Transcriber’s Note
Page 76 — conquerers changed to =conquerors=
Page 171 — expecially changed to =especially=
Page 226 — Funicolà changed to =Funiculà=
AROUND THE CLOCK IN EUROPE
[Illustration:
PIAZZA SAN MARCO FROM THE GRAND CANAL _Page 305_]
AROUND THE CLOCK IN
EUROPE
A Travel-Sequence
BY
CHARLES FISH HOWELL
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
HAROLD FIELD KELLOGG
[Illustration]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1912
COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY CHARLES FISH HOWELL
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
_Published October 1912_
TO
HELEN EDITH HOWELL
_Sweet the memory is to me_
_Of a land beyond the sea._
LONGFELLOW.
IN EXPLANATION
The pages that follow should best account for themselves, of course,
but for the satisfaction of those who very properly require some
general conception of a project before definitely entering upon it, the
author begs to say that he has here sought to visualize to the reader
the appearance and the life of these cities at the hours indicated,
and to preserve, as well, the distinctive atmosphere of each. He has
endeavored to catch and present faithful impressions of the streets,
their kaleidoscopic animation, and the activities and characteristics
of the people; to touch the pen-pictures with a light overwash of the
racial and national peculiarities that distinguish each, and to invest
them with what insight, sympathy, and enthusiasm he is capable of. It
is “fitting the scene with the apposite phrase,” as Mr. Howells has
so aptly described the process and as he himself has so wonderfully
exemplified it. A formidable undertaking? Indeed, yes; but there is the
dictum of Mr. Browning that the purpose swells the account.
These, then, are impressionistic sketches. They are of the moment only.
It has been sought, most of all, to give them just that character. They
have been written as reflecting the probable observations and emotions
of visitors of normal enthusiasm during these hours and in these
environs. Under such conditions, it is well to remember, every active
mind has its sudden, drifting excursions afield; something in the
visible, present surroundings whimsically invokes the subtle genii of
Memory and Imagination, and one is whisked off in a breath, and without
rhyme or reason, to the most ultimate and alluring Isles of Thought.
These swift and scarcely accountable flights are the common experience
of all travelers, and the author has felt it to be a part of his task
to take proper cognizance of them.
Travel is generally conceded to be one of the most informing and
diverting of engagements, and to gain in both particulars in proportion
to the favorableness of the conditions under which it is prosecuted.
It is, therefore, a satisfaction to be in position to afford readers
advantages scarcely obtainable elsewhere. Discarding conventions of
time and space, the author undertakes to give them twelve _consecutive_
happy hours in Europe,—once around the clock,—always endeavoring
to secure the most favorable union of hour and place. And though
there may be dissent from his judgment concerning the superiority of
this combination or that, there can hardly be two opinions as to the
perfection of the transportation facilities. The latter eliminate time
and space, and convey the reader from city to city and from point to
point, with no discomfort or inconvenience whatever, and without the
loss of so much as a tick of the watch.
With foot in the stirrup, it may be added that there has been an
earnest desire to entertain those whom circumstances have hitherto kept
at home, as also to revive to memory golden recollections for travelers
who have already passed along these pleasant ways. What is here offered
is just a new portfolio of sketches from Nature; the touch of another
but reverent hand on the old and well-loved scenes. Surely there can be
no better reason for any book than a desire to share with others the
happiness experienced by
THE AUTHOR.
CONTENTS
EDINBURGH—1 P.M. TO 2 P.M. 1
ANTWERP—2 P.M. TO 3 P.M. 33
ROME—3 P.M. TO 4 P.M. 69
PRAGUE—4 P.M. TO 5 P.M. 101
SCHEVENINGEN—5 P.M. TO 6 P.M. 135
BERLIN—6 P.M. TO 7 P.M. 153
LONDON—7 P.M. TO 8 P.M. 183
NAPLES—8 P.M. TO 9 P.M. 215
HEIDELBERG—9 P.M. TO 10 P.M. 249
INTERLAKEN—10 P.M. TO 11 P.M. 273
VENICE—11 P.M. TO MIDNIGHT 299
PARIS—MIDNIGHT TO 1 A.M. 329
ILLUSTRATIONS
PIAZZA SAN MARCO FROM THE GRAND CANAL (page 305) _Frontispiece_
EDINBURGH CASTLE 1
EDINBURGH, PRINCES STREET 4
THE WHOLE FAMILY 33
ANTWERP, FROM THE SCHELDT 42
IN THE GARDENS OF THE VATICAN 69
ROME, THE PIAZZA DI SPAGNA 90
THE PULVERTURM 101
PRAGUE, THE CASTLE FROM THE OLD BRIDGE 108
DUTCH GIRLS ARE ALWAYS KNITTING 135
SCHEVENINGEN BEACH 140
IN THE SIEGES-ALLÉE 153
BERLIN, UNTER DEN LINDEN 160
TRAFALGAR SQUARE 183
LONDON, ST. PAUL’S FROM UNDER WATERLOO BRIDGE 212
MARGHERITA 215
THE BAY OF NAPLES 220
A HEIDELBERG STUDENT 249
HEIDELBERG, FROM THE CASTLE TERRACE 252
DOWN FROM THE MOUNTAIN 273
INTERLAKEN, ON THE HOTEL LAWN 282
PIAZZA SAN MARCO 299
VENICE, GRAND CANAL FROM THE PIAZZETTA 304
A GARGOYLE OF NOTRE DAME 329
PARIS, ON THE BOULEVARD 334
[Illustration]
