Book . F ?o W ^- BOOK OFEDINBURGH ANECDOTE HENRY. LORD COCKIURN THE BOOK OF EDINBURGH ANECDOTE BY FRANCIS WATT New York CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 191 3 '.tzWi -t^^t>3^^ Printed by Morrison & Gibb Limited, Edinburgh I \ 3 TO CHARLES BAXTER, Writer to the Signet Sienna In Faithful Memory OF THE Old Days and the Old Friends THE LIST OF CHAPTERS I. Parliament House and Lawyers . . page 3 II. The Church in Edinburgh 31 III. Town's College and Schools 55 IV. Surgeons and Doctors 73 V. Royalty 103 VI. Men of Letters, Part 1 131 VII. Men OF Letters, Part II 151 VIII. The Artists 177 IX. The Women OF Edinburgh 195 X. The Supernatural 219 XI. The Streets 241 XII. The City 269 Index 280 THE LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Lord Cockburn frontispiece ■' By Sir J. Watson Gordon Sir Thomas Hamilton, First Earl of Haddington page 8> John Clerk, Lord Eldin 16/ From a mezzotint after Sir Henry Raeburn, R,A. John Inglis, Lord President of the Court of Session 24 / From a painting in the Parliament House. By permission of the Faculty of Advocates, Mr. James Guthrie 36 ^^ From an old engraving. Sir Archibald Johnston, Lord Warriston . . 40 / From a painting by George Jamesone. Rev. Sir Henry Moncreiff-Wellwood .... a^z/ From an engraving after Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. Robert Leighton, D.D., Archbishop of Glasgow 56 »/ From an engraving by Sir Robert Strange. Principal William Carstares 64* From the engraving by Jeens. By kind permission of Messrs. Macmillan & Co., London. Dr. Archibald Pitcairne %^^ From an engraving after Sir John Medina. Dr. Alexander Wood 92 /^ From an engraving after AILISON. ix THE LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Professor James Syme page 96 y From a drawing in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. Margaret Tudor, Queen of James IV 104 From the painting by Mabuse. Mary of Guise, Queen of James V 108 * From an old engraving. Mary, Queen of Scots 112/ From the Morton portrait. »/ William Drummond of Hawthornden . . . .132 From the painting by Cornelius Jonson van Ceulen James Boswell 144 ,, From an engraving after Sir Joshua Reynolds, /'.R. A. Henry Mackenzie, "The Man of Feeling" . . 152 v From an engraving after Andrew Geddes. John Leyden 160 / From a pen drawing. Robert Louis Stevenson as an Edinburgh Student 172 ■ Allan Ramsay, Painter 180 / From a mezzotint after Artist's own painting. Rev. John Thomson of Duddingston .... 184 / From the engraving by Croll. Mrs. Alison Cockburn 200 From a photograph. Miss Jean Elliot > . . . . 204 From a sepia drawing. THE LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Susanna, Countess of Eglinton .... page 208 / From the painting by Gavin Hamilton. Caroline, Baroness Nairne 212 y From a lithograph. Mrs. Siddons as "The Tragic Muse" . . . .216/' From an engraving after Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A. James IV 220 / From an old engraving, A Bedesman or Bluegown 240 y From a sketch by Monro S. Orr. Allan Ramsay, Poet 248 ^ From an engraving after William Airman. Andrew Crosbie, " Pleydell " 256 From a painting in the Parliament House. By permis- sion of the Faculty of Advocates. Rev. Thomas Somerville 272 / From a photograph in the Scottish National Portrait Gal- lery. William Smellie 280 ^ From an engraving after George Watson. CHAPTER ONE THE PARLIAMENT HOUSE AND THE LAWYERS BOOKOFEDINBURGH ANECDOTE CHAPTER ONE PARLIAMENT HOUSE<^LAWYERS THE PARLIAMENT HOUSE HAS ALWAYS had a reputation for good anecdote. There are solid reasons for this. It is the haunt of men, clever, highly educated, well off, and the majority of them with an all too abundant leisure. The tyranny of custom forces them to pace day after day that ancient hall,remark- able even in Edinburgh for august memories, as their predecessors have done for generations. There are statues such as thoseof Blair of Avontoun and Forbes of Culloden, and portraits like those of " Bluidy Mac- kenzie " and Braxfield, — all men who lived and la- boured in the precincts, — to recall and revivify the past, while there is also the Athenian desire to hear some new thing, to retail the last good story about Lord this or Sheriff that. So there is a great mass of material. Let me pre- sent some morsels for amusement or edification. Most are stories of judges, though it may be of them be- fore they were judges. A successful counsel usually ends on the bench, and at the Scots bar the excep- tions are rare indeed. The two most prominent that occur to one are Sir George Mackenzie and Henry Erskine. Now, Scots law lords at one time invari- ably, and still frequently, take a title from landed es- tate. This was natural. A judge was a person with some landed property, which was in early times the 3 BOOKOFEDINBURGH ANECDOTE only property considered as such, and in Scotland, as everybody knows, the man was called after his estate. Monkbarns of the Antiquary is a classic in- stance, and it was only giving legal confirmation to this, to make the title a fixed one in the case of the judges. They never signed their names this way, and were sometimes sneered at as paper lords. To- day, when the relative value of things is altered, they would probably prefer their paper title. According to tradition their wives laid claim to a corresponding dignity, but James v., the founder of the College of Justice,sternlyrepelledthepresumptuous dames, with a remark out of keeping with his traditional reputa- tion for gallantry. " He had made the carles lords, butwhathedeil made thecarlinesleddies?" Popular custom was kinder than the King, and they got to be called ladies, till a newer fashion deprived them of the honour. It was sometimes awkward. A judge and his wife went furth of Scotland, and the exact relations between Lord A. and Mrs. B. gravelled the wits of many an honest landlord. The gentleman and lady were evidently on the most intimate terms, yet how to explain their different names ? Of late the powers that be have intervened in the lady's fa- vour, and she has now her title assured her by royal mandate. Once or twice the territorial designation bore an ugly purport. Jeffrey kept, it is said, his own name, for Lord Craigcrook would never have done. Craig is Scots for neck, and why should a man name himselfa hanging judge to start with ? This was perhaps too great a concession to the cheap wits of the Parliament 4 PARLIAMENT HOUSE Gf LAWYERS House, and perhaps it is not true, for in Jeffrey's days territorial titles for paper lords were at a discount, so that Lord Cockburn thought they would never revive, but the same thing is said of a much earlier judge. Fountainhall's Decisions is one of those books that every Scots advocate knows in name, and surely no Scots practising advocate knows in fact. Its author, Sir John Lauder, was a highly successful lawyer ofthe Restoration, and when his time came to go up there was one fly in the ointment of success. His compact little estate in East Lothian was called Woodhead. Lauder feared not unduly the easy sarcasms of fools, or the evil tongues of an evil time. Territorial title he must have, and he rather neatly solved the difficulty by changing Woodhead to Fountainhall, a euphoni- ous name, which the place still retains. When James VI. and I. came to his great estate in England, he was much impressed by the splendid robes ofthe English judges. His mighty Lord Chan- cellor would have told him that such things were but " toys," though even he would have admitted, they in- fluenced the vulgar. At any rate Solomon presently sent word to his old kingdom, that his judges and advocates there were to attire themselves in decent fashion. I f you stroll into the Parliament House to-day and viewthe twin groups ofthe Inner House, you will say they went one better than their English brothers. A Scots judge in those times had not seldom a plurality of offices : thus the first Earl of Haddington was both President of the Court of Session and Sec- retary of State. He played many parts in his time, and he played them all well, for Tarn o' the Coogate 5 BOOKOFEDINBURGH ANECDOTE was nothing if not acute. There are various stories of this old-time statesman. This shows forth the man and the age. A highland chief was at law, and had led his men into the witness-box just as he would have led them to the tented field. The Lord President had taken one of them in hand, and sternly kept him to the point, and so wrung the facts out of him. When Donald escaped he was asked by his fellow-clansman whose turn was to follow, how he had done ? With every mark of sincere contrition and remorse, Donald groaned out, that he was afraid he had spoken the truth, and " Oh," he said, " beware of the man with the partridge eye ! " How the phrase brings the old judge, alert, keen, searching, before us ! By the time of the Restoration things were more specialised, and the law- yers of the day could give more attention to their own subject They were very talented, quite unscrupulous, terribly cruel; Courtof JusticeandPrivyCouncilalike are as the house of death. We shudder rather than laugh at the anecdotes. Warriston, Dirleton, Mac- kenzie, Lockhart,the great Stair himself, were remark- able men who at once attract and repel. Nisbet of Dirleton, like Lauder of Fountainhall, took his title from East Lothian — in both cases so tenacious is the legal grip, the properties are still in their families — and Dirleton's Doubts are still better known, and are less read, if that be possible, than Fountainhall's Decisions. You can even to-day look on Dirleton's big house on the south side of the Canongate, and Dirle- ton, if not "the pleasantest dwelling in Scotland," is a very delightful place, and within easy reach of the cap- ital. But the original Nisbet was, I fear, a worse rascal 6 PARLIAMENT HOUSE(Sf LAWYERS than any of his fellows, a treacherous, greedy knave. You might bribehis predecessor to spare blood, it was said, " but Nisbet was always so sore afraid of losing his own great estate, he could never in his own opinion be officious enough to serve his cruel masters." Here is the Nisbet story. In July 1668, Mitchell shot at Archbishop Sharp in the High Street, but, missing him,woundedHoneyman, Bishop of Orkney, who sat in the coach beside him. With an almost humorous cynicism some one remarked, it is only a bishop, and the crowd immediately discovered a complete lack of interest in the matter and in the track of the would- be assassin. Not so the Privy Council, which proceed- ed to a searching inquiry in the course whereof one Gray was examined, but for some time to little pur- pose. Nisbet as Lord Advocate took an active part, and bethought him of a trick worthy of a private in- quiry agent. He pretended to admire a ring on the man's finger, and asked to look at it ; the prisoner was only too pleased. Nisbet sent it off by a messenger to Gray's wife with a feigned message from her hus- band. She stopped not to reflect, but at once told all she knew ! this led to further arrests and further ex- aminations during which Nisbet suggested torture as a means of extracting information from some taciturn ladies ! Even his colleagues were abashed. " Thow rotten old devil," said Primrose, the Lord Clerk Reg- ister, " thow wilt get thyself stabbed some day." Even in friendly talk and counsel these old Scots, you will observe, were given to plain language. Fate was kind- er to Dirleton than he deserved, he died in quiet, rich, if not honoured, for his conduct in office was scandal- 7 BOOKOFEDINBURGH ANECDOTE ous even for those times, yet his name is not remem- bered with the especial detestation allotted to that of "the bluidy advocate Mackenzie," really a muchhigh- er type of man. Why the unsavoury epithet has stuck so closely to him is a curious caprice of fate or history. Perhaps it is that ponderous tomb in Old Greyfriars, insolently flaunting within a stone-throw of the Mar- tyrs' Monument, perhaps it is that jingle which (you suspect half mythical) Edinburgh callants used to occupy their spare time in shouting in at the keyhole, that made the thing stick. However, the dead-and- gone advocate preserves thestonysilenceofthetomb, and is still the most baffling and elusive personality in Scots history. The anecdotes of him are not of much account. One tells how the Marquis of Tweed- dale, anxious for his opinion, rode over to his country house at Shank at an hour so unconscionably early that Sir George was still abed. The case admitted of no delay, and the Marquis was taken to his room. The matter was stated and the opinion given from be- hind the curtains,and then s.woman's hand'wdiSstr&X.- ched forth to receive the fee ! The advocate was not the most careful of men, so Lady Mackenzie deemed it advisable to take control of the financial depart- ment. Of thisdame the gossips hinted too intimate re- lations with Claverhouse.but there was no open scan- dal. Another brings us nearer the man. Sir George, by his famous entail act, tied up the whole land of the country in asettlement so strict that various meas- ures through the succeeding centuries only gradually and partially released it. Now the Earl of Bute was the favoured lover of his only daughter, but Macken- 8 SIR THOMAS HAMILTON, FIRST EARL Of HADDINGTON From the Portrait at Tynninghamc PARLIAMENT HOUSEi< THE CHURCH IN EDINBURGH man, " that makes the thing far waur ; he will just make a bye job of our souls." Dr. Chalmers is the great figure of the Disruption controversy, but most of his work lay away from Edin- burgh. Well known as he was, there existed a sub- merged mass to whom he was but a name. In 1 845 he began social and evangelical work in the West Port. An old woman of the locality, being asked if she went to hear any one, said, "Ou ay, there's a body Chalmers preaches in the West Port, and I whiles gang to keep him in countenance, honest man ! " Chalmers was the founder of the Free Church ; its great popular preacher for years afterwards was Thomas Guthrie. His fame might almost be describ- ed as world-wide ; his oratory was marked by a certain vivid impressiveness that brought the scenes he de- scribed in actual fact before his hearers. A naval officer hearing him picture the wreck of a vessel, and the launching of the lifeboat to save the perishing crew, sprang from one of the front seats of the gallery and began to tear off his coat that he might rush to render aid. He was hardly pulled down by his mother who sat next him. Guthrie had other than oratorical gifts, he was genial and open-hearted. A servant from the country, amazed at the coming and going and the hos- pitality of the manse, said to her mistress : " Eh, mem, this house is just like a ' public,' only there's nae siller comes in!" Another leader, second only to Chalmers, was Dr. Candlish, much larger in mind than in body. "Ay," said an Arran porter to one who was watching the Doctor, " tak' a gude look, there's no muckle o' him, 49 D BOOKOFEDINBURGH ANECDOTE but there's a dealin him!" Lord Cockburn's words are to the like effect. " It requires the bright eye and the ca- pacious brow of Candlish to get the better of the small- nessof his person, which makes us sometimes wonder how it contains its inward fire." The eager spirit of this divine chafed and fretted over many matters ; his ora- tory aroused a feelingof sympathetic indignation in its hearers, afterwards they had some difficulty in finding adequate cause for their indignation. When the Prince Consort died his sorrowing widow raised a monument to him on Deeside, whereon a text from the Apocrypha wasinscribed. Candlish declaimed against the quota- tion with all the force of his eloquence. " I say this with the deepest sorrow if it is the Queen who is responsible, I say it with the deepest indignation whoever else it may be." These words bring vividly before us an al- most extinct type of thought. And this, again, spoken eight days before his death and in mortal sickness, has a touch of the age of Knox : " If you were to set me up in the pulpit I still could make you all hear on the deafest side of your heads." Times again change, the leaders of religious thought in Scotland are again broad church, if I may use a non- committal term. They have often moved in advance of their flocks. At a meeting in Professor Blackie's house in 1882 a number of Liberal divines were pre- sent. Among them Dr. Macgregor and Dr. Walter C. Smith. They were discussing the personality of the Evil One in what seemed to an old lady a very ration- alistic spirit. " What," she said in pious horror, "would you deprive us of the Devil ? " With this trivial anecdote may go that of another 5° THE CHURCH IN EDINBURGH conservative old woman more than a century earlier. The Rev. David Johnson, who died in 1824, was mini- ster of North Leith. In his time a new church was built, which was crowned with a cross wherein lurked, to some, a suggestion of prelacy if not popery. " But what are we to do ? " said the minister to a knot of objecting pious dames. " Do ! " replied one of them, " what wad ye do, but just put up the auld cock again !" (no doubt the weather-cock). This cock, or one of its predecessors, crows in history centuries before. On the 2 1st March 1 567 the Castle of Edinburgh was given in charge to Cockburn of Skirling. That day there was a great storm which, among greater feats, blew the tail from the cock on the steeple at Leith. An ancient prophecy ran the round of the town as miraculously " When Skirling sail be capitaine The Cock sail want his tail." Thus the diary of Robert Birrell, at any rate. The strictness of old-time Sabbath observance is well known. Lord George Campbell, afterwards Duke of Argyll, was in command of a corps of Fenciblesin Edinburgh in the early years of last century. He was skilled in whistling. He sat one Sunday morning at the open window of his hotel in Princes Street, and exercised his favourite art. An old woman passing by to church viewed him with holy horror and shook her fist at him, " Eh ! ye reprobate ! ye reprobate ! " she shouted. It were easy to accumulate anecdotes of the church officers of Edinburgh. I find space for two. In old days Mungo Watson was beadle of Lady Yester's Church under Dr. Davidson. His pastime was to 51 BOOKOFEDINBURGH ANECDOTE mount the pulpit and thunder forth what he believed to be a most excellent discourse to an imaginary audience. Whilst thus engaged he was surprised by Dr. Davidson, who shut him up very quickly: " Come down, Mungo, come down, toom barrels mak' most sound." \njeems the Doorkeeper, a Lay Sermon, Dr. John Brown has drawn a charming picture of the officer of his father's church in Broughton Place. The building was crowded, and part of the congregation consisted of servant girls, " husseys " as Jeems con- temptuously described them. Some were laced to the point of suffocation, and were not rarely carried out fainting to the vestry. Jeems stood over the patient with a sharp knife in his hand. " Will oo rip her up noo?" he said as he looked at the young doctor ; the signal was given, the knife descended and a cracking as of canvas under a gale followed, the girl opened her eyes, and closed them again in horror at the sight of the ruined finery. But we are chronicling very small beer indeed, and here must be an end of these strangely assorted scenes and pictures. CHAPTER THREE THE TOWN'S COLLEGE AND SCHOOLS CHAPTER THREE TOWN'S COLLEGE AND SCHOOLS THE OFFICIAL TITLE OF THE UNIVER- sity of Edinburgh is Academia Jacobi Sexti. So " our James," as Ben Jonson calls him, gave a name to this great seat of learning, and in the form of a charter he gave it his blessing, and there he stopped ! Bishop Reid, the last Roman Catholic Bishop of Orkney, left eight thousand merks for a college in Edinburgh,and though that sum sinks considerably when put into current coin of the realm, it is not to be neglected. It was obtained and applied, but the real patrons, auth- ors, managers and supporters for centuries of the Uni- versity was the good town of Edinburgh through its Town Council. It was Oure Tounis Colledge. They appointed its professors and ruled its destinies until almost our own time. The Scottish University Act of 1858 greatly lessened, though it by no means de- stroyed, their influence. In a country so much under ecclesiastical influence as Scotland of the Reformation, the union between the College and the Kirk was close and intimate ; still it was a corporation of tradesmen that managed the University, and though the professors kicked, there is no doubt they managed it very well. There has ever been something homely and unconventional about the college. It was opened on the 14th October 1583; the students were to wear gowns, they were to speak Latin,none was to soil his mouth with common Scots, and none was to go to taverns, or (it was later ordain- ed) to funerals — a serious form of entertainment for which old Scotland evinced a peculiar zest. 55 BOOKOFEDINBURGH ANECDOTE Ah, those counsels of perfection ! how the years set them at naught ! Why they alone of all men in Edin- burgh should not go to taverns or funerals was not a question wherewith they troubled themselves ; they simply went. Gowns they never wore, and though half-hearted attempts were now and again made to introducethem,theseneversucceeded. Sir Alexander Grant, thelate Principal, tells us that a working man, whose son was a student, wrote to him, pointing out the advantage of gowns in covering up a shabby dress. Sir Alexander seemed ratherstruck with this point of view, though after all, the gown must cost something, which might have been better applied to the cloak. The students, as now, lived anywhere. The histories give many quaint details as to the manners of other days. The classes began at five in summer and six in winter; the bursars rung the bell and swept the rooms ; the janitor was a student or even a graduate. His it was to lock the door at eleven at night. The early professors, who did not confine themselves to one subject but carried their class right through, were called regents. One of them, James Reid, had taken up the office in 1603; he was popular in the council, in the town, and in the whole city, but after more than twenty years' service he came to grief on aquarrel with the all-powerful Kirk. In 1626, Wil- liam Struthers, Moderator of the Presbytery, spoke of philosophy as the dish-clout of divinity. At a gradua- tion ceremony, Reid quoted Aristippus to the effect that he would rather be an unchristian philosopher than an unphilosophical divine ! for which innocent retort the regent was forced to throw up his office. 