Chapter L: Of Session (1)

Eskgrove.
Hailes.
Prestongrange.
Kames.
Milton.
Montgomery.
Bannatyne.

BARONETS.

Sir J. Grant.
Sir J. Suttie.
Sir J. Whiteford.
Sir J. Stewart.
Sir J. Stirling.
Sir J. Sinclair, Glorat.
Sir J. Halkett.
Sir James Stirling.
Sir D. Hay.
Sir B. Dunbar.
Sir J. Scott, Ancrum.
Sir R. Anstruther.
Sir J. Sinclair, Ulbster.

COMMANDERS-IN-CHIEF.

General Oughton.
General Skene.
Lord A. Gordon.
Lord Moira.

EMINENT MEN.

Adam Smith.
Dr Young.
Dugald Stewart.
Dr Gardner.
Dr Gregory.

BANK.

Douglas, Heron, and Company.

LADIES’ BOARDING-SCHOOL.

Mrs Hamilton, Chessels’s Court.

PRINCIPAL INNS.

Ramsay’s, St Mary’s Wynd.
Boyd’s, Head of Canongate.

‘Two coaches went down the Canongate to Leith—one hour in going, and one hour in returning.’

[236] Removal.

[237] ‘At a former period, when the Canongate of Edinburgh was a more fashionable residence than at present, a lady of rank who lived in one of the closes, before going out to an evening-party, and at a time when hairdressers and peruke-makers were much in demand, requested a servant (newly come home) to tell Tam Tough the hairdresser to come to her immediately. The servant departed in quest of Puff, but had scarcely reached the street before she forgot the barber’s name. Meeting with a caddy, she asked him if he knew where the hairdresser lived. “Whatna hairdresser is ’t?” replied the caddy. “I ha’e forgot his name,” answered she. “What kind o’ name wus ’t?” responded Donald. “As near as I can mind,” said the girl, “it was a name that wad neither _rug_ nor _rive_.” “The deil ’s in ’t,” answered Donald, “but that’s a tam’d tough name.” “Thank ye, Donald, that’s the man’s name I wanted—_Tam Tough_.”’—[_From an Edinburgh Newspaper._]

[238] The inscription is now removed.

[239] With the exception of Lord Kames’s house, all the others referred to have been swept away by the North British Railway and the Corporation Gasworks, which at one time occupied the eastern side of the street.

[240] Although it was outside the wall, the city authorities claimed jurisdiction over the Canongate as far as St John’s Cross, notwithstanding that the Canongate was a separate burgh, which it continued to be till the middle of the nineteenth century. Proclamations were made at St John’s Cross as well as at the Mercat Cross in the High Street, and at it the Canongate burgh officials joined the city fathers when paying ceremonial visits to Holyrood.

ST JOHN STREET.

LORD MONBODDO’S SUPPERS—THE SISTER OF SMOLLETT—ANECDOTE OF
HENRY DUNDAS.

St John Street, so named with reference to St John’s Cross above mentioned, was one of the heralds of the New Town. In the latter half of the last century it was occupied solely by persons of distinction—nobles, judges, and country gentleman; now it is possessed as exclusively by persons of the middle rank. In No. 13 lived that eccentric genius, Lord Monboddo, whose supper-parties, conducted in classic taste, frequented by the _literati_, and for a time presided over by an angel in the form of a daughter of his lordship, were of immense attraction in their day. In a stair at the head of this street lived the sister of the author of _Roderick Random_.

Smollett’s life as a literary adventurer in London, and the full participation he had in the woes of authors by profession, have perhaps conveyed an erroneous idea of his birth and connections. The Smolletts of Dumbartonshire were in reality what was called in Scotland a good old family. The novelist’s own grandfather had been one of the commissioners for the Union between England and Scotland. And it is an undoubted fact that Tobias himself, if he had lived two or three years longer, would have become the owner of the family estate, worth about a thousand a year. All this, to any one conversant with the condition of the Scottish gentry in the early part of the last century, will appear quite consistent with his having been brought up as a druggist’s apprentice in Glasgow—‘the bubbly-nosed callant, wi’ the stane in his pouch,’ as his master affectionately described him, with reference to his notorious qualities as a Pickle.

The sister of Smollett—she who, failing him, did succeed to the family property—was a Mrs Telfer, domiciled as a gentle widow in a common stair at the head of St John Street (west side), first door up. She is described as a somewhat stern-looking specimen of her sex, with a high cast of features, but in reality a good-enough-natured woman, and extremely shrewd and intelligent. One passion of her genus possessed her—whist. A relative tells me that one of the city magistrates, who was a tallow-chandler, calling upon her one evening, she said: ‘Come awa, bailie, and take a trick at the cartes.’

‘Troth, ma’am,’ said he, ‘I hav’na a bawbee in my pouch.’

‘Tut, man, ne’er mind that,’ replied the lady; ‘let’s e’en play for a pund o’ candles!’

During his last visit to Edinburgh (1766)—the visit which occasioned _Humphry Clinker_—Smollett lived in his sister’s house. A person who recollects seeing him there describes him as dressed in black clothes, tall, and extremely handsome, but quite unlike the portraits at the front of his works, all of which are disclaimed by his relations. The unfortunate truth appears to be that the world is in possession of no genuine likeness of Smollett! He was very peevish, on account of the ill-health to which he had been so long a martyr, and used to complain much of a severe ulcerous disorder in his arm.

