_HAUNTS OF BOYHOOD._
The curious ancient thoroughfare, the scene of early bookselling and
publishing operations, has been described in the previous chapter: for
many youthful recollections of William Nelson are associated with the
West Bow. In those years Edinburgh was still the romantic town described
by Scott in his “Marmion,” piled steep and massy, close and high, along
the ridge between the Cowgate and the Nor’ Loch. Since then nearly all
the antique historical mansions of the Castle Hill and the adjoining
Bowhead have disappeared. An extensive range was swept away about 1835
in clearing the area for Johnston Terrace and the Assembly Hall of the
Scottish Church. The famous old palace of Mary of Guise has given place
to the rival Assembly Hall and the New College of the Free Church; and a
broad highway now sweeps round the Castle rock where in early years
antique lands, closes, and wynds, once the abodes of the Scottish
gentry, were crowded together on the slope reaching to the Grassmarket.
The fine timber-fronted tenement at the corner of the Bowhead,
constructed mainly of oak, was a choice example of the burghers’
dwellings in Old Edinburgh, with their trading booths opening on the
street. Similar front lands in the High Street were the abodes of the
merchants and traders. The “Gladstone Land” still stands near by in the
Lawnmarket, bearing the initials of Thomas Gladstone, a merchant of
Edinburgh in the days of Charles I. and Cromwell, to whose gifted
descendant the restoration of the City Cross is due. The old nobles and
landed gentry, judges and advocates, preferred the retirement of the
closes and wynds, some of which still retain the names of patrician
occupants. In one of those antique dwellings, in Trotter’s Close, near
the Bowhead, with its wainscotted chambers, painted panels, and other
traces of older generations, the Nelson family resided in William’s
youth. The narrow approach to it admitted of no other carriage than the
old-fashioned sedan chair; but the house itself was commodious, though
with curious complexities of internal adaptation to its confined
neighbourhood. One large chamber was shelved round, and stored with the
surplus productions of publishing enterprise for which the Bowhead
establishment had no room; and its miscellaneous contents furnished a
tempting resort for explorations into some strange fields of literature
not ordinarily lying within the range of youthful studies. When at
length the West Bow was invaded by civic reformers, the Nelsons removed
to a more commodious house, the dwelling in an elder century of Lady
Elizabeth, Duchess of Gordon, while the duke held the Castle for James
II. The Gordon House on the Castle Hill was a fine example of the town
mansions of the sixteenth century; and, owing to its elevated site,
commanded a beautiful view from its southern windows, looking across the
Grassmarket to Heriot’s Hospital, the Greyfriars’ Churchyard, and the
distant range of the Pentland Hills. On its demolition, in 1887, William
Nelson secured sundry interesting relics, including a landscape by James
Norie, which filled a panel over the mantlepiece in the duchess’s
drawing-room. He also carried off the stone gargoils, fashioned in the
shape of cannons, which projected from under the south parapet; and they
now adorn the river wall of the garden at St. Bernard’s Well, the
restoration of which, as will be seen hereafter, constituted one of the
public-spirited works on which he was engaged when his life drew to a
close.
The stirring scene that the Grassmarket presented on certain days, as a
regular horse-fair, may be seen in a fine engraving after Calcott in
“The Provincial Antiquities of Scotland;” and is still more graphically
depicted in one of Geikie’s humorous etchings. Here accordingly was a
favourite resort of the boys from the neighbouring Bow. The Castle
Esplanade at certain hours afforded a freer playground. At other times
it offered the tempting attractions of military parade and drill. But
Edinburgh has also within its civic bounds the royal park of Arthur’s
Seat, the Salisbury Crags, and Duddingston Loch, looking as though a
choice fragment of the Highlands had been transported thither to form an
adequate pleasure-ground for the Scottish capital. Hither flocked the
city boys alike from the closes and wynds of the old town and from the
new town crescents and squares. There was room for all, and a choice of
sport for every age. Here is a reminiscence of a very youthful pastime,
recalled in 1883, in a letter to Mr. James Campbell, one of William
Nelson’s old West Bow playmates:--“You will, I have no doubt, recollect
a long, smooth stone near Jeanie Deans’ House, in the Queen’s Park. This
stone was associated with my earliest recollections, as it was a great
enjoyment for boys and girls to slide down it; and many a time, when I
was a little boy, have I had this enjoyment. Well, the stone was in
existence till only a few weeks ago, when some rascally fellows blew it
to pieces with dynamite. The act is much to be regretted, as the stone,
in addition to its being a source of enjoyment for little folks in the
way I have stated, was extremely interesting to geologists as one of
the finest illustrations near Edinburgh of the polish produced by
glacial action.”
