THE MODERN ATHENS, HAVING ALREADY RECEIVED THE AUTHOR, MAKES
PREPARATIONS FOR RECEIVING THE KING.
“The young gudewife o’ Auchinblae,
She was a cannie woman;
She wiped her wi’ a wisp o’ strae,
When her gudeman was comin.”--OLD BALLAD.
THE movements of a people of so much gusto, and grace, and gravity,
as those who had interposed their thickening clouds between my vision
and those municipal and mental glories which I had come to see, could
not choose but do every thing according to the most approved canons of
philosophy; and thus the mighty matter of the royal visitation had to
be received in its beginning, its middle, and its end, before I could
proceed in my legitimate and laudatory vocation. Besides the people who
came, there were the preparations made and the deeds done,--each of
which is well worthy of a chapter.
The rumour of the high honour came upon the Athens like the light of
the morning,--beaming upon the most elevated points, while yet the
general mass remained in shadow. The Lord President of the Court of
Session, the Lord Provost of the City of Edinburgh, the Lord Advocate,
Lady Macconochie, the very Reverend, and (by office and intuition,)
very learned Principal Baird, the Sheriff of the County, Deacon
Knox, of Radical-threshing renown, Mr. Archibald Campbell, and that
fair dame who watches and wipes in Queen Mary’s apartments at the
Holyrood, were the first upon whom the radiance broke; and, the summit
of Ben Nevis gilded by the morning sun, looks not more proudly down
upon the mists of Lochiel or the melancholy waste of Rannoch, than
each and all of those high personages did upon the ungifted sons and
daughters of Edinburgh. They were in a fidget of the first magnitude,
as to what was to be done, and who was to do it. Long and deep were
their deliberations; but, like the Areopagites of the Elder Athens,
themselves and their deliberations were in the dark. Hence, as hope
is the grand resource in such cases, they deputed the Lord President
to seek aid from the Royal Society of Edinburgh,--a society which,
composed of the wisest heads, and prosecuting the wisest subjects,
always says and does the very wisest things in the very wisest manner.
Fortunately the Society was sitting,--doing its incubation, upon a
refutation of Aristotle’s poetics by Sir George M’Kenzie, of Coul,
Bart., and a proposal for lighting all the roads in Scotland with
putrid fish-heads, by Sir John Sinclair. The Lord President opened his
mouth and his case; and each learned head nodded with the solemnity
of that of a Jupiter. The trumpet-call, blown through the nose by a
bandana handkerchief, summoned to the charge the commodity of brains
that each possessed; and each having returned the bandana to its place,
looked as wise as the goddess of the Elder Athens, or even as her
sacred bird. The general question propounded to them ran thus,--“What
was to be done, and by whom?” and the deliverance of their wisdoms
was, that “Every thing ought to be done, and every body ought to do
it”--a response surpassing in profoundity any thing ever uttered by
the Pythoness herself. The countenance of the dignified delegate was
brought parallel to the ceiling; his eyes and mouth had a contest as
to which could become the wider; and, he Macadamized the question
by breaking it into smaller pieces: “What should they say to the
King; what should they give him to eat; and how should they demean
themselves?” It was resolved, as touching the first, that they should
say very little, for fear of errors in propriety or in grammar; but
that they should put in motion the addressing-machinery, of which
official men in Scotland had so often felt the benefit, and give, in
“change for a Sovereign” as it were, two hundred and forty of those
copper coins, for their own benefit, and that of the royal closet. The
second point was more puzzling: A king would not care for sheep’s-head
or haggis, and as for French cookery, that would be no rarity. Some
lamented that the Airthrie whale was petrified, and that Dr. Barclay’s
elephant was nothing but bones; and Sir John Sinclair recommended three
mermaids dressed entire,--of which he assured them there were plenty
on the coast of Caithness. Upon this point there was a difference of
opinion; and they resolved to board the King upon the enemy, by getting
ten fat bucks from that notorious Whig the Honourable W. Maule, as his
Grace of Montrose had only one to spare. Upon the third point their
decision was equally summary and clear, “Every one was to do the best
that he could.”
