[104] Afterwards Lord Braxfield—appointed 1776; died 1800, while holding the office of Lord Justice-clerk. Lord Braxfield is the prototype of Stevenson’s Weir of Hermiston.
[105] Alexander Lockhart, Esq., decidedly the greatest lawyer at the Scottish bar in his day—appointed to the bench in 1774; died in 1782.
[106] Andrew Pringle, Esq.—appointed a judge in 1759; died 1776. This gentleman was remarkable for his fine oratory, which was praised highly by Sheridan the lecturer (father of R. B. Sheridan) in his Discourses on English Oratory.
[107] Henry Home, Esq.—raised to the bench 1752; died 1783. This great man, so remarkable for his metaphysical subtlety and literary abilities, was strangely addicted to the use of the coarse word in the text.
[108] Sir David Dalrymple—appointed a judge in 1766; died 1792. A story is told of Lord Hailes once making a serious objection to a law-paper, and, in consequence, to the whole suit to which it belonged, on account of the word justice being spelt in the manner mentioned in the text. Perhaps no author ever affected so much critical accuracy as Lord Hailes, and yet there never was a book published with so large an array of corrigenda et addenda as the first edition of the Annals of Scotland.
[109] George Brown, Esq., of Coalstoun—appointed 1756; died 1776.
[110] Alexander Fraser of Strichen—appointed 1730; died 1774.
[111] James Erskine, Esq., subsequently titled Lord Alva—appointed 1761; died 1796. He was of exceedingly small stature, and upon that account denominated ‘Lordie.’
[112] James Veitch, Esq.—appointed 1761; died 1793.
[113] Francis Garden, Esq.—appointed 1764; died 1793—author of several respectable literary productions.
[114] Robert Dundas, Esq., of Arniston—appointed 1760; died 1787.
[115] The bench being semicircular, and the President sitting in the centre, the seven judges on his right hand formed the east wing, those on his left formed the west. The decisions were generally announced by the words ‘Adhere’ and ‘Alter’—the former meaning an affirmance, the latter a reversal, of the judgment of the Lord Ordinary.
[116] The term of the summer session was then from the 12th of June to the 12th of August.
[117] Henry, first Viscount Melville, then coming forward as an advocate at the Scottish bar. When this great man passed advocate, he was so low in cash that, after going through the necessary forms, he had only one guinea left in his pocket. Upon coming home, he gave this to his sister (who lived with him), in order that she might purchase him a gown; after which he had not a penny. However, his talents soon filled his coffers. The gown is yet preserved by the family.
[118] ‘To See’ is to appoint the petition against the judgment pronounced to be answered.
[119] John Erskine of Carnock, author of the Institute of the Law of Scotland.
[120] Thomas Miller, Esq., of Glenlee—appointed to this office in 1766, upon the death of Lord Minto. He filled this situation till the death of Robert Dundas, in 1787, when (January 1788) he was made President of the Court of Session, and created a baronet, in requital for his long service as a judge. Being then far advanced in life, he did not live long to enjoy his new accession of honours, but died in September 1789.
[121] John Campbell, Esq., of Stonefield.
[122] James Burnet, Esq.—appointed 1767; died 1799.
[123] James Fergusson, Esq.—appointed 1761; died 1777. He always wore his hat on the bench, on account of sore eyes.
[124] Robert Bruce, Esq.—appointed 1764; died 1785.
[125] Alexander Tait, Clerk of Session.
[127] Within the memory of an old citizen, who was living in 1833, the Post-office was in the first floor of a house near the Cross, above an alley which still bears the name of the Post-office Close. Thence it was removed to a floor in the south side of the Parliament Square, which was fitted up like a shop, and the letters were dealt across an ordinary counter, like other goods. At this time all the out-of-door business of delivery was managed by one letter-carrier. About 1745 the London bag brought on one occasion no more than a single letter, addressed to the British Linen Company. From the Parliament Square the office was removed to Lord Covington’s house, above described; thence, after some years, to a house in North Bridge Street; thence to Waterloo Place; and finally, to a new and handsome structure on the North Bridge.