While the boys were disporting themselves on the Castle Hill and
Arthur’s Seat, without a care for the future, their father was grappling
with the first difficulties inevitable to the innovator on the
prescriptive usages of the book-trade. But whatever may have been the
obstacles encountered by him, there was no grudging expenditure in the
educational advantages provided for his sons. At the school of Mr.
William Lennie, and subsequently at that of Mr. George Knight, then
second to none in Edinburgh, and afterwards at the High School, William
Nelson pursued his earlier studies; and there, too, some of the
friendships were formed which he cherished with all the warmth of his
sympathetic nature to the close of life. It was in those early days, at
Mr. Knight’s school, that the friendship was formed with his present
biographer, along with George Wilson, subsequently Professor of
Technology in the University of Edinburgh, with Dr. Philip Maclagan, and
with William and James Sprunt, two young West Indians, the former of
whom will reappear as British Consul in North Carolina. Of the more
romantic career of the latter an account is happily preserved in the
notes of an address by William Nelson at one of the gatherings of old
schoolmates in later years, which were so congenial to his tastes.
After telling of James Sprunt’s first settlement in the island of St.
Vincent among a dissolute set of West Indians, his quitting it for New
Orleans, and being lost sight of for years, he thus proceeds:--“He had
landed penniless; but when his old father and mother got their first
letter from him, it was an invitation for them to join him there and
share his good fortune. He next appears as rector of a classical academy
at Wilmington, North Carolina, where he became a clergyman and pastor of
the Presbyterian Church; and when the war broke out between the North
and South, he cast in his lot with the latter, marched with the
Wilmington brigade into action, and as an army chaplain, under General
Stonewall Jackson, went through the terrible scenes of strife and
carnage in that bloody civil war, utterly regardless of danger, and even
ready to face death at the call of duty. His popularity with his
Wilmington congregation was not lessened, it may be believed, when he
returned to resume his pastoral charge at the close of the war.” Of
other boys of those first school-days may be noted Dr. J. A. Smith, in
later years an active member of the Royal Society, and Secretary of the
Society of Antiquaries of Scotland; Dr. John Knight, the son of our old
teacher; the Rev. James Huie of Wooler, Northumberland, and others, who
formed themselves into “The Juvenile Society for the Advancement of
Knowledge,” of which an account is given in the Memoir of George Wilson
by his sister.
The High School, a venerable civic institution dating from the sixteenth
century, still occupied the site of the Blackfriars’ Monastery, at the
east end of the ridge from which the ruined Kirk-of-Field was displaced
by the newly-founded university in Queen Mary’s time. The modern
policeman had not yet superseded the old city watch. The High School
Wynd, a singularly picturesque alley of timber-fronted lands, at the
foot of which stood the palace of Cardinal Beaton, gave access to the
Cowgate, a plebeian haunt, the young roughs of which maintained a
hereditary feud against the “puppies” of the High School. A stray High
School boy, especially if he was a “guite” or freshman, venturing into
that Alsatia, incurred all the risks of a wanderer into an enemy’s
lines; and from time to time a bicker, or pitched battle with sticks and
stones, between the “puppies” of the High School and the “blackguards”
of the Cowgate, came off by mutual understanding on a Saturday in the
Hunter’s Bog or on the Links. The school numbered upwards of seven
hundred boys. The Yards, as the playground was called, presented the
busy scene characteristic of similar juvenile gatherings. But there was
then less of restraint either by masters or police than under the new
_régime_ of school boards and “peelers.” Out of school boys settled
their own affairs, and righted their own wrongs, with results that seem
to me on the whole to have tended to develop manliness and
self-restraint. In the general sports, as well as in organized bickers
or raids into the enemy’s quarters, after some Cowgate encroachment upon
the amenities of the school, all were one; but the acquaintance even
with the boys of our own class was partial. They naturally formed into
little groups of kindred spirits, the beginnings in some cases of
life-long friendships.