Those sage counsels having been given and received, the loyalty of
Athens was set fire to in a number of places, and anon the whole city
was in a blaze. Lords of session, spies, men who had eaten flesh and
drank wine for the glory of the throne, excisemen, crown-lawyers,
holders and expectants of crown-patronages, address-grinders,
beaconeers, and all the interminable file of that which had supported
the loyalty and existence of Scotland in the worst of times, shone
forth with first and fiercest lustre. In that great tattle-market
(hereafter to be described,) the Parliament-house, you would have found
the Tory barristers--the current of whose loyalty is seldom much broken
by briefs, clubbing together, cackling as though they had been the sole
geese of salvation to the capitol, and stretching their mandibles,
and showing their feathers at the more-employed and laborious Whigs,
as a race soon to be exterminated. The disposal of majesty himself
was committed to the Great Unknown, who sagely counselled that they
should make a still greater unknown of the King, by mewing him up
in Dalkeith-house, where he could commune only with a few of the
chosen; and, that they should bring him before the public only once or
twice, to be worshipped and wondered at, more as a favour of _their_
procuring, than of his own Royal pleasure. How little they knew of his
Majesty, and how much they had overrated their own importance occurred
not to them at the time, but they found it out afterwards.
The next weighty question was what the city should do in her municipal
capacity; and, it was ordered _in limine_ that the nightly tattoo
of “The Flowers of Edinburgh,” which from time immemorial had been
played in the streets, should be suspended during the solemnity, under
pain of escheat of the instruments, allenarly for the private benefit
and use of the Lord Provost and magistrates. Every one who has seen
Edinburgh must know the perfect resemblance which her High-street--that
street in which magistracy is pre-eminently dominant, and where shows
are wont to be exhibited--bears to the back-bone of a red-herring.
Westward you have the castle in form, in elevation, and in grandeur,
the very type of the head; eastward, at the further extremity, you
have the palace of Holyrood, which from its lowly situation among
cesspools and bankrupts, and its usual gloomy and forlorn condition,
may very properly be likened to the tail; the intermediate street
is the spine; while the wynds and closes which stretch to the North
Loch on the one side, and the Cow-gate on the other, are the perfect
counterpart of the ribs. This High-street was cleared of some old
incumbrances, had exhibition-booths erected along its whole extent; and
it was expressly ordered that, as the King passed along, no frippery
or foul linen should be exhibited from even the third garret windows;
and, that during the whole sojourn of royalty, no man should enter the
rendezvouses in the closes by the street end, but come in by the back
stairs; _more clerici_, in the same fashion as during the sittings
of the General Assembly. But, it would be endless to notice all the
sagacious orders and prompt actings: suffice it to say, that every
thing which could be thought of was ordered, and every thing ordered
was done.
The people of the Athens are, even upon ordinary occasions, much
more attentive to their dress than to their address; and, therefore,
it was to be expected that they should be so upon so momentous an
occasion. Besides the tailors’ boxes of which I had felt a specimen on
my journey, there was work for every pair of sheers and needle in the
city. Webs of tartan, wigs, pieces of muslin, paste diamonds, ostrich
feathers, combs as well for use as for ornament, were driving over the
whole place like snow-flakes at Christmas. But, the hurry and harvest
were by no means confined to the Caledonian shop-keepers. The rumour
had reached the purlieus of Leicester-square, and had been heard in the
fashionable repositories of Holywell. The remnant of Jacob gathered
themselves together, resolving to come in for their share of the milk
and honey which was flowing in the new-made Canaan of Scotland; while
the daughters of Judah put tires upon their heads, and thronged away
to spoil the Amorites northward of the Tweed. It were impossible to
describe the wares brought by the sons of Jacob,--it were needless to
tell of those brought by the daughters of Israel. The plume which had
nodded upon the brows of fifty queens at Old Drury, was refurbished
to adorn some proud and pedigreed dame of the north; swords of most
harmless beauty--having nothing of steel about them but the hilts, were
crossed most bewitchingly in every thoroughfare, accompanied by old
opera-hats, bag-wigs, buttons, and every thing which could give the
outward man the guise and bearing of a courtier. Before these elegant
repositories slender clerks and sallow misses might be seen ogling
for the live-long day, and departing in sorrow at nightfall, because
the small tinkle in their pockets was unable to procure for them even
one morning or evening’s use of that garb, the fee simple of which
had cost Moses seven shillings and sixpence, and the translation and
transmission a crown-piece. Moses indeed found that he had something
else than Ludgate-hill and Regent-street to contend with; for, every
ribbon-vending son of the North had garnished his windows with trinkets
and ornaments which, in appearance, in quality, and in price, would
have done honour to Solomon himself.