[128] Lord Gardenstone erected the building (in the form of a Grecian temple) which encloses St Bernard’s Well, on the Water of Leith, between the Dean Bridge and Stockbridge. He also founded the town of Laurencekirk in Kincardineshire, which he hoped to make a manufacturing centre.
[129] Notes to Redgauntlet.
[130] Lord Grange, whose Diary of a Senator of the College of Justice was published in 1833.
[131] Lord Newton was known as ‘The Mighty.’ Lord Cockburn says it was not uncommon for judges on the bench to provide themselves with a bottle of port, which they consumed while listening to the case being tried before them.
[132] This story is told of John Clerk, who afterwards sat on the bench as Lord Eldin.
[133] It was very common for Scotch ladies of rank, even till the middle of the last century, to wear black masks in walking abroad or airing in a carriage; and for some gentlemen, too, who were vain of their complexion. They were kept close to the face by means of a string, having a button of glass or precious stone at the end, which the lady held in her mouth. This practice, I understand, did not in the least interrupt the flow of tittle-tattle and scandal among the fair wearers.
We are told, in a curious paper in the Edinburgh Magazine for August 1817, that at the period above mentioned, ‘though it was a disgrace for ladies to be seen drunk, yet it was none to be a little intoxicated in good company.’
[134] The principal oyster-parties, in old times, took place in Lucky Middlemass’s tavern in the Cowgate (where the south pier of the [South] bridge now stands), which was the resort of Fergusson and his fellow-wits—as witness his own verse:
At these fashionable parties, the ladies would sometimes have the oyster-women to dance in the ball-room, though they were known to be of the worst character. This went under the convenient name of frolic.
[135] The cry of ‘Gardy loo!’ at this hour was supposed to warn pedestrians; but, as Sir Walter Scott says, ‘it was sometimes like the shriek of the water-kelpie, rather the elegy than the warning of the overwhelmed passenger.’
[136] This highly appropriate popular sobriquet cannot be traced beyond the reign of Charles II. Tradition assigns the following as the origin of the phrase: An old gentleman in Fife, designated Durham of Largo, was in the habit, at the period mentioned, of regulating the time of evening worship by the appearance of the smoke of Edinburgh, which he could easily see, through the clear summer twilight, from his own door. When he observed the smoke increase in density, in consequence of the good folk of the city preparing their supper, he would call all the family into the house, saying: ‘It’s time now, bairns, to tak’ the beuks, and gang to our beds, for yonder’s Auld Reekie, I see, putting on her nicht-cap!’
[137] This gentleman, the ‘revered defender of beauteous Stuart,’ and the surviving friend of Allan Ramsay, had an unaccountable aversion to cheese, and not only forbade the appearance of that article upon his table, but also its introduction into his house. His family, who did not partake in this antipathy, sometimes smuggled a small quantity of cheese into the house, and ate it in secret; but he almost always discovered it by the smell, which was the sense it chiefly offended. Upon scenting the object of his disgust, he would start up and run distractedly through the house in search of it, and not compose himself again to his studies till it was thrown out of doors. Some of his ingenious children, by way of a joke, once got into their possession the coat with which he usually went to the court, and ripping up the sutures of one of its wide, old-fashioned skirts, sewed up therein a considerable slice of double Gloster. Mr Tytler was next day surprised when, sitting near the bar, he perceived the smell of cheese rising around him. ‘Cheese here too!’ cried the querulous old gentleman; ‘nay, then, the whole world must be conspiring against me!’ So saying, he rose, and ran home to tell his piteous case to Mrs Tytler and the children, who became convinced from this that he really possessed the singular delicacy and fastidiousness in respect of the effluvia arising from cheese which they formerly thought to be fanciful.