His wife, according to the same authority, was a Creole, with a dark complexion, though, upon the whole, rather pretty—a fine lady, but a silly woman. Yet she had been the Narcissa of _Roderick Random_.[241]

In _Humphry Clinker_, Smollett works up many observations of things and persons which he had made in his recent visit to Scotland. His relative Commissary Smollett, and the family seat near Loch Lomond, receive ample notice. The story in the family is that while Matthew Bramble was undoubtedly himself, he meant in the gay and sprightly Jerry Melford to describe his sister’s son, Major Telfer, and in Liddy to depict his own daughter, who was destined to be the wife of the major, but, to the inexpressible and ineffaceable grief of her father, died before the scheme could be accomplished. Jerry, it will be recollected, ‘got some damage from the bright eyes of the charming Miss R——n, whom he had the honour to dance with at the ball.’ Liddy contracted an intimate friendship with the same person. This young beauty was Eleonora Renton, charming by the true right divine, for she was daughter of Mr Renton of Lamerton, by Lady Susan Montgomery, one of the fair offshoots of the house of Eglintoune, described in a preceding article. A sister of hers was married to Smollett’s eldest nephew, Telfer, who became inheritor of the family estate, and on account of it took the surname of Smollett: a large modern village in Dumbartonshire takes its name from this lady. It seems to have been this connection which brought the charming Eleonora under the novelist’s attention. She afterwards married Charles Sharpe of Hoddam, and became the mother of Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, the well-known antiquary. Strange to say, the lady whose bright eyes had flamed upon poor Smollett’s soul in the middle of the last century, was living so lately as 1836.

PAGE 305.]

When Smollett was confined in the King’s Bench Prison for the libel upon Admiral Knowles, he formed an intimacy with the celebrated Tenducci. This melodious singing-bird had recently got his wings clipped by his creditors, and was mewed up in the same cage with the novelist. Smollett’s friendship proceeded to such a height that he paid the vocalist’s debts from his own purse, and procured him his liberty. Tenducci afterwards visited Scotland, and was one night singing in a private circle, when somebody told him that a lady present was a near relation of his benefactor; upon which the grateful Italian prostrated himself before her, kissed her hands, and acted so many fantastic extravagances, after the foreign fashion, that she was put extremely out of countenance.

On the west side of the street, immediately to the south of the Canongate Kilwinning Mason Lodge, there is a neat self-contained house of old fashion, with a flower-plot in front. This was the residence of —— Anderson, merchant in Leith, the father of seven sons, all of whom attained respectable situations in life: one was the late Mr Samuel Anderson of St Germains, banker. They had been at school with Mr Henry Dundas (afterwards Lord Melville); and when he had risen to high office, he called one day on Mr Anderson, and expressed his earnest wish to have the pleasure of dining with his seven school companions, all of whom happened at that time to be at home. The meeting took place at Mr Dundas’s, and it was a happy one, particularly to the host, who, when the hour of parting arrived, filled a bumper in high elation to their healths, and mentioned that they were the only men who had ever dined with him since he became a public servant who had not asked some favour either for themselves or their friends.

The house adjoining to the one last mentioned—having its gable to the street, and a garden to the south—was, about 1780, the residence of the Earl of Wemyss. A Lady Betty Charteris, of this family, occupied the one farthest to the south on that side of the street. She was a person of romantic history, for, being thwarted in an affair of the heart, she lay in bed for twenty-six years, till dismissed to the world where such troubles are unknown.

FOOTNOTES

[241] Strap in _Roderick Random_ was supposed to represent one Hutchinson, a barber near Dunbar. The man encouraged the idea as much as possible. When Mr [Warren] Hastings (governor of India) and his wife visited Scotland, they sent for this man, and were so pleased with him that Mr Hastings afterwards sent him a couple of razors, mounted in gold, from London.

MORAY HOUSE.

In the Canongate there is a house which has had the fortune to be connected with more than one of the most interesting points in our history. It is usually styled Moray House, being the entailed property of the noble family of Moray. The large proportions and elegant appearance of this mansion distinguish it from all the surrounding buildings, and in the rear (1847) there is a fine garden, descending in the old fashion by a series of terraces. Though long deserted by the Earls of Moray, it has been till a recent time kept in the best order, being occupied by families of respectable character.[242]

This house was built in the early part of the reign of Charles I. (about 1628) by Mary, Countess of Home, then a widow. Her ladyship’s initials, M. H., appear, in cipher fashion, underneath her coronet upon various parts of the exterior; and over one of the principal windows towards the street there is a lozenge shield, containing the two lions rampant which form the coat armorial of the Home family. Lady Home was an English lady, being the daughter of Edward Sutton, Lord Dudley. She seems to have been unusually wealthy for the dowager of a Scottish earl, for in 1644 the English Parliament repaid seventy thousand pounds which she had lent to the Scottish Covenanting Government; and she is found in the same year lending seven thousand to aid in paying the detachment of troops which that Government had sent to Ireland. She was also a sufferer, however, by the civil war, in as far as Dunglass House, which was blown up in 1640, by accident, when in the hands of the Covenanters, belonged to her in liferent. To her affluent circumstances, and the taste which she probably brought with her from her native country, may be ascribed the superior style of this mansion, which not only displays in the outside many traces of the elegant architecture which prevailed in England in the reign of James I., but contains two state apartments, decorated in the most elaborate manner, both in the walls and ceilings, with the favourite stucco-work of that reign. On the death of Lady Home the house passed (her ladyship having no surviving male issue) to her daughters and co-heiresses, Margaret, Countess of Moray, and Anne, Countess (afterwards Duchess) of Lauderdale, between whom the entire property of their father, the first Earl of Home, appears to have been divided, his title going into another line. By an arrangement between the two sisters, the house became, in 1645, the property of the Countess of Moray and her son James, Lord Doune.

