EDINBURGH THE PICTURESQUE
It was late in the afternoon when we first arrived in the most
beautiful city in Scotland, and the sun’s rays lay nearly level.
Between the old town on the hill--inhabited and garrisoned, perhaps,
from prehistoric times and sloping down from the castle-crowned
rock--and the new modern fashionable quarter, with sunny spaces and
broad avenues, runs a deep ravine. In old times this depression
contained a lake called the “Nor’ Loch,” which, having been drained
long ago, is used by the railways. Thus entering Edinburgh, by the
cellar, as it were, we must ascend several pairs of stairs from the
Waverly Station, to reach the ordinary street level.
Seeing far above us the hotel to which we wished to go we walked up
skyward toward it. At the top of the stairs, turning to look, we were
at once “carried to Paradise on the stairways of surprise.” One of
those moments in life, never to be forgotten, as when one beholds for
the first time Niagara, or has his initial view of the ocean, or stands
in presence of a monarch, was ours, as we gazed over toward the old
city and the cloud-lands of history. We had known that Edinburgh was
handsome, historic, and renowned, but had not dreamed that it was so
imposing, so magnificent, so unique in all Europe.
Beneath us lay the long, deep ravine, now threaded with the glittering
metal bands of the railway and planted with parks and gardens brilliant
with flowers. High on the opposite bank, and sweeping up toward the
summit, lay the old city. Its lofty irregular masses of stone buildings
and towers, with the castle crowning all, seemed like a mirage, so
weird and unearthly was this unexpected appearance of “the city set
upon a hill.”
We gazed long at the enchanting sight and then turned to visit the
chief avenue of the new city, Princes Street--a perfect glory of
attractive homes, with broad spaces rich in gardens and statuary, the
whole effect suggesting taste and refinement. This we believe, despite
Ruskin’s fiery anathema of modern taste.
[Illustration: EDINBURGH]
A splendid monument to Sir Walter Scott, three hundred feet high and
costing $90,000, stands in the centre of the space opposite our hotel.
Though in richest Gothic style and a gem of art, it was built by a
self-taught architect. Not far away, Professor Wilson, Allan Ramsay,
Robert Burns, and other sons of Scotland repose in bronze or marble
dignity. Indeed, the new city is particularly rich in monuments of
every description and quality. Edinburgh’s parks and open spaces are
unusually numerous. Even the cemeteries are full of beauty and charm,
for it is a pleasure to read the names of old friends, unseen, indeed,
but whom we learned to love so long ago through their books.
To-day the American greets in bronze his country’s second father, whose
ancestors once dwelt on the coin, or colony on the Lind; whence Father
Abraham’s family name, Lincoln. How we boys, in the Union army in 1863,
used to sing, “We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand
strong”! How in 1916, the men of the four nations of the United
Kingdom, who have formed Kitchener’s army, sang their merry response to
duty’s call, in the same music and spirit, and in much the same words!
Edinburgh is really the heart of the old shire of Midlothian, for
it is the central town of the metropolitan county, with a long and
glorious history. After James I, the ablest man of the Stuart family,
was murdered, on Christmas night, A.D. 1437, Edinburgh became the
recognized capital of the kingdom, for neither Perth, nor Scone, nor
Stirling, nor Dunfermline was able to offer proper security to royalty
against the designs of the turbulent nobles. From this date Edinburgh,
with its castle, was selected as the one sure place of safety for the
royal household, the Parliament, the mint, and the government offices.
Thereupon in “Edwin’s Burgh” began a growth of population that soon
pressed most inconveniently upon the available space, which was very
restricted, since the people must keep within the walls for the sake
of protection. The building of very high houses became a necessity.
The town then consisted only of the original main way, called “High
Street,” reaching to the Canon Gate, and a parallel way on the south,
long, narrow, and confined, called the “Cow Gate.” It was in the days
when the sole fuel made use of was wood that Edinburgh received its
name of “Auld Reekie,” or “Old Smoky.”