[138] The dress of the Edinburgh Defensive Band was as follows: a cocked hat, black stock, hair tied and highly powdered; dark-blue long-tailed coat, with orange facings in honour of the Revolution, and full lapels sloped away to show the white dimity vest; nankeen small-clothes; white thread stockings, ribbed or plain; and short nankeen spatterdashes. Kay has some ingenious caricatures, in miniature, of these redoubted Bruntsfield Links and Heriot’s Green warriors. The last two survivors were Mr John M’Niven, stationer, and Robert Stevenson, painter, who died in 1832.
[139] One of the panes is now (1847) destroyed, the other cracked. [The tavern is now out of existence.]
[140] Souters’ clods and other forms of bread fascinating to youngsters, as well as penny pies of high reputation, were to be had at a shop which all old Edinburgh people speak of with extreme regard and affection—the Baijen Hole—situated immediately to the east of Forrester’s Wynd and opposite to the Old Tolbooth. The name—a mystery to later generations—seems to bear reference to the Baijens or Baijen Class, a term bestowed in former days upon the junior students in the college. Bajan or bejan is the French bejaune, ‘bec jaune,’ ‘greenbill,’ ‘greenhorn,’ ‘freshman.’
[141] The fullest account yet published of this extraordinary coterie is that of Mr H. A. Cockburn in The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club, vol. iii. Creech refers to it in ironical terms as ‘the virtuous, the venerable and dignified Wig who so much to their own honour and kind attention always inform the public of their meetings.’ The reputation of the club was very different.
[142] The following were other eighteenth century Edinburgh clubs:
The Poker Club originated in a combination of gentlemen favourable to the establishment of militia in Scotland, and its name, happily hit on by Professor Adam Ferguson, was selected to avoid giving offence to the Government. A history of the club is given in Dugald Stewart’s Life, and also in Carlyle’s Autobiography, where he says: ‘Dinner was on the table soon after two o’clock, at one shilling a head, the wine to be confined to sherry and claret, and the reckoning called at six o’clock.’ The minutes of this interesting club are preserved in the University Library.
The Mirror Club, formed by the contributors to the periodical of that name. It had really existed before under the name of ‘The Tabernacle.’ ‘The Tabernacle,’ or ‘The Feast of Tabernacles,’ as Ramsay of Ochtertyre calls it, was a company of friends and admirers of Henry Dundas, first Viscount Melville.
The Easy Club, founded by Allan Ramsay the poet, consisted of twelve members, each of whom was required to assume the name of some Scottish poet. Ramsay took that of Gawin Douglas.
The Capillaire Club was ‘composed of all who were inclined to be witty and joyous.’
The Facer Club, which met in Lucky Wood’s tavern in the Canongate, was perhaps not of a high order. If a member did not drain his measure of liquor, he had to throw it at his own face.
The Griskin Club also met in the Canongate. Dr Carlyle and those who took part with him in the production of Home’s Douglas at the Canongate playhouse formed this club, and gave it its name from the pork griskins which was their favourite supper dish.
The Ruffian Club, ‘composed of men whose hearts were milder than their manners, and their principles more correct than their habits of life.’
The Wagering Club, instituted in 1775, still meets annually. An account of this club is given in The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club, vol. ii.
Others may be mentioned by name only: The Diversorium, The Haveral, The Whin Bush, The Skull, The Six Foot, The Assembly of Birds, The Card, The Borached, The Humdrum, The Apician, The Blast and Quaff, The Ocean, The Pipe, The Knights of the Cap and Feather, The Revolutionary, The Stoic, and The Club, referred to in Lockhart’s Life of Scott.
Of a later period than those mentioned above were The Gowks Club; The Right and Wrong, of which James Hogg gives a short account; and The Friday Club, instituted by Lord Cockburn, who also wrote an interesting history of it, recently printed by Mr H. A. Cockburn, in vol. iii. of The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club.
[143] The Scottish peers on occasions of election of representatives to the House of Lords frequently brought their meetings to a close by dining at Fortune’s Tavern.