But wherefore should I waste time on the ornaments of individuals, when
the garnishing of the whole city was before my eyes,--when, from the
pier of Leith to the farthest extremity of Edinburgh, every act of the
coming drama stood rubric and impressed upon men and women, and things.
The first, important enough upon all occasions, had now put on looks of
ten-fold wisdom and sagacity. The second, all bewitching as they are in
their native loveliness, were subjecting their necks to the process of
bleaching by chlorine gas, laying their locks in lavender, sleeping in
“cream and frontlets,” and applying all manner of salves and unctions
to the lip, in order to make it plump and seemly for the high honour
of royal salutation. I have no evidence that any daughter of the North
fed upon the flesh of vipers in order to induce fairness in her own, as
little have I evidence that there was need for such a regimen; I did
hear, however, that the lady of one baronet took up her lodgings for
two successive nights in a warm cow’s-hide, and that she of a senator
of the college of justice wrought wonders upon her bust by a cataplasm
of rump-steak, but I cannot vouch for the facts, or set my _probatum_
to them as successful experiments in kaleiosophy. So much for the first
blush of preparation with the men and women; I need not add, that like
the streams of Edina, it became rich as it ran.
The attitudes of things were a good deal more diversified and puzzling;
and, perhaps the shortest way of getting rid of them would be to
adopt the laundress’ phrase, and say they were “got up;” but this,
though summary and in the main correct, would neither be just nor
satisfactory,--because, in all modern stage displays, the actors would
cut but a sorry figure were it not for the scenery.
As, however, the scenery arises out of the drama itself, while the
actors have an existence and character off the boards, it will be
necessary to premise an outline of the plot. That was arranged into
the following acts, with as many interludes public and private as
could be crammed into the time and space. The King was to land--to be
received by whoever should be accounted the greatest and most loyal
man in Scotland, which some said was Lord President Hope, some Bailie
Blackwood, some Sir Walter Scott, others Sir Alexander Gordon, of
Culvennan, a few Principal Baird, and even Professor Leslie had his own
vote and another--he was to shake hands with Bailie Macfie, of Leith,
(with his glove on as it were,) then he was to pass along streets,
through triumphal arches, over bridges, and in at gates, to the ancient
palace of the Holyrood, where the old throne from Buckingham-House had
been darned and done up for his reception, by way of reading him an
introductory lecture upon Scotch economy. Such was to be the first act
of the drama, and the preparations for it were peculiarly splendid. The
line of progress, which was both long and broad, was to be thronged
with people; the devices and mottoes were to be got up, to let the
King know that an illumination was coming; the ladies were instructed
to fidget and wriggle in the windows, by way of hint that there would
be a dance; the presence of Sir William Curtis made it certain there
would be turtle-soup; the curl of the Reverend Dr. Lamond’s nose
threatened a sermon; the archery and men with white sticks pointed to
a procession; the hungry looks of the Burgh magistrates and local men
in authority, had obvious reference to a levee; the pouting lips of
the ladies rendered a drawing-room indispensable; and the bevies of
breechless Highlanders and bandy-legged Southerns in similar costume,
were pretty sure tokens of a theatrical exhibition,--and, from the
extreme officiousness of Glengarry, the Kouli Khan of all the Celts,
it was pretty apparent that that exhibition could be nothing else than
Rob Roy--that prince of chieftains and cow-stealers. Thus, while the
first act was to be perfect in itself, it was shrewdly contrived that
it should develop the sequence and economy of the others; but still, to
make assurance double-sure, the gazette writer for Scotland, who had
been a sinecurist since the creation, was kept drudging at delineations
of doings and programmes of processions from morning till night, and
sometimes from night till morning.
