The house, which fronts us as we approach the termination of the
drive, is a modern edifice, built by Sir James, the third Baronet,
in 1761, after he had returned from a residence in Italy, saturated
with classical ideas. It was erected entirely from the Baronet’s own
designs; but, doubtless, these were produced under the influence of
Robert Adam, the celebrated architect, whose sister had been married
in 1753 to John Clerk, author of the “Naval Tactics,” Sir James’s
younger brother. Consequently the present house does not possess the
interest of having been the meeting-place of Allan Ramsay, who died in
1758, and his friends and patrons of the Clerk family; an association
erroneously assigned to the present structure by Dr. Daniel Wilson
in his “Reminiscences of Old Edinburgh,” a work which contains many
curious particulars regarding the Clerks, and especially of the Baron,
the second Baronet. The house in which the poet and the antiquary spent
together many a genial evening of “honest talk and wholesome wine” no
longer exists. It occupied a site close behind the present mansion, on
whose completion it was removed. Some of the old cellars remain under
the earthen mound to the south, and are still in use. We may sigh a
little over the memories and associations of old Penicuik House, over
the vanished picturesqueness of its “crowstep” gables and its circular
corkscrew turrets, of which a shadow still survives in the sketch by
John Clerk, reproduced in the Bannatyne Club issue of his etchings; but
doubtless the present mansion is vastly more commodious and in better
harmony with modern ideas of comfort than was its predecessor, and it
takes its place excellently in the landscape; its effect not greatly
marred by the more recent wings added by Bryce in 1857-8; its straight
perpendicular and horizontal lines contrasting excellently with the
flowing curves of ground and trees, in that fashion which Turner
recognised and loved, and emphasised so delightfully in his early
drawings of four-square English mansions set amid the rounded forms of
wood and hill and stream.
As we turn our eye towards the offices of Penicuik House, which
are situated a little to our right, two objects of rather singular
aspect arrest our attention. Regarding one of them—a tall, very
ecclesiastical-looking steeple garnished with the usual large gilded
clock-face, which in the oddest fashion surmounts the stables—a
curious bit of tradition lingers in the neighbourhood. It seems that
Sir James designed not only his own mansion, but also the parish church
of Penicuik. When the plan of the latter, however, was submitted to the
heritors or kirk-session, it appears that they would have none of the
steeple,—for what reason is not recorded, whether it was that their
architectural tastes did not chime in with those of the Baronet, or
that they considered it as too decorative a feature to be in accordance
with severe Presbyterian principles, or whether, finally, the expense
was too great for their pockets. Declined, at any rate, the steeple
was, so local tradition affirms. But Sir James was by no means willing
that the structure which his brain had devised should only be dimly
visible upon paper, and never take substantial embodiment in stone and
lime; so he reared it, at his own proper cost, in his stable-yard,
where it still forms so imposing and unusual a feature.
The other curious erection is a rounded dome on the opposite side
of the court, raising its height above the stable buildings. This
is nothing less than an accurate reproduction of “Arthur’s O’on,”
which formerly existed on the north bank of the Carron, a mile and a
half from Falkirk, believed by “Sandy Gordon,” the great antiquarian
friend of the second Baronet of Penicuik, to be a Roman _Sacellum_, or
chapel in which military standards and insignia were deposited, and
fully described and discussed in his “Itinerarium Septentrionale,”
that precious folio which Oldbuck had captured and was beginning to
examine when we make his acquaintance in the opening chapters of “The
Antiquary.”
Turning, however, to the house itself, we may remark, as we enter, that
the ornaments of the front—the stone vases that break the sky-line,
and the graceful “Chippendale” shield of arms, furnished with the
decorative, not heraldic, adjunct of wings—were designed by John
Clerk of Eldin, author of the “Naval Tactics,” a cadet of the family.
Also that the _grisaille_ painting on the lower side of the roof of
the raised portico was executed—so James Jackson’s “Account of the
Parish of Penicuik” informs us—by Alexander Runciman, when he was
an apprentice with John Norie, the well-known decorative painter and
landscapist of Edinburgh, and that it was the ability displayed in
this work that induced Sir James to assist in sending the youth for
four or five years to Rome, whence he returned to execute the mural
paintings of the St. Margaret Staircase and the Ossian Hall of Penicuik
House. The motto, from Cicero’s _De Officiis_ with which the portal is
inscribed, was chosen by the Earl of Perth, grandson of John Drummond,
the attainted Earl of Melfort, a close friend of Sir James’s; and a
letter regarding it may be transcribed, as a quaint example of the
stately epistles of our ancestors.
“SIR,—Upon considering the manner of your House of Pennicueik,
where I had the pleasure of beeing some days in November last,
and admiring the Architecture of it, after 40 years ponderating
(_sic_) in my mind a Precept of Cicero’s,
_Non Domo Dominus, sed Domino Domus honestanda est,_
found for the first time that it was obtemperate, and should
wish for leave to inscribe it on Pennicueik House as the real
sentiment of
Your most obedient
Servant and Cousin
PERTH.
“_LUNDIN HOUSE, Ap. 22, 1771._”