AROUND THE CLOCK
IN EUROPE
EDINBURGH
1 P.M. TO 2 P.M.
Up there on the gusty heights of Edinburgh no one ever inquires the
time at one o’clock in the afternoon. Precisely at the second, a ball
flutters to the top of the Nelson flagstaff on Calton Hill and a
cannon booms from a battery at Castle Rock; and watches are then set
by merchants all over town, by shepherds on the shaggy Pentland Hills,
and sailors on ships in the lee of Leith. And one o’clock is the very
best time Edinburgh could have fixed upon to encourage her people to
look up and about and behold her at her finest. It is luncheon-hour,
and when the sun is kindly, “Auld Reekie” is just about as garish and
stimulating as it is possible for a town of such dignified traditions
and questionable climate ever to become. The air freshens in from
blustering Leith, and fair Princes Street wears its most beguiling
smiles. One thrills with the joy of being alive in so brave and bonny
a world, with the bluebells and heather of Old Scotland about him and
this town of song and story at his feet. He gazes at the cheerful
crowds moving leisurely along the valley gardens elegant with statues
and flowered lawns, or across at the frowzy heads in rickety garret
windows away up among the palsied gables of ancient High Street, and
he knows that over there is the Canongate of stern tradition and the
storied St. Giles’ and black Holyrood, and beyond them he sees the
Salisbury Crags, a gaunt palisade halfway up to lofty Arthur’s Seat. He
has just arrived, perhaps, with the glow on his face of all he has read
and heard of this famed place, and the bugles are singing on Castle
Hill and the Edinburgh bells are ringing.
There is little opportunity for preliminary impressions while
arriving. The train darts up a valley before you have finished with
the suburban cottages of the laboring men, and with an ultimate shriek
of relief abruptly dives into its cave, as it were, and deposits you
unceremoniously in the esplanaded Waverley Station, with flowered
walks above and a market just at hand. The wise traveler gathers up
his luggage and fares eagerly forth to Princes Street, as a matter
of course. There, on the way to his hotel, he finds a good part of
Edinburgh idling pleasantly after luncheon, for Princes Street is
the dear delight of the loiterer be he old or young, Robin or Jean.
He is studied as he passes through the crowds, curiously, smilingly,
critically, tolerantly. His clothing may excite disapproval, his
baggage amusement, and his intentions speculation. Curiosity “takes the
air” at noon. Arrived in a moment at a Princes Street hotel and duly
registered, he is handed a curious disk of white cardboard the size of
an after-dinner coffee-cup’s top, upon which is blazoned the number of
the room to which he has just been assigned. Preceded by a chambermaid
gowned in black and aproned in white and followed by a porter with
his traps, he advances grandly to his quarters, according to the tag,
and hurries to a window for his first keen impression of the “Modern
Athens.”
[Illustration: EDINBURGH, PRINCES STREET]
Just why it should be called an “Athens” would scarcely be apparent
from a Princes Street hotel window. The literary rights to the title
might be conceded, but the stranger will need to view the town from
some neighboring height to appreciate the physical similarity between
the two cities and to observe the suggestiveness of the Castle and the
reminder of the Acropolis in the “ruin”-crowned summit of Calton Hill.
What he does see from his window is sufficiently inspiring. At his feet
stretches Princes Street which he has heard called the finest avenue in
Europe, and along its other side terraces of vivid turf, set with shade
trees and statues and flowered walks, drop down in graceful steps to
the lawns in the bottom of the valley that was once the North Loch’s
basin and where now, to Edinburgh’s chagrin, are the railroad tracks.
Across these gardens vaults a boulevard styled “The Mound,” and on
their farther side is the gray old Castle on its precipitous crag with
a soft sweep of green braes at its base. On the Castle side of the
valley the far-famed High Street turns the venerable backs of its tall,
tottering, weather-blackened rookeries on the frivolity of Princes
Street, and scornfully gives its laundry to the breeze in hundreds of
heaped and crooked gable-windows. Centuries before any of us were born
those fantastic and whimsical family nests were lined up as we see them
to-day. One could fancy them a row of colossal, prehistoric giraffes
with their tails all our way, nibbling imaginary tree-tops on High
Street. The stranger will lean out of his window and look down Princes
Street and start with delight to see that “sublimest monument to a
literary genius,” the lace-like Gothic spire to Scott, where, under a
springing canopy of arches and aspiring needles studded with statues of
the immortal characters he created, sits the great Sir Walter himself
in snowy Carrara, with his favorite hound at his feet. And one’s heart
warms to this romantic Edinburgh so beloved of him and of the fiery
Burns, the passionate Chalmers, the gentle Allan Ramsay, and Jeffrey
of the brilliant “far-darting” criticisms. Here, in their time, mused
Robert Fergusson and David Livingstone and Smollett and Hume and
Goldsmith and De Quincey and “Kit North” and Carlyle; and but yesterday
has added the name of Stevenson, not the least loved of them all. What
inspiration this region must have kindled to have given to Art such
sons as Gordon, Drummond, Nasmyth, Wilkie, Raeburn, and Faed! Could
the roster of old Greyfriars Burying-Ground be called, one would marvel
at the number of great names there memorialized that are familiar and
beloved to the remotest, out-of-the-way corners of the earth. And so
the new arrival closes his window more slowly than he raised it and
steals reverently down into the street to meet this Edinburgh face to
face.
