THE curious ancient thoroughfare, the scene of early bookselling and publishing operations, has been described in the previous chapter: for many youthful recollections of William Nelson are associated with the West Bow. In those years Edinburgh was still the romantic town described by Scott in his “Marmion,” piled steep and massy, close and high, along the ridge between the Cowgate and the Nor’ Loch. Since then nearly all the antique historical mansions of the Castle Hill and the adjoining Bowhead have disappeared. An extensive range was swept away about 1835 in clearing the area for Johnston Terrace and the Assembly Hall of the Scottish Church. The famous old palace of Mary of Guise has given place to the rival Assembly Hall and the New College of the Free Church; and a broad highway now sweeps round the Castle rock where in early years antique lands, closes, and wynds, once the abodes of the Scottish gentry, were crowded together on the slope reaching to the Grassmarket.

The fine timber-fronted tenement at the corner of the Bowhead, constructed mainly of oak, was a choice example of the burghers’ dwellings in Old Edinburgh, with their trading booths opening on the street. Similar front lands in the High Street were the abodes of the merchants and traders. The “Gladstone Land” still stands near by in the Lawnmarket, bearing the initials of Thomas Gladstone, a merchant of Edinburgh in the days of Charles I. and Cromwell, to whose gifted descendant the restoration of the City Cross is due. The old nobles and landed gentry, judges and advocates, preferred the retirement of the closes and wynds, some of which still retain the names of patrician occupants. In one of those antique dwellings, in Trotter’s Close, near the Bowhead, with its wainscotted chambers, painted panels, and other traces of older generations, the Nelson family resided in William’s youth. The narrow approach to it admitted of no other carriage than the old-fashioned sedan chair; but the house itself was commodious, though with curious complexities of internal adaptation to its confined neighbourhood. One large chamber was shelved round, and stored with the surplus productions of publishing enterprise for which the Bowhead establishment had no room; and its miscellaneous contents furnished a tempting resort for explorations into some strange fields of literature not ordinarily lying within the range of youthful studies. When at length the West Bow was invaded by civic reformers, the Nelsons removed to a more commodious house, the dwelling in an elder century of Lady Elizabeth, Duchess of Gordon, while the duke held the Castle for James II. The Gordon House on the Castle Hill was a fine example of the town mansions of the sixteenth century; and, owing to its elevated site, commanded a beautiful view from its southern windows, looking across the Grassmarket to Heriot’s Hospital, the Greyfriars’ Churchyard, and the distant range of the Pentland Hills. On its demolition, in 1887, William Nelson secured sundry interesting relics, including a landscape by James Norie, which filled a panel over the mantlepiece in the duchess’s drawing-room. He also carried off the stone gargoils, fashioned in the shape of cannons, which projected from under the south parapet; and they now adorn the river wall of the garden at St. Bernard’s Well, the restoration of which, as will be seen hereafter, constituted one of the public-spirited works on which he was engaged when his life drew to a close.

The stirring scene that the Grassmarket presented on certain days, as a regular horse-fair, may be seen in a fine engraving after Calcott in “The Provincial Antiquities of Scotland;” and is still more graphically depicted in one of Geikie’s humorous etchings. Here accordingly was a favourite resort of the boys from the neighbouring Bow. The Castle Esplanade at certain hours afforded a freer playground. At other times it offered the tempting attractions of military parade and drill. But Edinburgh has also within its civic bounds the royal park of Arthur’s Seat, the Salisbury Crags, and Duddingston Loch, looking as though a choice fragment of the Highlands had been transported thither to form an adequate pleasure-ground for the Scottish capital. Hither flocked the city boys alike from the closes and wynds of the old town and from the new town crescents and squares. There was room for all, and a choice of sport for every age. Here is a reminiscence of a very youthful pastime, recalled in 1883, in a letter to Mr. James Campbell, one of William Nelson’s old West Bow playmates:—“You will, I have no doubt, recollect a long, smooth stone near Jeanie Deans’ House, in the Queen’s Park. This stone was associated with my earliest recollections, as it was a great enjoyment for boys and girls to slide down it; and many a time, when I was a little boy, have I had this enjoyment. Well, the stone was in existence till only a few weeks ago, when some rascally fellows blew it to pieces with dynamite. The act is much to be regretted, as the stone, in addition to its being a source of enjoyment for little folks in the way I have stated, was extremely interesting to geologists as one of the finest illustrations near Edinburgh of the polish produced by glacial action.”