56 ROBERT LEIGH HRISHOP OF OLA^ TOWN'S COLLEGE AND SCHOOLS One wonders what would have happened if Town Council and Kirk had come to loggerheads, but they never did, and through a college committee and a col- lege bailie they directed the affairs of the University. Creech, best known to fame as Burns's publisher, and the subject of some kindly or some unkindly half- humorous verse, was in his time college bailie ; but Creech was agreat many things in his time, though the world has pretty well forgotten him. The Lord Pro- vost was the important figure in University as well as City life. In 1665 he was declared by the council Rector of the College, yet in the years that followed he did nothing in his office. Longafterwards,in 1838, there was a trial of students before the Sheriff, for the part these had taken in a great snowball bicker with the citizens. Witty Patrick Robertson was their counsel, and was clever enough to throw a farcical air over the whole proceedings. " You are Rector of the University, are you not ? " he asked the then Lord Provost. " No ! I may be, but I am not aware of it," was the rather foolish answer. A caricature was im- mediately circulated of the man who does not know he is Rector ! This office was not the present Lord Rectorship, which only dates from the Act of 1858. Edinburgh has never been a rich town. In the old days, it was as poor as poor might be, and so was its college; they had nothing in the way of plate to show visitors, or to parade on great occasions. Their only exhibits were the college mace and George Buch- anan's skull ! There was a legend about the mace. In 1683 the tomb of Bishop Kennedy at St. Andrews was opened : it contained five silver maces — quite a 57 BOOKOFEDINBURGH ANECDOTE providential arrangement, one for each of the Scots Universities, and one to spare! But there was a mace in Edinburghbeforethis. Wehavenoteof it in i640,and in 165 1 the Town Council had it on loan for the use of the public. In 1660 the macerofthe Parliament needs must borrow it till his masters get one of their own. There is a quaint, homely touch about this passing on of the mace from one body to another. It had been a valuable and interesting relic,but in the night between 29th and 30th October 1787 the library was forced, and the mace stolen from the press wherein it lay, and was never seen more. Ten guineas reward was offered, but in vain. Every one presently suspected Deacon Brodie, himself a member of the Council,and perhaps the most captivating and romantic burglar on record. Ere a year was over, he was lying in the Tolbooth a condemned felon, but he uttered no word as to the precious bauble. The year after that, very shame induced the Council to procure an elegant silver mace, with a fine Latin inscription, and the arms of James VI., the arms of the City, and the arms of the University itself, invented for the special purpose. It was just in time to be used on the laying of the found- ation-stone of the new university buildings in 1789, and it has been used ever since on great occasions only. The loan of it is not asked for any more! every body corporate now has a mace of its own ! The Buchanan skull is still held by the college. That eminent scholar died on the 28th September 1 5 82, and was buried in the Greyfriars Churchyard. John Adam- son,Principal of theUniversity between 1 623 and 1 65 1 , got the skull by bribing the sexton, and bequeathed 58 TOWN'S COLLEGE AND SCHOOLS it to the college. The story rather revolts the taste of to-day, but grim old Scotland had a strange hanker- ing after those elements of mortality. Its remarkable thinness was noted, in fact the light could be seen through it, and anatomists of later years dwelt on the jfine breadth of forehead, and remarkable contours. It was judged, moreover, a skull of a Celtic type — Celtic was possibly enough Buchanan's race. Long after- wards Sir William Hamilton, at the Royal Society in Edinburgh, compared it with the skull of a Malay rob- ber and cut-throat, and showed that, according to the principlesof the phrenologists, the Malay had the finer head. This was meant as a reductio ad absiirduni of phrenology ,though,after all,the evidenceofidentifica- tion could not be satisfactory. If the sexton consented to be bribed he was not likely, in old Greyfriars,tobeat a loss for a skull, but it seems irreverent to pursue the subject further. Robert Leighton, Principal between 1 65 3 and 1 662, was afterwards Bishop of Dunblane, and then Arch- bishop of Glasgow. In 1672 he was still living in his rooms in the college, and was there waited upon one day by Chorley,an English student studying divinity at Glasgow. He brought the compliments of his col- lege and tutor,and invited the prelate to his approach- ing laureation. Henextpresentedhimwiththelaurea- tion thesis, which was gratefully received, but when the visitor produced a pair of "fine fringed gloves" " he started back and with all demonstrations of hu- mility excused himself as unworthy of suchapresent." Chorley, however, whilst humble was persistent, and though the Archbishop refused again and again and 59 BOOK OFEDINBURGH ANECDOTE retreated backwards, Chorley followed, and at the end fairly pinned Leighton against the wall ! His Grace needsmustyield,"butitwas amazing to see with what humblegratitude,bowingtotheveryground,this great man accepted them." So much for the author of the classic Commentary on theist Epistle of St. Peter. Is it not a picture of the time when men wereextremeinall things, though Leighton alone was extreme in humil- ity ? Was there not (you ask) something ironic in the self-depreciation? I do not think so, for you look as " through a lattice on the soul " and recognise a spirit ill at ease in an evil day, one who might have uttered Lord Bacon's pathetic co^xiy^X^vatmultum incola fuit anima mea with far more point and fitness than ever Bacon did. Of a later Principal, Gilbert Rule (1690- 1 701), a less conspicuous but very pleasing memory remains. His window was opposite that of Campbell, Professor of Divinity. Now Dr. Rule was ever late at his books, whilst Campbell was eager over them ere the late northern dawn was astir; so the one candle was not out before the other was lighted. They were called the evening and the morning star. Rule died first, and when Campbell missed thefamiliarlight,hesaid, "the evening star was now gone down, and the morning star would soon disappear," and ere long it was noted that both windows were dark. Among his other gifts, Gilbert Rule was a powerful preacher. In some minis- terial wandering it was his lot to pass a night in a soli- tary house in a nook of the wild Grampians. At mid- night enter a ghost, who would take no denial ; Gilbert must out through the night till a certain spot was 60 TOWN'S COLLEGE AND SCHOOLS reached ; then the ghost vanished and the Doctor got him back to bed, with, you imagine, chattering teethanddismal foreboding. Nextdaytheground was opened, and the skeleton of a murdered man discover- ed. Gilbert preached on the following Sunday from the parish pulpit, and reasoned so powerfully of judg- ment and the wrath to come that an old man got up and confessed himself the murderer. In due course he was executed and the ghost walked no more. WilliamCarstares,Principal between 1 703 and 1 7 1 5, was a great figure in Church and State. " Cardinal" Carstares they nicknamed him at Dutch William's Court,andboth that astute monarch and Queen Anne, Stuart as she was, gave him almost unbounded con- fidence. In tact and diplomacy he excelled his con- temporaries and in the valuable art of knowing what to conceal even when forced to speak. He was put to it, for the most famous anecdote about him tells of his suffering under the thumbikins in 1684. They were applied for an hour with such savage force that the King's smith had to go for his tools to reverse the screws before it was possible to set free the maimed and bruised thumbs. In Carstares' picture the thumbs are very prominent, in fact or flattery they show forth quite untouched. At the King's special request he tried them on the royal digits; His Majesty vowed he had confessedanythingtoberidofthem. Wehaveapleas- ing picture of an annual fish dinner at Leith whereat the Principal was entertained by his colleagues. Cal- amy the English nonconformist was a guest, and was much delighted with the talk and the fare, and especi- ally "the freedom and harmony between the Principal 61 BOOKOFEDINBURGH ANECDOTE and the masters of the college/'theyexpressingaven- eration for him as a common father, and he a tender- ness for them as if they had all been his children. Principal Robertson (1762-1793) is still a disting- uished figure,but he belongs to Letters in the first place, and the Church in the second ; yet even here he was eminent. A charminganecdote tells how as Principal he visited the logic class where John Stevenson, his own old teacher, was still prelecting. He addressed the students in Latin, urging them to profit, as he hop- ed he had himself profited, by the teaching of Steven- son, whereat " the aged Professor, unable any longer to suppress his emotion, dissolved in tears of grateful af- fection, and fell on the neck of his favourite pupil, his Principal." George Husband Baird (i 793-1 840) was a much more commonplace figure. His middle name was thought felicitous ; he was husband to the Lord Pro- vost's daughter and there seemed no other sufficient reason to account for his elevation. This play upon names,by the way,has always been a favourite though puerile form of Edinburgh wit. The better part of a century afterwards we had one of our little wars on the Gold Coast, and some local jester asked for the difference between the folk of Ashantee and those of Edinburgh, The first, it was said, took their law from Coffee and the second their coffee from Law ! The Ashantee war of the 'seventies is already rather dim and ancient history, but Coffee, it may be remember- ed, was the name of their king, and the other term re- ferred to a well-known Edinburgh house still to the fore. However, we return to our Baird for a moment. 62 TOWN'S COLLEGE AND SCHOOLS He was Minister of the High Church as well as Princi- pal. Discoursing of the illness of George III., he wept copiously and unreasonably; "from George Husband Baird to George III. greeting" said one of his hearers. There is a m ass of legendary stories about the ordin- ary professors, but the figures aredim,and thenotesof theirlivesmostlytrivial. For instance, there is Dr.John Meiklejohn, who was Professor of Church History, 1739-1781: "He had a smooth round face, that never bore any expression but good-humour and content- ment," he droned monotonously through his lectures, glad to get away to his glebe at Abercorn, eight miles off. He delighted to regale the students at his rural manse, and pressed on them the produce of the soil, with a heartiness which he never showed in invitiner their attention to the fathers of the church. " Take an &^g, Mr. Smith," he would genially \ns\s\.,^^ they are my own eggs, for the eggs of Edinburgh are not to be depended on." Of like kidney was David Ritchie, who was Professor of Logic and Metaphysics and Min- ister of St. Andrew's Church,but" was more illustrious on the curling pond, than in the Professor's chair." But,then,tohimin i836succeededSirWilliam Hamil- ton, and for twenty years the chair was the philosophi- cal chair of Britain. The records of his fame are not for this page ; his passionate devotion to study, his vast learning, are not material for the anecdotist. He was fond of long walks with a friend into the surrounding country, and in his day it was still very easy to leave the town behind you. Though he started with a com- panion, he was presently away in advance or on the othersideof theroad,muttering to himself in Greek or 63 BOOK OFEDINBURGH ANECDOTE Latin or EngHsh,forgetful of that external world which occupied no small place in his philosophy. "Dear me, what did you quarrel about?" asked a lady, to his no small amusement. The Council did not always select the most eminent men. About a century before, in 1745 to wit, they had preferred for the chair of Moral Philosophy William Cleghorn to David Hume. There was no other choice,it was said. A Deist might possibly become a Christian, but a Jacobite could not become a Whig. Ruddiman's amanuensis, Adam Walker, was a student at this class, where he had listened to a lec- ture on the doctrine of necessity. " Well, does your Professor make us free agents or not?" said his em- ployer. " He gives us arguments on both sides and leaves us to judge," was the reply. " Indeed," was Ruddiman's caustic comment, " the fool hath said in his heart, there is no God, and the Professor will not tell you whether the fool is right or wrong." Many of us remember Dunbar's Greek Lexicon^ so much in use till superseded by Liddell and Scott's. Its author was Professor of Greek in the University from 1 806 to 1852. He fell from a tree, it was said, into the Greek chair. In fact, he commenced life as gardener; confined by an accident he betook himself to study, with highly satisfactory results. His predecessor in the chair had been Andrew Dalzel, an important fig- ure in his time, perhaps best remembered by the in- eptitude of his criticism of Scott, whom he entertain- ed unawares in his class. Scott sent him in an essay, "crackingup" Ariosto above Homer. Dalzel was nat- urally furious : " Dunce he was and dunce he would remain." You cannot blame the professor, but dts 64 PRINCIPAL WILLIAM CARSTARES From the Engraving by Jeens TOWN'S COLLEGE AND SCHOOLS aliter visum ! Dunbar's successor was John Stuart Blackie (1852-1882), one of the best known Edin- burgh figures of his time. He had a creed of his own, ways of his own, and a humour of his own. Even the orthodox loved and tolerated the genial individ- ualist who was never malicious. " Blackie's neyther orthodox, heterodox, nor any ither dox ; he's juist himsel' ! " An ardent body of abstainers under some mistaken idea asked him to preside at one of their meetings. Hethus addressed them : "I cannot under- stand why I am asked to be here, I am not a teeto- taler — far from it. If a man asks me to dine with him and does not give me a good glass of wine, I say he is neither a Christian nor a gentleman. Germans drink beer. Englishmen drink wine, ladies tea, and fools water." Blackie was an advocate as well as a professor. Possibly he had in his mind a certain Act of 17 16, to wit, the 3rd of Geo. I. chap. 5, whereby a duty was imposed " of two pennies Scots, or one- sixth of a penny sterling on every pint of ale and beer that shall be vended and sold within the City of Edin- burgh." Among the objects to which the duty was to be applied was the settling of a salary upon the Professor of Law in the University of Edinburgh and his successor in office not exceedingiJ"ioo perannum. Here is a portrait by himself which brings vividly back, true to the life, that once familiar figure of the Edin- burgh pavement: "When I walk along Princes Street I go with a kingly air, myhead erect, my chest expan- ded, myhair fllowing, myplaid flying, my stick swing- ing. Do you know what makes me do that ? Well, I'll tell you — ^just con-ceit." Even those who knew him 65 E BOOK OFEDINBURGH ANECDOTE not will understand that the Edinburgh ways never quite seemed the same when that picturesque figure was seen no longer there. And yet the Blackie anec- dotesare disappointing. There is a futile story that he once put up a notice he would meet his classes at such an hour. A student with a very elementary sense of humour cut off the c^ and he retorted by deleting the /. All this is poor enough. Alas ! he was only of the silver or, shall we say, of the iron age of Auld Reekie ? Aytoun in an address at the graduation of 1863, spoke of the professors of his time as the instructors, and almost idols, of the rising generation. He him- self filledthechairofRhetoricbetween 1845 and 1865. A quaint though scarcely characteristic story is pre- served of his early years. One night he was, or was believed to be, absent from home, " late at een birling the wine." An irate parent stood grimly behind the door the while a hesitating hand fumbled at the latch, the dim light of morn presently revealed a cloaked figure, upon whom swift blows descended without stint or measure. It was not young Aytoun at all, but a mighty Senator of the College ofjustice whohadmis- taken the door for his own, which was a little farther along the street ! One of the idols to whom Aytoun referred was no doubt his father-in-law, John Wilson (i 820-1 85 3), the well-known Christopher North, described by Sir R. Christisonas "the grandest specimen I haveeverseen of the human form, tall, perfectly symmetrical, mass- ive and majestic, yet agile." Even in old age he had many of his early characteristics. He noted a coal carter brutally driving a heavily-laden horse up the 66 TOWN'S COLLEGE AND SCHOOLS steep streets of Edinburgh; he remonstrated with the fellow, who raised his whip in a threatening manner as if to strike. The spirit of the old man swelled in righteous anger, he tore away the whip as if it had been straw, loosened the harness, threw the coals into the street, then clutching the whip in one hand and leading the horse by the other, he marched through Moray Place, to deposit the unfortunate animal in more kindly keeping. There are stories of the library that merit atten- tion. I will give the name of Robert Henderson, ap- pointed librarian in 1685, where he so continued till 1747 — sixty-two years altogether, the longest record of University service extant. Physically of a lean and emaciated figure, he had a very high opinion of his own erudition. Now in the old college there was a cer- tain ruinous wall to which was attached the legend, that it would topple over on some great scholar. The librarian affected an extreme anxiety when in the vicinity of the wall. At length it was taken down. Boswell told the story to Johnson, The sage did not lose the chance for a very palpable hit at Scots learn- ing. " They were afraid it never would fall ! " he growled. There was a like tradition regarding that precipitous part of Arthur's Seat quaintly named Samson's Ribs. An old witch prophesied they would be sure to fall on the greatest philosopher in Scot- land. Sir John Leslie was afraid to pass that way. The relations between the Town Council and the professors in the first half of the nineteenth century were sometimes far from harmonious. The days were past when the Academy of James VI. was merely the 67 BOOK OF EDINBURGH ANECDOTE "Tounes Colledge," it was more and more a University with a European reputation. A cultured scholar of the type of Sir William Hamilton, "spectator of all time and of all existence," in Plato's striking phrase, was not like to rest contented under the sway of the Town Council, Possibly the Council sneered at him andhis likes, asvisionary, unpractical, eccentric; pos- sibly there was truth on both sides, so much does de- pend on your point of view. The University, some- what unwisely, went to law with the Council, and cam e down rather heavily ; nor were the Council generous victors. The Lord Provost of the time met Professor Dunbar one day at dinner — " We have got you Pro- fessors under ourthumb, andby wewillmakeyou feel it," said he rather coarsely. The professors con- soled each other with anecdotes of Town Council oddities in college affairs. One councillor gave as a reason why he voted for a professorial candidate that, " He was asked by a leddy who had lately given him a good job." " I don't care that," said another, snappinghisfingers,"forthechairof , but whoever the Provost votes for, I'll vote for somebody else." An English scholar had come to Edinburgh as can- didate for a chair. He