When the whole matter had been planned,--when the officers of the
household for Scotland had got their robes of state,--when the archers
had learned to walk without treading down the heels of each other’s
shoes,--when the tailor, the barber, and the dancing-master had done
the needful upon the Provost and Bailies,--when the tails of the
Highland chiefs had run quarantine,--when the edge of the parsons’
appetites had been a little blunted,--when the wonted tattoo had
ceased,--when lamps had been hung upon the front of every house,--when
the ladies had drilled themselves in train-bearing, by the help of
sheets and table-cloths, and learned to do their salutations without
any inordinate smacking,--and when the elements of dazzling and of din
had been collected upon all the heights, in the likeness of bone-fires,
and bombs, and bagpipes,--it wanted only the placing of the royal foot
upon the pier at Leith, to bring all those mighty things into forward
and fervent action.
Amid all those mighty preparations, there was one thing which was very
remarkable, and which throws perhaps more light both upon the morale of
the spectacle and the feelings of the people, than any other that could
be mentioned. The Scots, generally, are allowed to be a people of song
and of sentiment. There is a feeling in their melodies, an alternate
pathos and glee in their songs, and an enthusiasm and romance in their
legends, which are perhaps not equalled, and certainly not surpassed
by those of any nation in the world. This may with truth be said of
the nation, taking the average of times and of places; and, when it is
considered that the Modern Athens holds herself up to the world as a
sort of concentrated tincture or spirit of all that is fine or feeling
in the country,--as being the throne of learning--the chosen seat of
sentiment and of song; furthermore, when upon this occasion there was
gathered in and about the Athens, all the lights which are acknowledged
as shining, and all the fires which are recognised as burning, in taste
and talent throughout Scotland; it must be acknowledged, that something
might have been expected to go upon record worthy of such a people at
such a time. It had been known that the great Seneschal of all those
royal musters,--the ears of the Lord Advocate, the mouth of the Lord
President, the eyes of the Lord Provost--to hear, to speak, and to
stare, at mighty things as it were;--it had been known that, at the
mere loosening of a bookseller’s purse-strings, his verse had flowed
rapid as the Forth, and his prose spread wide as its estuary; and
surely it was not too much to hope that he would consecrate in song,
or conserve in story, an event which was so congenial to his avowed
sentiments, and which must have been (from the fond and forward part
he played in it) so gratifying to his individual vanity. When, too, it
was recollected that this famed and favoured servant of the muse had
gone, invited or not invited, to London at the Coronation, lest the
Laureat should break down under the compound pressure of solemnity and
sack, and the glory slide into oblivion for the want of a fit recorder,
it was surely to be hoped that he would have done justice to the royal
show in his own country, and in his own city. But, _ecce ridiculus
mus!_ the pen which had been so swift, and the tongue which had been
so glib at the bidding of a mere plebeian bookseller, were still and
mute when a king was the god, and an assembled nation the worshippers.
He who had made the world to ring again with the shouts of Highland
freebooters, and the din of whose tournaments yet sounds in our ears,
failed at the very point of need! “Ah, where was Roderick then! One
blast upon _his_ bugle horn” had been worth all the senseless vulgarity
from Princes’-street, and all the piddling inanity of Tweedale-court.
It was wished for, it was called for, it was imperious upon every
principle--not of consistency merely, but of gratitude; but it came
not; and all that stands recorded as having come from his otherwise
fluent pen upon the occasion, is a paltry and vulgar drinking song,
which it would disgrace the most wretched Athenian _caddie_ to troll
in the lowest pot-house of the Blackfriars wynd.
