_SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMATES._
William Nelson was a pupil in the High School of Edinburgh when one
great cycle in its history was completed. It had occupied the site of
the old Blackfriars’ Monastery for upwards of two hundred and seventy
years. In 1555 the town house of Cardinal Beaton, at the foot of the
Blackfriars’ Wynd, which continued to be one of the most interesting
historical buildings in Edinburgh till its demolition in 1871, was
rented by the city for the use of the Grammar School, while a building
for its permanent occupation was “being biggit on the east side of the
Kirk-of-Field,” the scene, a few years later, of Lord Darnley’s
mysterious assassination. Its rector was David Vocat, a prebendary of
the neighbouring collegiate church of St. Mary-in-the-Field; and under
his rule the cloisters of the Dominicans, built for them in 1230 by
Alexander II., gave place to the halls and playground of the High School
boys. But it was a turbulent age, and before the century closed the
Yards became the scene of a tragic event which retained a prominent
place among the traditions of the school so long as it remained on the
old site. In 1598 Bailie Macmoran, one of the city magistrates, was shot
in a barring out of the schoolboys by William Sinclair, a son of the
Chancellor of Caithness. The contemporary diarist, Birrel, notes that
“there was ane number of scholaris, being gentlemen’s bairns, made a
mutinie;” and on the poor bailie interposing, the schoolboy revolt ended
in dire tragedy.
Great as were the changes that time had wrought on the locality where
the old monastery of the Black Friars gave place to the City Grammar
School, a flavour of historic antiquity pervaded it to the last. The
episcopal palace of the Beatons, where the school work had been carried
on for a time, still stood at the foot of the High School Wynd; and near
by was the site of that of Gawain Douglas, who, while still provost of
St. Giles’s collegiate church--
“In a barbarous age
Gave to rude Scotland Virgil’s page.”
It was probably due to the vicinity of their lodgings that the poet
interposed on behalf of the militant archbishop when, after the famous
street feud of “Cleanse the Causeway,” Beaton had vainly sought
sanctuary behind the altar of the Blackfriars’ Church, and, but for the
interposition of the poet, would have been slain. His vigorous
translation of the Æneid into the Scottish vernacular was a favourite
with William Nelson in later years. But the associations of the locality
in his school days were for the most part of more recent date.
The High School Yards had been the playground of Hume, Robertson,
Erskine, Horner, Jeffrey, Cockburn, Brougham, and Scott, and of many a
notability before them. The memory of its gentle, scholarly rector, Dr.
Adam, author of “Roman Antiquities” and other works, was still fresh;
and the old school seemed a link between past generations and the living
age. But neither the site, with its picturesque surroundings, nor the
building, accorded with the ideas of civic reformers who had organized a
crusade against whatever was out of keeping with the brand-new town. The
age had not then reverted to the mediæval models which have since come
into vogue. Classic art was regarded as most suited to academic
requirements; and so a beautiful Grecian building--the finest specimen
of Thomas Hamilton’s architectural skill, in the designing of which his
artist friend, David Roberts, was understood to have contributed
valuable aid,--had been erected on the southern slope of the Calton
Hill, as a more fitting home for the city Grammar School.
The migration from the antiquated building at the head of the High
School Wynd to this splendid edifice in the New Town was an important
change in many ways besides the mere removal to more commodious and
sightly halls. It brought to an end a host of old customs and
traditions; and, among the rest, to the hereditary feud between the
Cowgate “blackguards” and the High School “puppies.” A grand civic
ceremonial marked this transfer of the school to its new domicile. On
the 23rd of June 1829--a bright, auspicious day--William Nelson, the
head boy of his class, with his schoolmates, under the leadership of the
rector and masters, walked in procession, each bearing an osier wand,
with music, military escort, and all the civic glories that the Lord
Provost and magistrates could command, to do honour to the occasion. It
was a memorable epoch in schoolboy life. But it seemed to the old boys
as though they never were quite at home in their stately New Town
quarters. Old “Blackie,” with her famous “gib” or toffy stall, was out
of place there; and as for Brown’s famous subterranean pie-shop in the
old High School Wynd, it necessarily tarried behind, to the inevitable
ruin of a once flourishing business. Not the building only, but the
entire scholastic system carried on within its walls, soon after
underwent a complete revolution; and the work of the venerable Grammar
School of Prebendary Vocat, the classic arena of Adam, Pillans, and
Carson, has since devolved on Fettes College, a creation of the present
century.