called on a worthy member of the Council to whom his very accent suggested black prelacy, or worse. " Are ye a jined member ? " The stranger stared in hopeless bewilderment. " Are ye a jined member o' onie boadie ? " was the far from lucid explanation. However, the Act of 1858 has changed all this, and town and gown in Edinburgh fight no more. Well, there is no gown, and the Uni- versity has always been a good part of the good town 68 TOWN'S COLLEGE AND SCHOOLS of Edinburgh, as much now as ever. Take a broad view from first to last, and how to deny that the Coun- cil did their duty well ! Principal Sir Alexander Grant in his Story of the University of EdinburghhQ.zx^ gener- ous and emphatic testimony as to this, and here we may well leave the matter. I must now desert the groves of the Academy of James VI. to say a word on a lesser school and its school- masters. Here we have the memorable and illus- trative story of the great barring out of September 1595 at the old High School. The scholars had gone on the 15 th of that month to ask the Council for the week's holiday of privilege as was usual. It was curtly refused, whereupon some " gentlemen's bairns " collected firearms and swords, and in dead of night seized the schoolhouse, which they fortified in some sort. Their Rector, Master Pollock, was re- fused admittance next morning, and complained to the magistrates. Bailie John Macmorran came to the spot with a posse of officers, but William Sinclair, son of the Chancellor of Caithness, took his stand at a window and threatened to pistol the first who ap- proached. Bailie Macmorran was a big man in his day — his house, now restored as University Hall, still rises stately and impressive in Riddle's Close, on the south side of the Lawnmarket — and he was not to be put down by a schoolboy ; he ordered his satellites to crash in the door with the beam they were bringing forward. It is not hard to reconstitute the scene : the bailie, full of civic importance and wrath, the angry boy at the window, the pride of youth and blood in his set, determined face. Presently the pistol shot 69 BOOKOFEDINBURGH ANECDOTE rang out, and Macmorran fell dead on the pavement with a bullet through his brain. The whole town rush- ed to the spot, seized the frightened boys and thrust them into the Tolbooth, but finally they were liber- ated without hurt, after, it would seem, some form of a trial. There are many quaint details as to the scholars. They used to go to the fields in the summer to cut rushes or bent for the floor of the school, but, you see, fighting was the work orthe game of nearly every male in Scotland, and even the children must needs have their share. On these expeditions the boys fell to slashing one another with their hooks, and they were stopped. The winter of 1 7 1 6 was distinguished by furious riots, thoughnot of the same deadly nature. The pupils demolished every window of the school and of the adjacent parish church of Lady Yester, also the wall which fenced the playground. I will not gather records ofthe various Rectors, not even of Dr. Alexander Adam, the most famous of them all. You can see to-day his portrait by Rae- burn, and one of Raeburn's best in the Gallery on the Mound, and think of his striking utterance in the last hours of his life, " Boys, it is growing dark, you may go home." In his prime he had a profound conviction of his own qualities and those of his school. " Come away, sir," — thus he would address a new scholar, — " you will see more here in an hour than you will in any other school in Europe." He had a long series of eminent pupils, among them Scott, Horner, and Jeffrey, and the manner in which they have spoken of him justifies his words and his reputation. 70 CHAPTER FOUR SURGEONS AND DOCTORS CHAPTER FOUR THE SURGEONS & THE DOCTORS THE PHYSICIANS, THE SURGEONS, THE medical schools of Edinburgh have long and famous histories. A few facts may assist the reader to under- stand the anecdotes which fill this chapter. The Guild of Surgeons and Barbers received a charter of Incor- poration from the Town Council on the ist July 1505, and to this in 1 506 the sanction of James IV. was ob- tained. On 26th February 1567 the surgeons and apothecaries were made into one body ; henceforth they ceased to act as barbers and, after 1722, save that the surgeons kept a register of barbers' apprent- ices, there was no connection whatever between the profession and the trade. In 1778 a charter was ob- tained from George III., and the corporation became the Royal College of Surgeons of the City of Edin- burgh. In early days they had a place of meeting in Dixon's Close, but in 1656 they acquired and occu- pied Curriehill House, once the property of the Black Friars. In May 1775 the foundation-stone of a new hall was laid in Surgeons Square, hard by the old High School. Here the Incorporation met till the opening of the new Surgeons Hall ini 832 on the east side of Nicolson Street, a little way south of the old University buildings. Just as the barbers became separated from the surgeons, so in time a distinction was drawn between these last and the physicians. In 1617, James VI. in the High Court of Parliament de- creed the establishment of a College of Physicians for Edinburgh. In poverty-stricken Scotland a scheme often remained a mere scheme for many long years. 73 BOOKOFEDINBURGH ANECDOTE In 1656, Cromwell issued a patent establishing a Col- lege of Physicians on thelines laid down by James VI., but he passed away and his scheme with him, and it was not till 1681 that the charter was finally obtain- ed. Their ancient place of meeting was near the Cow- gate Port, but in 1775 the foundation of a splendid building was laid by Professor Cullen, their most eminent member. It stood opposite St. Andrew's Church, George Street, but in 1843 this was sold to the Commercial Bank for ;!f 20,000, and in 1844 the foundation-stone was laid of the present hall in Queen Street. The first botanical garden in Edinburgh was found- ed by Sir Andrew Balfour (i 630-1 694), who com- menced practice in the capital in 1670. He obtained from the Town Council a small piece of land between the east end of the Nor' Loch and Trinity College, which had formed part of the Trinity Garden. Here were the old Physic Gardens. About 1770 this was completely abandoned in favour of new land on the west side of Leith Walk, and in less than a hundred years, namely, in 1824, the new and splendid Royal Botanical Gardens were established in Inverleith Row ; to this all the " plant " of the old gardens was transferred. As to the medical faculty in the University, I note that the chair of anatomy was founded in 1705, and that its most famous occupants were the three Alex- ander Monro's, known ^sprimus, secundus, and tertius, who held the professorship between them for 126 years, namely, from 1720 to 1846. The first Monro distinguishedhimselfatthebattleof Prestonpans,not 74 THE SURGEONS & THE DOCTORS by slaying but by healing. He attended diligently to the wounded on both sides and got them conveyed to Edinburgh. The second was professor from 1754 to 1 808, a remarkable period of fifty-four years. His fa- ther made an odd bargain with the Town Council. If they would appoint his son to succeed him he would carefullytrainhimforthe post in the best schools both at home and abroad. They agreed, and the experi- ment turned out a complete success. He had studied at London, Leyden, Paris, and Berlin, and when he returned his father asked the city notabilities to hear his first lecture. Monro had got it up by heart, but he lost his presence of mind and forgot every word ; he had to speak extempore, yet he knew his subject and soon found his feet. He lectured without notes ever after. The most popular Scots divines have al- ways done the same. Monro tertius was not equal to his father or grandfather. The memory of his great predecessors was too much for him, " froze the genial current of his soul," made him listless and apathetic. He had as rival the famous Dr. John Barclay, extra- mural lecturer on anatomy, 1797-1825. Thislastwas very ready and self-possessed. Once he had to lecture on some part of the human frame ; the subject lay be- fore him covered with a sheet. He lifted the sheet, laid it down again, and proceeded to give an excel- lent discourse on anatomy, but not quite according to the programme ; in fact, a mistake had been made, and there was nothing under the sheet ; but, again, the feat does not seem altogether surprising. How- ever, the mistake was not so dire as that of one of his assistants, who after dinner one night hurried to 75 BOOKOFEDINBURGH ANECDOTE the dissecting room to prepare the subject for next day. He pulled off the cloth, but it was at once pulled back again ; he pulled it off again, the same thing happened : the farthing dip that faintly illumined the room almost fell from his nerveless hand, a low growl revealed the unexpected presence ofa dog whose teeth had supplied the opposing force ! Barclay's lectures were flavoured with pungent doses of caustic old Edinburgh wit. He warned his students to beware of discoveries of anatomy. " In a field so well wrought, what remained to discover? As at harvest, first come the reapers to the uncut grain and then the gleaners, and finally the geese, idly poking among the rubbish. Gentlemen, we are the geese \" It was not rarely the habit of professors in former times to give free tickets for their courses. The kindness was some- times abused. Barclay applied a humorous but suf- ficient corrective. Once he had a note from Mr. Laing, bookseller,father of Dr. David Laing the well-known antiquary, requesting a free ticket for some sucking sawbones. Barclay professed himself delighted to confer the favour, but invited his proposed pupil to accompany him to Mr. Laing's shop, where he select- ed books on anatomy to the exactvalue of his ticket, and sagely remarking that without text-books his lectures were useless, presented them to the aston- ished youth as a gift from Mr. Laing ! Taking no denial he bundled the youth and the books out of the place. He did not again find it necessary to repeat the lesson. In Sir Robert Christison's Life some re- markable instances are given of this curious form of benevolence at somebody else's expense, but the sub- 76 THE SURGEONS & THE DOCTORS ject need not be pursued. Barclay had collected a con- siderable museum, of which a fine elephant, an early- Jumbo in fact, was the gem. His friends, who were numerous and powerful, tried to get a chair of com- parative anatomy founded for him in the University. Various members of the medical faculty opposed it tooth and nail, as poaching on their preserves. One of Kay's most famous caricatures represents Barclay seated on an elephant charging the college gate, which is barred against him by a learned crowd. The opposition succeeded and Barclay was never elect- ed professor. Barclay had been brought up for the church, and in his early days had, duringthe absence of the Rev. Mr. Baird of Bo'ness, wagged his head in the pulpitofthat divine. "Howdidtheylikehim?" askedBaird of San- dy ,the village sage or the village idiot or, perhaps, both. " Gey weel, minister, gey weel, but everybody thought him daft." "Why, Sandy?" " Oh, for gude reasons, minister ; Mr. Barclay was aye skinning puddocks" (frogs). It was reported that dogs fled in terror at the sight of him ; the sagacious animals feared capture and dissection; he had incautiously cut up a dog in the presence of its kind and thus had an ill name in the canine world ! Not that this implied any ill-will to dogs ; quite the contrary, as witness a story of John Goodsir (1814-1867), who succeeded Monro tertius as professor of anatomy in 1846. He had carefully studied the anatomy of the horse. " I love the horse, I love the horse," he said with genuine fervour, " I have dissected him twice ! " Barclay possessed an uncle, a full-blown divine, 77 BOOK OFEDINBURGH ANECDOTE and the founder of a sect by some called after him. Nephew and uncle argued theological points. The young man was so hard to convince that the elder sent a heavy folio flying at his head ; he dodged the missile, but if not confuted, was at any rate silenced. Many of the anecdotes of the surgeon's life in old Edinburgh turn on this question of anatomy. Until the Anatomy Act of 1832, that science was terribly hampered by the want of subjects. The charter of 1505 provided an allowance of one body annually, which was almost ludicrously insufficient, hence body snatching became almost a necessity, perhaps among the surgeons themselves it was counted a virtue, but they dared not say it openly. On 20th May 1 7 r i , the college solemnly protested against body snatching. On the 24th of January 1721 a clause was ordered to be inserted in indentures binding apprentices not to violate graves, but the populace, rightly or wrongly, thought those rascal surgeons had tongue in cheek all the time, and were ever inclined to put the worst possible construction on every circumstance that seemed to point that way. Lauder of Fountainhall commemorates an early case. On the 6th Febru- ary 1678 four gipsies, a father and three sons, were hanged together at Edinburgh, for killing another gipsy called Faa at Romanno. To the Edinburgh burghers of the day the gipsy and the cateran were mere wild beasts of prey, and these four wretches were hung in haste, cut down in haste, and forthwith hud- dled together with their clothes on — it was not worth while to strip them of their rags — into a shallow hole in Greyfriars Churchyard. Next morning the grave 78 THE SURGEONS & THE DOCTORS lay open, and the body of the youngest son, aged six- teen, was missing. It was remembered he had been the last thrownover.andthefirstcutdown, and thelast buried. Perhaps hehad revived, thrown aside a scanty covering of earth, and fled to Highland hill or Border waste. Others opined that the body had been stolen by some chirurgeon or his servant for the purpose of dis- section, on which possibility Fountainhall takes occa- sion touttersomegravelegalmaxims; solemnly locks thedoor,asitwere,intheabsenceofthesteed. In 1742 a rifled grave was noted in the West Kirkyard, and a body, presumably its former tenant, was presently discovered near the shop of one Martin Eccles, surg- eon. Forthwith the Portsburgh drum was beating a mad tattoo through the Cowgate, and the mob pro- ceeded to smash the surgeon's shop. As for Martin, you may safely assume non est inventus^ else had he been smashed likewise. Again, a sedan chair is discov- ered containing a dead body, apparently on its way to the dissecting room. The chairman and his assist- ant were banished, and the chair was burned by the common hangman. Again, one John Samuel, a gar- dener, moved thereto, you guess,by an all too consum- ing thirst, is taken at the Potterow Port trying to sell the dead body of a child, which was recognised as hav- ing been buried at Pentland the week before. He was soundly whipped through Edinburgh and banished Scotland for seven years. A still more sordid and more terrible tragedy is a- mongtheeventsof 1752. Two women, Ellen Torrence and Jean Waldy, meet in the street a mother with her little boy, they ask her to drink, an invitation, it seems, 79 BOOK OFEDINBURGH ANECDOTE impossible to resist. Whilst one plied her with liquor, the other enticed the boy to her own den, where she promptly suffocated him. The body was sold for two shillings to the students, sixpence was given to the one who carried it, and it was only after long haggling thatan additional tenpence was extorted" foradram." They were presently discovered and executed. This almost incredible story, to which Gilbert Glossin in Guy AJ annering rcid^ies a rather far-fetched reference in a discussion with Mr, Pleydell, proves at any rate one thing, there was a ready market for dead bodies in Edinburgh for purposesof dissection, and as the buyer was not too inquisitive, indeed he could scarcely afford to be, the bodies almost certainly were illegally pro- cured ; though, whatever the populace might think and suspect, there was never any case where there was the least evidence that the surgeon was a party to the murder. Any surgeon who was such must have been a criminal lunatic. The case of Dr. Knox, to be pre- sently referred to, was the one that excited most no- tice and suspicion. It was carefully inquired into, and nothing was found against him. If there had been a prima facie case, the popular feeling was so strong that the Crown authorities needs must have taken action, but I anticipate a little. From the latter half of the eighteenth century to thefirst part of the nineteenth, the resurrectionist and the pressgang were two subjects on which the popu- lar imagination dwelt with a certain fascinated hor- ror. The resurrectionist was so much in evidence that graves were protected with heavy iron frames (you still see one or two specimens in old Greyfriars 80 THE SURGEONS & THE DOCTORS and elsewhere), and churchyards were regularly wat- ched. There is no need to set forth how the tenderest and deepest feelings of human nature were outraged by the desecration of the last resting-place. On the other hand, the doctors were mad for subjects. Acer- tain enthusiasm for humanity possessed them, too. Were they not working to relieve suffering ? There was something else: the loveofdaring adventure, the romance and mystery of the unholy midnight raid had their attraction ; it was never difficult, you can believe, tocollect a harum-scarum set of medicalstud- ents for an expedition. Some men, afterwards very eminent, early distinguished themselves. Thus, the celebrated surgeon, Robert Liston (i 794-1 847), was engaged in more than oneof thefollowingadventures, the stories of which I here tell as samples of the bulk. One Henderson, an innkeeper, had died in Leven, in Fifeshire. Two students from Edinburghhad snatch- ed the body and were conveying it away, when one of them suddenly felt ill. They took refugewith their burden, enclosed in a sack, in a convenient public- house. It happened to be the one formerly kept by Henderson, and now in charge of his widow and daughter. They were shown to an upper room, which contained a closed-in box bed, so frequent a feature in old Scots houses. The sick man was pulling him- self together with brandy and what not, when a great hubbub arose downstairs. The town officers were searching the house for stolen property. The stud- ents were beside themselves with panic, though in fact the officers do not seem to have searched the upstairs room at all. However, "The thief doth fear each bush 81 K BOOKOFEDINBURGH ANECDOTE an officer." The two lads hastily took the body from the sack and put it in the bed, then they bolted thro- ugh the window, and were seen no more. The room as it turned out was used by the widow as a bedroom, and it was only when sheretiredforthenight — I need not follow the narrative further, save to note that the graveclothes had been made by herself! When Listen was a student he heard from a country surgeon of an interesting case where a post-mortem seemed desirable in the interests of science. He and some others dressed as sailors and repaired to the place by boat, for it was on the shore of the Firth. The surgeon's apprentice met them as arranged, and everything went off well. The marauding party re- paired for refreshment to a little change-house, leav- ing their sack under a near hedge. Here they spent a happy time in carousing and chaffing the country wench whom they found in charge. A loud shout of " Ship ahoy ! " startled them. The girl said it was only her brother, and a drunken sailor presently staggered in with the sack on his shoulders. Pitching it to the ground, he said with an oath," Now if that ain't some- thing good, rot them chaps who stole it," Presently he produced a knife. " Let's see what it is," said he as he ripped the sack open. The sight of the contents worked a sudden change : the girl fled through the door with hysterical screams, the sailor on the instant dead sober followed, Liston seized the body, and all made for the boat, and they were soon safe back in Edinburgh. Liston is the chief figure of another ad- venture. He and his party had gone by boat to Rosyth to get the body of a drowned sailor. His sweetheart, 82 THE SURGEONS & THE DOCTORS nearly distracted at her recent loss, was scarce ab- sent from the tomb night or day. They did manage to get the body lifted and on board the boat, when the woman discovered the violated grave. Her wild shrieks rang in their ears as they pulled for the oppo- site shore as hard as they could, but they kept secure hold of their prey. Another story tells of a party of tyros who had raised the body of a farmer's wife from Glencorseor some neighbouringchurchyard. As they dragged along it seemed to their excited fancy that the body had recovered life and was hopping after them ! They fled with loud yells of terror, and left their burden by the roadside. The widower was the first to discover it there next morning. He thought it was a case of premature burial and made some fran- tic efforts at resuscitation: the truth only gradually dawned upon him. This, 1 venture to think, was