It stood in this condition as to ownership, though still popularly called ‘Lady Home’s Lodging,’ when, in the summer of 1648, Oliver Cromwell paid his first visit to Edinburgh. Cromwell had then just completed the overthrow of the army of the _Engagement_—a gallant body of troops which had been sent into England by the more Cavalier party of the Scottish Covenanters, in the hope of rescuing the king from the hands of the sectaries. The victorious general, with his companion Lambert, took up his quarters in this house, and here received the visits of some of the leaders of the less loyal party of the Covenanters—the Marquis of Argyll, the Chancellor Loudoun, the Earl of Lothian, the Lords Arbuthnot, Elcho, and Burleigh, and the Reverend Messrs David Dickson, Robert Blair, and James Guthrie. ‘What passed among them,’ says Bishop Henry Guthrie in his _Memoirs_, ‘came not to be known infallibly; but it was talked very loud that he did communicate to them his design in reference to the king, and had their assent thereto.’ It is scarcely necessary to remark that this was probably no more than a piece of Cavalier scandal, for there is no reason to believe that Cromwell, if he yet contemplated the death of the king, would have disclosed his views to men still so far tinctured with loyalty as those enumerated. Cromwell’s object in visiting Edinburgh on this occasion and in holding these conferences, was probably limited to the reinstatement of the ultra-Presbyterian party in the government, from which the Duke of Hamilton and other loyalists had lately displaced it.

When, in 1650, the Lord Lorn, eldest son of the Marquis of Argyll, was married to Lady Mary Stuart, eldest daughter of the Earl of Moray, the wedding feast ‘stood,’ as contemporary writers express it, at the Earl of Moray’s house in the Canongate. The event so auspicious to these great families was signalised by a circumstance of a very remarkable kind. A whole week had been passed in festivity by the wedded pair and their relations, when, on Saturday the 18th of May, the Marquis of Montrose was brought to Edinburgh, an excommunicated and already condemned captive, having been taken in the north in an unsuccessful attempt to raise a Cavalier party for his young and exiled prince. When the former relative circumstances of Argyll and Montrose are called to mind—when it is recollected that they had some years before struggled for an ascendancy in the civil affairs of Scotland, that Montrose had afterwards chased Argyll round and round the Highlands, burned and plundered his country undisturbed, and on one occasion overthrown his forces in a sanguinary action, while Argyll looked on from a safe distance at sea—the present relative circumstances of the two chiefs become a striking illustration of the vicissitudes in personal fortune that characterise a time of civil commotion. Montrose, after riding from Leith on a sorry horse, was led into the Canongate by the Watergate, and there placed upon a low cart, driven by the common executioner. In this ignominious fashion he was conducted up the street towards the prison, in which he was to have only two days to live, and in passing along was necessarily brought under the walls and windows of Moray House. On his approach to that mansion, the Marquis of Argyll, his lady, and children, together with the whole of the marriage-party, left their banqueting, and stepping out to a balcony which overhangs the street, there planted themselves to gaze on the prostrated enemy of their house and cause. Here, indeed, they had the pleasure of seeing Montrose in all external circumstances reduced beneath their feet; but they had not calculated on the strength of nature which enabled that extraordinary man to overcome so much of the bitterness of humiliation and of death. He is said to have gazed upon them with so much serenity that they shrank back with some degree of discomposure, though not till the marchioness had expressed her spite at the fallen hero by spitting at him—an act which in the present age will scarcely be credible, though any one well acquainted with the history of the seventeenth century will have too little reason to doubt it.

In a Latin manuscript of this period, the gardens connected with the house of the Earl of Moray are spoken of as ‘of such elegance, and cultivated with so much care, as to vie with those of warmer countries, and perhaps even of England itself. And here,’ pursues the writer, ‘you may see how much the art and industry of man may avail in supplying the defects of nature. Scarcely any one would believe it possible to give so much beauty to a garden in this frigid clime.’ One reason for the excellence of the garden may have been its southern exposure. On the uppermost of its terraces there is a large and beautiful thorn, with pensile leaves; on the second there are some fruit-trees, the branches of which have been caused to spread out in a particular way, so as to form a kind of cup, possibly for the reception of a pleasure-party, for such fantastic twistings of nature were not uncommon among our ancestors. In the lowest level of the garden there is a little receptacle for water, beside which is the statue of a fishing-boy, having a basket of fish at his feet, and a _clam-shell_ inverted upon his head.[243] Here is also a small building, surmounted by two lions holding female shields, and which may therefore be supposed contemporaneous with the house: this was formerly a summer-house, but has latterly been expanded into the character of a conservatory. Tradition vaguely reports it as the place where the Union between England and Scotland was signed; though there is also a popular story of that fact having been accomplished in a _laigh shop_ of the High Street (marked No. 117), at one time a tavern, and known as the _Union Cellar_.[244] Probably the rumour, in at least the first instance, refers only to private arrangements connected with the passing of the celebrated statute in question. The Chancellor Earl of Seafield inhabited Moray House at that time on lease, and nothing could be more likely than that he should there have after-dinner consultations on the pending measure, which might in the evening be adjourned to this garden retreat.