While the boys were disporting themselves on the Castle Hill and Arthur’s Seat, without a care for the future, their father was grappling with the first difficulties inevitable to the innovator on the prescriptive usages of the book-trade. But whatever may have been the obstacles encountered by him, there was no grudging expenditure in the educational advantages provided for his sons. At the school of Mr. William Lennie, and subsequently at that of Mr. George Knight, then second to none in Edinburgh, and afterwards at the High School, William Nelson pursued his earlier studies; and there, too, some of the friendships were formed which he cherished with all the warmth of his sympathetic nature to the close of life. It was in those early days, at Mr. Knight’s school, that the friendship was formed with his present biographer, along with George Wilson, subsequently Professor of Technology in the University of Edinburgh, with Dr. Philip Maclagan, and with William and James Sprunt, two young West Indians, the former of whom will reappear as British Consul in North Carolina. Of the more romantic career of the latter an account is happily preserved in the notes of an address by William Nelson at one of the gatherings of old schoolmates in later years, which were so congenial to his tastes. After telling of James Sprunt’s first settlement in the island of St. Vincent among a dissolute set of West Indians, his quitting it for New Orleans, and being lost sight of for years, he thus proceeds:—“He had landed penniless; but when his old father and mother got their first letter from him, it was an invitation for them to join him there and share his good fortune. He next appears as rector of a classical academy at Wilmington, North Carolina, where he became a clergyman and pastor of the Presbyterian Church; and when the war broke out between the North and South, he cast in his lot with the latter, marched with the Wilmington brigade into action, and as an army chaplain, under General Stonewall Jackson, went through the terrible scenes of strife and carnage in that bloody civil war, utterly regardless of danger, and even ready to face death at the call of duty. His popularity with his Wilmington congregation was not lessened, it may be believed, when he returned to resume his pastoral charge at the close of the war.” Of other boys of those first school-days may be noted Dr. J. A. Smith, in later years an active member of the Royal Society, and Secretary of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland; Dr. John Knight, the son of our old teacher; the Rev. James Huie of Wooler, Northumberland, and others, who formed themselves into “The Juvenile Society for the Advancement of Knowledge,” of which an account is given in the Memoir of George Wilson by his sister.

The High School, a venerable civic institution dating from the sixteenth century, still occupied the site of the Blackfriars’ Monastery, at the east end of the ridge from which the ruined Kirk-of-Field was displaced by the newly-founded university in Queen Mary’s time. The modern policeman had not yet superseded the old city watch. The High School Wynd, a singularly picturesque alley of timber-fronted lands, at the foot of which stood the palace of Cardinal Beaton, gave access to the Cowgate, a plebeian haunt, the young roughs of which maintained a hereditary feud against the “puppies” of the High School. A stray High School boy, especially if he was a “guite” or freshman, venturing into that Alsatia, incurred all the risks of a wanderer into an enemy’s lines; and from time to time a bicker, or pitched battle with sticks and stones, between the “puppies” of the High School and the “blackguards” of the Cowgate, came off by mutual understanding on a Saturday in the Hunter’s Bog or on the Links. The school numbered upwards of seven hundred boys. The Yards, as the playground was called, presented the busy scene characteristic of similar juvenile gatherings. But there was then less of restraint either by masters or police than under the new rÉgime of school boards and “peelers.” Out of school boys settled their own affairs, and righted their own wrongs, with results that seem to me on the whole to have tended to develop manliness and self-restraint. In the general sports, as well as in organized bickers or raids into the enemy’s quarters, after some Cowgate encroachment upon the amenities of the school, all were one; but the acquaintance even with the boys of our own class was partial. They naturally formed into little groups of kindred spirits, the beginnings in some cases of life-long friendships.

Dr. Philip Maclagan, referring to those early school-days, says: “I was one of the original members of the Juvenile Society for the Advancement of Knowledge. The society met on Friday evening; papers were read by the members in rotation, and questions previously started were debated. I remember some of them—‘Whether the whale or the herring afforded the more useful and profitable employment to mankind?’ ‘Whether the camel was more useful to the Arab or the reindeer to the Laplander?’ and similar puzzles for youthful ingenuity.” As yet political and social questions were unheeded; and the Saturday rambles, for which Edinburgh offers such rare advantages, furnished materials for subsequent discussion in diverse geological, botanical, and antiquarian subjects of interest. Those excursions extended to Cramond; to Royston Castle, picturesquely crowning a rock near the sea-shore; to Newhaven, Leith, or Portobello; or landward, to Craigmillar Castle, Corstorphine, Colinton, the Esk; and to the Braid or Blackford Hill: a stolen pleasure, since we were at that time liable to pursuit and ejection as trespassers. The Arthur’s Seat as well as the Blackford Hill of those days, if less adapted for the proprieties of a city park, were more to the taste of youthful explorers while still in a state of nature. It was the Blackford of young Walter Scott—

Already, when Scott penned his “Marmion,” the agriculturist and the builder were working havoc on the scene. How much more may survivors of that younger circle now say,—

But such feelings found no place in the thoughts of the eager truants. Close at hand were the never-failing Calton Hill, or Arthur’s Seat and Duddingston, with charm enough for a pleasant ramble, but also utilized, along with more extended excursions, for collecting specimens to furnish material for subsequent discussion in their Juvenile Society, as well as contributions to the museum which was already in course of formation.