the story that suggested to R. L. Stevenson his gruesome tale of T/ie Body-snatcJier. Yet another story tells of a certain Miss Wilson of Bruntsfield Links who was courted by two admirers. She showed a marked preference for one, and when he died she seemed heart-broken. The other, not con- tent with having the field to himself, engaged the ser- vices ofa professional body-snatcher and proceeded to Buccleuch burying-ground. Miss Wilson was mour- ning at the grave; they waited till she was gone and then set to work, and the surviving rival soon had the cruel satisfaction of knowing that the body of the other was on the anatomical table at the University ! I have mentioned the professional body-snatcher, and the class certainly existed. Obviously it was for- 83 BOOK OFEDINBURGH ANECDOTE med of men of a low type, however afraid they might be to perpetrate actual murder. Among the best known was a certain Andrew Lees, called " Merry An- drew"by the students. He had been a carrier between a country town and Edinburgh,and his house was near the churchyard, which he despoiled at leisure. In after dayshe used to lament thetimes when he got subjects " as cheap as penny pies." It was said he drank six- teen glasses of raw whisky daily, and that on great occasions the glasses became pints. Various ruffians were associated with him, one nicknamed " Moudie- wart," or mole, from his skill in the delving part of the operation. Perhaps a line from Shakespeare was in the mind of the nicknamer : " Well said, old mole, can'st work i' the earth so fast ? " More probably it was all native wit. Another was a sham parson called "Praying Howard/'whowept and supplicated with an unction hard to distinguish from the real article. There is no doubt these rascals thor- oughly enjoyed their knavish pranks, and they were ever on the watch to hear of some one dying, friend- less and alone ; then one appeared among a house- hold perplexed to know what to do with the remains of a person in whom they had no special interest. The stranger was a dear friend or near relative of the de- ceased, and was only anxious to bury him with all pos- sible honour, and in due course a mock funeral was ar- ranged, with parson, undertaker, and chief mourner. The procession started for some place in the country, but of course the real destination of the departed was one of the Edinburgh dissecting rooms. If things went well, Andrew and his fellows spent a night in 84 THE SURGEONS & THE DOCTORS wild debauchery in some tavern of ill odour in every sense of the word. At least those pranks were comparatively harm- less. The dead were gone beyond the reach of hurt, and the feelings of the living were not outraged. As regards the rifling of graveyards, you wonder how it was so often successful. The watchers were, however, paid hirelings, they were frozen with superstitious terror, they were usually paralysed with drink, and they had watched hours and nights already, and no- thing had happened. The assailants were infinitely more active in mind and body ; they had full command of cash and of all necessary appliances, and they se- lected the time of their attack ; more than all, they seemed absolutely free from superstitious feeling. Yet, with it all, it is curious that no Edinburgh doctor orstudent seems ever to have been put in actual peril. I turn now to the Burke and Hare murders, which had important effects in various directions. The locus was Tanner's Close in the West Port, outside the city boundary. Here Burke kept a lodging-house,and here, onthe29thof November 1 827, Donald, an old pension- er,diedindebtto Burke. Thusaneedymanfound him- self in possession of the body of his dead-and-gone debtor, and it seemed tohimquitejustifiable tofill up the coffin with rubbish, and sell the corpse to Dr. Knox of 10 Surgeon Square at ;^7,ios., a sum which seemed for the moment a small fortune. Then the notion oc- curred to him or his associate. Hare, how easy to press the life out of some of the waifs and strays that floated about the Grassmarket and its adjacent quarters, the very lowest in Edinburgh ! These were here to-day 85 BOOKOFEDINBURGH ANECDOTE and gone to-morrow, and if they never turned up again who was there to ask after them or mourn their loss ? I shall not tell here the story of " Daft Jamie " and handsome Mary Paterson and the other victims, or of how the murderers were discovered, how Hare turned King's evidence, how Burke was convicted, whilst his associate, Helen Macdougal, escaped. Burke was exe- cuted amidst impressive and even terrible marks of popular indignation, and by a sort of poetic justice, which appealed to the popular imagination, he him- self was dissected. For us Dr. Knox is a more interesting and import- ant figure. The thing cast a shadow over his brilliant career, and at last his life was lost in flats and shallows, yet he was one of the most striking figures of his time. Though a cruel attack of small-pox in his youth had left him blind in the left eye, and plain to the verge, or over the verge, of ugliness, he was a special favour- ite with women, by his talk, by his manner, by you know not what. According to Shakespeare, Richard Crookback, a more evil man, surely, in every way, had the same fatal gift. Knox was widely read and of wide culture. In a city of brilliant talkers he was, so his biographer would have us believe, among the very best, nay, he ranks him equal or superior to De Quincey. We are told that he was so tender-hearted that he hated to think of experiments on living ani- mals; he did not believe that any real advantage was to be gained therefrom. He certainly was possessed of true enthusiasm for science ; he was by no means a rich man, yet he spent ;^300 on a whale which he dissected, and whose skeleton he secured for the 86 THE SURGEONS & THE DOCTORS museum. It was only an amiable weakness that he was very careful in his dress and person. His friend, Dr. Macdonald, afterwards professor of natural history at St. Andrews, calling upon him one day, found him with his sister Mary. She had a pair of curling-tongs in her hand, with which she was touching up her bro- ther's rather scanty locks. " Ah, ah ! I see," said Mac- donald, " the modern Apollo attired by the Graces." Knox was not unduly disturbed by remarks of this sort. Monro's pupils considered themselves in the opposite camp. One of them wagered that he would put the anatomist out of countenance. He set himself right before him in the street : " Well, by Jove, Dr. Knox,you are the ugliest fellow I ever saw in my life ! " Knox quietly patted the impudent student on the shoulder: "Ah! then you cannot have seen my brother Fred!" As it happened, Fred was much the handsomer of the two, but he had been rather a thorn in the side of the anatomist, who had shown him much kindness, and maybe Knox was not ill pleased at the chance to give him a sly dig. His own students doted on him, they called him Robert for short. " Yes," said an enemy, "Robert le Diable" ; as such the people re- garded him. How he escaped death, or at least bodily injury, is a little curious ; even the students were af- frighted at the yells and howls of the mob outside his evening classroom. The lecturer pointed out that he had never missed a single lecture, and that he was not afraid. Once the rabble burned his effigy and attacked his house. Knox escaped to his friend. Dr. Adams, in St. Patrick Square. He was asked how he dare ven- ture out. He said he preferred to meet his fate, what- 87 BOOKOFEDINBURGH ANECDOTE ever it was, outside than die like a rat in a hole, then he threw open the military cloak that he wore and reveal- ed a sword, pistols, and a Highland dirk. The brutes might kill him, but he would account for at least twenty of them first. All sorts of legends were told about him. He had many Kaffir skulls in his museum, and he was alleged to have explained: "Why, sir, there was no diffi- culty in Kaffraria. I had but to walk out of my tent and shoot as many as I wanted for scientific and ethnologi- cal purposes." Knox //(^^experiences in South Africa, but they were not of this kind. In chap books and popular ditties his name ever went with the West Port murderers — a verse may be given : " Burke an' Hare Fell doun the stair Wi' a leddy in a box Gaun tae Doctor Knox." Once when walking in the Meadows with Dr. Adams, Knox gave a penny and said some pleasant words to a pretty little girl of six who was play ing there. "Would she come and live with him," he said jestingly, " if he gaveherapennyeveryday?" Thechild shook her head. " No ; you'd maybe sell me to Dr. Knox." His bio- grapher affirms he was more affected by this childish thrust than by all the hostility of the mob. He could give a shrewd thrust himself, however. Dr. John Reid, the physiologist, had dissected two sharks, in which he could discover no sign of a brain ; he was much per- plexed. " Howon earth could theanimals live without it ? " said he to Knox. " Not the least extraordinary," was the answer. " If you go over to the Parliament House any morning you will see a great number of tllBALD PITCAIRN im an Engraving after Sir John Mtdin i THE SURGEONS & THE DOCTORS live sharks walking about without any brains what- ever." I have gone somewhat out of my way to complete the story of the resurrectionist times. I return to an earlier period with a note on the Royal Infirmary. The great evil of the body-snatching incidents was that it brought into disrepute and odium the profes- sion towards which the public felt kindly and to which they have been so greatly indebted for unpaid, un- selfish, and devoted service. During nearly two hun- dred years the great Edinburgh hospital known as "The Royal Infirmary" has borne witness to the labours in the public cause of the Edinburgh doctors. The story of its inception is creditable to the whole community. It was opened in 1729 on a very hum- ble scale in a small house. A charter was granted by George II. in 1736, and on the 2nd August 1738 the foundation-stoneofagreat building was laid to the east of the college near the old High School. The whole nation helped : the proprietors of stone quarries sent stone and lime ; timber merchants supplied wood ; the farmers carried materials; even day labourers gave the contribution of their labour,all free of charge. Ladies collected money in assemblies, and from every part of the world help was obtained from Scotsmen settled in foreign parts. Such is the old Royal Infirmary. When it was unable further to supply the wants of an ever-increasing population and the requirements of modern science, the new Royal Infirmary was founded in October 1870 and opened in October 1879 on the grounds of George Watson's Hospital, which had been acquired for the purpose. The place is the BOOK OFEDINBURGH ANECDOTE western side of the Meadow Walk, and the same de- voted service to the cause of humanity has now been given for more than thirty years in those newer walls. But for the present we are concerned with incidents in the lives of old eighteenth-century doctors. Dr. Archibald Pitcairne ( 1 6 5 2-1 7 1 3), scholar and Jacob- ite, perhaps better known as that than as a physician, was a well-known figure. He was buried in Grey- friars' Churchyard under a rectangular slab with four pillars, on which there was an inscription by the learned Ruddiman, himself a Jacobite scholar and much in sympathy with the deceased. Pitcairne, like the rest of Edinburgh, set great store on his wine ; with an almost sublime confidence he collected cer- tain precious bottles and decreed in his will that these should not be uncorked until the King should enjoy his own again, but when the nineteenth cen- tury dawned it seemed hardly worth while to wait any longer. Pious souls were found to restore the tomb which, like so many other tombs in Greyfriars, alas ! had fallen into decay and disorder. They were rewarded in a way which was surely after the master's own heart. The 25 th of December 1800 was the an- niversary of the doctor's birth. The consent of Lady Anne Erskine, his granddaughter,having been obtain- ed, the bottles were solemnly uncorked, and they were found to contain Malmsey in excellent preser- vation. Each contributor to the restoration received a large glass quaintly called a Jeroboam. This, you do not doubt, they quaffed with solemn satisfaction in memory of the deceased. Pitcairne was far from " sound," according to the 90 THE SURGEONS & THE DOCTORS standard of the time ; he was deist or perhaps even atheist, it was opined, and one was as bad as the other, buthe must have his joke at whatever price. At a sale of books acopy of Holy Writ could find no purchaser. " Was it not written," sniggered Pitcairne, " Verbum Deimanetin ceternum ? " The crowd had Latin enough to see the point. There was a mighty pother, strong remarks were freely interchanged, an action for de- famation was the result, but it was compromised. I tell elsewhere of a trick played by Pitcairne on the tryers. Dr. Black, of the police establishment, play- ed one even more mischievous on Archibald Camp- bell, the city officer. Black had a shop in the High Street, the taxes on which were much in arrear, and the irascible Highlander threatened to seize his " cat- tinary (ipecacuanha) pottles." Black connected the handle of his door with an electric battery and await- ed developments. First cameaclerk, who gotnothing more than a good fright. He appeared before his mas- ter, who asked him what he meant by being "trunk like a peast " at that time of day ? He set off for the doctor's himself, but when he seized the door handle he received a shock that sent him reeling into the gut- ter. "Ah," said one of the bystanders, who no doubt was in the secret, " you sometimes accuse me of lik- ing a glass, but I think the doctor has given you a tumbler ! " " No, sir," cried Archie as soon as he had recovered his speech. " He shot me through the shoulder with a horse-pistol. I heard the report by Laddie, do you see any plood ? " An attempt was made to communicate with the doctor next day through the clerk, but the latter promptly refused. 91 BOOKOFEDINBURGH ANECDOTE " You and the doctor may paith go to the tevil ; do you want me to be murdered, sir?" Practical joking of the most pronounced descrip- tion was much in favour in old Edinburgh. One Dempster, a jeweller in the Parliament Close, after a bout of hard drinking, was minded to cut his throat. A friend, described by Kay as " a gentleman of very convivial habits," remarked in jest that he would save him the trouble, and proceeded to stick a knife into him. It was at once seen that the joke — and the knife — if anything, had been pushed too far, and John Ben- net, surgeon, was summoned in desperate haste; his treatment was so satisfactory that the wound, was cured and the matter hushed up. The delighted Hamilton, relieved from dismal visions of the Tol- booth and worse, " presented Mr. Bennet with an elegant chariot," and from this time he was a made man. His ideas of humour were also a little peculiar. In payment of a bet he gave a dinner at Leith at which, as usual, everybody drank a great deal too much. They were to finish up the evening at the theatre, and there they were driven in mourning coaches at a funer- eal pace. All this you may consider mere tomfoolery, mad pranks of ridiculous schoolboys, but Bennet was a grave and reputable citizen; he was President of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1803, and died in 1805, and in the stories that I tell of him and others you have for good or ill eighteenth-century Edinburgh. He was a very thin man. He once asked a tailor if he could measure him for a suit of smallclothes? "Oh," said the man of shears, " hold up your stick, it will serve the purpose well enough." You can only con- 92 DR. ALEXANDER WOOD i.iigraving after Ailisoa THE SURGEONS & THE DOCTORS jecture whether the order was in fact given, for there the chronicle stops short. There are certain " large and comfortable words " in the Rhynimg Epistle to a Tailor that would have served excellent well for a reply. Bennet had not the wit of Burns, and his reply is not preserved. You believe, however, it did not lack strength. One of the best known surgeons of old Edinburgh was Alexander Wood (1725-1 807), whose name still survives in averse of Byron's. Once he" would a-woo- ing go," and was asked by his proposed father-in-law as to his means. He drew out his lancet case: " We have nothing but this," he said frankly. He got the lady, however. Sir James Stirling, the Provost, was unpopular on account of his opposition to a scheme for the reform of the Royal boroughs of Scotland. He was so like Wood that the one was not seldom mistaken for the other, and a tragedy of errors was well-nigh acted. An angry mob, under the mistaken impression that they had their Lord Provost, were dragging Wood to the edge of the North Bridge with the loudly expressed intention of throwing him over, but when he yelled above the din, " I'm lang Sandy Wood ; tak' me to a lamp and ye'll see," the crowd dis- solved in shouts of laughter. When the great Mrs. Siddons was at the theatre it was a point of fashion with ladies to faint by the score. Wood's services were much in requisition, a good deal to his disgust. " This is glorious acting," said some one to him. "Yes, and a d — d deal o't too," growled Sandy, as he sweated from one unconscious fair to the other. Almost as well known as Sandy 93 BOOKOFEDINBURGH ANECDOTE were his favourite sheep Willie and a raven, which followed him about whenever they could. The most conspicuous figure of the eighteenth-cen- tury Edinburgh doctors was William Cullen (1710- 1 790), who in 1 756 was made Professor of Chemistry in the University. One charming thing about those Edinburgh doctors is their breadth of culture : Cullen had the pleasure of reading Don Quixote in the orig- inal. When Dugald Stewart was a lad he fell ill, and was attended by Cullen, who recommended the great Spaniard to the ingenious youth. Doctor and patient had many a long talk over favourite passages. Dr. John Brown, afterwards author of the Brunonian sys- tem of medicine, was assistant to Cullen, but they quarrelled, and Brown applied for a mastership in the High School. Cullen could scarcely trust his ears. " Can this be oor Jock ? " quoth he. Plain speaking was a note of those old Edinburgh medicals. Dr. John Clark was called in to consult as to the state of Lord Provost Drummond, who was ill of a fever. Bleeding seemed his only chance, but they thought him doomed, and it seemed use- less to torture him. " None of your idle pity," said Clark, " but stick the lancet into him. I am sure he would be of that opinion were he able to decide upon his case." Drummond survived because, or in spite, of the operation. Lord Huntington died suddenly on the bench after having delivered an opinion. Clark was hurried in from the Parliament Close. " The man is as dead as a herring," said he brutally. Every one was shocked, for even in old Edinburgh plain speak- ing had its limits. He might have taken a lesson from 94 THE SURGEONS & THE DOCTORS queer old Monboddo, who said to Dr. Gregory, " I know it is not in the power of man to cure me ; all I wish is euthanasia, viz. a happy death." However, he recovered. " Dr. Gregory, you have given me more than I asked — a happy life." This was the younger Gregory (175 3-1 821), Professor of Medicine in the University, as his father had been earlier. He was an eminent medical man, but a great deal more; his quick temper, his caustic wit,his gift of style, madehim a dan- gerous opponent. The public laughed with him whe- ther he was right or wrong. His History of the West- ern Islands and Highlands of Scotland showed that hehadotherthanmedical interests. In 1793, when the Royal Edinburgh volunteers were formed, he became one of them, and he disturbed the temper of Sergeant Gould, who said, " He might be a good physician, but he was a very awkward soldier." He asked too many questions. " Sir," said the instructor, " you are here to obey orders and not to ask reasons; there is nothing in the King's orders about reasons," and again," Hold your tongue, sir. I would rather drill ten clowns than one philosopher." He who professes universal knowledge is not in favour with the specialist. Gregory visited Matthew Baillie in London, and the two eminent medicos were in after talk not entirely laudatory of one another. " Baillie," said Gregory, " knows nothing butphysic." " Gregory," said the other," seems to me to know every- thing but physic." This Matthew Baillie (1761-1823) was a well-known physician of his time who had done well in Edinburgh and gone south to do better still. He worked sixteen hours a day, and no wonder he 95 BOOKOFEDINBURGH ANECDOTE was sometimes a little irritable. A fashionable lady once troubled him with a long account of imaginary- ills, he managed to escape, but was recalled by an ur- gent message : " Might she eat some oysters on her return from the opera?" "Yes, ma'm," said Baillie, " shells and all." Robert Liston (1794- 1847) began as Barclay's as- sistant. Like other eminent surgeons stories are told of hispresenceofmindand fertility of resource during an operation. In an