If one whose piping is so gratefully received and so amply rewarded,
and whose loyalty has been withal so abundant and so profitable,
remained mute or degenerated into mere foolery upon the occasion, what
could be expected from the provincial and unhired dabblers in verse,
who write only to the casual inspiration of love or liquor, and melt in
madrigals or madden in catches according as Cupid or Bacchus holds the
principal sway! Nothing, I maintain, and therefore the Great Unknown is
guilty not only of his own omission, but of that of all his countrymen.
If he had done as he ought,--done in a way worthy of himself--putting
the occasion entirely out of the question, there is not a doubt but the
whole drove would have been at his heels. As the case stands, whatever
may be the comparative merits of the Whig _becks_ and Tory _booings_,
the poetic eclat of the visit of George the Fourth must succumb to that
of the descent of Jamie in sixteen hundred and eighteen.
How is this to be accounted for?--I can see why the mouths of the minor
poets must have remained shut; but, to find an apology for the master
one, is no such easy matter; and perhaps the safe way for all parties
would be to place his salvation in consternation by day, and cups by
night. Still, it is remarkable that, though this was the only royal
visit with which Scotland had, during the reigns of six monarchs, been
honoured, there is no where existing a single decent page, either in
verse or in prose, in commemoration of it; and, if the long preparation
which was made for it, the bustle which it occasioned, and the crowds
which it drew together, be considered, one would feel disposed thence
to conclude, that the Athenians, instead of being that literary people
which they are represented, are a set of ignorant barbarians. This
however is, as themselves say, not the fact, and therefore there must
be a cause for their supineness. That cause, however, being beyond the
depth of my philosophy, must be left to their own.
While the Athens was making all preparations to receive the king,
and the king all speed to visit the Athens, the elements, those
outlaws from even royal authority, created a little anxiety on both
sides. The weather, which had been propitious at the outset, became
(notwithstanding that the mayor of Scarbro’, in his zeal to present a
loyal address at the end of a long stick, had been chucked into the
sea, like another Jonah, and not swallowed up by a whale) not a little
unpleasant, as the royal squadron approached that singular rock, once
the abode of state prisoners, and now of Solon geese, denominated the
Bass, and resembling more than any thing else a great pigeon-pie riding
at anchor. The chosen had arranged that this same rock, emblematical of
the ancient manners as a prison-house, and haply of the modern men as a
gooserie, should be the first Scottish soil trodden by the royal foot.
Some said, that this was intended to show that, though the said chosen
were unable to contend with their political opponents in argument,
they had the power on their side, and could send them to prison; but
that is a point without the scope of my speculation, and it is of no
consequence, as the Father of the sea would not permit the Father of
the British people to land.
When a day and night more than had been calculated upon were expired,
without any tidings of the royal squadron, the gloom of the Athenian
authorities became sad in the extreme. Here you would find one wight
twining up the steep acclivities of Arthur’s Seat, jerking his fatigued
corpus upon the pile of coal which had been collected upon the top for
a bon-fire, and straining his owl-like eyes to penetrate the dense fog
of the eastern horizon, like a conjuror ogling the volume of futurity;
and there would go a frowsy bailie or fat sheriff hotching and blowing
to the observatory on the Calton Hill, keeping the anxious window of
his wisdom for ten minutes at the telescope, and leaving it with
a growl that he could “see nothing,”--and how could he, bless his
honest soul! for he had not removed the brass cap from its opposite
extremity? No matter: bailies and sheriffs must understand Erskine’s
Institutes, but a telescope was quite another thing. Amid this looking
and lamenting, the wind freshened, and it rained; and there were
also one or two distant growls of thunder, which fear very naturally
converted into signals of distress from his Majesty’s yacht. Upon this,
the mental agony became immense; and, saving an attempt on the part of
Kerne of the Clan Donnochie, to open with his dirk a free passage for
the soul of a Canon-gate constable, no event had broken the gloom of
that dismal Tuesday. “Mirk Monday” had long been a day accursed in the
Scottish calendar, and it was now feared that his younger brother was
to reign in his stead.