Dr. Philip Maclagan, referring to those early school-days, says: “I was
one of the original members of the Juvenile Society for the Advancement
of Knowledge. The society met on Friday evening; papers were read by the
members in rotation, and questions previously started were debated. I
remember some of them--‘Whether the whale or the herring afforded the
more useful and profitable employment to mankind?’ ‘Whether the camel
was more useful to the Arab or the reindeer to the Laplander?’ and
similar puzzles for youthful ingenuity.” As yet political and social
questions were unheeded; and the Saturday rambles, for which Edinburgh
offers such rare advantages, furnished materials for subsequent
discussion in diverse geological, botanical, and antiquarian subjects of
interest. Those excursions extended to Cramond; to Royston Castle,
picturesquely crowning a rock near the sea-shore; to Newhaven, Leith,
or Portobello; or landward, to Craigmillar Castle, Corstorphine,
Colinton, the Esk; and to the Braid or Blackford Hill: a stolen
pleasure, since we were at that time liable to pursuit and ejection as
trespassers. The Arthur’s Seat as well as the Blackford Hill of those
days, if less adapted for the proprieties of a city park, were more to
the taste of youthful explorers while still in a state of nature. It was
the Blackford of young Walter Scott--
“On whose uncultured breast,
Among the broom, and thorn, and whin,
A truant boy, I sought the nest;
Or listened, as I lay at rest,
While rose on breezes thin
The murmur of the city crowd.”
Already, when Scott penned his “Marmion,” the agriculturist and the
builder were working havoc on the scene. How much more may survivors of
that younger circle now say,--
“O’er the landscape, as I look,
Nought do I see unchanged remain,
Save the rude cliffs and chiming brook.
To me they make a heavy moan
Of early friendships past and gone.”
But such feelings found no place in the thoughts of the eager truants.
Close at hand were the never-failing Calton Hill, or Arthur’s Seat and
Duddingston, with charm enough for a pleasant ramble, but also utilized,
along with more extended excursions, for collecting specimens to furnish
material for subsequent discussion in their Juvenile Society, as well as
contributions to the museum which was already in course of formation.
The sea-shore had then, as in later years, a peculiar charm for William
Nelson. To the very close of his life an excursion in company with some
favourite companion to Newhaven, or to North Berwick, and off in one of
the fishermen’s boats to fish for haddock or whitings, furnished one of
his most prized recreations. But it was at Kinghorn, his mother’s
birthplace, on the opposite shore of the Firth of Forth, that his
choicest holidays were spent. In a letter written in long subsequent
years to his old schoolmate and friend, the Rev. Dr. Simpson of Derby,
when an event, hereafter referred to, brought him anew into intimate
relations with the place, he thus recalls the memories of his early
boyhood:--“My connection with Kinghorn has been very close; and my love
for it, as my mother’s birthplace, and the place where I spent many very
happy days in my earliest years, and during my school holidays
afterwards, is very great. I was exceedingly fond of fishing, both from
the rocks on the sea-shore and at Kinghorn Loch; and happier days were
never spent by any youngster than were those days of mine at Kinghorn.
I knew every rock on the coast from Pettycur onwards to Seafield Tower
on East the Braes, which is not far from the ‘lang toon of Kirkcaldy;’
and a finer sea-coast for grand rocks there is not anywhere on the
northern coast of the Firth of Forth. I was as happy as I could be from
morning till night. I remember the talks, too, in those early days by
the old folks, which were principally about Paul Jones’s visit to the
Firth, my grandmother having seen his ship from the little hamlet of
Glassmount, about two miles from Kinghorn, where she was born, and where
her parents stayed at that time.