[145] ‘The wags of the eighteenth century used to tell of a certain city treasurer who, on being applied to for a new rope to the Tron Kirk bell, summoned the Council to deliberate on the demand; an adjournment to Clerihugh’s Tavern, it was hoped, might facilitate the settlement of so weighty a matter, but one dinner proved insufficient, and it was not till their third banquet that the application was referred to a committee, who spliced the old rope, and settled the bill!’—Wilson’s Memorials of Old Edinburgh.
[146] Since this was written, the whole group of buildings has been taken down, and new ones substituted (1868).
[147] The ‘White Horse’ is introduced in The Abbot—it was the scene of Roland Græme’s encounter with young Seton.
[148] The Corsican patriot whose acquaintance Boswell made on his tour abroad. Johnson characterised him as having ‘the loftiest port of any man he had ever seen.’
[149] Peter Ramsay was a brother of William Ramsay of Barnton, the well-known sporting character of the early part of the nineteenth century.
[150] A punning friend, remarking on the old Scottish practice of styling elderly landladies by the term Lucky, said: ‘Why not?—Felix qui pot——’
[151] The following curious advertisement, connected with an inn in the Canongate, appeared in the Edinburgh Evening Courant for July 1, 1754. The advertisement is surmounted by a woodcut representing the stage-coach, a towering vehicle, protruding at top—the coachman a stiff-looking, antique little figure, who holds the reins with both hands, as if he were afraid of the horses running away—a long whip streaming over his head and over the top of the coach, and falling down behind—six horses, like starved rats in appearance—a postillion upon one of the leaders, with a whip:
‘The Edinburgh Stage-Coach, for the better accommodation of Passengers, will be altered to a new genteel two-end Glass Machine, hung on Steel Springs, exceeding light and easy, to go in ten days in summer and twelve in winter; to set out the first Tuesday in March, and continue it from Hosea Eastgate’s, the Coach and Horses in Dean Street, Soho, London, and from John Somerville’s in the Canongate, Edinburgh, every other Tuesday, and meet at Burrowbridge on Saturday night, and set out from thence on Monday morning, and get to London and Edinburgh on Friday. In the winter to set out from London and Edinburgh every other [alternate] Monday morning, and to go to Burrowbridge on Saturday night; and to set out from thence on Monday morning, and get to London and Edinburgh on Saturday night. Passengers to pay as usual. Performed, if God permits, by your dutiful servant,
Hosea Eastgate.
‘Care is taken of small parcels according to their value.’
[152] The pillar was restored to Edinburgh, and for some years stood within an enclosed recess on the north side of St Giles’. When Mr W. E. Gladstone rebuilt the Cross in 1885, a little to the south of its former site, between St Giles’ Church and the Police Office, the original pillar was replaced in its old position.
[153] Bishop Forbes inserts in his manuscript (which I possess) a panegyrical epitaph for Ned Burke, stating that he died in Edinburgh in November 1751. He also gives the following particulars from Burke’s conversation:
‘One of the soles of Ned’s shoes happening to come off, Ned cursed the day upon which he should be forced to go without shoes. The Prince, hearing him, called to him and said: “Ned, look at me”—when (said Ned) I saw him holding up one of his feet at me, where there was de’il a sole upon the shoe; and then I said: “Oh, my dear! I have nothing more to say. You have stopped my mouth indeed.”
‘When Ned was talking of seeing the Prince again, he spoke these words: “If the Prince do not come and see me soon, good faith I will go and see my daughter [Charles having taken the name of Betty Burke when in a female disguise], and crave her; for she has not yet paid her christening money, and as little has she paid the coat I ga’e her in her greatest need.”’
[154] ‘Upon the 26th of February [1617], the Cross of Edinburgh was taken down. The old long stone, about forty footes or thereby in length, was to be translated, by the devise of certain mariners in Leith, from the place where it had stood past the memory of man, to a place beneath in the High Street, without any harm to the stone; and the body of the old Cross was demolished, and another builded, whereupon the long stone or obelisk was erected and set up, on the 25th day of March.’—Calderwood’s Church History.