But the old classic system still prevailed in William Nelson’s time;
and, notwithstanding some glaring defects, was turned by him to good
account. As to the school itself, it must be owned that it stood in need
of reform. The class of Mr. Benjamin Mackay, under whose training
William Nelson remained for four years, numbered upwards of a hundred
boys. Those in the two front forms worked with more or less persistency
under a somewhat coercive system; the remainder idled in the most
flagrant fashion, and not a few of them looked back in later years on
those dreary hours with an indignant sense of wasted time. But William
Nelson was foremost among the studious workers. The same quiet, resolute
perseverance which marked his later career in business characterized him
as a schoolboy. He maintained his place as the dux of his class, carried
off the chief prizes of the school, and at the close of his course under
the rector, Dr. Carson, he passed to the university with the highest
honours, as classical gold medalist.
Among the carefully preserved papers of his early years are a bundle of
old letters from schoolmates, enclosed in an envelope addressed to his
mother, with an endorsation begging her to see to their safe keeping.
They furnish pleasant glimpses of the affectionate relations already
established with more than one of the friends of later years. The solemn
protest of the learned Principal, Dr. Lee, against “that most
objectionable and pernicious practice of making balls of snow,” is
humorously commented on, along with graver matters, such as pertained to
the themes and discussions of the Juvenile Literary Society, and the
more ambitious debating societies of the university. His own sense of
humour found free play both in early and later years; but above all, his
youthful letters are full of pleasant gossip of the old sailors of
Kinghorn, who told him yarns of the victories in which they had shared
in the great French war, and the pranks they indulged in when flush with
prize-money. Old Charlie Mackenzie had been in the _Mars_ in her action
with the _Hercules_, one of the bloodiest naval conflicts of the war.
Another of the Kinghorn story-tellers--Orrock, who died in 1836, upwards
of ninety years of age--claimed to have known the man who acted as
drummer at the Porteous mob, and to have learned from him some details
of the burning of the doors, and so gaining admission to the Tolbooth.
The intense feeling of local attachment which such reminiscences reveal
manifested itself in later years in the interest he took in improvements
at Kinghorn, as well as in the more costly restorations in his native
city. But one of the first fruits of his intercourse with the old
pensioners of Kinghorn, who, as he says, “were great fishers for
podlies from certain rocks on the sea-shore,” was the capture of a crab
with a double claw, a _lusus naturæ_, which furnished a novel subject
for discussion at a meeting of the Juvenile Literary Society. His
contributions to its collections and learned discussions were generally
of the same class--algæ, shells, or other marine curiosities, the fruits
of his last holiday ramble by the sea.
Among stray waifs that have survived from those old days is a letter,
bearing date February 20, 1829, addressed to the secretary of the
Juvenile Society by the elder brother of one of its members. With all
the condescension of an undergraduate placing his mature knowledge at
the service of schoolboys, the writer sets forth “the very great
pleasure I take in hearing of the proceedings of your society, and my
unqualified approbation of your plan of keeping a journal as a sort of
record of your proceedings.” He proceeds: “I daresay you are unaware
that the duties of a student of medicine are of a very arduous nature.”
