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

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

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

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

HUGO ARNOT.

The cleverly executed History of Edinburgh, published by Arnot in 1779, and which to this day has not been superseded, gives some respectability to a name which tradition would have otherwise handed down to us as only that of an eccentric gentleman, of remarkably scarecrow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

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

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

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

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

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

ALLAN RAMSAY.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HOUSE OF THE GORDON FAMILY.

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

In more recent times, this substantial mansion was the abode of Mr Baird of Newbyth; and here it was that the late gallant Sir David Baird, the hero of Seringapatam, was born and brought up. Returning in advanced life from long foreign service, this distinguished soldier came to see the home of his youth on the Castle-hill. The respectable individual whom I found occupying the house in 1824 received his visitor with due respect, and after showing him through the house, conducted him out to the garden. Here the boys of the existing tenant were found actively engaged in throwing cabbage-stalks at the tops of the chimneys of the houses of the Grassmarket, situated a little below the level of the garden. On making one plump down the vent, the youngsters set up a great shout of triumph. Sir David fell a-laughing at sight of this example of practical waggery, and entreated the father of the lads ‘not to be too angry; he and his brother, when living here at the same age, had indulged in precisely the same amiable amusement, the chimneys then, as now, being so provokingly open to such attacks that there was no resisting the temptation.’

The whole matter might have been put into an axiomatic form—Given a garden with cabbage-stalks, and a set of chimneys situated at an angle of forty-five degrees below the spot, any boys turned loose into the said garden will be sure to endeavour to bring the cabbage-stalks and the chimneys into acquaintance.

DR WEBSTER.

An isolated house which formerly stood in Webster’s Close,[12] a little way down the Castle-hill, was the residence of the Rev. Dr Webster, a man eminent in his day on many accounts—a leading evangelical clergyman in Edinburgh, a statist and calculator of extraordinary talent, and a distinguished figure in festive scenes. The first population returns of Scotland were obtained by him in 1755; and he was the author of that fund for the widows of the clergy of the Established Church which has proved so great a blessing to many, and still exists in a flourishing state.[13] He was also deep in the consultations of the magistrates regarding the New Town.

It is not easy to reconcile the two leading characteristics of this divine—his being the pastor of a flock of noted sternness, called, from the church in which they assembled, the Tolbooth Whigs; and his at the same time entering heartily and freely into the convivialities of the more mirthful portion of society. Perhaps he illustrated the maxim that one man may steal horses with impunity, &c.; for it is related that, going home early one morning with strong symptoms of over-indulgence upon him, and being asked by a friend who met him ‘what the Tolbooth Whigs would say if they were to see him at this moment,’ he instantly replied: ‘They would not believe their own eyes.’ Sometimes he did fall on such occasions under plebeian observation, but the usual remark was: ‘Ah, there’s Dr Webster, honest man, going hame, nae doubt, frae some puir afflicted soul he has been visiting. Never does he tire o’ well-doing!’ And so forth.

The history of Dr Webster’s marriage is romantic. When a young and unknown man, he was employed by a friend to act as go-between, or, as it is termed in Scotland, black-fit, or black-foot, in a correspondence which he was carrying on with a young lady of great beauty and accomplishment. Webster had not acted long in that character, till the young lady, who had never entertained any affection for his constituent, fell deeply in love with himself. Her birth and expectations were better than his; and however much he might have been disposed to address her on his own behalf, he never could have thought of such a thing so long as there was such a difference between their circumstances. The lady saw his difficulty, and resolved to overcome it, and that in the frankest manner. At one of these interviews, when he was exerting all his eloquence in favour of his friend, she plainly told him that he would probably come better speed if he were to speak for himself. He took the hint, and, in a word, was soon after married to her. He wrote upon the occasion an amorous lyric, which exhibits in warm colours the gratitude of a humble lover for the favour of a mistress of superior station, and which is perhaps as excellent altogether in its way as the finest compositions of the kind produced in either ancient or modern times. There is one particularly impassioned verse, in which, after describing a process of the imagination by which, in gazing upon her, he comes to think her a creature of more than mortal nature, he says that at length, unable to contain, he clasps her to his bosom, and—

HOUSE OF MARY DE GUISE.

The restrictions imposed upon a city requiring defence appear as one of the forms of misery leading to strange associations. We become, in a special degree, sensible of this truth when we see the house of a royal personage sunk amidst the impurities of a narrow close in the Old Town of Edinburgh. Such was literally the case of an aged pile of buildings on the north side of the Castle-hill, behind the front line of the street, and accessible by Blyth’s, Nairn’s, and Tod’s Closes, which was declared by tradition to have been the residence of Mary de Guise, the widow of James V., and from 1554 to 1560 regent of this realm.