[155] See Domestic Annals of Scotland, ii. 436.
[156] Waverley Annotations, i. 435.
[157] What is said to be the original Blue Blanket is still preserved in the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland.
[158] Scots Magazine, June 1767.
[159] The skeleton of this singular being exists entire in the class-room of the professor of anatomy in the College.
[160] Notes to Waverley.
[161] Waverley Annotations, i. 70.
[162] The buildings in this alley are now demolished.
[163] He is said to have been a nobleman of considerable talent, and a great underhand supporter of the exiled family; see the Lockhart Papers. George Lockhart had married his daughter Euphemia, or Lady Effie, as she was commonly called. In the Edinburgh Annual Register there is preserved a letter from Lord Eglintoune to his son, replete with good sense as well as paternal affection.
[164] The earl was forty-nine and Miss Kennedy twenty.
[165] The anecdote which follows is chiefly taken from The Tell-tale, a rare collection, published in 1762.
[166] Notes by C. K. Sharpe in Stenhouse’s edition of the Scots Musical Museum, ii. 200.
[167] As a specimen of the complimentary intercourse of the poet with Lady Eglintoune, an anecdote is told of her having once sent him a basket of fine fruit; to which he returned this stanza:
The love of raillery has recorded that on this being communicated by Ramsay to his friend Eustace Budgell, the following comment was soon after received from the English wit:
[168] An old gentleman told our informant that he never saw so beautiful a figure in his life as Lady Eglintoune at a Hunters’ Ball in Holyrood House, dancing a minuet in a large hoop, and a suit of black velvet, trimmed with gold.
[169] Snuff-taking was prevalent among young women in our grandmothers’ time. Their flirts used to present them with pretty snuff-boxes. In one of the monthly numbers of the Scots Magazine for the year 1745 there is a satirical poem by a swain upon the practice of snuff-taking; to which a lady replies next month, defending the fashion as elegant and of some account in coquetry. Almost all the old ladies who survived the commencement of this century took snuff. Some kept it in pouches, and abandoned, for its sake, the wearing of white ruffles and handkerchiefs.
[170] A gown then required ten yards of stuff.
[171] This verse appears in a manuscript subsequent to 1760. The name, however, is Sleigh, not Lee. Mrs Mally Sleigh was married in 1725 to the Lord Lyon Brodie of Brodie. Allan Ramsay celebrates her.
[172] James Erskine on ascending the bench first took the title of Lord Tinwald, from his estate in Dumfriesshire. That of Lord Alva he assumed when he purchased the family estate of Alva, in Clackmannanshire, from his eldest brother, Sir Charles Erskine.
[173] The site of Mylne Square is now occupied by the block of buildings directly opposite the north front of the Tron Church.
[174] The first of this name was made ‘master-mason’ to the king in 1481, and the position descended in regular succession in the family till 1710, when they adopted the style of architect.
[175] Lady Glenorchy built a chapel, which was named after her, on the low ground to the south of the Calton Hill. The chapel was swept away, along with that of the fine Gothic building Trinity College Church, for the convenience of the North British Railway. The lady’s name is still preserved in Lady Glenorchy’s Established Church in Roxburgh Place and Lady Glenorchy’s United Free Church in Greenside.
[176] The Canongate seems to have been paved about the same time. In 1535 the king granted to the Abbot of Holyrood a duty of one penny upon every loaded cart, and a halfpenny upon every empty one, to repair and maintain the causeway.
[177] George Lockhart of Carnwath lived here in 1753. Afterwards he resided in Ross House, a suburban mansion, which afterwards was used as a lying-in hospital. The park connected with this house is now occupied by George Square. While in Mr Lockhart’s possession Ross House was the scene of many gay routs and balls.