“Another favourite subject of talk was the ‘windy Saturday,’ a
tremendous day of wind, when only one vessel, it was said, out in the
Firth of Forth, was able to face the stormy blasts without coming to
grief. A third subject of talk with the old folks was the mischief that
steam-boats had done to the town, as, before they began to run, there
were big boats to carry passengers; and as they started only at
particular times of the tide, and did not go during the night,
passengers had generally to stay some time in the town till the boats
were ready to start--that is, for Leith, as there was no Newhaven in
those days. ‘What a good this did to the town!’ and, ‘What a mistake it
was to upset the quiet, easy way of taking things, as they were in those
good old days, by the introduction of steam-boats!’ My mother’s uncle,
John Macallum, was the captain of the first steam-boat, or, at all
events, one of the first, that sailed on the Firth of Forth, its name
being the _Sir William Wallace_. It unfortunately was wrecked on some
rocks near Burntisland.
“I could enlarge upon such themes to a great extent, and upon my
companions of those early days; but, alas! those companions have all
passed away, with two exceptions--namely, Henry Darney, a worthy citizen
of Kinghorn, and Major Greig, now of Toronto, Canada. My connection with
Kinghorn came to a close about 1836, when my grandmother died; but such
a liking have I for the place, that I have paid it a short visit almost
every year since that time.”
His more intimate relations with Kinghorn, as he states, terminated with
the death of his grandmother; but his fondness for it remained through
life. In 1885 his eldest sister, Mrs. George Brown, returned from
Canada, and I am indebted to her for some interesting early
reminiscences recalled by more than one visit made in his company to
their mother’s birthplace. “It was there,” she writes, “he spent all his
holidays as a boy; and so eager was he to get to the place that the very
afternoon of the breaking up of school often saw him on board the
ferry-boat on his way across the Forth, fishing-rod in hand and
fishing-basket on back. For fishing he had a perfect passion. At
Newhaven, Kinghorn, Crail, North Berwick, and Oban, he was well known
and greatly liked by all the fishermen, although frequently their
patience must have been pretty well put to the test when they were taken
out in rough weather by William, and they knew there were no fish to be
had.
“When a boy at Kinghorn, late and early he might be seen either putting
his tackle in order, or down on the beach digging for bait, or on the
rocks, now on one and now on another, according to the state of the
tide, contented to spend hours and hours together so that he only caught
fish or even got what he called good nibbles. On many occasions he was
so successful that he was able to keep the poor pretty well supplied
with fish during his visits.
“It was not only during the holiday months that William occupied himself
in fishing or in preparation for it. All through the winter he and his
brothers spent a good deal of their time in manufacturing lines for the
next summer’s campaign. It is amusing to remember where materials for
these fishing-lines sometimes came from. There was an old piano in the
house which had seen better days, and the strings of it afforded a good
supply of wire for fastening the hooks on the lines; the tail of any
horse unfortunate enough to come in the way was put under contribution
for a supply of hair. To the end of his life, his interest in and his
love for Kinghorn never waned; and by the occasional visits he continued
to pay, his acquaintance with the few remaining companions of his
boyhood was kept up.
“The second last visit he paid was in 1886. My sister Jessie and I were
with him. Leaving Edinburgh early in the day, we crossed to Burntisland;
and getting a carriage there, we drove to Pettycur. His recollections
were all of his boyhood. He showed us a part of the beach where he used
to dig for cockles and sand-eels, and the rocks where he and his
companions made a fire to roast potatoes. He pointed out the place where
Alexander III. is said to have been killed; and recalled the old times
of pinnaces and open boats before steamers were heard of. Leaving
Pettycur, we drove to the loch, a lovely, sequestered place, where
William caught his first pike. To show his love for fishing, my brother
Tom recalls the fact that on one occasion, when the holidays were over
and the day had come for William to return to Edinburgh, after he had
finished his preparations for starting, he looked at the clock, and
saying he had still time to run up to the loch before the boat sailed,
rushed off with his fishing-rod. Whether he came back with an empty
basket or not tradition does not say. From the loch we made our way to
the beautiful sandy beach; then up to the Braes, where he used to
scamper about, and on which there still stands an old hawthorn tree, by
the side of which, he told us, he fired his first shot. He loved
evidently to linger in memory over these days and recall his friends and
playmates, the remembrance of whom brought tears to his eyes.”