You might think, to hear Americans talk at home, that every other
Edinburgh man carries a dirk or a claymore under a tartan and wears a
ferocious red beard like the pictures of Rob Roy; that people go about
in plaid shawls and tam o’shanters, and that most society functions end
up with a Highland fling. One may see at wayside railroad stations,
as in our own country, wild, hair-blown lassies with flaming cheeks
running in from the hills to have a look at the train; but with some
such mild exception, if it is one, the Scots on their native heath
are, of course, precisely what we are used to elsewhere. Types apart,
the man of the streets of Edinburgh looks entirely familiar—shrewd
and combative, rugged and perhaps hard, slouchy and indifferent in
the matter of dress, hobnailed and be-capped. There is something
tremendously genuine and wholesome about him. He is merry and brisk
and lively, often; but you would not call him ever quite gay—at least
with that sparkle that dances in the eyes you look into on the Paris
boulevards. You could scarcely, for instance, imagine a Scotchman
singing a barcarolle! Best of all they are honest and sincere, and
one takes to them at once. Here are the lassies and laddies you have
long sung about, fresh-faced and debonair. Cheerful fearlessness shines
out of their frank blue eyes, and they look to dare all things and be
utterly unafraid. The square foreheads of the older men, the austere
cheek bones and strong chins, unscroll history to the observer and make
him think of savage broils along the border, of fierce finish-fights
throughout the wild Highlands, and of the deathless Grays of Waterloo.
You may defeat a Scotchman, but he will never admit it, and if he
is all-Scotch he will not even know it. They are brave, witty, and
devoted, and many a person will take issue with Swift for finding their
conversation “hardly tolerable,” and with Lamb for pronouncing their
“tediousness provoking” and for giving them up in despair of ever
learning to like them.
The new arrival plunges into Princes Street, accepts inspection
good-naturedly, and soon feels entirely at home. He may even find the
day bright and cheerful, in spite of apprehension over the dictum
of Stevenson that this climate is “the vilest under heaven.” The
street is quite unusual—one side a terraced valley, the other a
splendid line of shops, clubs, and hotels, with gay awnings. Paris
and London novelties fill the windows. A throng of vehicles bustles
up and down—motor-busses, double-decked trolley cars, taxi-cabs,
hired Victorias, two-wheeled carts, brewery wagons, station lorries,
tourists’ _chars-à-bancs_ with drivers in scarlet liveries, private
carriages and bicycles. The stream of people on either pavement is
of the holiday cheeriness that comes with the luncheon recess from
office and shop, though here and there one may occasionally discover
some “sour-looking female in bombazine” that recalls R. L. S.’s “Mrs.
McRankin” and who appears as ready as she to inquire whether we
attend to our “releegion.” The restaurants are plying a brisk trade,
contenting their tarrying guests, speeding the parting and hailing
the coming. Whole coveys of pretty shop-girls with brilliant cheeks,
wholesome and vivacious, come chattering and laughing out of tea- and
luncheon-rooms and flutter back to work with frequent enthusiastic
stops before alluring windows. Workmen in tweed caps and clerks in
straw hats pass by, to or from their occupations, and always with
lingering looks toward the Princes Street Gardens, so that one can
accurately guess whether they are coming from or going to office by
applying the reliable Shakespearean formula—
“Love goes to Love as schoolboys from their books,
And Love from Love to school with heavy looks.”
The air is rhythmic with the up-and-down slur of this speech of
“aye” and “na.” Curious faces flash past. Threadbare lawyers argue
pompously as they saunter back arm in arm toward Parliament Close,
and the ruddy-cheeked girls, by contrast, seem so distracting that a
foreigner rages at the sentiment that “kissing is out of season when
the gorse is out of bloom.” Occasionally, even at so early an hour,
there is evidence of the passion for drink. “Willie brew’d a peck o’
maut” flashes to mind, and one fancies the unsteady ones are trying
to hum, “We are na fou, we’re no that fou, but just a drappie in our
ee.” When night comes on, sober men in the streets have reason to
frown censoriously; and if it be a Saturday night, they may even feel
lonesome.
A passing regiment is a welcome interruption and a brave spectacle.
It is always hailed with shouts of joy. All Edinburgh turns in its
bed Sunday mornings at nine to see the Black Watch come out from the
Castle for “church parade” at St. Giles’s. Nothing stirs Princes Street
on any week day like a military display. It is a thrilling moment to
a stranger, perhaps, when he has his first glimpse of a young Tommy
Atkins, and he stops stock-still to take in the bright scarlet,
tailless jacket, the tight trousers, the “pill-box” perilously cocked
over an ear, and the inevitable “swagger cane” with which he slaps his
leg as he braves it along. But what is that to the passing of a company
of Highlanders! Along they come, kilts and plaids, sporrans swinging,
claymores rattling, and jolly Glengarry bonnets poised rakishly to the
falling point. Ten pipers are droning and three drummers are pounding;
and one watches, as they pass, for the holly sprig, or what-not, they
wear in their bonnets as a badge of the clan. The best show is made by
the King’s Highlanders from up Balmoral way; and splendid they are in
royal Stuart tartan, with the oak leaf and thistle in their bonnets and
each man carrying a Lochaber axe. If there is anything more inspiriting
than cheery bagpipe music at such a time, no one to laugh foolishly at
it and every one to love it, and the men stepping proudly and the crowd
applauding,—I, for one, do not know it.
Keenness of impressions, as we all know, may depend on the most trivial
circumstances of time and place. I recall, for example, a sharp and
thrilling musical experience in Scotland, with the instrument nothing
more than the despised and humble mouth-organ. Perhaps it was the
mood, perhaps the setting, perhaps the unexpectedness of it; there
was so little and yet so much. At all events, I shall not soon forget
the sparkle and stir of “The British Grenadiers” as it ripped the
sharp night air of quiet Melrose to the approach of three English
soldiers, one with the mouth-organ and the others whistling in time as
they marched briskly along. I shall always remember the rhythmic beat
of their feet as they swung across the murky, deserted square, the
loudness, the thrill, and the lilt of that historic melody, and the
flicker of a lamp in a window here and there and the pleasant sting of
the keen night air.