It would appear that about this period the garden attached to the house was a sort of a public promenade or lounging-place; as was also the garden connected with Heriot’s Hospital. In this character it forms a scene in the licentious play called _The Assembly_, written in 1692 by Dr Pitcairn. _Will_, ‘a discreet smart gentleman,’ as he is termed in the prefixed list of _dramatis personæ_, but in reality a perfect debauchee, first makes an appointment with Violetta, his mistress, to meet her in this place; and as she is under the charge of a sourly devout aunt, he has to propound the matter in metaphorical language. Pretending to expound a particular passage in the Song of Solomon for the benefit of the dame, he thus gives the hint to her young protégée:

‘_Will._ “Come, my beloved, let us walk in the fields, let us lodge in the villages.” The same metaphor still. The kirk not having the liberty of bringing her servant to her mother’s house, resolveth to meet him in the villages, such as the Canongate, in respect of Edinburgh; and the vineyard, such as _my Lady Murray’s Yards_, to use a homely comparison.

‘_Old Lady._ A wondrous young man this!

* * * * *

‘_Will._ The eighth chapter towards the close: “Thou that dwellest in the gardens, cause me to hear thy voice.”

‘_Violetta._ That’s still alluding to the metaphor of a gallant, who, by some signs, warns his mistress to make haste—a whistle or so. The same with early in the former chapter; that is to say, to-morrow by six o’clock. Make haste to accomplish our loves.

‘_Old L._ Thou art a hopeful girl; I hope God has blest my pains on thee.’

In terms of this curious assignation, the third act opens in a walk in Lady Murray’s Yards, where Will meets his beloved Violetta. After a great deal of badinage, in the style of Dryden’s comedies, which were probably Dr Pitcairn’s favourite models, the dialogue proceeds in the following style:

‘_Will._ I’ll marry you at the rights, if you can find in your heart to give yourself to an honest fellow of no great fortune.

‘_Vio._ In truth, sir, methinks it were fully as much for my future comfort to bestow myself, and any little fortune I have, upon you, as some reverend spark in a band and short cloak, with the patrimony of a good gift of prayer, and as little sense as his father, who was hanged in the Grassmarket for murdering the king’s officers, had of honesty.

‘_Will._ Then I must acknowledge, my dear madam, I am most damnably in love with you, and must have you by foul or fair means; choose you whether.

‘_Vio._ I’ll give you fair-play in an honest way.

‘_Will._ Then, madam, I can command a parson when I please; and if you be half so kind as I could wish, we’ll take a hackney, and trot up to some honest curate’s house: besides, a guinea or so will be a charity to him perhaps.

‘_Vio._ Hold a little; I am hardly ready for that yet,’ &c.

After the departure of this hopeful couple, Lord Huffy and Lord Whigriddin, who are understood to have been intended for Lord Leven (son of the Earl of Melville) and the Earl of Crawford, enter the gardens, and hold some discourse of a different kind.

FOOTNOTES

[242] For many years the Practising School for Teachers under the management of the Free Church of Scotland, now the Training College for Teachers under the Provincial Council of Education.

[243] The terraces have long since been deprived of their last semblance of the old gardens; but while recent excavations were being made for an extension of the educational buildings, the statue of the boy was discovered underground in the lowest terrace. The statue is preserved, and forms a connecting link between ‘My Lady Murray’s Yards’ and the ‘Yards’ of the modern school.

[244] On the north side of the High Street, opposite the Tron Church. The site is now covered by the opening of Cockburn Street.

THE SPEAKING HOUSE.

The mansion on which I venture to confer this title is an old one of imposing appearance, a little below Moray House. It is conspicuous by three gables presented to the street, and by the unusual space of linear ground which it occupies. Originally, it has had no door to the street. A _porte-cochère_ gives admittance to a close behind, from which every part of the house had been admissible, and when this gateway was closed the inhabitants would be in a tolerably defensible position. In this feature the house gives a striking idea of the insecurity which marked the domestic life of three hundred years ago.

PAGE 313.]

It was built in the year of the assassination of the Regent Moray, and one is somewhat surprised to think that, at so dark a crisis of our national history, a mansion of so costly a character should have taken its rise. The owner, whatever grade he held, seems to have felt an apprehension of the popular talk on the subject of his raising so elegant a mansion; and he took a curious mode of deprecating its expression. On a tablet over the ground-floor he inscribes: HODIE MIHI: CRAS TIBI. CUR IGITUR CURAS? along with the year of the erection, 1570. This is as much as to say: ‘I am the happy man to-day; your turn may come to-morrow. Why, then, should you repine?’ One can imagine from a second tablet, a little way farther along the front, that as the building proceeded, the storm of public remark and outcry had come to be more and more bitter, so that the soul of the owner got stirred up into a firm and defying anger. He exclaims (for, though a lettered inscription, one feels it as an exclamation): UT TU LINGUÆ TUÆ, SIC EGO MEAR. AURIUM, DOMINUS SUM (‘As thou of thy tongue, so I of my ears, am lord’); thus quoting, in his rage on this petty occasion, an expression said to have been used in the Roman senate by Titus Tacitus when repelling the charges of Lucius Metellus.[245] Afterwards he seems to have cooled into a religious view of the predicament, and in a third legend along the front he tells the world: CONSTANTI PECTORI RES MORTALIUM UMBRA; ending a little farther on with an emblem of the Christian hope of the Resurrection, ears of wheat springing from a handful of bones. It is a great pity that we should not know who was the builder and owner of this house, since he has amused us so much with the history of his feelings during the process of its erection. A friend at my elbow suggests—a schoolmaster! But who ever heard of a schoolmaster so handsomely remunerated by his profession as to be able to build a house?