The Lords Ross, the original proprietors of this mansion, died out in 1754. One of the last persons in Scotland supposed to be possessed by an evil spirit was a daughter of George, the second last lord. A correspondent says: ‘A person alive in 1824 told me that, when a child, he saw her clamber up to the top of an old-fashioned four-post bed like a cat. In her fits it was almost impossible to hold her. About the same time, a daughter of Lord Kinnaird was supposed to have the second-sight. One day, during divine worship in the High Church, she fainted away; on her recovery, she declared that when Lady Janet Dundas (a daughter of Lord Lauderdale) entered the pew with Miss Dundas, who was a beautiful young girl, she saw the latter as it were in a shroud gathered round her neck, and upon her head. Miss Dundas died a short time after.’
[178] Both facts from Moyses’s Memoirs.
[179] In the house to the north of this was a shop kept by an eccentric personage, who exhibited a sign bearing this singular inscription:
ORRA THINGS BOUGHT AND SOLD—
which signified that he dealt in odd articles, such as a single shoe-buckle, one of a pair of skates, a teapot wanting a lid, or perhaps, as often, a lid minus a teapot; in short, any unpaired article which was not to be got in the shops where only new things were sold, and which, nevertheless, was now and then as indispensably wanted by householders as anything else.
[180] The present article is almost wholly from original sources, a fact probably unknown to a contemporary novelist, who has made it the groundwork of a fiction without any acknowledgment. Some additional particulars may be found in Tales of the Century, by John Sobieski Stuart (Edinburgh, 1846). In the Spalding Miscellany, vol. iii., are several letters of Lord Grange, containing allusions to his wife; and a production of his, which has been printed under the title of Diary of a Senator of the College of Justice (Stevenson, Edinburgh, 1833), is worthy of perusal.
[181] Here and elsewhere a paper in Lord Grange’s own hand is quoted.
[182] ‘Then, and some time before and after, there was a stage-coach from hence to England.’ So says his lordship; implying that in 1751, when he was writing, there was no such public conveniency! It had been tried, and had failed.
[183] If we could believe Lord Lovat, however, he personally was innocent, and regretted he was innocent, of any association with the abduction of Lady Grange. ‘They said it was all my contrivance, and that it was my servants that took her away; but I defyed them then, as I do now, and do declare to you upon honour, that I do not know what has become of that woman, where she is or who takes care of her, but if I had contrived and assisted, and saved my Lord Grange from that devil, who threatened every day to murder him and his children, I would not think shame of it before God or man.’—Letter of Lord Lovat’s quoted in Genealogie of the Hayes of Tweeddale.
[184] About four gallons.
[185] Named after John Cant, a pious citizen of the sixteenth century, who, with his wife, Agnes Kerkettle, was a contributor to the foundation of the Convent of St Catherine of Siena on the south side of the Meadows. The district is now known as Sciennes—pronounced Sheens.
[186] Only fragments of the ancient buildings remain in Cant’s and Dickson’s Closes.
[187] At the head of the Old Bank Close, to the westward; burned down in 1771.
[188] Only a small portion of this building now remains.
[189] The Advocates’ Library.
[190] In the parish of Borthwick.
[191] This anecdote was related to me by the first Lord Wharncliffe, grandson’s grandson to Sir George, about 1828.
[192] Cromarty, at seventy, contrived to marry ‘a young and beautiful countess in her own right, a widow, wealthy, and in universal estimation. The following distich was composed on the occasion:
C. K. Sharpe, Notes to Law’s Memorials, p. xlvii.
[193] This historic building was demolished many years ago. Its main front faced the Cowgate, and to the north and east were extensive gardens.
[194] In this house, too, Queen Mary was entertained at a banquet given by the citizens. ‘Upon the nynt day of Februar at evin the Queen’s grace come up in ane honourable manner fra the palice of Holyrudhouse to the Cardinal’s ludging in Blackfriars Wynd, ... and efter supper the honest young men in the town come with ane convoy to her,’ and escorted her back to Holyrood.—Diurnal of Occurrents.
Before the opening of the original High School in the grounds of the Blackfriars’ Monastery the pupils were temporarily accommodated in Beaton’s palace.