There is no better place for a stranger to “get his bearings” in
Edinburgh than out on that valley-spanning boulevard they call “The
Mound.” He then has the Old Town to one side and the New Town to the
other, and on opposite corners, as if to maintain the balance, the
Castle and Calton Hill. He also takes note of the several bridges
that clamp the town together, as it were; and he may look down into
the gardens before him and watch the children playing as far as the
promenade-covered Waverley Station, or he may turn and look the other
way and see quite as many more all the way along the pleasant green to
the old battle-scarred West Kirk of St. Cuthbert’s where De Quincey
lies in his quiet grave. Thus he will find himself of a sunny afternoon
between the pleasant horns of a most agreeable dilemma. He must choose
whether to spend his first hour in the New Town or the Old. If he
remembers what Ruskin said he will fly from the New; but then he may go
there, after all, if he recalls the opinion of the old skipper cited
by Stevenson, whose most radiant conception of Paradise was “the New
Town of Edinburgh, with the wind the matter of a point free.” He must
decide whether his present inclination is for latter-day city features,
like conventional streets lined with substantial gray stone buildings
looking all very much alike, for the fashionables of Charlotte Square
and Moray Place and the bankers and brokers of St. Andrew Square, or
the historic ground of crowded old High Street and the Castle and
Holyrood. He would find in the New Town some old places, too, for
it is one hundred and fifty years old, and there are the literary
associations of the last century and the house on Castle Street where
Scott lived more than a quarter-century—“poor No. 39,” as he called it
in his Journal—and wrote the early Waverley Novels, and rejoiced along
with his mystified friends in the tremendous success of “The Great
Unknown.” He would find it a rapidly modernizing city; no longer may
the children salute the lamplighter on his nightly rounds with “Leerie,
Leerie, licht the lamps!” But he would find the most interesting things
there the oldest things, and they all in the Antiquarian Museum—and
what a show! John Knox’s pulpit, the banners of the Covenanters, the
“thumbikins” that “aided” confession and the guillotine “Maiden” that
rewarded it, the pistols Robert Burns used as an exciseman, and the
sea-chest and cocoanut cup of Alexander Selkirk, the real Robinson
Crusoe; and there, too, is Bonnie Prince Charlie’s blue ribbon of
the Garter and the ring Flora Macdonald gave him when they parted.
If historic paraphernalia is alluring, however, the scenes of its
associations are much more so; and our friend would doubtless hesitate
no longer, but turn to the Old Town and trudge up the steep way to the
Castle.
“You tak’ the high road
And I’ll tak’ the low road,
And I’ll get to Scotland afore ye”;—
and if the song had kept to geography it would probably have added,
“And we’ll meet at the bonny Castle o’ Auld Reekie.” Such, at least,
has been a Scotch custom for thirteen hundred years; and with every
reason. Through the long and cruel centuries it has gathered to
its flinty gray bosom memories of every possible phase of national
mutation, desperate or glorious, gloomy or gay. One approaches it with
awe. So long has it gripped the summit of that impregnable rock, half
a thousand feet sheer on three of its sides, that it has blended into
the life and color of its foundations, like a huge chameleon, until one
could scarcely say where rock leaves off and castle begins. A stern and
pitiless object, tolerating only here and there a grassy crevice at its
base, and a clinging tree or two. In the great “historic mile” of High
Street, lifting gradually from Holyrood to this rugged elevation, one
feels the illusion of an enormous scornful finger extended dramatically
westward toward the traditional rival, Glasgow. There is no need to
see Highland regiments drilling on its broad esplanade, or to enter
its sally-port or penetrate the dungeons in its rocky depths to have
confidence that the royal regalia of “The Honours of Scotland” are safe
enough here, on the red cushions in their iron cage. One enters, and
there settles upon him a feeling of sharing in every grim tradition
since the doughty days “when gude King Robert rang.” It is not a visit;
it is an initiation.
Quite worthy of this savage stronghold is the inspiring outlook from
its parapets over hills and rivers and storied glens. One turns
impatiently from “Mons Meg,” which may have been a big gun in some
past day of little ones, to gaze afar over the carse of Stirling
and the trailing silver links of the Forth to where the snow shines
in the clefts of Ben Ledi, or out over the Pentland Hills where the
“Sweet Singers” awaited the Judgment. The sportsman will think of
the grouse-shooting at Loch Earn; the sentimentalist will reflect
that when night settles over Aberdeenshire the pipers will strike
up their strathspeys and there will be Scotch reels by torchlight.
Scotland seems unrolled at your feet and Scottish songs rush to mind
until you fairly bound the region in verse and story: To the north
and northwest, “Bonnie Dundee,” the glens of “Clan Alpine’s warriors
true,” Bannockburn and “Scots wha hae wi’ Wallace bled,” and “The Banks
of Allan Water”; to the north and east, the Firth of Forth where the
fishwives’ “puir fellows darkle as they face the billows”; to the west
and southwest, “The banks and braes o’ bonnie Doon,” “Tam o’Shanter’s”
land, “Sweet Afton” and “Bonnie Loch Leven” whence “the Campbells are
comin’”; and to the south, “The braes of Yarrow,” “Norham’s castled
steep, Tweed’s fair river, broad and deep, and Cheviot’s mountains
lone,” and, most sung of all, “The Border”:—
“England shall, many a day, tell of the bloody fray
When the blue bonnets came over the border.”
The afternoon sun rests brightly on the pretty glen in the foreground
where lie the dismal, bat-flown ruins of Rosslyn Castle, loopholed for
archers and shadowed in ancient yews that have overhung the Esk for
a thousand years, and on the delicate chapel of stone-lace where the
barons of Rosslyn await the Judgment in full armor with finger-tips
joined in prayer. And there, too, are the cool, dark thickets of
Hawthornden, recalling the ever-popular
“Gang down the burn, Davy Love,
And I will follow thee.”