Nothing else is known of the early history of this house beyond the fact of the Canongate magistrates granting a charter for it to the Hammermen of that burgh, September 10, 1647.[246] It was, however, in 1753 occupied by a person of no less distinction than the Dowager Duchess of Gordon.[247]

In the alley passing under this mansion there is a goodly building of more modern structure, forming two sides of a quadrangle, with a small court in front divided from the lane by a wall in which there is a large gateway. Amidst filthiness indescribable, one discerns traces of former elegance: a crest over the doorway—namely, a cock mounted on a trumpet, with the motto ‘VIGILANTIBUS,’ and the date 1633; over two upper windows, the letters ‘S. A. A.’ and ‘D. M. H.’ These memorials, with certain references in the charter before mentioned, leave no room for doubt that this was the house of Sir Archibald Acheson of Abercairny, Secretary of State for Scotland in the reign of Charles I., and ancestor to the Earl of Gosford in Ireland, who to this day bears the same crest and motto. The letters are the initials of Sir Archibald and his wife, Dame Margaret Hamilton. Here of course was the _court_ of Scotland for a certain time, the Secretary of State being the grand dispenser of patronage in our country at that period—_here_, where nothing but the extremest wretchedness is now to be seen! That boastful bird, too, still seeming to assert the family dignity, two hundred years after it ceased to have any connection with the spot! Verily there are some moral preachments in these dark old closes if modern refinement could go to hear the sermon!

Sir Archibald Acheson acquired extensive lands in Ireland,[248] which have ever since been in the possession of his family. It was a descendant of his, and of the same name, who had the gratification of becoming the landlord of Swift at Market-hill, and whom the dean was consequently led to celebrate in many of his poems. Swift seems to have been on the most familiar terms with this worthy knight and his lady; the latter he was accustomed to call _Skinnibonia_, _Lean_, or _Snipe_, as the humour inclined him. The inimitable comic painting of her ladyship’s maid Hannah, in the debate whether Hamilton’s Bawn should be turned into a malt-house or a barrack, can never perish from our literature. In like humour, the dean asserts the superiority of himself and his brother-tenant Colonel Leslie, who had served much in Spain, over the knight:

‘Proud baronet of Nova Scotia,
The dean and Spaniard much reproach ye.
Of their two fames the world enough rings;
Where are thy services and sufferings?
What if for nothing once you kissed,
Against the grain, a monarch’s fist?
What if among the courtly tribe,
You lost a place and saved a bribe?
And then in surly mood came here
To fifteen hundred pounds a year,
And fierce against the Whigs harangued?
You never ventured to be hanged.
How dare you treat your betters thus?
Are you to be compared to us?’

Speaking also of a celebrated thorn at Market-hill, which had long been a resort of merry-making parties, he reverts to the Scottish Secretary of former days:

‘Sir Archibald, that valorous knight,
The lord of all the fruitful plain,
Would come and listen with delight,
For he was fond of rural strain:

Sir Archibald, whose favourite name
Shall stand for ages on record,
By Scottish bards of highest fame,
Wise Hawthornden and Stirling’s lord.’

The following letter to Sir Archibald from his friend Sir James Balfour, Lord Lyon, occurs amongst the manuscript stores of the latter gentleman in the Advocates’ Library:

‘To Sir ARCHIBALD ACHESONE,
one of the Secretaries of Staite.

‘WORTHY SIR—Your letters, full of Spartanical brevity to the
first view, bot, againe overlooked, Demosthenicall longe;
stuffed full of exaggerations and complaints; the yeast of your
enteirest affections, sent to quicken a slumbring friend as you
imagine, quho nevertheless remains vigilant of you and of the
smallest matters, which may aney wayes adde the least rill of
content to the ocean of your happiness; quherfor you may show
your comerad, and intreat him from me, as from one that trewly
loves and honors his best pairts, that now he vold refraine,
both his tonge and pen, from these quhirkis and obloquies,
quherwith he so often uses to stain the name of grate
personages, for hardly can he live so reteiredly, in so voluble
ane age, without becoming at one tyme or uther obnoxious to the
blow of some courtier. So begging God to bless you, I am your—

JA. BALFOUR.
‘_LONDON, 9 Apryll 1631._’

Twenty years before the Duchess of Gordon lived in the venerable house at the head of the close, a preceding dowager resided in another part of the town. This was the distinguished Lady Elizabeth Howard (daughter of the Duke of Norfolk, by Lady Anne Somerset, daughter of the Marquis of Worcester), who occasioned so much disturbance in the end of Queen Anne’s reign by the Jacobite medal which she sent to the Faculty of Advocates. Her grace lived in a house at the Abbeyhill, where, as we are informed by Wodrow, in a tone of pious horror,[249] she openly kept a kind of college for instructing young people in Jesuitism and Jacobitism together. In this labour she seems to have been assisted by the Duchess of Perth, a kindred soul, whose enthusiasm afterwards caused the ruin of her family, by sending her son into the insurrection of 1745.[250] The Duchess of Gordon died here in 1732. I should suppose the house to have been that respectable old villa, at the extremity of the suburb of Abbeyhill, in which the late Baron Norton, of the Court of Exchequer, lived for many years. It was formerly possessed by Baron Mure, who, during the administration of the Earl of Bute, exercised the duties and dispensed the patronage of the _sous-ministre_ for Scotland, under the Hon. Stuart Mackenzie, younger brother of the Premier. This was of course in its turn the _court_ of Scotland; and from the description of a gentleman old enough to remember attending the levees (Sir W. M. Bannatyne), I should suppose that it was as much haunted by suitors of all kinds as ever were the more elegant halls of Holyrood House. Baron Mure, who was the personal friend of Earl Bute, died in 1774.

FOOTNOTES

[245] I was indebted to my friend Dr John Brown (_Horæ Subsecivæ_, p. 42) for drawing my attention to a quotation of Seneca by Beyerlinck (_Magn. Theatr. Vit. Human._, tom. vi. p. 60), involving this fine expression. Some one, however, has searched all over the writings of Seneca for it in vain.