amputation of the thigh by Rus- sell, Professor of Clinical Surgery at the University, an artery bled profusely. From its position it could not be tied up or even got at. Liston, with the amputat- ing knife, chipped off a piece of wood from the operat- ing table, formed it into a cone, and inserted it so as at once to stop the bleeding and so save the patient. In 1818 Liston left Barclay and lectured with James Syme ( 1 799- 1 870) as his assistant, but in 1822 Syme withdrew and commenced to lecture for himself His old master was jealous. " Don't support quackery and humbug," he wrote as late as 1 830 in the subscription book of his rival's hospital. However, the two made it up before the end. This is not the place to speak of the skill of one of the greatest surgeons of his time ; it was emphatically said of him " he never wasted a word, nor a drop of ink, nor a drop of blood." A contemporary of Syme was Sir William Fergus- son (i 808-1 877). He was one of that brilliant Edin- burgh bandwhodid so well in London; he began as a demonstrator to Knox. In London he became Pre- sident of the Royal College of Surgeons, and the best known stories are of his later period. The speed and 96 PROFESSOR JAMES SYME irtrait Gallerv THE SURGEONS & THE DOCTORS certainty of his work were remarkable. " Look out sharp, "saidastudent/'forifyou only even wink, you'll miss the operation altogether," Once when operating on a large deep-seated tumour in the neck, a severed artery gave forth an enormous quantity of blood ; an assistant stopped the wound with his finger. " Just get your finger out of the way, and let's see what it is," and quick as lightning he had the artery tied up. There must have been something magical in the very touch of those great operators. A man afflicted with a tumour was perplexed as to the operation and the operator. But as he himself said : " When Fergusson put his hand upon me to examine my jaw, I felt that he was the man who should do the operation for me, the contrast between his examination and that of the others was so great." A little earlier than these last were the famous fam- ily of Bells. Sir Charles Bell (i 774-1 842) is rather of London than of Edinburgh, though to him is ascribed the saying that " London is the place to live in, but nottodiein." JohnBell (1763-1820), his brother, was an Edinburgh surgeon of note, and a famous lecturer on surgery and anatomy. He had a violent contro- versy with Professor James Gregory, who attacked him in a Review of the Writings of John Bell by Jo- nathan Dawplucker. This malignant document was stuck up like a playbill on the door of the lecture room, on the gates of the college, and of the infirmary, where he operated ; in short, everywhere, for such were the genial methods of Edinburgh controversy. Bell was much occupied and had large fees for his opera- tions. A rich country laird once gave him a cheque 97 G BOOKOFEDINBURGH ANECDOTE for £$0, which the surgeon thought much below his deserts. As the butler opened the door for him , he said to that functionary : " You have had considerable trou- ble opening the door for me, here is a trifle for you," and he tossed him the bill. The laird took the hint and immediately forwarded a cheque for ^i 50. It is worth while to note that Joseph Bell ( 1 837-1 91 1 ), who sprang from the same family, has a place in literary fiction as the original Sherlock Holmes. The great name among modern Edinburgh doctors is clearly that of Sir James Young Simpson (181 1- 1870), an accomplished scholar and antiquarian, as well as the discoverer of chloroform. His activity was incessant. An apology was made to him because he had been kept waiting for a ferry-boat. *' Oh dear, no," said he, " I was all the time busy chloroforming the eels in the pool." His pietistic tendencies by no means quenched his sense of humour. Parting from a young doctor who had started a carriage, " I have just been telling him I will pray for his humility." Some one propounded the not original view that the Bible and Shakespeare were the greatest books in the world. " Ah," said he, " the Bible and Shakespeare — and Oli- ver and Boyd's Edinburgh Almanac," this last huge collection of facts he no doubt judged indispensable for the citizen. The final and solemn trial of chloro- form was made on the 28th November 1837. Simp- son, Keith, and Duncan experimented on themselves. Simpson went off, and was roused by the snores of Dr. Duncan and the convulsive movements of Dr. Keith. " He saw that the great discovery had been made, and that his long labours had come to a successful end." 98 THE SURGEONS & THE DOCTORS Some extreme clergymen protested." It enabled wom- en," one urged," to escape part of the primeval curse ; it was a scandalous interference with the laws of Pro- vidence," Simpson went on with his experiments. Once he became insensible under the influence of some drug. Ashe cameto himself,he heard his butler, Clarke, shoutingin anger and concern : "He'll kill him- self yet wi' thae experiments, an' he's a big fule, for they'll never find onything better than clory." On an- other occasion, Simpson and some friends weretaking chloral ether in aerated water. Clarke was much inter- ested in the "new champagne chlory"; he took what was left downstairs and administered it to the cook, who presently became insensible. The butler in great alarm burst in upon the assembled men of science: " For God's sake, sir, come doun, I've pushioned the cook." Those personal experiments were indeed tric- ky things. Sir Robert Christison (1797- 1882) once nearlykilledhimselfwith Calabar bean. He swallow- ed his shaving water, which acted promptly as an emetic, but he was very ill for some time. One of the most beautiful things in Simpson's story was the de- votion of his own family to him, specially the care of his elder brother Alexander. " Oh, Sandie, Sandie," said Simpson again and again to the faithful brother, who stood by him even on his death-bed. To the out- side world he seemed the one Edinburgh figure of first importance. A citizen was presented at the Court of Denmark to the King of that country. " You come from Edinburgh," said His Majesty. "Ah ! Sir Simp- son was of Edinburgh." CHAPTER FIVE ROYALTY CHAPTER FIVE ROYALTY A DIFFICULTY MEETS YOU IN MAKING Kings the subject of anecdote; the "fierce light" that beats about a throne distorts the vision, your anec- dote is perhaps grave history. Again, a monarch is sure to be a centre of many untrustworthy myths. What credit is to be placed, for instance, on engag- ing narratives like that of Howieson of Braehead and James V. ? Let us do the best we can. Here I pass over the legends of Queen Margaret and her son Da- vid, but one story of the latter I may properly give. Fergus, Prince of Galloway, was a timid if not repent- ant rebel. He made friends with Abbot Alwyn of Holyrood, who dressed him as a monk and presented him with the brethren on the next visit of the King. The kiss of peace, words of general pardon for all past transgressions, were matters of form, not to be omitted, but quite efficacious. Fergus presently re- vealed himself, and everybody accepted the dodge as quite legitimate. You recall the trick by which William of Normandy got Harold to swear on the bones of the saints : the principle evidently was, get your oath or your pardon by what dodge you choose, but at all costs get it. Alexander, Lord of the Isles, played a more seemly part in 1458 when he appeared before James I. at the High Altar at Holyrood, and held out in token of submission his naked sword with the hilt towards the King. A quaint story is chroni- cled of James II. As a child he was held in Edinburgh Castle by Crichton,the Lord Chancellor. The Queen Mother was minded to abduct him; she announced a pilgrimage to Whitekirk, a famous shrine or shrines, 103 BOOKOFEDINBURGH ANECDOTE for there was more than one of the name. Now a Queen, even on pilgrimage and even in old-time Scot- land, must have a reasonable quantity of luggage, change of dresses, and what not. Thus no particular attention was given to a certain small box, though the Queen's servants, you believe, looked after it with considerable care. In fact it contained His Majesty in propria persona. By means of a number of air- holes practised in the lid he managed to survive the journey. It is said his consent was obtained to his confinement, but those old Scots were used to carry their own lives and the lives of others in their hands, and he had little choice. This is the James who ended at Roxburgh by the bursting of a cannon. His son had peculiar relations with Edinburgh. In 1482 he gave the city its Golden Charter, exalting its civic rulers, and his Queen and her ladies knit with their own hands for the craftsmen the banner of the Holy Ghost, locally known for centuries as the "Blue Blan- ket," that famous ensign which it was ridiculously fab- led the citizens carried with them to the Holy Land. At this, or rather against the proud spirit of its own- ers, James VI. girded in the Basilicon Doron. It made a last public appearance when it waved, a strange an- achronism, in 1745 from the steeple of St. Giles to animate the spirits of the burghers against Prince Charles and his Highlanders, then pressing on the city. There it hung, limp, bedraggled, a mere hopeless rag ! How unmeet, incongruous, improper, to use it against a Stuart ! At any rate it was speedily pulled down, and stowed away for ever. James III. fell at Sauchieburn in 1488. It was rumoured he had surviv- 104 MARGARET TUDOR, QUEEN OF JAMES IV. From the Painting by Mabuse OF ROYALTY IN EDINBURGH ed the battle and taken refuge on the Yellow Carvel which Sir Andrew Wood, his Admiral, had brought to the Forth. The rebel lords sent for Sir Andrew, whom the Duke of Rothesay, afterwards James IV., mistook for his dead parent. "Sir,areyou my father?" said the boy. " I am not your father, but his faithful servant," answered the brave sailor with angry tears. The lords after many questions could make nothing of him, so they let him go back to his ship, just in time to save the lives of the hostages whom his brothers, truculent and impatient, were about to string up at the yard-arm. The reign of James IV. is full of picturesque inci- dent. There are stories of brilliant tournaments at Edinburgh, where he sat on a ledge of the Castle rock and presided over the sports of a glittering throng gathered from far and near. There are the splendid records of his marriage with Margaret, Henry VIl.'s daughter, the marriage that a hundred years after- wards was to unite the Crowns, the marriage whose fateful import even then was clearly discerned ; and there is the tragic close at Flodden, of which, in the scanty remnants of the Flodden Wall, Edinburgh still bears the tangible memorials. I prefer to note here quainter and humbler me- morials. James had a curious, if fitful, interest in art and letters. The picturesque Pitscottie boldly affirms him "ane singular guid chirurgione." In the book of the royal expenses we have some curious entries. A fine pair of teeth had an unholy attraction for him. He would have them out, on anyor no pretext. "Item, ane fellow because the King puUit furtht his teith, 105 BOOKOFEDINBURGH ANECDOTE xviiishillings." " Item,to Kynnard, ye harbour, for twa teith drawn furtht of his hed be the King, xviii sh." History does not record what the " fellow " or the "harbour" said on the subject, or whether they were contented with the valuation of their grinders, which was far from excessive since the computation is in Scots money, wherein a shilling only equalled an English penny. The barber, moreover, according to the practice of the time, was a rival artist,hut — specu- lation is vain ; though it will be observed that instead of the patients feeing the Royal physician, they were themselves feed to submit to treatment. This same Lindsay of Pitscottie is also our authority for another story to the full as quaint. James desired to know the original language of mankind. He procured him two children — human waifs and strays were plentiful in old Scotland ; provided them with a dumb woman for nurse, and plumped the three down on Inchkeith, that tiny islet in the Forth a little way out from Leith. Our chronicler is dubious as to the result. " Some say they spak guid Hebrew, but I know not by authoris rehearse," The "guid Hebrew," ifit ever existed, died with them. Nor is there any trace of a Scots Yiddish, a compound whereof you shudder at the bare con- ception. Under James V. we have the popular legend of Howieson already referred to. James, or all tradition errs, was given to wandering in disguise through his kingdom to see how his subjects fared or to seek love adventures, or perhaps for both. The King of the Commons, as his folk called him, took things as they came and life as he found it. The story goes that he io6 OF ROYALTY IN EDINBURGH was courting some rustic damsel in Cramond village when he was set upon by a band of enraged rivals or relatives. He defended himself on the narrow bridge that then crossed the Almond, but spite his efficient swordplay was like to get the worst of it when a rus- tiCjOneJock Howieson,whowas workingnearathand, came to his aid and laid about him so lustily with his flail that the assailants fled. There was some talk of a reward, and Jock confessed that his dearest wish was to own the land which he tilled. The stranger, without revealing his identity, or, rather, concealing it under the title of the Gudeman of Ballengiech (the traditional name adopted by James in his wanderings and derived from a road or pass at Stirling Castle), made an appointment with his preserver at Holyrood Palace. Jock turned up in due course, and was prom- ised an interview with the King, whom he would re- cognise as the only man with his bonnet on. Jock, with rustic humour, replied that either he himself or his friend must be the King since they were the only two that were covered. A grant of the land, which con- veniently turned out to be Crown property, speedily followed on the condition that when the King came that way Jock or his descendant should present him with a vessel of water wherein to wash hishands. " Ac- cordingly in the year 1822 when George iv. came to Scotland the descendant of John Howieson of Brae- head, who still possesses the estate, which was given to his ancestor, appeared at a solemn festival and offered His Majesty water from a silver ewer that he might perform the service by which he held his lands." Thus Sir Walter Scott in the Tales of a Grandfather. 107 BOOK OF EDINBURGH ANECDOTE It seems that in 1822 the proprietor was William Howieson Crawford, Esq. of Braehead and Crawford- land. One fancies that the good Sir Walter jogged, if one may say so, Mr. Crawford's memory, and possibly arranged both " the solemn festival " and " the silver ewer." This entertaining legend has not escaped — how could it ? — sceptical modern critics. It is shown that not for centuries after James did the story take co- herent shape, and that as handed down it can scarce have happened. What can you say but that in some form or other it may have had a foundation in fact? That if it is not possible conclusively to prove, neither is it possible clearly to disprove, and finally it is at least ben trovato. In setting down one or two anecdotes of James v.'s Queens I am on surer ground. In 1537, James was married to Magdalen, daughter of Francis L, in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris. They reached Scotland on the 27th of May. As the Queen landed she knelt down and kissed the soil, a pretty way of adopting her new fatherland that touched those hard Scots as it still touches us, but on the loth of July the poor child, she was not complete seventeen, was lying dead at Holyrood. It was a cold spring: the Castle was high and bleak, Holyrood was damp and low. She was a fragile plant and she withered and faded away, for us the most elusive and shadowy of memories, yet still with a touch of old-world sweet- ness. All the land grieved for that perished blossom. It was the first general mourning known in Scotland, and there was in due time " the meed of some melodi- ous tear" from George Buchanan and David Lindsay. 108 MARY OF GUISE, QUEEN OF JAMES V. Kmni :in cild Knf^T" OF ROYALTY IN EDINBURGH Before a year had passed away, to wit, in June 1538, James had brought another mate to Scotland, a very different character, known in our history as Mary of Guise, the famous mother of a still more famous daughter, Mary Queen of Scots. James v.'s widow was Queen Regent during most of the minority of her child, and she held her own with unfailing courage and ability. If she tricked and dodged she was like every- body else. In that bitter fight neither Catholic nor Protestant were over-scrupulous ; she was on the un- popular and finally on the losing side, but she fought as steadfastly and stoutly for what gods she had as Knox himself, and she was not one of the royal au- thors. Her story is told for us mainly by her enemies, andchiefof all by John Knox, the most deadlyamong them. In 1 5 56 he addressed a letter to her, by desire of the Congregation, exhorting her to renounce the errors of Rome ; she handed this to Beaton, Bishop of Glas- gow. " Please you, my Lord,to read a pasquil." Knox, a humorist himself, was peculiarly sensitive to scorn- ful irony, and of that two of his contemporaries had a peculiargift,theQueen Regent, Mary of Guise,and the Secretary, Maitland of Lethington. He never forgot nor forgave these thrusts, and he cordially hated both. This does not justify his vicious and one-sided ac- count ofthedeath-bedofthis Royal lady in 1 560: "God for his greit mercyis saik red us frome the rest of the Guysianeblude. Amen. Amen." Such were the folk of the time. In 1560 the Congregation made an attack on Leith, which was held by the French. They failed : the French, Knox tells us, stripped the slain and laid 109 BOOKOFEDINBURGH ANECDOTE them along the wall. When the Regent looked across the valley at this strange decoration she could not contain herself for joy, and said, " Yonder are the fair- est tapestrie that ever I saw. I wald that the haill feyldis that is betwix this place and yon war strowit with the same stuffe." I am quite ready to believe this story. On both sides death did not extinguish hatred, not even then was the enemy safe from insult. Does not Knox himself tell us with entire approval how his party refused the dead Regent the rightsofherchurch, and how the body was " lappit in a cope of lead and keipit in the Castell " for long weary months till it could be sent to France, where the poor ashes were at length laid to rest in due form ? Whatever the creed of either side, both in practice firmly held that Providence was on the side of big battalions. Almost of necessity the Regent was con- tinually scheming for troops and possession of castles and so forth. Some quaint anecdotes are told of her dealings with Archibald, sixth Earl of Angus, grand- son of old " Bell the Cat," and gifted like him with power of emphatic utterance. Angus had married, in 1 5 14, Margaret,the widow of James IV. For sometime he was supreme in Scotland and was at the lowest a person to be reckoned with. In his passages of wit with the Regent she comes off second best, but then again the account is by Hume of Godscroft, historian and partisan of the house of Douglas. Thetimehadnot yet come for Kings to subsidise letters. Once Mary told Angus that she proposed to create the Earl of Huntly, his rival, a duke. " By the might of God " — his oath when angry — " then I will be a drake." He OF ROYALTY IN EDINBURGH was punning on duke, which is Scots for duck, and meant to say that he would still be the greater, though possibly the Queen required a surgical operation be- fore she understood. Once he came to pay his com- pliments to her in Edinburgh at the head of a thou- sand horsemen. She angrily reproved him for breach of the proclamation against noblemen being so at- tended ; but Angus had his answer ready. " The knaves will follow me. Gladly would I be rid of them, for they devour all my beef and my bread, and much, Madam, should I be beholden to you, if you could tell me how to get quit of them." Again, when she un- folded to him a plan for a standing army, he prompt- ly said, " We will fight ourselves better than any hired fellows," she could hardly reply that it was against disturbing forces like his own that she longed for a defence. She proposed to garrison Tantallon, that strong fortress of the Douglas which still rises, mere shell though it be, in impressive ruin on the Lothian coast opposite the Bass Rock. Angus had his gos- hawk on his wrist, and was feeding it as he talked with the Queen, and one notes that it seemed quite proper fornoblestogoabout so accompanied. He made as if he addressed the bird, " Greedy gled, greedy gled , thou hast too much already, and yet desirest more " : the Queen chose not to take the obvious hint, but per- sisted. Angus boldly faced the question. " Why not. Madam? Ah yes, all is yours, but. Madam, I must be captain of your muster and keeper of Tantallon." Not that these epigrams altered the situation, rather they expressed it. Even in