One cannot forbear a smile as he surveys the noble bridge that spans
the Forth and recalls the insistent pride of Edinburgh in the same.
Here is an achievement over which all visitors are expected to exclaim
in amazement—and engineers, I presume, invariably do. On this point
your Edinburgh man is immovable. He scorns to elaborate and he will not
descend to eulogy. He merely indicates it with a reverent inclination
of the head, and turns and looks you in the eye; you are supposed to do
the rest. Personally, while I give the great structure its dues, which
are many, I like what flows under it more.
And there is one thing about the Forth that Edinburgh people never
forget, nor do the visitors who find it out: “Caller herrin’!” It
must have taxed the resources of even such a genius as Lady Nairne,
whose home one may see if he looks beyond Holyrood to the villas
of Duddingston, to have written two such dissimilar songs as the
heart-melting “Land o’ the Leal” and the cheery “Caller Herrin’.”
There’s the king of all marketing songs. It really compels one to
think with despair of what a dreary mockery life would be were this,
of all harvests, to fail. For love of that song I could defend the
Forth herring against all competitors whatsoever. Loch Fyne herring?
Fair fish, yes; but really, now, you would hardly say they have that
racy flavor we get in the Forth article. Caller salmon? Oh, pshaw, you
are from Glasgow; you have been swearing by caller salmon for five
hundred years; have it on your coat of arms; used to draw it on legal
papers as other people do seals;—but, honestly, have you ever seen a
salmon in the Clyde, anywhere near Glasgow, in all your life? And if
you did, would you eat it? Certainly not! So “give over,” as they say
in England. Certainly there never was such pathos and unction devoted
to just such a subject. And the music, too! How it compels you with its
appealing monotones and rebukes you with the brave huckster cries on
high F! So when you are passing near Waverley Market and encounter one
of the picturesque Scandinavian fishwives, who has trudged in with her
“woven willow” from her little stone house at Newhaven with the patched
roof and quaint fore-stairs, unless you are willing to buy a herring
then and there and carry it around in your pocket, run for your life
before she starts singing:—
“When ye were sleeping on your pillows,
Dreamt ye aught o’ our puir fellows,
Darkling as they face the billows,
A’ to fill our woven willows!
“Wha’ll buy caller herrin’?
They’re bonnie fish and halesome farin’;
Buy my caller herrin’,
New drawn frae the Forth.”
To stroll down High Street is to unscroll Scottish history and survey
Edinburgh of to-day at one and the same time. “Hie-gait,” as the
old fellows still occasionally call it, is the “historic mile” _par
excellence_ of Scotland. In its independent fashion it assumes new
names as it meanders along, first Castle Hill, then Lawnmarket, then
High Street, and finally Canongate. Even the afternoon sun ventures
guardedly among the nest of tall, gaunt _lands_ that scowl at each
other across its war-worn way. Bleak and glum to the peaked and gabled
roofs, eight and ten stories above the sidewalk, they have resisted dry
rot by a miracle of mortar and still hang together, doubtless to their
own amazement, huddling a perfect enmeshment of tiny homes like some
ingenious nest of boxes. It would be hard to imagine more drear and
rickety domiciles or any more nervously overshadowed with an impending
doom of dissolution. One looks anxiously about to see some venerable
veteran give it up with a dismal, weary groan and collapse in a vast
huddle of domestic wreckage. Fancy living where you have to scale
breakneck stairs to a dizzy height and then reach your remote eyrie by
a trembling gangway over an air well! The _closes_ or _wynds_ that are
engulfed among these flat-chested ancients are equally surprising. One
passes in from the street through a dirty entrance with a worn stone
sill and a rudely carven doorhead inscribed with Scriptural and moral
injunctions, and finds himself in an inner court fronted by dirty doors
and palsied windows full of frowzy women, a cobbled pavement littered
with refuse and a patch of sky half-hidden by fragments of laundry.
And, mind you, these retreats are not without pride of tradition; many
of them have entertained riches and royalty—but that was not last
week. Lady Jane Grey was once hidden in famous White Horse Close, which
must have fallen further than Lucifer to reach its present condition.
Douglas Tavern was in one of them, where Burns and his brethren of the
“Crochallan Club” were wont to revel with “Rattlin’, roarin’ Willie,
and amang guid companie.” Legends, of course, abound. There was the
case of the two stubborn sisters who quarreled one night and never
spoke to each other again, though they lived the remainder of their
lives together in the selfsame room. There’s Scotch persistence! Deacon
Brodie was another instance, the “Raffles” of his time. He it was who
used to ply his nefarious trade by night on the friends who knew him by
day as a highly respectable cabinet-worker; and if you look furtively
aloft at some dusty, closed shutter you can fancy the dark lantern
glowing and the file rasping and the black mask drawn to his chin.
Happily, they hanged him eventually; and, singularly enough, on the
very gallows for which he had himself invented a very superior drop.
A _close_, therefore, is so cheerless a spot that you could not well
be worse off if you were to dive down the steep, wet steps of a
neighboring slit of an alley and come out on the old Grassmarket of
sinister renown where they hanged the Covenanters of the Moss Hags.
As you gaze about on this ill-omened slum, once the home of many a
prosperous and respected “free burgess,” but now given over to drovers
and visiting farmers, and peer suspiciously up the adjoining West Port
where Burke and Hare conducted their murders to get bodies for the
surgeons, you are very apt to beat a hurried retreat and cry out with
Claverhouse, “Come, open the West Port and let me gang free!”