[246] The close entering by the archway at the east end of the house, now called ‘Bakehouse Close,’ was formerly ‘Hammermen’s Close.’

[247] ‘The Speaking House’ is now recognised as a town mansion of the Huntly family. It is said to be associated with the first marquis, who killed the ‘Bonnie Earl of Moray’ at Donibristle, and died in 1636 at Dundee on his way north to Aberdeenshire. His son, the second marquis, who was beheaded in 1649, was residing in this house ten years prior to his execution, and in it his daughter Lady Ann was married to Lord Drummond, third Earl of Perth.

[248] Which he named Gosford, after the estate in East Lothian, which was acquired by Sir Archibald’s ancestor, a wealthy burgess in the reign of Queen Mary. The Viscounts Gosford take their title from the Irish estate.

[249] In his MS. Diaries in the Advocates’ Library.

[250] In an advertisement in a Jacobite newspaper, called _The Thistle_, which rose and sank in 1734, the house is advertised as having lately been occupied by the Duchesses of Gordon and Perth. [1868. It is in the course of being taken down to make way for a railway.]

PANMURE HOUSE—ADAM SMITH.

At the bottom of a close a little way below the Canongate Church, there is a house which a few years ago bore the appearance of one of those small semi-quadrangular manor-houses which were prevalent in the country about the middle of the seventeenth century. It is now altered, and brought into juxtaposition with the coarse details of an ironfoundry, yet still is not without some traits of its original style. The name of Panmure House takes the mind back to the Earls of Panmure, the fourth of whom lost title and estates for his concern in the affair of 1715; but I am not certain of any earlier proprietor of this family than William Maule, nephew of the attainted earl, created Earl of Panmure as an Irish title in 1743. _He_ possessed the house in the middle of the last century.

All reference to rank in connection with this house appears trivial in comparison with the fact that it was the residence of Adam Smith from 1778, when he came to live in Edinburgh as a commissioner of the customs, till his death in 1790, when he was interred in a somewhat obscure situation at the back of the Canongate Tolbooth. In his time the house must have seen the most intellectual company to be had in Scotland; but it had not the honour of being the birthplace of any of Smith’s great works. His last and greatest—the book which has undoubtedly done more for the good of the community than any other ever produced in Scotland—was the work of ten quiet, studious years previous to 1778, during which the philosopher lived in his mother’s house in Kirkcaldy.

The gentle, virtuous character of Smith has left little for the anecdotist. The utmost simplicity marked the externals of the man. He said very truly (being in possession of a handsome library) that ‘he was only a beau in his books.’ Leading an abstracted, scholarly life, he was ill-fitted for common worldly affairs. Some one remarked to a friend of mine while Smith still lived: ‘How strange to think of one who has written so well on the principles of exchange and barter—he is obliged to get a friend to buy his horse-corn for him!’ The author of the _Wealth of Nations_ never thought of marrying. His household affairs were managed to his perfect contentment by a female cousin, a Miss Jeanie Douglas, who almost necessarily acquired a great control over him. It is said that the amiable philosopher, being fond of a bit sugar, and chid by her for taking it, would sometimes, in sauntering backwards and forwards along the parlour, watch till Miss Jeanie’s back was turned in order to supply himself with his favourite morsel. Such things are not derogatory to greatness like Smith’s: they link it to human nature, and secure for it the love, as it had previously possessed the admiration, of common men.

The one personal circumstance regarding Smith which has made the greatest impression on his fellow-citizens is the rather too well-known anecdote of the two fishwomen. He was walking along the streets one day, deeply abstracted, and speaking in a low tone to himself, when he caught the attention of two of these many-petticoated ladies, engaged in selling their fish. They exchanged significant looks, bearing strong reference to the restraints of a well-managed lunatic asylum, and then sighed one to the other: ‘Aih, sirs; and he’s weel put on too!’—that is, well dressed; his gentleman-like condition making the case appear so much the more piteous.

JOHN PATERSON THE GOLFER.

In the Canongate, nearly opposite to Queensberry House, is a narrow, old-fashioned mansion, of peculiar form, having a coat-armorial conspicuously placed at the top, and a plain slab over the doorway containing the following inscriptions:

‘Cum victor ludo, Scotis qui proprius, esset,
Ter tres victores post redimitus avos,
Patersonus, humo tunc educebat in altum
Hanc, quæ victores tot tulit una, domum.’

‘I hate no person.’

It appears that this quatrain was the production of Dr Pitcairn, while the sentence below is an anagram upon the name of JOHN PATERSONE. The stanza expresses that ‘when Paterson had been crowned victor in a game peculiar to Scotland, in which his ancestors had also been often victorious, he then built this mansion, which one conquest raised him above all his predecessors.’ We must resort to tradition for an explanation of this obscure hint.

Till a recent period, golfing had long been conducted upon the Links of Leith.[251] It had even been the sport of princes on that field. We are told by Mr William Tytler of Woodhouselee that Charles I. and the Duke of York (afterwards James II.) played at golf on Leith Links, in succession, during the brief periods of their residence in Holyrood. Though there is an improbability in this tale as far as Charles is concerned, seeing that he spent too short a time in Edinburgh to have been able to play at a game notorious for the time necessary in acquiring it, I may quote the anecdote related by Mr Tytler: ‘That while he was engaged in a party at golf on the green or Links of Leith, a letter was delivered into his hands, which gave him the first account of the insurrection and rebellion in Ireland; on reading which, he suddenly called for his coach, and leaning on one of his attendants, and in great agitation, drove to the palace of Holyrood House, from whence next day he set out for London.’ Mr Tytler says, regarding the Duke of York, that he ‘was frequently seen in a party at golf on the Links of Leith with some of the nobility and gentry. I remember in my youth to have often conversed with an old man named Andrew Dickson, a golf-club maker, who said that, when a boy, he used to carry the duke’s golf-clubs, and run before him, and announce where the balls fell.’[252]

PAGE 320.]