The sea-shore had then, as in later years, a peculiar charm for William Nelson. To the very close of his life an excursion in company with some favourite companion to Newhaven, or to North Berwick, and off in one of the fishermen’s boats to fish for haddock or whitings, furnished one of his most prized recreations. But it was at Kinghorn, his mother’s birthplace, on the opposite shore of the Firth of Forth, that his choicest holidays were spent. In a letter written in long subsequent years to his old schoolmate and friend, the Rev. Dr. Simpson of Derby, when an event, hereafter referred to, brought him anew into intimate relations with the place, he thus recalls the memories of his early boyhood:—“My connection with Kinghorn has been very close; and my love for it, as my mother’s birthplace, and the place where I spent many very happy days in my earliest years, and during my school holidays afterwards, is very great. I was exceedingly fond of fishing, both from the rocks on the sea-shore and at Kinghorn Loch; and happier days were never spent by any youngster than were those days of mine at Kinghorn. I knew every rock on the coast from Pettycur onwards to Seafield Tower on East the Braes, which is not far from the ‘lang toon of Kirkcaldy;’ and a finer sea-coast for grand rocks there is not anywhere on the northern coast of the Firth of Forth. I was as happy as I could be from morning till night. I remember the talks, too, in those early days by the old folks, which were principally about Paul Jones’s visit to the Firth, my grandmother having seen his ship from the little hamlet of Glassmount, about two miles from Kinghorn, where she was born, and where her parents stayed at that time.

“Another favourite subject of talk was the ‘windy Saturday,’ a tremendous day of wind, when only one vessel, it was said, out in the Firth of Forth, was able to face the stormy blasts without coming to grief. A third subject of talk with the old folks was the mischief that steam-boats had done to the town, as, before they began to run, there were big boats to carry passengers; and as they started only at particular times of the tide, and did not go during the night, passengers had generally to stay some time in the town till the boats were ready to start—that is, for Leith, as there was no Newhaven in those days. ‘What a good this did to the town!’ and, ‘What a mistake it was to upset the quiet, easy way of taking things, as they were in those good old days, by the introduction of steam-boats!’ My mother’s uncle, John Macallum, was the captain of the first steam-boat, or, at all events, one of the first, that sailed on the Firth of Forth, its name being the Sir William Wallace. It unfortunately was wrecked on some rocks near Burntisland.

“I could enlarge upon such themes to a great extent, and upon my companions of those early days; but, alas! those companions have all passed away, with two exceptions—namely, Henry Darney, a worthy citizen of Kinghorn, and Major Greig, now of Toronto, Canada. My connection with Kinghorn came to a close about 1836, when my grandmother died; but such a liking have I for the place, that I have paid it a short visit almost every year since that time.”

His more intimate relations with Kinghorn, as he states, terminated with the death of his grandmother; but his fondness for it remained through life. In 1885 his eldest sister, Mrs. George Brown, returned from Canada, and I am indebted to her for some interesting early reminiscences recalled by more than one visit made in his company to their mother’s birthplace. “It was there,” she writes, “he spent all his holidays as a boy; and so eager was he to get to the place that the very afternoon of the breaking up of school often saw him on board the ferry-boat on his way across the Forth, fishing-rod in hand and fishing-basket on back. For fishing he had a perfect passion. At Newhaven, Kinghorn, Crail, North Berwick, and Oban, he was well known and greatly liked by all the fishermen, although frequently their patience must have been pretty well put to the test when they were taken out in rough weather by William, and they knew there were no fish to be had.

“When a boy at Kinghorn, late and early he might be seen either putting his tackle in order, or down on the beach digging for bait, or on the rocks, now on one and now on another, according to the state of the tide, contented to spend hours and hours together so that he only caught fish or even got what he called good nibbles. On many occasions he was so successful that he was able to keep the poor pretty well supplied with fish during his visits.

“It was not only during the holiday months that William occupied himself in fishing or in preparation for it. All through the winter he and his brothers spent a good deal of their time in manufacturing lines for the next summer’s campaign. It is amusing to remember where materials for these fishing-lines sometimes came from. There was an old piano in the house which had seen better days, and the strings of it afforded a good supply of wire for fastening the hooks on the lines; the tail of any horse unfortunate enough to come in the way was put under contribution for a supply of hair. To the end of his life, his interest in and his love for Kinghorn never waned; and by the occasional visits he continued to pay, his acquaintance with the few remaining companions of his boyhood was kept up.

“The second last visit he paid was in 1886. My sister Jessie and I were with him. Leaving Edinburgh early in the day, we crossed to Burntisland; and getting a carriage there, we drove to Pettycur. His recollections were all of his boyhood. He showed us a part of the beach where he used to dig for cockles and sand-eels, and the rocks where he and his companions made a fire to roast potatoes. He pointed out the place where Alexander III. is said to have been killed; and recalled the old times of pinnaces and open boats before steamers were heard of. Leaving Pettycur, we drove to the loch, a lovely, sequestered place, where William caught his first pike. To show his love for fishing, my brother Tom recalls the fact that on one occasion, when the holidays were over and the day had come for William to return to Edinburgh, after he had finished his preparations for starting, he looked at the clock, and saying he had still time to run up to the loch before the boat sailed, rushed off with his fishing-rod. Whether he came back with an empty basket or not tradition does not say. From the loch we made our way to the beautiful sandy beach; then up to the Braes, where he used to scamper about, and on which there still stands an old hawthorn tree, by the side of which, he told us, he fired his first shot. He loved evidently to linger in memory over these days and recall his friends and playmates, the remembrance of whom brought tears to his eyes.”