After one or two such explorations a stranger is content to pursue his
investigation in the broad light of High Street. It seems delightful
then to watch the barefooted boys in the street and the little girls
in aprons and “pigtails.” And happily he may come across a shaggy
steely-eyed old Highlander growling to a comrade in the guttural
Gaelic, or perhaps a soldier in kilts and sporan. At this hour he
will certainly see around Parliament Square groups of advocates and
solicitors and “writers to the Signet,” and, it may be, some judge of
the “Inner House” or “Outer House,” and possibly the Lord President
himself. Otherwise he can take note of the uninviting shop-windows
and the piles of merchandise on the sidewalks, and find entertainment
in such unfamiliar signs as “provisioners,” “spirit merchants,”
“bootmakers,” “hairdressers,” etc., with prices set forth in shillings
and pence, or rejoice in a hostelry with so unusual a name as “The
Black Bull Lodgings for Travellers and Working Men.”
There are pleasant surprises. For instance, you find in the cobbled
pavement the outline of a heart—and you do not have to be told that
you are standing on the site of the terrible old Tolbooth prison, at
the Heart of Midlothian. And what rushes to mind and displaces all
other associations if not the fine story Sir Walter gave us under that
name! Here, then, the Porteous mob swarmed and raged in its struggle
to burn this savage Bastile, and here they tried and condemned poor
Effie Deans and locked her up while the faithful Jeanie turned heaven
and earth to save her, and the heart of old David broke. “The Heart of
Midlothian!” Why, it is like being a boy all over again!
Encouraged by this discovery, like a man who has just found a
gold-piece, you keep a sharp lookout on the pavements, and presently
comes a second reward in the shape of a brass tablet in the ground
marking the last resting-place of stern John Knox. “There!” say you;
“Dr. Johnson said he ought to be buried in the public road, and sure
enough, he is!” What a man! He dared all things and feared nothing.
How many a long discourse did Queen Mary herself supply him a topic
for, and how often did he assail even her with personal rebukes and
virulent public tirades! Thanks to the Free Church, his dwelling stands
intact, farther down the street at the site of the Netherbow; and a
fine specimen it is of sixteenth-century domestic Scotch architecture,
with low ceilings and stairways scarce two feet wide—but, like its
former austere tenant, narrow, cornery, and unpleasant. Implacable,
unbending old John Knox! There is nothing in Browning more shuddering
in imaginative flight than the quatrain:—
“As if you had carried sour John Knox
To the play-house at Paris, Vienna, or Munich,
Fastened him into a front-row box,
And danced off the ballet with trousers and tunic.”
One makes a long stop before the far-famed church of St. Giles, half
a thousand years old and the battle-ground of warring creeds. Its
crown-shaped tower top is one of the familiar landmarks of Edinburgh.
Within you may study to heart’s content the grim barrel vaulting and
massive Norman piers and the tattered Scottish flags in the nave, but
there is scope for many an agreeable thought outside if one conjures
up the little luckenbooth shops that once clustered between its
buttresses, and imagines Allan Ramsay in his funny nightcap selling
wigs, or “Jingling Geordie” Heriot, of “The Fortunes of Nigel,”
gossiping with his friend King James VI over his jewelry counter. Nor
would you forget Jenny Geddes and how she seized her stool in disgust
when the Dean undertook to introduce the ritual, and let it fly at the
good man’s head with the sizzling invective, “Deil colic the wame o’
ye! Would ye say mass i’ my lug!”
Old Tron Kirk, farther on, is still an active feature of Edinburgh
life, and particularly on New Year’s Eve when the crowds rally here
as the old year dies. Beyond it the Canongate extends itself in a
rambling, happy-go-lucky fashion, lined with curious timber-fronted
houses with “turnpike” stairs. It is like sitting down to “Humphrey
Clinker” once more; or better still, perhaps, to the poems of
Fergusson; and we smile at thoughts of the scowling, early-risen
housewives of other days who would
“Wi’ glowering eye
Their neighbours’ sma’est faults descry!”
and fancy how the convivial revelers would foregather by night and
“sit fu’ snug,
Owre oysters and a dram o’ gin,
Or haddock lug.”
But lingering along the Canongate is a negligible pleasure. There is
nothing in the whole architectural world more jailish and pitiless
than the gaunt Tolbooth and all its grim neighbors. It is as if the
conception of anything suggestive of beauty or ornamentation had been
harshly repressed, and ugliness and the most naked utility sternly
insisted upon. One may, however, if he is interested in slums, pause
a moment to look down through the railings of the South Bridge on the
screaming peddlers and flaunting shame of bedraggled Cowgate, and
behold a district which stands to Edinburgh in the relative position
of Rivington Street to New York, or Petticoat Lane to London, or
Montmartre to Paris.
The end of the Canongate, a few steps farther on, debouches
unexpectedly, and with a sudden unpreparedness for the stranger, on the
great open square before Holyrood. There it stands, black and dismal;
more like a prison than a palace! The Abbey ruins, in the rear, supply
all the atmosphere of romance that the eye will get here. But the eye
is better left as a secondary aid in comprehending Holyrood; history
and imagination do the work. Cowering sorrowfully in its gloomy hollow,
it has the look of a moody, forsaken thing brooding over a neglectful
world. Its memories are of the dead. Its sole companionship is in the
mosses and grassy aisles of the crumbling Abbey chapel, where lie the
bones of Scottish royalty that ruled and reveled here its allotted time
and left scarce a memory behind. It was here they slew Rizzio as he
dined with Queen Mary; and perhaps that is romance enough.