Tradition reports that when the duke lived in Holyrood House he had on one occasion a discussion with two English noblemen as to the native country of golf; his Royal Highness asserting that it was peculiar to Scotland, while they as pertinaciously insisted that it was an English game as well. Assuredly, whatever may have been the case in those days, it is not now an English game in the proper sense of the words, seeing that it is only played to the south of the Tweed by a few fraternities of Scotsmen, who have acquired it in their own country in youth. However this may be, the two English nobles proposed, good-humouredly, to prove its English character by taking up the duke in a match to be played on Leith Links. James, glad of an opportunity to make popularity in Scotland, in however small a way, accepted the challenge, and sought for the best partner he could find. By an association not at this day surprising to those who practise the game, the heir-presumptive of the British throne played in concert with a poor shoemaker named John Paterson, the worthy descendant of a long line of illustrious golfers. If the two southrons were, as might be expected, inexperienced in the game, they had no chance against a pair, one member of which was a good player. So the duke got the best of the practical argument; and Paterson’s merits were rewarded by a gift of the sum played for. The story goes on to say that John was thus enabled to build a somewhat stylish house for himself in the Canongate, on the top of which, being a Scotsman, and having of course a pedigree, he clapped the Paterson arms—three pelicans vulned; on a chief three mullets; crest, a dexter hand grasping a golf-club; together with the motto—dear to all golfers—FAR AND SURE.

It must be admitted there is some uncertainty about this tale. The house, the inscriptions, and arms only indicate that Paterson built the house after being a victor at golf, and that Pitcairn had a hand in decorating it. One might even see, in the fact of the epigram, as if a gentleman wit were indulging in a jest at the expense of some simple plebeian, who held all notoriety honourable. It might have been expected that if Paterson had been enriched by a match in which he was connected with the Duke of York, a Jacobite like Pitcairn would have made distinct allusion to the circumstance. The tradition, nevertheless, seems too curious to be entirely overlooked, and the reader may therefore take it at its worth.

FOOTNOTES

[251] In 1864 this favourite Scottish pastime was resuscitated on Leith Links, and is now enjoyed with a relish as keen as ever.

[252] _Archæologia Scotica_, i.

[LOTHIAN HUT.

The noble family of Lothian had a mansion in Edinburgh, though of but a moderate dignity. It was a small house situated in a spare piece of ground at the bottom of the Canongate, on the south side. Latterly it was leased to Professor Dugald Stewart, who, about the end of the last century, here entertained several English pupils of noble rank—among others, the Hon. the Henry Temple, afterwards Lord Palmerston.[253] About 1825 building was taken down to make room for a brewery.

About the middle of the last century, Lothian Hut was occupied by the wife of the fourth marquis, a lady of great lineage, being the only daughter of Robert, Earl of Holderness, and great-granddaughter of Charles Louis, Elector Palatine. Her ladyship was a person of grand character, while yet admittedly very amiable. As a piece of very old gossip, the Lady Marchioness, on first coming to live in the Hut, found herself in want of a few trifling articles from a milliner, and sent for one who was reputed to be the first of the class then in Edinburgh—namely, Miss Ramsay. But there were two Miss Ramsays. They had a shop on the east side of the Old Lyon Close, on the south side of the High Street, and there made ultimately a little fortune, which enabled them to build the villa of Marionville, near Restalrig (called _Lappet Hall_ by the vulgar). The Misses Ramsay, receiving a message from so grand a lady, instead of obeying the order implicitly, came together, dressed out in a very splendid style, and told the marchioness that every article they wore was ‘at the very top of the fashion.’ The marchioness, disgusted with their forwardness and affectation, said she would take their specimens into consideration, and wished them a good-morning. According to our gossiping authority, she then sent for Mrs Sellar, who carried on the millinery business in a less pretentious style at a place in the Lawnmarket where Bank Street now stands. (I like the localities, for they bring the Old Town of a past age so clearly before us.) Mrs Sellar made her appearance at Lothian Hut in a plain, decorous manner. Her head-dress consisted of a mob-cap of the finest lawn, tied under her chin; over which there was a hood of the same stuff. She wore a cloak of plain black silk without any lace, and had no bonnet, the use of which was supplied by the hood. Mrs Sellar’s manners were elegant and pleasing. When she entered, the marchioness rose to receive her. On being asked for her patterns, she stepped to the door and brought in two large boxes, which had been carried behind her by two women. The articles, being produced, gave great satisfaction, and her ladyship never afterwards employed any other milliner. So the story ends, in the manner of the good-boy books, in establishing that milliners ought not to be too prone to exhibit their patterns upon their own persons.]

FOOTNOTES

[253] A newspaper, giving an account of Lord Palmerston’s visit to Edinburgh in 1865, mentions that his lordship, during his stay in the city, was made aware that an aged woman of the name of Peggie Forbes, who had been a servant with Dugald Stewart, well remembered his lordship when under the professor’s roof in early days. Interested in the circumstance, Lord Palmerston took occasion to pay her a visit at her dwelling, No. 1 Rankeillor Street, and expressed his pleasure at renewing the acquaintance of the old domestic. Dr John Brown had discovered the existence of this old association, and with it a box of tools which were the property of ‘young Maister Henry’ of those days. The sight of them called up within the breast of the Premier further associations of days long bygone.