Next morning was little better; and though all the loyal spirits
of Athens scrambled to the heights to call the king from the
fog-enshrouded and “vasty deep,” there was no answer to their call,
save the hollow booming of the east wind, and the melancholy scream
of these sea-fowl which had escaped from the storm. They who had been
instrumental in bringing their sovereign into such peril, wist not what
to do; and, as is the case with most men in such a situation, they
did nothing,--at least nothing which could increase his safety, or
accelerate his arrival.
Still the preparations went on; and, in the sadness and anxiety of the
day, the drilling of the highlanders and archers--who had become so
expert as to face all possible ways at a single word of command--were
not a jot abated, while the gloom of the night was broken by the
clinking of hammers erecting scaffolding in every thoroughfare, as
well as by pattering feet of official and other men learning to “make
their legs” against the levee, and the scratching of grinders’ pens
translating, redacting, and otherways brushing up loyal and dutiful
addresses, which came before them on all complexions of paper, and in
all concatenations of orthography. Nor were these glimpses through
the gloom confined to sounds; the sights were equally delectable.
Here, one might catch a sight of some single star, not of the first
magnitude, twisting her face into all expressions, and her neck into
all attitudes, in order to find the barleycorn of beauty in the bushel
of chaff; and there again might be beheld a whole constellation,
bedraperied with sheets as aforesaid, streaming forward through some
long gallery, tailed and terrible as comets, and then retreating
backwards with perplexed and puzzled steps, tucking up the sheets as
they progressed, and occasionally dropping like falling stars from the
firmament of their practice.
Morning dawned; and the sleepless eyes and speculationless telescopes
again faired forth to scan the gloomy east. One from the top of the
Calton, cried “There is the Royal George! I know her by the spread of
her sails, and the sweep of her oars.” The crowd looked toward the
sea, and saw nothing. The observer looked at his telescope: a moth had
settled upon the object glass, with downy wings elevated above, and
feet and feelers extended below. Still the crowd collected, till every
height commanding a view of the point at which the Forth mingles its
broad waters with the ocean, was absolutely paved with human beings,
all worshipping towards the east, with more intense devotion than a
caravan of Moslem pilgrims in the desert.
Toward mid-day, the more experienced eye, or better-ordered glass
of the port-admiral at Leith, descried the smoke of the assisting
steam-boats. Up went the royal standard; every gun of every ship in the
roads told the tidings; and instantly the echoes of cliff and castle
rang to the shouts of an hundred thousand joyous voices. All was bustle
and scramble. Heralds marshalling here, clans mustering there, and
people crowding everywhere; while the royal squadron, now aided by
a gentle but favourable breeze, stood majestically toward the roads,
where it anchored about two o’clock. Anon the water was peopled with
loyalty; the splendour of dresses and of flags dazzled the eye; and the
swell of all sorts of noises deafened the ear. The equilibrium of the
clouds was unsettled; and, just as preparations were making for the
landing, rain fell in torrents. Lest so much finery should be spoiled
in the first scene of the drama, the grand ceremony was postponed till
the next morning. The king, in the mean time, received at the hands
of Sir Walter Scott, a St. Andrew’s cross, the gift of some ladies
of Scotland, whose names (prudently perhaps) never were distinctly
published. Nearly at the same time with this, came a messenger of
another description. He told that the Marquis of Londonderry was no
more; and thus, even the royal joy was not wholly unmingled. Still
the king showed himself to his aquatic visitors in the most courteous
manner; and, perhaps, the two events were the better borne that they
came together. Thus the Athens had another night for preparation; and,
as it was not a night of fear, that preparation went on with increased
activity and spirit. She had now seen the king; and but a night was to
elapse, ere the gratification was to be mutual, by the king seeing her.
On his part, indeed, it should have been greatest, as she had given
herself most trouble, and would continue longest to feel the cost.