The fumes and cobwebs of murky tradition dissipate in the keen,
vigorous air of Calton Hill. Breezes from over the level shore-sands
of Leith taste sharp of salt and excite bracing thoughts of the sea.
Like a map, the whole environ of Edinburgh lies exposed from the
Pentlands to the Firth. There is the steepled city, rising over its
ridges and dropping down its valleys like billows of a troubled ocean,
and there, too, is the enveloping sweep of suburbs dotted with villas
or cross-thatched with streets of workingmen’s cottages, and farther
still the Meadows and their archery grounds, “the furzy hills of Braid”
and their golf links, Blackford Hill whence “Marmion” and his bard
looked down on “mine own romantic town,” and, on the southern horizon,
the heathery Pentlands, low and shaggy, with the kine that graze over
them low and shaggy too. To the northward, away beyond the cricket
greens of Inverleith Park, the blue Firth sparkles in the offing,
dotted with fleet steamers and the white spread sails of stately ships
laying courses for the Baltic. In the distance, over Leith, looms the
tall lighthouse of the Inchcape Rock that Southey made famous with a
ballad. Beyond the west end of the city a wavy blue line marks the
course seaward of the bustling little Water of Leith, where “David
Balfour” kept tryst with “Alan Breck,” and many a sturdy little “brig”
leaps across it as it hurries along, “brimmed,” wrote Stevenson, “like
a cup with sunshine and the song of birds.” Still farther to the
westward, where the old Queens Ferry Coach Road appears as a faint
white tracing, within many “a mile of Edinborough Town,” thin vapors
of smoke rise from the chimneys of white cottages on peasant greens by
brooksides; and one knows that the rowans there are white with bloom
and the meadows flecked with daisies, and that bees are droning in the
foxglove and blackbirds singing in the hawthorn.
Calton Hill itself scarcely improves on acquaintance, but loses rather.
Its meagre scattering of monuments would barely excite a passing
interest were it not for their conspicuous location and that suggestion
of the Athenian Acropolis. A paltry array—a tall, ugly column to
Nelson, a choragic monument like the one to Burns on a hillside near
Holyrood, an old observatory with a brown tower and a new one with
a colonnaded portico and a dome, and, most mentioned of all, the
so-called “ruin” of the proposed national monument to the Scotch dead
of Waterloo and the Peninsula, which got no farther than a row of
columns and an entablature when funds failed and work stopped. Many
a bitter shaft of scorn and mockery has this ill-starred undertaking
pointed for the disparagers of Scotland. However, in its present
condition it has done more than any other agency to stimulate the
pleasant illusion of the “Modern Athens.” The hill itself is a favorite
resort, lofty, and with a broad, rounded top. The eastern slopes are
terraced and set with gardens, and the western and northern sides
are steep verdant braes. One yields the palm for reckless daring to
Bothwell; not every one would care to speed a horse down such a course
even to win attention from eyes so bright and important as Queen Mary’s.
It was on Calton Hill I had my first experience of the old school of
Scotchmen, in the person of a dry and withered chip of Auld Reekie,
combative, peppery, brusque and sententious, and abounding in that
peculiar admixture of braggadocio and repression so characteristic
of the class. He had evidently been nurtured from infancy on Allan
Ramsay’s collection of Scotch proverbs, for he quoted them continually,
giving the poet credit for their origin. He was sitting in the shade of
Nelson’s column in shirt sleeves and cap, absorbed to all appearances
in a copy of “The Scotsman,” though I suspect he had been regarding
me for some while with quite as much curiosity as I now did him. He
was a grim, self-contained old party, as dignified as the Lord Provost
himself, with gray, shaggy eyebrows and a thin, wry mouth that gripped
a cutty pipe; and he looked so much a part of the surroundings, so
settled and weather-beaten, that one might almost have passed him over
for some memorial carving or, at least, an “animated bust.” Him I
beheld with vast inner delight and gingerly approached, giving “Good
day” with all the cordiality in the world. The reward was a curt nod
and a keen scrutiny from a pair of hard and twinkling blue eyes that
had an appearance under the grizzled brows of stars in a frosty sky.
I observed upon the fineness of the day; he opined “There had been
waur, no doot.” I noted what a capital spot it was for a quiet smoke;
he allowed I might “gang far an’ find nane better.” Here I made proffer
of a cigar and, presumably, with acceptable humility, for he took it
with an “Ah, weel, I dinna mind,” of gloomy resignation—and so we got
things going.
The conversation that followed I venture to give in some detail as
illustrating, possibly, the peculiarities of a type to be encountered
on every Edinburgh street corner—whimsical, conservative, witty,
cautious in opinion, and surcharged with local pride.
“A man can take life pleasantly here,” said I, when we had lighted up.
“Aye, aye,” said he; “even a hard-workin’ one like mysel’, as Gude
kens. But a bit smoke frae ane an’ twa o’ the day hurts naebody, I’m
thinkin’; an’ auld Allan Ramsay was richt eneuch, ‘Light burdens break
nae banes.’”
“You will never be leaving Edinburgh, I’ll warrant.”
“Na, na. Ye’ll have heard tell the sayin’, ‘Remove an auld tree an’ it
will wither.’”
“There’s more money to be made elsewhere, perhaps.”
“I’m no so sure o’ that. Forbye, ‘Little gear the less care.’”
“One wouldn’t find a handsomer city than this, at all events.”
“Aweel, aweel, a’body kens that. Ye’ll no so vera frequently see the
bate o’ it, I’m thinkin’. Them that should ken the best say sae.”
“How many people are there here, sir?”
“Mare than three hunner an’ fifty thoosan’, I’m telt.”
“No more? It is small for its fame. Why, Glasgow must be three times as
large,” I ventured, resolved to stir him up a little.