HENRY PRENTICE AND POTATOES.

No doubt is entertained on any hand that the field-culture of the potato was first practised in Scotland by a man of humble condition, originally a pedlar, by name Henry Prentice. He was an eccentric person, as many have been who stepped out of the common walk to do things afterwards discovered to be great. A story is told that while the potatoes were growing in certain little fields which he leased near our city, Lord Minto came from time to time to inquire about the crop. Prentice at length told his lordship that the experiment was entirely successful, and all he wanted was a horse and cart to drive his potatoes to Edinburgh that they might be sold. ‘I’ll give you a horse and cart,’ said his lordship. Prentice then took his crop to market, cart by cart, till it was all sold, after which he disposed of _the horse and cart_, which he affected to believe Lord Minto had given him as a present.

Having towards the close of his days realised a small sum of money, he sunk £140 in the hands of the Canongate magistrates, as managers of the poorhouse of that parish, receiving in return seven shillings a week, upon which he lived for several years. Occasionally he made little donations to the charity. During his last years he was an object of no small curiosity in Edinburgh, partly on account of his connection with potato culture and partly by reason of his oddities. It was said of him that he would never shake hands with any human being above two years of age. In his bargain with the Canongate dignitaries, it was agreed that he should have a _good grave_ in their churchyard, and one was selected according to his own choice. Over this, thinking it as well, perhaps, that he should enjoy a little quasi-posthumous notoriety during his life, he caused a monument to be erected, bearing this inscription:

‘Be not anxious to know how I lived,
But rather how you yourself should die.’

He also had a coffin prepared at the price of two guineas, taking the undertaker bound to screw it down gratis with his own hands. In addition to all this, his friends the magistrates were under covenant to bury him with a hearse and four coaches. But even the designs of mortals respecting the grave itself are liable to disappointment. Owing to the mischief done by the boys to the premature monument, Prentice saw fit to have it removed to a quieter cemetery, that of Restalrig, where, at his death in 1788, he was accordingly interred.

Such was the originator of that extensive culture of the potato which has since borne so conspicuous a place in the economics of our country, for good and for evil.

It is curious that this plant, although the sole support of millions of our population, should now again (1846) have fallen under suspicion. At its first introduction, and for several ages thereafter, it was regarded as a vegetable of by no means good character, though for a totally different reason from any which affect its reputation in our day. Its supposed tendency to inflame some of the sensual feelings of human nature is frequently adverted to by Shakespeare and his contemporaries; and this long remained a popular impression in the north.[254]

FOOTNOTES

[254] Robertson, in his _Rural Recollections_ (Irvine, 1829), says: ‘The earliest evidence that I have met with of potatoes in Scotland is an old household book of the Eglintoune family in 1733, in which potatoes appear at different times as a dish at supper.’ They appear earlier than this—namely, in 1701—in the household book of the Duchess of Buccleuch and Monmouth, where the price per peck is intimated at 2s. 6d.—See Arnot’s _History of Edinburgh_, 4to, p. 201.

THE DUCHESS OF BUCCLEUCH AND MONMOUTH.

It is rather curious that one of my informants in this article should have dined with a lady who had dined with a peeress married in the year 1662.

This peeress was Anne, Duchess of Buccleuch and Monmouth, the wife of the unfortunate son of Charles II. As is well known, she was early deserted by her husband, who represented, not without justice, that a marriage into which he had been tempted for reasons of policy by his relations, when he was only thirteen years of age, could hardly be binding.

The young duchess, naturally plain in features, was so unfortunate in early womanhood as to become lame in consequence of some feats in dancing. For her want of personal graces there is negative evidence in a dedication of Dryden, where he speaks abundantly of her wit, but not a word of beauty, which shows that the case must have been desperate. [This, by the way, was the remark made to me on the subject by Sir Walter Scott, who, in the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_, has done what Dryden could not do—flattered the duchess:

‘She had known adversity,
Though born in such a high degree;
In pride of power and _beauty’s bloom_,
Had wept o’er Monmouth’s bloody tomb.’]

Were any further proof wanting, it might be found in the regard in which she was held by James II., who, as is well known, had such a tendency to plain women as induced a suspicion in his witty brother that they were prescribed to him by his confessor by way of penance. This friendship, in which there was nothing improper, was the means of saving her grace’s estates at the tragical close of her husband’s life.

It is curious to learn that the duchess, notwithstanding the terms on which she had been with her husband, and the sad stamp put upon his pretensions to legitimacy, acted throughout the remainder of her somewhat protracted life as if she had been the widow of a true prince of the blood-royal. In her state-rooms she had a canopy erected, beneath which was the only seat in the apartment, everybody standing besides herself. When Lady Margaret Montgomery, one of the beautiful Countess of Eglintoune’s daughters, was at a boarding-school near London—previous to the year _Thirty_—she was frequently invited by the duchess to her house; and because her great-grandmother, Lady Mary Leslie, was sister to her grace’s mother, _she_ was allowed a chair; but this was an extraordinary mark of grace. The duchess was the last person of quality in Scotland who kept _pages_, in the proper acceptation of the term—that is, young gentlemen of good birth, who acquired manners and knowledge of the world in attending upon persons of exalted rank. The last of her grace’s pages rose to be a general. When a letter was brought for the duchess, the domestic gave it to the page, the page to the waiting-gentlewoman (always a person of birth also), and she at length to her grace. The duchess kept a tight hand over her clan and tenants, but was upon the whole beloved.