the hostile narrative your sympathies are sometimes on the side of Mary of III BOOKOFEDINBURGH ANECDOTE Guise. In 1558 a calf with two heads was shown to her, apparently as a portent of calamity, like the bos locutus est of Livy, but what it exactly meant no one could say. "She scripped and said it was but a com- mon thing," in which, at any rate, she has the entire approval of the modern world. Her daughter Mary gave Edinburgh the most ex- citing, romantic, interesting, and important time in the city's annals. It was scarcely six years in all (19th August 1 56 i-i 6th June 1567), but those were crowd- ed years : the comparatively gay time at first ; the marriage with Darnley ; the assassination of Rizzio ; the murder of Darnley ; her seizure by Bothwell ; her marriage to Bothwell ; the surrender of Carberry, with her departure for Loch Leven. I scarce know what to select. On 1 5 th April 1 562 Randolph writes : "The Queen readeth daily after her dinner,instructed by a learned man, Mr. George Buchanan, somewhat of Livy." You wish it had been Virgil, because you are sure scholar and pupil had tried the Sortes Virgiliancs with results even more pregnant than happed to Mary's grandson Charles I., at Oxford, in the time of the civil wars, and the mere mention of George Buch- anan is fateful. He, at any rate, was an earnest and high-minded man, and he employed all the grace of his Latin muse to say delightful things about her on more than one occasion, and he had, in after years, every term of invective to hurl at her also in Latin, but prose this time, and he felt himself justified in both. The modern point of view which would find her almost certainly guilty of being an accessary be- fore the fact to the slaughter of Darnley, that would MARY, ^il'EEN OF SCOTS From the Morton Portrait OF ROYALTY IN EDINBURGH also find that the circumstances were so peculiar, that she was by no means altogether blameworthy, was not the conception of her own day. She was guilty, and therefore a monster of wickedness ; or she was innocent,and therefore a martyr: those arethesharp- ly opposed views. It was not an age of compromise or judicial balance. Take another incident. Rizzio's murder was on 9th March 1566. Immediately after she won over Darnley, mixed up with the affair as he had been. The pair escaped from Holyrood in the midnight hours, through the burial vaults and tombs of the palace. Darnley made some sudden and half- involuntary reference to the freshly-turned grave of Rizzio that lay right in their path. Mary gripped his arm and vowed, in what must have been a terrible whisper, that ere a year had passed " a fatter than he should lie as low." Kirk-o'-field was on lOth Febru- ary 1567. I prefer here to deal with trivialities, not tragedies. How curiously from the firstsheoccupied the thoughts of men : ere she was a month old grave statesmen were busy match-making ! In 1558 she married the Dau- phin, afterwards Francis II. When the news came to Edinburgh it was felt that some celebration was ne- cessary. " Mons Meg was raised forth from her lair " and fired once. The bullet was found on Wardie Muir, two miles off, and bought back by a careful Govern- ment to serve another occasion. We are told the cost of the whole affair was ten shillingsand eightpence,no doubt Scots currency, and without any doubt at all the most frugal merry-making in history. I will relate this other comic interlude of the night of her arrival at 113 H BOOK OF EDINBURGH ANECDOTE Holyrood. Knoxtellsthestoryofher landing with his never-failing graphic force : the thick and dark mist that covered the earth, a portent of the evil days to come, "the fyres of joy " that blazed through it all, " and a company of the most honest with instruments of musick and with musitians gave their salutationis at hir chamber wyndo. The melody (as she alledged) lyked hir weill and she willed the same to be contine- ued some nightis after." Knox is a little doubtful as to the sincerity of her thanks. Brantome was of the Queen's company, and the gay Frenchman gives us a very different account of the proceedings. " There came under her window five or six hundred rascals of that town, who gave her a concert of the vilest fiddles and little rebecs, which are as bad as they can be in that country, and accompanied them with singing Psalms, but so miserably out of time and concert that nothing could be worse. Ah, what melody it was 1 What a lullaby for the night ! " One of the Queen's Maries remembered and applied a favourite text of Montlin, Bishop of Valence, on which they had heard more than one sermon : " Is any merry, let him sing Psalms." If she showed herself a Scot by her Biblical quotation, you guessshe revealed her French upbring- ing in an infinitely expressive shrug and grimace; but forthatnighteven Mary 'sspiritwas broken. Shefound no place for mirth and could scarce refrain from tears, yet she had the courage on that and other mornings gracefully to thank the musicians ; only she shifted her bedroom to the floor above,and slept,you believe, none the worse for the change. The drop in material comfort,not tospeak of anythingelse, must have been 114 OF ROYALTY IN EDINBURGH enormous, from gay, wealthy, joyous France to this austere, poverty-stricken land and people. Did not some mad scheme for instant return move through her brain ? No, for after all she was a Queen and a Stuart, and it is mere commonplace to say that she never failed to confront her fate. It were easy and useless to dwell on the glaring contrasts in character between Mary and her son James, between the most tragically unfortunate and the most prosaically fortunate of the Stuarts. Such contrasts between the character and fate of parent and child are not uncommon in daily life. The first day of James on earth was memorable for the dramatic meet- ing of his father and mother. He was born in Edin- burgh Castle, in the little room that is shown you there, between nine and ten on the morning of Wednesday, 19th June 1 566. About two in the afternoon Darnley came to see his child. Like everybody else in Edin- burgh, he had known of the event for hours,sincea few minutes after the birth heavy guns, almost at Mary's bedsideand without a word of pro test from the courag- eous woman, had roared out theirsignal to the capital that well-nigh went mad on the instant with joy and pride. The nurse put the child into Darnley's arms, "MyLord,"saidMarysimplyandsolemnly,"Godhas given you and me a son." Then she turned to Sir Wil- liam Stanley : " This is the son who I hope shall first un- ite the two kingdoms of Scotland and England." The Englishman said something courteous about the pri- or rights of Mary and Darnley, and then Mary wan- dered off into the Rizzio business only three months before. What would have happened if they had then "5 BOOKOFEDINBURGH ANECDOTE killed her ? You fancy the colour went and came in Darnley's face. "These things are all past," he mut- tered. " Then," said the Queen, " let them go." As James grewuphe becamewell-nigh themost eminent of royal and noble authors, and that strange mixture of erudition, folly,wisdom,and simplicity which marks him as one of the oddest characters in history. He was great in nicknames and phrases, and the nick- names stuck and the phrases are remembered. "Tam o' the Coogate" for the powerful Earl of Haddington ; " Jock o' the Sclates " for the Earl of Mar, because he, when James's fellow-pupil, had been entrusted by George Buchanan with a slate thereon to note James's little peccadilloes in his tutor's absence ; better than all, " JinglingGeordie" for George Heriot the goldsmith. What a word picture that gives you of the prosperous merchant prince who possibly hinted more than once that he could an he would buy up the whole Court ! That well-known story of ostentatious benevolence can hardly be false. George visited James at Holy- rood and found him over a fire of cedar wood, and the King had much to say of the costly fuel ; and then the other invited him to visit his booth hard by St. Giles', where he was shown a still more costly fire of the Royal bonds or promissory notes, as we might call them in the language of to-day. We know that the relations between the banker and his Royal cus- tomer were of the very best ; and how can we say anything but good of Heriot when we think of that splendid and beautiful foundation that to-day holds its own with anything that modern Edinburgh can show ? As for his colloquial epigrams, there is the ii6 OF ROYALTY IN EDINBURGH famous account of David I. as a " sair sanct " for the Crown ; his humorous and not altogether false state- ment, when the Presbyterian ministers came to inter- view him, "Set twal chairs, there be twal kings com- ing " ; his description — at an earlier date, of course — of the service of the Episcopal Church as " an evil said mass in English wanting nothing but the lift- ings " ; his happy simile apropos of his visit to Scot- land in 1617 of his " salmon-lyke " instinct — a great and natural longing to see "our native soil and place of our birth and breeding." No wonder he got a re- putation for wisdom ! A quaint anecdote dates his renown in that regard from a very early period in- deed. On the day after his birth the General Assembly met, and were much concerned as to the religious edu- cation of the infant. They sent Spottiswoode, " Sup- erintendant of Lothian," to interview the Queen on the subject. He urged a Protestant baptism and upbring- ing for the child. Mary gave no certain answer, but brought in her son to show to the churchmen, and probably also as themeans of endingan embarrassing interview. Spottiswoode, however, repeated his de- mand, and with pedantic humour asked the infant to signify his consent. The child babbled something, which one of the hearers at least took for" Amen," and " Master Amen " was the Court-name for Spottis- woode ever after. James deserved to be called the British Solomon, but then how did it happen that the man had such a knack of making himself ridiculous ? On the night of the 23rd July 1 593 the madcap Francis Earl of Both- well made one of his wild raids on Holyrood. James 117 BOOKOFEDINBURGH ANECDOTE came out of his chamber in terror and disorder, "with hisbreeks in his hand"; trembling, he implored the in- vaders to do him no harm. " No, my good bairn," said Bothwell with insolence (the King was twenty-seven at the time); and as a matter of fact no harm was done him. Fate tried the mother of James and the son of James far more severely than it ever tried James him- self, and Mary Stuart and Charles the First managed things so ill that each in theend had to lay theheadon the block,but no one ever spoke to them like that, and theynevermade themselves ridiculous. Marywasnev- er less than Queen and Charles was never less than King, and each played the last scene so superbly as to turn defeat and ruin into victory and honour, and ifyou say it was birth and breeding and the heritage of their race how are you to account for the odd figure in be- tween? Hereisanother trivial anecdote. On Tuesday, 5th April 1603, James set forth southward totakepos- session of his English throne. As Robert Chambers points out, here was the most remarkable illustra- tion of Dr. Johnson's remark that the best prospect a Scotsman ever saw was the high road to England. Not very far from Holyrood stood splendid Seton Palace, and as James and his folk drew near they crossed another procession. It was the funeral train of the first Earl of Winton, who had been an attach- ed adherent of James's mother. One of the Queen's Maries was a Seton, and James, as was right and proper, made way and halted till the procession of the mightier King Death had passed. He perched himself in the meantime on the garden wall, and you think of him hunched up there "glowering" at the proceed- 118 OF ROYALTY IN EDINBURGH ings. On his return to Scotland James spent at Seton Palace his second night after crossing the Tweed, and it was here he received Drummond of Haw- thornden's poem of Forth Feasting. There was un- bounded popular rejoicing, though not without an occasional discordant note; for the Presbyterian Scot was terribly suspicious. It happened that one of the royal guards died during the visit. He was buried with the service of the English Church, read by a surpliced clergyman ; there was an unseemly riot, and the parson if he escaped hard knocks got the hardest of words. He was William Laud, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. Let me end those stories of James with one of a lighter character. I have spoken of James's schoolfellow, the Earl of Mar. He was left a widower, his wife Ann Drummond having died after giving birth to a son. An Italian magician had shown him, as in a glass darkly, the face of his second spouse. He identified the figure as that of Lady Mary Stuart of the Lennox family, who would have none of him ; for the Drummond baby would be Earl of Mar, whilst hers would only be Mr. Erskine. Jock o' the Sclates was so mortified at the refusal that he took to his bed, and seemed like to make a mortal though ridiculous exit; but the Kingcame to encour- age him. " By God, ye shanna dee, Jock, for ony lass in a' the land ! " In due course James brought about the marriage, which turned out well for all concerned. The Kings after James had but a very remote and chance connection with Edinburgh. There are golfing anecdotes of Charles I. and James II., and there is not even that about Charles II. Charles I. when in Edin- 119 BOOKOFEDINBURGH ANECDOTE burgh was fond of the Royal game on the links at Leith, then the favourite ground for the sport. It was whilst so engaged he heard the news of the massacre in Ire- land, and not unnaturally he threw down his club and hastily quitted the links. The anecdote of James II. is of a more detailed character, for Golfer's Land, grim and battered, still stands in the Canongate. When James held court at Holyrood as Duke of York, he was given to golfing on the links. He had a match with two English noblemen, his fellow-player in the foursome being John Patterson, a poor shoemaker in the Canongate, but a superb golfer. If you don't know the story, at least you anticipate the result. The Eng- lishmen were shamefully beaten, and the stake being too small game for Royalty, Patterson netted the pro- ceeds, with which he built Golfer's Land. The learned Dr. Pitcairne adorned it with a Latin inscription, and all you can say is you hope the legend is true. Another story of James tells how one of the soldiers on duty at Holyrood, mortal tired or perhaps mortal drunk, was found asleep at his post. Grim old Tom Dalzell was in charge, and he was not the man to overlook such an ofTence,but marked out the culprit for instant exe- cution. The Duke, however, intervened and saved the man's life. I am glad to tell those stories of James, who as a rule fares so ill at the hands of the historians. Although I have said nothing of Charles II., his statue perhaps deserves a word. It stands in Parlia- ment Square, between St. Giles' and the Parliament House. The local authorities were once minded to set up the stone image of Cromwell in that same place, indeed the stone had been got ready when the Restor- I20 OF ROYALTY IN EDINBURGH ation changed the current of their thoughts, and after an interval of twenty-five years they put up one to Charles II. instead, the onlystatue that old Edinburgh for many a long day possessed. Kings and Queens came and went for the better part of a century, but none of them came to Edinburgh, or even to Scotland,for you cannot count the fugitive visit of the Old Pretender as anything at all. Itwas not till Prince Charles Edward Stuart made the memorable descent on the capital in the '45 that I can again take up the easy thread of my narrative. Here anecdotes are abundant, but the most too well known for quota- tion : they tell of the cowardice of the citizens and the daring simplicity of the Highlanders. The capture of the city was without opposition. A burgher taking a walk saw a Highlander astride a gun, and said to him that surely he did not belong to the troops that were there yesterday. "Och no," quoth the Celt, "she pe re- lieved." According to all accounts,the invading army behaved well. An exception was the man who present- ed a musket at the head of a respectable shopkeeper, and when the trembling cit asked what he wanted, re- plied," A bawbee." This modestrequest being instant- ly complied with, they parted the best of friends. The demands of others did not rise beyond a pinch of snuff, and one hopes it was not required in an equally heroic manner. The dayof Charles'sentry,his father as King and himself as Regent were proclaimed at the Cross by the heralds in their antique garb and with their antique rites, and conspicuous among the attendant throng was the beautiful Mrs. Murray of Broughton on horseback with a drawn sword, covered with white 121 BOOKOFEDINBURGH ANECDOTE cockades, the conspicuous Stuart emblem. With her itwasthe onesupreme moment of a life that was pres- ently obscured in shadows. Her husband's reputation as traitor still lay in the future. You remember how Scott's father, Whigas he was,dashed to pieces the cup that Murray had touched, so that neither he norany of his family might ever use it ? At that same Cross, not many months after, the standards of the clans and of Charles were burnt by the hangman andTron men or sweepsby theorderof Cumberland,the least generous of foes. In the crowd there must have been many who had gazed on the other ceremonial. What a complete circuit fortune's wheel had made! Amidst the festivi- ties of Holyrood those things were not foreseen. Then came Prestonpans, with many a legend graveorgay. I will not repeat in detail those al most threadbare stories of the Highland estimation of the plunder: how that chocolate was Johnny Cope's salve, and the watch that stopped was a beast that had died, and a pack-sad- dle was a fortune, and so forth. Here is perhaps the quaintest anecdote of misadventure. Two volunteers, one of them destined to the bench as Lord Garden- stone, were detailed to watch the precincts of Mussel- burgh. They werebothconvivial "cusses": they knew every tavern in Edinburgh and every change-house in the far and near suburbs: they remembered alittleden noted for its oysters and its sherry — possibly an odd combination, but the stomachs of young Edinburgh were invincible. At any rate, they made themselves merry. Buttherewerelimbs ofthe law, active or" stic- kit," on the other side, and one as he prowled about espied the pair, and seized them without difficulty as 122 OF ROYALTY IN EDINBURGH they tried to negotiate that narrow bridge which still crosses the Esk at M usselburgh. They were dragged to the camp at Duddingston, and were about to be hang- ed as spies, but escaped through the intercession of still another lawyer, Colquhoun Grant, an adherent of the Prince. This same Colquhoun was a remarkable person, and distinguished himself greatly at Preston. He seized the horse of an English officer and pursued a great body of dragoons with awe-inspiring Gaelic curses. On.on wentthepanic-stricken mob, with Grant at their heels so close that he entered the Netherbow with them, and was just behind them at the Castle. He stuck his dirk into the gate, rode slowly down the High Street,ordered the Netherbow Portto be thrown open, and the frightened attend ants were only too glad toseetheback of him. In after years hebeathissword to a ploughshare, or rather a pen, and became a highly prosperous Writer to the Signet of Auld Reekie. It is related by Kay that Ross of Pitcarnie, a less fortunate Jacobite, used to extract " loans " from him by artful references to his exploits at Preston and Falkirk. The cowardice of the regular troops is difficult to account for, but there was more excuse for the volunteers, of whom many comical stories are told. The best is that ofJohnMaclurethewriting-master,whowoundaquire of writing-paper round his manly bosom, on which he had written in his best hand, with all the appropriate flourishes, " This is the body of John Maclure, pray give it a Christian burial." However, when once the Prince was in, the citizens preserved a strict neutrality. Of sentimental Jacobites like Allan Ramsay we hear not a word : they lay low and said nothing. What could 123 BOOK OF EDINBU RGH ANECDOTE they do but wait upon time? Oneclergyman was bold enough, at any rate, namely, the Rev. Neil M'Vicar, incumbent of St. Cuthbert's, who kept on praying for King Georgeduring the wholetimeof the Jacobiteoc- cupation : " As for this young man who has come a- mong us seeking an earthly crown, we beseech Thee that he may obtain what is far better, a heavenly one." Archibald Stewart was then Provost, and he was said to have Jacobite leanings. His house was by the West Bow, and here, it was rumoured, he gave a secret ban- quet to Charles and some of his chiefs. The folk in the Castleheardofthis,andsentdownapartyofsoldiersto seize the Prince. Just as they were entering the house the guests disappeared into a cabinet, which was really an entrance to a trap stair, and so got off. The story is obviously false. Stewart was afterwards tried for