Descending the first of these alleys about thirty yards, we came to a dusky, half-ruinous building on the left-hand side, presenting one or two lofty windows and a doorway, surrounded by handsome mouldings; the whole bearing that appearance which says: ‘There is here something that has been of consequence, all haggard and disgraced though it now be.’ Glancing to the opposite side of the close, where stood another portion of the same building, the impression was confirmed by further appearances of a goodly style of architecture. These were, in reality, the principal portions of the palace of the Regent Mary; the former being popularly described as her house, the latter as her oratory or chapel. The close terminated under a portion of the building; and when the visitor made his way so far, he found an exterior presented northwards, with many windows, whence of old a view must have been commanded, first of the gardens descending to the North Loch, and second, of the Firth of Forth and Fife. One could easily understand that, when the gardens existed, the north side of the house might have had many pleasant apartments, and been, upon the whole, tolerable as a place of residence, albeit the access by a narrow alley could never have been agreeable. Latterly the site of the upper part of the garden was occupied by a brushmaker’s workshops and yard, while the lower was covered by the Earthen Mound. In the wall on the east side there was included, as a mere portion of the masonry, a stray stone, which had once been an architrave or lintel; it contained, besides an armorial device flanked by the initials A. A., the legend Nosce Teipsum, and the date 1557.

Reverting to the door of the queen’s house, which was simply the access of a common stair, we there found an ornamented architrave, bearing the legend,

LAUS ET HONOR DEO,

terminated by two pieces of complicated lettering, one much obliterated, the other a monogram of the name of the Virgin Mary, formed of the letters M. R.[14] Finally, at the extremities of this stone, were two Roman letters of larger size—I. R.—doubtless the initials of James Rex, for James V., the style of cutting being precisely the same as in the initials seen on the palace built by that king in Stirling Castle; an indirect proof, it may be remarked, of this having been the residence of the Regent Mary.

Passing up a spiral flight of steps, we came to a darksome lobby, leading to a series of mean apartments, occupied by persons of the humblest grade. Immediately within the door was a small recess in the wall, composed of Gothic stonework, and supposed by the people to have been designed for containing holy-water, though this may well be matter of doubt. Overhead, in the ceiling, was a round entablature, presenting a faded coronet over the defaced outline of a shield. A similar object adorned the ceiling of the lobby in the second floor, but in better preservation, as the shield bore three fleurs de lis, with the coronet above, and the letters H. R. below. There was a third of these entablatures, containing the arms of the city of Edinburgh, in the centre of the top of the staircase. The only other curious object in this part of the mansion was the door of one of the wretched apartments—a specimen of carving, bearing all the appearance of having been contemporary with the building, and containing, besides other devices, bust portraits of a gentleman and lady. This is now in the possession of the Society of the Antiquaries of Scotland.

A portion of the same building, accessible by a stair nearer the head of the close, contained a hall-like apartment, with other apartments, all remarkable for their unusually lofty ceilings. In the large room were the remains of a spacious decorated chimney, to which, in the recollection of persons still living, there had been attached a chain, serving to confine the tongs to their proper domain. This was the memorial of an old custom, of which it is not easy to see the utility, unless some light be held as thrown upon it by a Scottish proverb, used when a child takes a thing and says he found it: ‘You found it, I suppose, where the Highlandman found the tongs.’ In the centre of almost all the ceilings of this part of the mansion I found, in 1824, circular entablatures, with coats of arms and other devices, in stucco, evidently of good workmanship, but obscured by successive coats of whitening.

The place pointed out by tradition as the queen-regent’s oratory was in the first-floor of the building opposite—a spacious and lofty hall, with large windows designed to make up for the obscurity of the close. Here, besides a finely carved piscina, was a pretty large recess, of Gothic structure, in the back-wall, evidently designed for keeping things of importance. Many years ago, out of the wall behind this recess, there had been taken a small iron box, such as might have been employed to keep jewellery, but empty. I was the means of its being gifted to Sir Walter Scott, who had previously told me that ‘a passion for such little boxes was one of those that most did beset him;’ and it is now in the collection at Abbotsford.

The other portions of the mansion, accessible from different alleys, were generally similar to these, but somewhat finer. One chamber was recognised as the Deid-room; that is, the room where individuals of the queen’s establishment were kept between their death and burial.

It was interesting to wander through the dusky mazes of this ancient building, and reflect that they had been occupied three centuries ago by a sovereign princess, and one of the most illustrious lineage. Here was the substantial monument of a connection between France and Scotland, a totally past state of things. She whose ancestors owned Lorraine as a sovereignty, who had spent her youth in the proud halls of the Guises in Picardy, and been the spouse of a Longueville, was here content to live—in a close in Edinburgh! In these obscurities, too, was a government conducted, which had to struggle with Knox, Glencairn, James Stewart, Morton, and many other powerful men, backed by a popular sentiment which never fails to triumph. It was the misfortune of Mary to be placed in a position to resist the Reformation. Her own character deserved that she should have stood in a more agreeable relation to what Scotland now venerates, for she was mild and just, and sincerely anxious for the good of her adopted country. It is also proper to remember on the present occasion that ‘in her court she maintained a decent gravity, nor would she tolerate any licentious practices therein. Her maids of honour were always busied in commendable exercises, she herself being an example to them in virtue, piety, and modesty.’[15] When all is considered, and we further know that the building was strong enough to have lasted many more ages, one cannot but regret that the palace of Mary de Guise, reduced as it was to vileness, should not now be in existence. The site having been purchased by individuals connected with the Free Church, the buildings were removed in 1846 to make room for the erection of an academical institution or college for the use of that body.[16]