In other words, feudal and royal Edinburgh was a walled space,
consisting of two long streets, sloping from hilltop to flats,
with houses of stone that rose high in the air. Somehow, such an
architectural formation, which might remind a Swiss of his native Mer
de Glace and its _aiguilles_, recalls to the imaginative but irreverent
American the two long parallel series of rocks, which he may see on
the way to California, called “The Devil’s Slide.” These avenues of
old Edinburgh, so long and not very wide, had communication each with
the other by means of about one hundred dark, narrow cross-alleys
or “closes,” between the dense clusters of houses. Sometimes they
were called “wynds,” and in their shadowy recesses many a murder,
assassination, or passage-at-arms took place, when swords and dirks,
as in old Japan, formed part of a gentleman’s daily costume. In
proportions, but not in character or quality of the wayfarers, these
two Scottish streets are wonderfully like the road to heaven.
These houses were not homes, each occupied by but one family. They were
rather like the modern apartment houses, consisting of a succession
of floors or flats, each forming a separate suite of living-rooms,
so that every structure harbored many households. Of such floors
there were seldom fewer than six, and sometimes ten or twelve, the
edifices towering to an immense height; and, because built upon an
eminence, rendered still more imposing. It was toward the middle of the
eighteenth century before the well-to-do citizens left these narrow
quarters for more extensive and level areas beyond the ravine. There is
now no suggestion of aristocracy here, for these are now real tenement
houses. The hygienic situation, however, even though the tenants are
humble folk, reveals a vast improvement upon the days when elegant
lords and ladies inhabited these lofty rookeries, which remind one of
the Cliff Dwellings of Arizona--or those modern “cliff dwellings,” the
homes of the luxurious literary club men on the lake-front of Chicago.
In old days it was a common practice to throw the slops and garbage
out of the upper windows into the street below. The ordinary word of
warning, supposed to be good Scotch and still in use, is “Gardeloo,”
which is only a corruption of the French “Gardez de l’eau” (Look out
for the water). It is but one of a thousand linguistic or historic
links with Scotland’s old friend and ally, France.
In fact, until near the nineteenth century, Edinburgh’s reputation for
dirt, though it was shared with many other European cities in which our
ancestors dwelt, was proverbial, especially when refuse of all sorts
was flung from every story of the lofty houses. From the middle of the
street to the houses on both sides lay a vast collection of garbage
ripening for transportation to the farms when spring opened. In this
the pigs wallowed when driven in, at the close of the day, from the
beech or oak woods by the hog-reeve. The prominent features of the
prehistoric kitchen middens, which modern professors so love to dig
into, were, in this High Street, in full bloom and the likeness was
close.
How different, in our time, when municipal hygiene has become, in
some places at least, a fine art! There is a reason why “the plague”
no longer visits the British Isles. Nor, as of old, is “Providence”
so often charged with visiting “mysterious” punishment upon humanity.
Science has helped man to see himself a fool and to learn that
cleanliness is next to godliness. The modern Scot, for the most part,
believes that laziness and dirt are the worst forms of original sin.
Yet it took a long course in the discipline of cause and effect to
make “Sandy” fond of soap, water, and fumigation. In this, however, he
differed, in no whit, from our other ancestors in the same age.
After seeing Switzerland, and studying the behavior of glaciers, with
their broad expanse at the mountain-top, their solidity in the wide
valleys, and then, farther down, their constriction in a narrow space
between immovable rocks, which, resisting the pressure of the ice-mass,
force it upward into pinnacles and tower-like productions, I thought
ever afterwards of the old city of Edinburgh as a river, yet not of ice
but of stone. Flowing from the lofty summit whereon the castle lay,
the area of human habitation was squeezed into the narrower ridge,
between ancient but now valueless walls, which seemed to force the
human dwellings skyward. Yet it was not through the pressure of nature,
but because of the murderous instincts of man, with his passions of
selfishness and love of destruction, that old Edinburgh took its shape.
On our first visit, to cross from our hotel in the new city and over
into the ancient precincts, we walked above the ravine, over a high
arched stone bridge, and turning to the right climbed up High Street
to the castle, and rambled on the Esplanade. This is the picture--it
is Saturday afternoon and a regiment of soldiers in Highland costume
have been parading. Yet, besides the warriors, you can see plenty of
other men in this pavonine costume, with their gay plaids, bare legs,
and showy kilts. We hear a strange cry in the streets and then see, for
the first time, the Edinburgh fishwoman in her curious striped dress
of short skirts and sleeves, queer-looking fringed neck-cover, and
striped apron. Her little daughter dresses like her, for the costume is
hereditary. On her shoulders is a huge basket of fish bound by a strap
over her head. These fish peddlers are said to be a strange race of
people living, most of them, at Leith, and rarely intermarrying outside
of their own community.