“Glesgie, is it! Think shame o’ yersel’, mon, to say the same! A
grippie carlin, Glesgie! Waur than the auld wife o’ the sayin’, ‘She’ll
keep her ain side o’ the hoose, and gang up an’ doon in yours.’ Ye
canna nay-say me there. Gae wa’ wi’ ye!”
“But you must admit it is a great port. The receipts are enormous, I’m
told.”
“Aye, an’ it’s muckle ye’ll be telt ye’ll never read in the Guid Buik!
Port, are ye sayin’? Hae ye na thought o’ Leith? Or the bonny sands an’
gardens o’ Portobello? Or Granton, forbye, wi’ the three braw piers
o’ the Duke o’ Buccleuch? Ye’ll no be kennin’ they’re a’ a part o’
Ed’nboro, maybe.”
“But how about the ship-building on the Clyde?”
“An’ what wad ye make o’ that? How ony mon in his senses could gang to
think sic jowkery-packery wi’ the gran’ brewin’ ayont the Coogait is
mair than ever I could win to understan’. It’s by-ordinar, fair! An’
dinna loup to deecesions frae the claver an’ lees aboot muckle things.
’Twas Allan Ramsay himsel’ said, ‘Mony ane opens their pack an’ sells
nae wares.’ It’s unco strange that a body should tak nae notice o’ the
learnin,’ an’ the gran’ courts, an’ the three hunner congregeetions,
an’ a’ the bonny kirks we hae in Ed’nboro, but must ever be spairin’
o’ the siller. Do ye think, noo, it’s sae vera wonderful to ‘Put twa
pennies in a purse, an’ see them creep thegither’? Glesgie may ken a’
sic-like gear, I’m nae sayin’; but there’s no sae muckle worth in that,
as ye’ll be findin’ oot, though ye read in the books til the morn’s
mornin’. It’s a fair disgrace to hae sic thochts. Mon can sae nae mair.”
“At any rate, there’s a fine university there.”
“It’s easy sayin’ sae. Muckle service is it! Gude kens a’ they learn
there! Gin it’s cooleges ye’ll be admirin’, maybe ye’ll no be so vera
well acquaint wi’ our ain toun? There’s nane in a’ Glesgie like the ane
ye see the day. Mon, it’s fair dementit ye’ll be.”
It took time and diplomacy and many a round compliment on Edinburgh to
bring him out of his sulk; but eventually he yielded.
“Aye,” said he, “I believe ye’ll be in the richt the noo. It’s gran’ up
here, dinna misdoot it. Mony’s the braw sicht to be had, that’s a fac’,
an’ I ken them a’ like the back o’ my hand. Sin lang afore yon trees
were plantit, mare than ane fine dander hae I taen mysel’, bonny simmer
days, lang miles o’er the heather. Ye’ll believe me, I’d gang hame and
sleep soun’. It’s na sae pleesant, maybe, in winter, wi’ the dour haars
an’ the fog an’ the east winds. But I aye like it fine in simmer,
wi’ a bit nip o’ wind betimes an’ then fair again. At the gloaming
it’s quaiet an’ cauller, and then aiblins I bide a blink an’ hae a
bit puff o’ my cutty, an’ syne I’ll gang to my bed wi’ an easy hairt.
But, wheesht, mon! It’ll be twa o’ the day by the noo, I’m thinkin’?
Is it so! Be gude to us! Weel, weel, I’ll gang my gait. I maunna be
late to the wark; it’s a fearsome example to the laddies. ‘A scabbed
sheep,’ says auld Allan, ‘smites the hale hirsel’.’ Guid day to ye; an’
keep awa’ frae Glesgie.” And with many a sigh and rheumatic hitch he
shuffled off to the steps.
The old man was right. “Frae ane an’ twa o’ the day” a blither or
more inspiring spot than Calton Hill would be hard to find. What more
could possibly be desired, with a city so fair and famous at one’s
feet and the air tonic with the sweetness of the heather and the brine
of the sea! Fancy plays an amiable rôle and adds to one’s contentment
with shadowy illusions of the Canongate of bygone days acclaiming
Scotland’s kings and queens as they ride forth in pomp and pageantry,
with trains of fierce clansmen from the furtherest Highlands, with
pibrochs screaming, bonnets dancing, and axes and claymores rattling.
And Montrose may pass with his Graham Cavaliers, or Argyle leading the
Campbells of the Covenant. With our eyes on Holyrood, pathetic visions
float before us of fair Mary of many sorrows, over whose gilded gloom
the poets have loved to linger. One moment she looms in the heroic
martyrdom conceived by Schiller, and the next we see her as Swinburne
did in “Chastelard,” with
“lips
Curled over, red and sweet; and the soft space
Of carven brows, and splendor of great throat
Swayed lily-wise.”
Welcome apparitions of later days throng about us on the hill: Ramsay
and his “Gentle Shepherd,” young Fergusson and his wild companions,
Burns with his jovial cronies, the scholarly Jeffrey, the learned
Hume, the inspired Sir Walter, the delightful revelers of the “Noctes
Ambrosianæ,” the gentle Lady Nairne, the eager, brilliant Stevenson,
and Dr. Brown with the faithful “Rab” and Ollivant with “Bob, Son of
Battle.” The crisp sunshine lies golden on Princes Street and all
her flowered terraces; it glints the grim redoubts of the Castle and
lingers on the crooked gables of High Street. From the brown heather of
the Pentlands to the distant sparkle of the Firth stretches a vigorous
and comely land. What man so callous as to feel no joy in “Scotia’s
Darling Seat”!
[Illustration]
ANTWERP
2 P.M. TO 3 P.M.