neg- lectofdutyduringthe Rebellion, and theproceedings, which lasted an inordinate time — the longest then on record — resulted in his triumphant acquittal. The Goverment had never omitted a damning piece of ev- idencelike this — if the thinghad happened. One comic and instructive touch will pave my way to the next episode. A certain Mrs. Irvine died in Edinburghin the year 1837 at the age of ninety-nine years or so, if the story be true which makes her a young child in the '45. She was with her nurse in front of the Palace, where a Highlander was on guard : she was much attracted by his kilt.she advanced and seized it, and even pulled it up a little way. The nurse was in a state of terror, but the soldier only smiled and said a few kind words to the child. The moral of this story is that till the Highlanders took the city the kilt was a practically 124 OF ROYALTY IN EDINBURGH unknown garment to the folk in the capital. Sixyears before Mrs. Irvine died, to wit in 1831, she saw the setting up at the intersection of George Street and Hanover Street of the imposing statue by Chan- trey which commemorates the visit of George iv. to Scotland, This visit was from 14th August to 29th August 1822. Sir Walter Scott stage-managed the business, and Lockhart has pointed out how odd the whole thing was. Scott was a Lowlander, and surely better read than any other in the history of his coun- try, and who better knew that the history of Scotland is the history of the Lowlands, that Edinburgh was a Lowland capital, that the Highlands were of no ac- count, save as disturbing forces? Yet, blinded by the picturesque effect, he ran the show as if the Highlands and the Highlands alone were Scotland. Chieftains were imported thence, Scott was dressed as a High- lander, George was dressed as a Highlander, Sir Wil- liam Curtis, London alderman, was dressed as a High- lander: the whole thingtrembled on the verge of burles- que. The silver St, Andrew's cross that Scott present- ed to the King when he landed had a Gaelic inscrip- tion! The King, not to be outdone, called for a bottle of Highland whiskyand pledged Sir Walter thereand then, and Sir Walter begged the glass that had touch- ed the Royal lips, for an heirloom no doubt. He got it, thrust it into his coat-tail pocket, and presently re- duced it to fragments in a moment of forgetfulness by sitting on it. There, fortunately, the thing was left : they did not try to reconstitute it, after the fashion of the Portland Vase in the British Museum, George IV. had a fine if somewhat corpulent figure (Leigh Hunt "5 BOOK OF EDINBU RGH ANECDOTE wrote to Archibald Constable at an earlier period that he had suffered imprisonment for not thinking the Prince Regent slender and laudable),and no doubt in the Highland garb he made a "very pretty man," but the knight from London was even more corpulent. Byron sings in The Age of Bronze : " He caught Sir William Curtis in a kilt, While thronged the Chiefs of every Highland clan To hail their brother Vich Ian an Alderman." " Faar's yer speen?" (Where's your spoon ?) said an envious and mocking Aberdeen bailie, to the nosmall discomfiture of the London knight, as he strutted to and fro, believing that his costume was accurate in every detail. Lockhart hints that possibly Scott in- vented the story to soothe the King's wounded feel- ings. On the 24th of August the Provost and Magi- strates of Edinburgh entertained the King in Parlia- ment House to a great banquet. The King gave one toast, " The Chieftains and Clans of Scotland, and prosperity to the Land of Cakes." He also attended a performance of Rob Roy at the theatre. Carlyle was in Edinburgh at the time, and fled in horror from what he called the " efflorescence of the flunkeyisms," but everybody else seemed pleased, and voted the thing a great success. No doubt it gave official stamp to what is perhaps still the ordinary English view of Scotland. The odd thing is that Scott himself never grasped the Highland character — at least, where has he drawn one for us ? Rob Roy and Helen Macgregor and Fergus MTvor and Flora M'lvor are mere crea- tures of melodrama, but the Bailie and Mattie and JeanieDeansandDavieDeans and the Antiquary and 126 OF ROYALTY IN EDINBURGH Edie Ochiltree and Andrew Fairservice and Mause and CuddieHedriggare real beings of fleshand blood. We have met them or their likes on the muir or at the close fit, or on the High Street or in the kirk. Twentyyears passed, and a British Sovereign again comes to Scotland. Ontheist of September in 1842 Queen Victoria and Prince Albert arrived at Granton. They duly proceeded towards Edinburgh. The Lord Provost and Bailies ought to have met them at Canon- mills to present the keys of the city, but they were "conspicuous by their absence," and the Royal party had to go to Dalkeith (like George the Fourth, they put up for the time in the Duke of Buccleuch's huge palace there). The local wits waxed merry ; they swore that my Lord Provost and his fellows had over- slept themselves, and a parody of a well-known song rang unpleasantly in civic ears: " Hey, Jamie Forrest, Are ye waukin' yet. Or are yer byles Snoring yet ? " However, the Royal party came specially from Dal- keith on a subsequent day, and received the keys at the Cross, and nobody even whispered " Anticlimax!" CHAPTER SIX MEN OF LETTERS. PART I CHAPTER SIX MEN OF LETTERS GEORGE BUCHANAN IS THE FIRST IN time as he is one of the first in eminence of Scots men of letters. Many wrote before him; among the kings, James I. certainly, James V. possibly, and even yet they are worth reading by others than students. There is Gawin Douglas, the Bishop, there is Buchanan's con- temporary, Knox, the Reformer, whose work is clas- sic, but they are not men of letters in the modern sense of the term. Buchanan is. Literature was his aim in life, and he lived by it indirectly if not directly. He is always to me a perplexing figure. How deep was his reforming zeal, how deep his beliefs, I cannot tell. I have read, I trust not without profit, Mr. Hume Brown's two careful volumes upon this great Scot, but he has not solved my doubts. The old scholar was too learned, too travelled, too cultured tobein har- mony with the Scotland of his day ; a certain aloofness marks him, a stern and heroic rather than a human and sympathetic figure. You remember how consistently the British Solomon hated his sometime schoolmaster. Certain quaint anecdotes remain of their relations, but they have not to do with Edinburgh ; yet he died in the capital, and in one or two memories that linger round those last hours you seem just at the end to get in real touch with the man, with the human figure under the cloak. In 1 581 James Melville, the diarist, with certain friends, visited him in Edinburgh. They found him teaching the young man that served him : A, b, ab, and so forth. " I see you are not idle," said one of the visitors in ironical astonishment, but he said it was better than idleness. They mentioned his magnum opus, his History of Scotland, the literary 131 BOOK OFEDINBURGH ANECDOTE sensation of the day, if that day had literary sensa- tions. He stopped them. " I may da nae mair for thinking on another matter." " What is that? " says Mr. Andro. " To die," quoth he. They went to the printer's to have a peep at the last sheets, just passing through the press, where they pres- ently spied some plain-spoken words like to be high- ly unpalatable at Court. Again they sought the old scholarand spoke to him about them. "Tell me, man," says he, "giff I havetould the truth." His visitors were of the same views as himself,and they could not shirk soplain an issue. "Yes,sir,"saysoneof them,'T think sae." Then says the old man sternly: "Let it remain, I will byde it, whatever happen. Pray, pray to God for me and let Him direct all." A " Stoick " philosopher, says Melville, and so heproved to theend, which came on the 28th of September 1582, in Kennedy's Close, thesecond close to the west of the Tron Kirk, andlong since vanished. The day before he died he found that he had not enough money to pay for his funeral, but even this, he said, must be given to the poor, his body could fare for itself. Wisely provident for its own renown Edinburgh gave him a public funeral in the Greyfriars Churchyard. Tradition marked the spot for some time, and then a blacksmith put up a tablet at his own cost, but that too vanished, and one is not certain that the learned Dr. David Laing succeeded in fixing the true place. As we have seen, the Univer- sity of Edinburgh possesses what is believed to be his skull. When Deacon Brodie stole the mace, this tro- phy did not come under his hand, or it had surely gone too. 132 WILLIAM DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN ^ he Painting by Cornelius Janson van Ceulcn MEN OF LETTERS IN EDINBURGH No one could be less like George Buchanan than WilliamDrummond of Hawthornden,born three years after the death of the other, save that he also was a man of letters, and that he also had intimate connec- tion with Edinburgh, Hawthornden is one of the beauty spots near the capital. Here Ben Jonson paid him, in 1618-19, one of the most famous visits in all the history of letters. The story is that Drummond was seated underahuge sycamore tree when Jonson's huge form hove in sight. The meeting of two poets needs must call forth a spark of poetry. " Welcome ! Welcome ! royal Ben ! Thank ye kindly, Hawthornden ! " A little suspicious, you may think ! Where did Ben Jonson learn to address a Scots laird in this peculiar- ly Scots fashion ? After all, Ben's forbears came from Annandale, and who that has seen Hawthornden will doubt here was the ideal spot for such an encounter? Drummond was a devoted cavalier ; his death was caused or hastened by that of Charles i. He was bur- ied by his favourite river in the neighbouring church- yard of Lasswade. He has written his own epitaph : " Here Damon lies whose songs did sometime grace The wandering Esk — may roses shade the place." The town of Edinburgh honoured itself and the two poets by a banquet, and in the next century Allan Ramsay honoured the pair in a more appropriate fashion. There was once a huge pile of buildings called the Luckenbooths, between St. Giles' Church and the north side of the High Street. The building at the east end, afterwards known as Creech's Land, from the bookseller who did business there, and who ^33 BOOKOFEDINBURGH ANECDOTE was locally famous as the Provost and is still remem- bered as Burns's publisher, was occupied by Ramsay, and here, in 1725, he established the first circulating library ever known in Scotland. It would have been the last if godly Mr. Robert Wodrow and his fellows could have had their way, on account of" the villain- ous, profane, and obscene books of plays "it contained. You see they neither weighed nor minced words at the time. As sign Allan stuck over the door the heads of Drummond of Hawthornden and Ben Jonson. Scots literature was altogether on the side of the Crown, or one should rather say of the Stuarts. Who so stout a Jacobite as Allan, in words, at any rate ? In deeds it was quite otherwise : you never hear of him in the '45. His copious muse that could throw off a popular ballad on the instant was silent during that romantic occupation of Edinburgh by the young Ascanius. It was prudence that saved him. He was a Jacobite and so against the powers that were, but he took no hurt ; he was given to theatrical speculation and he did burn his fingers over an abor- tive business in that Carrubber's Close which has now a reputation far other, yet he came to no harm in the end, even if it be true that his prosperous painter son had finally to discharge some old debts. We have seen the view of the godly anent the books he sold or lent, and yet he dodged their wrath ; but I wonder most of all how he escaped a drunkard's death. Who knew betterthat grimy, witty, sordidly attractive, va- nished Edinburgh underworld of tavern and oyster- cellar — and worse ? The Gentle Shepherd is all very well, and the Tea-Table Miscellany, with its senti- 134 MEN OF LETTERS IN EDINBURGH mental faking up of old Scots songs, is often very ill, though you cannot deny its service to Scots literature; but not there is the real Allan to be found. He minces and quibbles no longer when he sings the praises of umquhile Maggie Johnson, who kept that famous "howf" on Bruntsfield links. " There we got fou wi' little cost And muckle speed. Now wae worth Death ! our sport's a' lost Since Maggy's dead ! " Nor is his elegy on Luckie Wood of the Canongate less hearty. " She ne'er gae in a lawin fause, Nor stoups a' froath aboon the hause, Nor kept dow'd tip within her waws, But reaming swats. She ne'er ran sour jute, because It gees the batts." Unfortunately I cannot follow him in his lamen- tation over John Cowper or Luckie Spence, or dwell on the part those worthies played in old Edinburgh life. An' you be curious you must consult the original — unexpurgated. Let us quote our Allan on at least a quotable topic. " Then fling on coals and ripe the ribs. And beek the house baith but and ben, That mutchkin stoup it bauds but dribs, Then let's get in the tappit hen. Good claret best keeps out the cauld. And drives away the winter sune ; It makes a man baith gash and bauld, And heaves his saul beyond the mune." Among drinking-songs it would be hard to beat these lines for vigour. Did he quaff as heartily as he 135 BOOKOFEDINBURGH ANECDOTE sang? I think not, probably his comrades shouted "pike yer bane" to no purpose (he would have trans- lated it to an English admirer as " no heel taps ") to this little " black-a-vised " man with his nightcap for head-dress, and his humorous,contented, appreciative smile. The learned Thomas Ruddiman, his fellow- townsman and fellow-Jacobite, used to say " The liquor willnotgodown "when urged to yet deeperpotations; perhaps Allan escaped with some such quip, at least there is no touch of dissipation about his life, nay, a well-founded reputation for honest, continuous, and prosperous industry. In the end he built that famous house on the Castle Hill, called, from its quaint shape, the " Goose Pie." " Indeed, Allan, now that I see you in it I think the term is very properly applied," said Lord Elibank. The joke was obvious and inevitable, but for all that rather pointless, unless it be that Ram- say affected a little folly now and then to escape envy or a too pressing hospitality. However, he lived re- putably, died a prosperous citizen, and his is one of the statues you see to-day in the Princes Street Gar- dens. Although Buchanan was one of the greatest schol- ars of his time in Europe, he was not the founder of a race in minute points of classical scholarship, especi- ally in correct quantities of Latin syllables. Scotland was long lacking, perhaps the reason was the want of rich endowments, but Dr. Archibald Pitcairne (1652- I7i3),thephysician,the Jacobite, and the scholar.had another reason: "Ifit had not been forthe stupid Pres- byterianism we should have been as good as the Eng- lish at longs and shorts." Oddly enough, the same 136 MEN OF LETTERS IN EDINBURGH complaint was echoed within the national Zion itself. Dalzel, Professor of Greek and Clerk to the General Assembly, was, according to Sydney Smith, heard to declare, " If it had not been for that Solemn League and Covenant we should have made as good longs and shorts as they." Before I pass from Fitcairne I quote a ludicrous story of which he is the hero. His sceptical proclivities were well known in Edinburgh, and he was rarelyseen inside achurch. Hewas driven there, however, on one occasion by a shower of rain. Theaudiencewas thin, the sermon commonplace, but the preacher wept copiously and, as it seemed to Fit- cairne, irrelevantly. He turned to the only other oc- cupant of the pew, a stolid-visaged countryman, and whispered, " What the deevil gars the man greet ? " " You would maybe greet yoursel'," was the solemn answer, " if ye was up there and had as little to say." I pass from one sceptic to another — one might say from one age to another. Edinburgh, in the latter part of the eighteenth century, according to Smollett's fam- ous phrase, was a " hotbed of genius." When Amyot, the King's dentist,was in Edinburgh he said ,as he stood at the Cross, that he could anyminute take fifty men of genius by the hand. Of this distinguished company David Hume was the chief To what extent this his- torian, philosopher, sceptic, is now read, we need not inquire; he profoundly influenced European thought, and gave a system of religious philosophy the dead- liestblow it ever received. Hewas a prominent and in- terestingfigure,and manyand various are the legends about him. What were his real religious beliefs, if he had any, remains uncertain. Hewas hand in glove 137 BOOKOFEDINBURGH ANECDOTE with "Jupiter" Carlyle, Principal Robertson, Dr. Hugh Blair, and other leading moderates. They thought his scepticism was largely pretence, mere intellectual bounce, so to speak ; they girded at his unreasonable departure from the normal, and indeed Carlyle takes everyopportunityofthrustingathimon this account. The Edinburgh folk regarded him with solemn hor- ror. The mother of Adam, the architect, who was also aunt to Principal Robertson, had much to say against the ' atheist,' whom she had never seen. Her son played her a trick. Hume was asked to the house and set down beside her. She declared " the large jolly man who sat next me was the most agreeable of them all." " He was the very atheist, mother," said the son, "thatyou were so much afraid of." "Oh," re- plied the lady,"bring him here as much asyou please, for he is the most innocent, agreeable, facetious man I ever met with." His scepticism was subject for his friends' wit and his own. He heard Carlyle preach in Athelstaneford Church. " I did not think that such heathen morality would have passed in East Lothian." One day when he sat in the Poker Club it was men- tioned that a clerk of Sir William Forbes, the banker, had bolted with £goo. When he was taken, there was found in one pocket Hume's Treatise on Human Na- ture and in the other Boston's Fourfold State of Man, this latter being a work of evangelical theology. His moderate friends presently suggested that no man's morality could hold out against the combination. Dr. Jardine of the Tron Kirk vigorously argued with him on various points of theology, suggested by Hume's Natural History of Religion. Hisfriend,like mostfolk 138 MEN OF LETTERS IN EDINBURGH in Edinburgh, lived in a flat off a steep turnpike stair, down which Hume fell one night in the darkness. Jar- dine got a candle and helped the panting philosopher to his feet. Your old Edinburgh citizen never could re- sistthechance of a cutting remark. The divine was no exception. "Davy, I have often tell't ye that 'natural licht' is no' sufficient." Like Socrates, he hid his wit under an appearance of simplicity. His own mother's opinion of him was: "Davy's a fine, good-natured cra- ter, but uncommon wake-minded." He had his weak- nesses, undoubtedly. Lord Saltoun said to him, refer- ring to his credulity, "David, man, you'll believe ony- thingexceptthe Bible," but like other Scotsmenofhis time he did not believe overmuch in Shakespeare. In 1757 he thus addresses the author o{ Douglas: "You possess the true theatrical genius of Shakespeare and Otway, refined from the barbarisms of the one, and the licentiousness of the other," Put beside this Burns's famous and fatuous line : " Here Douglas forms wild Shakespeare into plan," and what can you do but shud- der ? When young, he had paid his court to a lady of fashion, and hadmet with scant courtesy. Hewastold afterwards that she had changed her mind. " So have I," said the philosopher. On another occasion he was more gallant. Crossing the Firth in a gale he said to Lady Wallace, who was in the boat, that they would soon be food for the fishes. "Will they eat you or me?" said the lady. " Ah," was the answer, " those that are gluttons will undoubtedly fall foul of me, but the epi- cure will attack your ladyship." David, like the fishes he described, was a bit of an epicure of the simplest kind. He would sup with his moderate friends in John- 139 BOOKOFEDINBURGH ANECDOTE ny Bowie's tavern in Libberton's Wynd. On the table lay his huge door-key, wherewith his servant, Peggy, had been careful to provide him that she might not have to rise to let him in. After all, the friends did not sit very late, and the supper was some simple Scots dish — haddock, or tripe, or fluke, or pies, or it might be trout from the Nor' Loch, for Bowie's was famous for these little dainties. But the talk ! Would you match it in modern Edinburgh with all its pomp and wealth? I trow not — perhaps not even in mightier London. The story is threadbare of how he was stuck in a bog under the Castle rock, and was only helped out by a passing Edinburgh dame on condition that he would say the Lord's Prayer and the Creed . More witty and more probable, though perhaps as well known, is the following : In the last years of his life he deserted the Old Town for the New. He had a house at the corner of St. Andrew Square, in a street as yet anony- mous. " St. Bavid