At the castle we see that the moat, portcullis, and sally port are
still there. We pass through the outer defences, which have so often
echoed with battle-cries and the clang of claymores, for this old
castle has been taken and retaken many times. Reaching what are now the
soldiers’ barracks, we see a little room in which Mary Queen of Scots
gave birth to James the Sixth of Scotland and First of England, in whom
the two thrones of the island were united. It seems a rough room for a
queen to live in.
The ascent of High Street is much like climbing a staircase, resting
on landings at the second, third, or fourth floor. When, however, one
reaches the top and scans the glorious panorama, he feels like asking,
especially, as he sees that the highest and oldest building is Queen
Margaret’s Chapel,--a house of worship,--“Does God live here?”
Of all the places of interest which we saw within or near the great
citadel, there was one little corner of earth, with rocky environment
but without deep soil, set apart as a cemetery for soldiers’ pets and
mascots. The sight touched us most deeply. Here were buried, with
appropriate memorials and inscriptions, probably twenty of the faithful
dumb servants of man, mostly dogs, from which their masters had not
loved to part.
It compels thought to recall the fact that, in large measure, man is
what he is because of his dumb friends. What would he be without the
horse, the dog, the cow, the domesticated beasts of burden, and our
dumb friends generally? Without the white man, the Iroquois of America
and the Maoris of New Zealand would undoubtedly have arisen into a
higher civilization, had they been possessed of beasts of draught or
burden, or which gave food, protection, or manifold service. Could they
have made early use of the wonderful gifts of the finer breeds of the
dog and the horse, what steps of advancement might they not have taken?
How far would the Aztecs, Incas, and Algonquins have advanced without
domestic fowls and cattle? What would the Japanese islanders have been,
without the numerous domestic animals imported from China in historic
times? What would Europe and America be, bereft of the gifts they have
both received from Asia?
How striking are the narratives of the early colonists in America,
that reveal to us the fact that the aboriginal Indian had only a
wolf-dog of diminutive size and slight powers, while the canine
breeds of Europe not only showed more varied and higher qualities,
but were larger in size. Of these strange creatures, the red men were
usually more afraid than of their white owners. How surprising was the
experience of the Mexicans, who, on beholding the Spanish cavaliers,
cased in steel, thought the horse and the rider were one animal! What
would South America and her early savages have been, if left without
the friends of man imported from the Asian continent?
As at The Hague and at Delft, one notes with the statue of William
the Silent the little dog that saved his life; so at Edinburgh we see
at the feet of the effigy of Sir Walter, the poet and romancer, his
favorite dog Maida. Few episodes are more touching than that of the dog
Lufra, in Canto V of the “Lady of the Lake.”
After such a picture of mutual devotion between man and brute, it
seems little wonder that in Scotland has been bred what is perhaps
the noblest type of canine life. In the physical characteristics of
speed, alertness, fleetness, the Scotch collie is second to none in
the kingdom of dogs, while in the almost human traits of loyalty to
his master and devotion to his interests, this friend of man crowns an
age-long evolution from the wild. Happily in art, which is the praise
of life, Scotland’s collie and hound have found the immortality of
man’s appreciation. This is shown, not only in the word paintings of
her poets and romancers, but on the canvas of Landseer, the Shakespeare
of dogs. In the Highlands this English painter found some of his
noblest inspirations.
Edinburgh, besides being a brain-stimulant, because it is the focus of
Scottish history, is also a heart-warmer. Holyrood Palace, Arthur’s
Seat, Grey Friar’s Churchyard, St. Giles’s Church, the University,
Calton Hill--what memories do they conjure up, what thought compel? A
Scottish Sabbath--how impressive! One can no more write the history of
Scotland or pen a description of the country and people, and leave out
religion, than tell of Greece or Japan and make no mention of art.