his fears of being taken having reference chiefly to the Prince, as he was apprehensive that the enemy might torture him to gain intelligence of his late master’s movements. At length the Act of Indemnity placed him at his ease; and the humble creature who, by a word of his mouth, might have gained thirty thousand pounds, quietly returned to his duty as a chairman on the streets of Edinburgh! Which of the venal train of Walpole, which even of the admirers of Pulteney, is more entitled to admiration than Ned Burke? A man, too, who could neither read nor write—for such was actually his case.[153]

One cannot but feel it to be in some small degree a consolatory circumstance, and not without a certain air of the romance of an earlier day, that a bacchanal company came with a bowl of punch, the night before the demolition, and in that mood of mind when men shed ‘smiles that might as well be tears,’ drank the Dredgie of the Cross upon its doomed battlements.

‘Oh! be his tomb as lead to lead,
Upon its dull destroyer’s head!
A minstrel’s malison is said.’[154]

FOOTNOTES

[152] The pillar was restored to Edinburgh, and for some years stood within an enclosed recess on the north side of St Giles’. When Mr W. E. Gladstone rebuilt the Cross in 1885, a little to the south of its former site, between St Giles’ Church and the Police Office, the original pillar was replaced in its old position.

[153] Bishop Forbes inserts in his manuscript (which I possess) a panegyrical epitaph for Ned Burke, stating that he died in Edinburgh in November 1751. He also gives the following particulars from Burke’s conversation:

‘One of the soles of Ned’s shoes happening to come off, Ned cursed the day upon which he should be forced to go without shoes. The Prince, hearing him, called to him and said: “Ned, look at me”—when (said Ned) I saw him holding up one of his feet at me, where there was de’il a sole upon the shoe; and then I said: “Oh, my dear! I have nothing more to say. You have stopped my mouth indeed.”

‘When Ned was talking of seeing the Prince again, he spoke these words: “If the Prince do not come and see me soon, good faith I will go and see my daughter [Charles having taken the name of Betty Burke when in a female disguise], and crave her; for she has not yet paid her christening money, and as little has she paid the coat I ga’e her in her greatest need.”’

[154] ‘Upon the 26th of February [1617], the Cross of Edinburgh was taken down. The old long stone, about forty footes or thereby in length, was to be translated, by the devise of certain mariners in Leith, from the place where it had stood past the memory of man, to a place beneath in the High Street, without any harm to the stone; and the body of the old Cross was demolished, and another builded, whereupon the long stone or obelisk was erected and set up, on the 25th day of March.’—Calderwood’s _Church History_.

THE TOWN-GUARD.

PAGE 179.]