Street " chalked up a witty young lady, Miss Nancy Ord, daughter of Chief Baron Ord, and St. Bavid Street it is to this day. His servant, in a state of indignation, brought him the news. " Never mind,lassie,many a better man has been made a saint without knowing it," said the placid philosopher. A female member of a narrow sect called upon him near the end with an alleged message from Heaven. " This is an important matter. Madam, we must take it with deliberation. Perhaps you had better get a little tem- poral refreshment before you begin. — Lassie, bring this young lady a glass of wine." As she drank, he in his turn questioned, and found that the husband was a 140 MEN OF LETTERS IN EDINBURGH tallow-chandler. How fortunate,for he was out of cand- les ! He gave an order, the woman forgot the message, and rushed off to fulfil it. Hume, you fancy,had a quiet chuckle at his happy release. He was a great friend of Mrs. Mure, wife of Baron Mure, and was a frequent visitor at their house at Abbeyhill, near Holyrood. On his death-bed he sent to bid her good-bye. He gave her his History of England. " O, Dauvid, that's a book ye may weel be proud o' ! but before ye dee ye should burn a' yer wee bookies," to which the philosopher, with difficulty raisinghimselfonhisarmSjWas only able toreplywithsomelittleshowofvehemence," What for should I burn a' my wee bookies ? " But he was too weak to argue such points ; he pressed the hand of his old friend as she rose to depart. When his time came he went quietly, contentedly, even gladly, re- gretted by saint and sceptic alike. If Carlyle girded at him, his intimate friend, Adam Smith, who might almost dispute his claim to mental eminence, pic- tured him forth in those days as the perfectly wise man, so far as human imperfections allowed. The piety or caution of his friends made them watch the grave for some eight nights after the burial. The vigil began at eight o'clock, when a pistol was fired, and candles in a lanthorn were placed on the grave and tended from time to time. Some violation was feared, for a wild legend of Satanic agency had flashed on the instant through the town. Hume has no monument in Edinburgh, crowded as she is with statues of lesser folk; but the accident of position and architecture has in this, as in other cases, produced a striking if unde- signed result. From one cause or another the valley 141 BOOK OFEDINBURGHANECDOTE is deeper than of yore, and the simple round tower that marks Hume's grave in the Calton burying-gro- und crowns a half-natural, half-artificial precipice. It is seen with effect from various points : thus you can- not miss itasyoucross the North Bridge. Some mem- ory of this great thinker still projects itself into the trivial events of the modern Edinburgh day. Of Hume's friend and companion, Adam Smith, there are various anecdotes, more or less pointed, bearing on his oblivious or maybe contemptuous in- difference to the ordinary things of life. The best and best known tells how, as he went with shuffling gait and vacant look,a Musselburgh fishwifestared athim in amazement. " Hech,and he is weel put on tae." It seemed to her a pity that so well-dressed a simpleton was not better looked after. No amount of learning helps you in a crowded street. The wisdom of the ancients reports that Thales, wrapt in contemplation of the stars, walked into a well and thusended. Adam Smith's grave is in a dark corner of the Canongate Churchyard ; it is by no means so prominent as Hume's, nay, it takes some searching to discover. When I saw it last I found it neglected and unvisited alike by economic friends and foes. Among Hume's intimate cronies was Dr. Carlyle of Inveresk, whose Autobiography ^resQtves for us the best record of the men of his time. " The grandest demigod I ever saw," says Sir Walter Scott, " com- monly called Jupiter Carlyle, from having sat more than once for the King of gods and men to Gavin Hamilton, and a shrewd, clever old carle he was, no doubt, but no more a poet than his precentor." This 142 MENOF LETTERS IN EDINBURGH last is apropos of some rhyming of Carlyle's as bad as rhymes can possibly be. In 1758 Carlyleand Prin- cipal Robertson and John Home were together in London; they went down to Portsmouth and aboard the Raniilies, the warship in the harbour, where was Lieut. Nelson, a cousin of Robertson's. The honest sailor expressed his astonishment in deliciously comi- cal terms : " God preserve us ! what has brought the Presbytery of Edinburgh here? for damme me if there is not Willy Robertson, Sandie Carlyle, and John Home come on board." He soon had them down in the cabin, however, and treated them to white wine and salt beef A jolly meal, you believe, for divines or sceptics, philosophers or men of letters or business, those old Edinburgh folk had a common and keen en- joyment of life. Certainly Carlyle had. Dr. Lindsay Alexander of Augustine Church, Edinburgh, remem- bered as a child hearing one of the servants say of this divine, "There he gaed, dacent man, as steady as a wa' after his ain share o' five bottles o' port." Home by this time was no longer a minister of the Church. He had thrown up his living in the previous year on account of the famous row about the once famous tra- gedy of Douglas. He still had a hankering after the General Assembly, where, if he could no longer sit as teaching elder, he might as ruling elder, because he was Conservator of Scots privileges at Campvere,but he was something else; he was lieutenant in the Duke of Buccleuch's Fencibles, and as such hadarightto at- tire himself in a gorgeous uniform, and it was so incon- gruously adorned that he took his seat in that rever- end house. Thecountry ministers stared with all their H3 BOOK OF EDINBURGH ANECDOTE eyes, and one of them exclaimed, " Sure, that is John Home the poet ! What is the meaning of that dress?" " Oh," said Mr. Robert Walker of Edinburgh, "it is only the farce after the play." Eminent lawyers who are also industrious, and even eminent writers, were a feature of the time, but of them I have already spoken and there is little here to add. Monboddo had a remarkable experience in his youth; the veryday,in I736,he returned to Edin- burgh from studying abroad he heard at nightfall a commotion in the street. In nightdress and slippers he stepped from the door and was borne along by a wild mob, not a few of whom were attired as strange- ly as himself It was that famous affair of Captain Porteous, and, nolens volens, he needs must witness that sordid yet picturesque tragedy whose incidents, you are convinced, he never forgot, and often, as an old man, retailed to a newer generation. Like many another Scots lawyer, Lord Kameshad a keen love for the land, keener in his case because it had come to him from his forbears ; but his zeal was not always according to knowledge. One of the " fads " of the time was a wonderful fertilising pow- der. He told one of his tenants that he would be able to carry the manure of an acre of land in his coat pocket, " And be able to bring back the crop in yer waistcoat pouch ? " was the crushing reply. He would have his joke, cruel and wicked, at any cost. To him belongs the well-nigh incredible story of a murder trial at Ayr in 1780. He knew the accused and had played chess with him. " That's checkmate for you, Matthie," he chuckled in ungodly glee when the ver- 144 JAMES BOSWELI Ml an Engraving aft' MEN OF LETTERS IN EDINBURGH diet was recorded. This story, by the way, used to be told of Braxfield, to whom it clearly does not belong, and one wished it did not belong to Karnes either. He spared himself as little as he did others. He lived in New Street, an early old-time improvement on the north side of the Canongate, and from there he went to the Parliament House in a sedan chair. One mor- ning, near the end, he was being helped into it, for he was old and infirm, when James Boswell crossed his path. Jamie was always in one scrape or the other, but this time you fancy he had done something specially notorious. " I shall shortly be seeing your father,"said Kames (old Auchinleck had died that year (1782), as on the 27th of December did Kames himself) ; " have you any message for him ? Shall I tell him how you are getting on ? " You imagine his diabolical grin and Bozzy's confused answer. Beside these quaint figures Lord Hailes, with his ponderous learning, is a mere Dry-as-dust antiquary — the dust lies ever deeper over his many folios ; of his finical exactness there still linger traditions in the Parliament House. It is said he dismissed a case be- cause a word was wrongly spelt in one of the numbers of process. Thus he earned himself a couplet in the onoe famous Court of Session Garlatid. " To judge of this matter I cannot pretend, For justice, my Lords, wants an ' e ' at the end." So wrote Boswell, himself, though he only partly belongs to Edinburgh, not the least interesting figure of our period. There is more than one story of him and Kames. The judge had playfully suggested that Boswell should write his biography ! How devoutly 145 K BOOKOFEDINBURGH ANECDOTE you wish he had. What an entertaining and famous book it had been ! but perhaps he had only it in him to do one biography, and we know how splendid that was. Poor Bozzy once complained to the old judge that even he, Bozzy himself, was occasionally dull. " Homer sometimes nods," said Kames in a reassur- ing tone, but with a grin that promised mischief The other looked as pleased as possible till the old cynic went on : " Indeed, sir, it is the only chance you have of resembling him." Old Auchinleck, his father, was horrified at his son's devotion to Johnson. "Jamie has gaen clean gyte. What do you think, man ? He's done wi' Paoli — he's aff wi' the land-loupin' scoondrel o' a Corsican. Whae's tail do ye think he has preened himsel' tae noo ? A dominie man — an auld dominie who keepit a schule and caa'ed it an Acaademy ! " In fact, the great Samuel pleased none of the Boswell clan except Boswell and Boswell's baby daughter, Auchinleck had many caustic remarks even after he had seen the sage: " He was only a dominie, and the worst-mannered dominie I ever met." So much for the father. The wife was not more favourable : " She had often seen a bear led by a man, but never till now had she seen a man led by a bear." Afterwards, when the famous biography was published, the sons were horribly ashamed both of it and of him. Bozzy has given us so much amusement — we recognise his in- imitable literary touch — that we are rather proud of and grateful to him ; but then, we don't look at the matter with the eyes of his relatives. Johnson was himself in Edinburgh. You remember how he arrived in February 1773 at Boyd's White- 146 MEN OFLETTERS IN EDINBURGH horse Inn off St. Mary's VVynd, not the more famous Inn of that name in the Whitehorse Close down the Canongate ; how angry he was with the waiter for lift- ing with his dirty paw thesugar to put in his lemonade; how, in the malodorous High Street, he pleasantly re- marked to Boswell, " I smell you in the dark " ; how, as he listened at Holyrood to the story of the Rizzio murder, he muttered a line of the old ballad /o/mnze Armst7'07ig s last good-night — " And ran him through the fair bodie." They took him to the Royal Infir- mary, and he noted the inscription " Clean your feet." " Ah," said he, " there is no occasion for putting this at the doors of your churches." The gibe was justified ; he had just looked in at St. Giles', then used for every strange civic purpose, and plastered and twisted about to every strange shape. Most interesting to me is that Sunday morning, 15th August 1773, when Bozzy and Principal Robertson toiled with him up the College Wynd to see the University, and passed by Scott's birthplace. The Wizard of the North was then two years old, and who could guess that his fame in after years would be greater than that of those three emi- nent men of letters put together? In this strange re- mote way do epochs touch one another. No wonder Bozzy 's relatives got tired of his last hobby, his very subject himself got tired. " Sir," said the sage, " you have but two topics, yourself and me. I am sick of both." Yet Bozzy knew what he was about when he stuck to his one topic. After his idol was gone, what was there for him but the bottle? It was one of the earliest recollections of Lord Jeffrey that he had as- sisted as a boy in putting the biographer to bed in a 147 BOOKOFEDINBURGH ANECDOTE stateofabsolute unconsciousness. Next morning Bos- well was told of the service rendered : he clapped the lad on thehead,and complacently congratulated him. " If you go on as you've begun, you may live to be a Bozzy yourself yet." And so much bemused the great- est of biographers vanishes from our sight. CHAPTER SEVEN MEN OF LETTERS. PART II CHAP. SEVEN MEN OF LETTERS TO TURN TO SOME LESSER FIGURES. Hugo Arnot, advocate, is still remembered as author of one of the two standard histories of Edinburgh. No man better known in the streets of the old capital : he was all length and nobreadth. That incorrigible joker, Harry Erskine, found him one daygnawingaspeldrin — a species of cured fish chiefly used to remove the trace of last night's debauch,and prepare the stomach for another bout. It is vended in long thin strips. "You are very like your meat,"said the wit. The Edin- burgh populace called a house which for some time stood solitary on Moutries Hill, afterwards Bunkers Hill, where is now the Register House, " Hugo Ar- not," because the length was out of all proportion to the breadth. One day he found a fishwife cheapen- ing a Bible in Creech's shop ; he had some semi- jocular remarks, probably not in the best taste, at the purchase and the purchaser. " Gude ha mercy on us," said the old lady, " wha wad hae thocht that ony human-like cratur wud hae spokan that way ; but you" she went on with withering scorn — "a perfect atomy." He was known to entertain sceptical opin- ions, and he was pestered with chronic asthma, and panted and wheezed all day long. " If I do not get quit of this," he said, " it will carry me offlike a roc- ket." "Ah, Hugo, my man," said an orthodox but un- kind friend, "but in a contrary direction." He could joke at his own infirmities. A Gilmerton carter pass- ed him bellowing " sand for sale " with a voice that made the street echo. " The rascal," said the exasper- ated author, " spends as much breath in a minute as 151 BOOKOFEDINBURGH ANECDOTE would serve me for a month." Like other Edinburgh folk he migrated to the New Town, to Meuse Lane, in fact, hard by St. Andrew Square. What with his diseases and other natural infirmities, Hugo's temper was of the shortest. He rang his bell in so violent a manner that a lady on the floor above complained. He took to summoning his servant by firing a pistol ; the remedy was worse than the disease. The caustic, bitter old Edinburgh humour was in the very bones of him. He was, as stated, an advocate by profession, and his collection of criminal trials,by the way, is still an authority. Once he was consulted in order that he might help in some shady transaction. He listened with the greatest attention. " What do you suppose me to be? "said he to the client. "A lawyer, an advo- cate," stammered the other. " Oh, I thought you took me for a scoundrel," sneered Arnot as he showed the proposed client the door. A lady who said she was of the same name asked how to get rid of an importu- nate suitor. "Why, marry him," said Hugo testily. "I would see him hanged first," rejoined the lady. The lawyer's face contorted to a grin. " Why, marry him, and by the Lord Harry he will soon hang himself" All very well, but not by such arts is British Themis propitiated. Arnot died in November 1786 when he was not yet complete thirty-seven. He had chosen his burial-place in the churchyard at South Leith, and was anxious to have it properly walled in ere the end, which he clearly foresaw, arrived. It was finished just in time, and with a certain stoical relief this strange mortal departed to take possession. Another well-known Edinburgh character was 152 HENRY MACKENZIE, "THE MAN OF FEELING' From an Engraving nftcr Andrew Gcddes MEN OFLETTERS IN EDINBURGH Henry Mackenzie. Born in 1745 he lived till 1 831, and connects the different periods of Edinburgh literary splendour. His best service to literature was his early appreciation of Burns, but in his own time the Man of Feeling was one of the greatest works of the day, and the Man of the World and ftilia de Roubigni ioX- lowed not far behind. To this age all seems weak, stilted, sentimental to an impossible degree, but Scott and Lockhart, to name but these, read and admired with inexplicable admiration. In ordinary life Mac- kenzie was a hard-headed lawyer, and as keen an at- tendant at a cock main, it was whispered, as Deacon Brodie himself. He told his wife that he'd had a glor- ious night. "Where?" she queried. " Why, at a splen- did fight." " Oh Harry, Harry," said the good lady, " you have only feeling on paper." Tobias Smollett, though not an Edinburgh man, had some connection with the place. His sister, Mrs. Telfer, lived in the house yet shown in theCanongate, at the entrance to St. John Street. Here, after long absence, his mother recognised him by his smile. Ten years afterwards he again went north, and again saw his mother ; he told her that he was very ill and that he was dying. " We'll no' be very lang pairted onie way. If you gang first, I'll be close on your heels. If I lead the way, you'll no' be far ahint me, I'm think- ing," said this more than Spartan parent. But when you read the vivacious Mrs. Winifred Jenkins in the Expedition of Humphrey Clinker, you recognise how good a thing it was for letters that Smollett visited Edinburgh. It is a little odd, but I have no anecdotes to tell 153 BOOK OFEDINBURGH ANECDOTE (the alleged meeting between hi m and old John Brown in Haddington Churchyard is a wild myth) of that characteristic Edinburgh figure, Robert Fergusson, the Edinburgh poet, the native and the lover. He struck a deeper note than Allan Ramasy, has a more intimate touch than Scott, is scarcely paralleled by R. L. Stevenson, who half believed himself a reincar- nation of " my unhappy predecessor on the causey of old Edinburgh " . . . " him that went down — my brother, Robert Fergusson." " Auld Reekie ! thou'rt the canty hole, A bield for mony a cauldrife soul Wha' snugly at thine ingle loll Baith warm and couth, While round they gar the bicker roll To weet their mouth." There you see the side of Edinburgh that most attracted him. He was no worse than his fellows per- haps,but perhaps he could not stand what they stood. It is said that he once gave as an excuse, "Oh, sirs, any- thing to forget my poor mother and these aching fingers." As Mr. H. G. Graham truly says : " It was a poor enough excuse for forgetting himself" He used to croon over that pleasing little trifle, The Birks of Invermay, in Lucky Middlemist's or elsewhere, and dream of trim rural fields he did not trouble to visit. I have no heart to repeat the melancholy story of his lonely death in the Schelles, hard by the old Darien House at the Bristo Port in 1774, at the age of twenty- four. His interest is as a ghost from the Edinburgh underworld, you catch a glimpse of a more vicious Grub Street. There must have been a circle of broken professional men of all sorts, more or less clever, all 154 MEN OFLETTERS IN EDINBURGH needy, all drunken and ready to do anything for a dram. What a crop of anecdotes there was ! But no one gathered, and the memory of it passed away with the actors. Local history that chronicled the oddities of Kames or Monboddo refused to chronicle the pranks of lewd fellows of the baser sort. Only when the wastrel happened to be a genius do we piece to- gether in some sort his career. Whatever one says about Fergusson, you never doubt his genius. It is curious how very occasional is the anecdote of this Caledonian Grub Street. Here is rather a charac- teristic straw which the stream of time has carried down regarding a certain drudge called Stewart. One night, homeless and houseless, he staggered into the ash pit of a primitive steam-engine, and lay down to rest. An infernal din aroused him from his drunk- en slumber ; he saw the furnace opened, grimy black figures stoking the fire and raking the bars of the enormous grate, whilst iron rods and chains clanked around him with infernal din. A tardily awakened conscience hinted where he was. " Good God, has it come to this at last?" he growled in abject terror. Another anecdote, though of a later date, is told in Lockhart's Life of Scott. Constable, the Napoleon of publishers,called the crafty in the CJialdean Manu- script, is reported " a most bountiful and generous patron to the ragged tenants of Grub Street." He gave stated dinners to his "own circle of literary serfs." At one of these David Bridges, "tailor in or- dinary to this northern potentate," acted as croupier. According to instructions he brought with him a new pair of breeches, and for these Alister Campbell and 155 BOOKOFEDINBURGH ANECDOTE another ran a race, and yet this same Campbell was editor oiAlbyns Anthology, 1 8 16, to which Scott con- tributed y