But, as he goes on to state, he had laid before the Plinian Society in
the previous summer a paper on certain “Discoveries made behind
Edinburgh Castle in digging the foundation of the new bridge,”--part of
the terraced road which involved the destruction of Trotter’s Close and
the Nelson homestead,--and this, he says, “I shall copy out in a style
which I hope will prove interesting to my young friends, and which may,
perhaps, form a contribution to their journal.” The writer, whose
seniority, by the years that separate the College student from the High
School boy, entitled him thus condescendingly to address his brother
Philip and the other juvenile _savants_, is now Sir Douglas Maclagan,
the genial veteran Professor of Medical Jurisprudence in his own
university; and, it may be added, the author of some of the most popular
of a younger generation’s student-songs.
At a later stage the juvenile debaters awoke to an interest in the
stirring questions of the day. Mr. Alexander Sprunt, writing from
Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1859, says: “During the period of our
High School curriculum, questions were occupying the public mind, and
startling events taking place in Europe: the final struggle of the
Poles, the French ‘Three Days of July,’ the reform movement, etc. The
subject of the immediate or gradual emancipation of the negro slaves in
the colonies was also keenly discussed about that time. Some of us,
being related to families of the colonists, were familiar with the
arguments for a gradual abolition of slavery.” William Nelson took up
the question warmly, and was an uncompromising advocate for immediate
emancipation. As to the oft-renewed struggle in France between Bourbon
Royalists, Imperialists, and Red Republicans, it was forcibly brought
home to the realization of the young debaters by the presence of the
exiled Charles X. and his little court at Holyrood; and by the
occasional sight of the royal refugee as he passed the High School Yards
on foot, in company with one or two of his suite, to enjoy the
magnificent panorama from the Calton Hill.
The fruits of those early experiences could be discerned in later years.
The boy’s education was progressing under other teachings besides those
of the schoolmaster. It was altogether alien to the unobtrusiveness of
William Nelson’s sensitive nature to take, in later years, a prominent
share in political life; but his generous support was extended in the
most practical form to all philanthropic movements. He manifested the
keenest interest in all questions of liberal politics: in the
emancipation of the slaves; in the prolonged controversies which led to
the disruption of the Scottish Church; and in the more recent struggle
between the Slave and Free States in the great American Civil War. Most
of those questions belong to periods long subsequent to the time when
James and Alexander Sprunt were the champions of the West Indian
planters, and William Nelson and other juvenile debaters maintained the
cause of the enslaved negro.
But the members of the Literary Society, as already noted, had their
field-days as well as their Friday night sessions; and in pursuit of
material for their papers, as well as in the free use of the Saturday
and other holidays, the schoolmates had many an exciting ramble. In
spite of its uncertain climate, Edinburgh presents an unequalled variety
of choice holiday excursions; and as to the rain, it required a good
deal more than an ordinary shower to put a stop to any projected
excursion. In walking, climbing, and all the ordinary feats of healthy
boyhood, William Nelson was unsurpassed. To make our way to the summit
of Salisbury Crags by the famous Cat-Nick, or outrival each other in the
attempt to scale Samson’s Ribs, and sit supreme on some overhanging
ledge of the basaltic columns, were among the most favourite pastimes.
Or a leisurely climb along the slopes to the summit of Arthur’s Seat,
and a survey of the magnificent landscape spread out to view, were a
prelude, at the word, to a dash down the hill, scrambling like so many
goats over the western cliffs and the rough slope below, and so by the
Hunter’s Bog, for the first draught at St. Anthony’s Well. In all such
feats William Nelson was a match for any schoolmate. His coolness
equalled his courage, and he had a love for daring feats such as those
who only knew him in later years will hardly realize. When the old home
at the Bowhead was displaced by the Assembly Hall, and its lofty spire
was in process of erection, he made friends with the contractor, and I
accompanied him in more than one ascent. A steam hoist carried us up
the main portion of the way; and then came the trying ordeal on the
ladders. But as the tapering spire approached completion, it was no
longer possible to reach the summit from within; and I still recall with
vividness the composure with which, all unconscious of danger, he walked
out on the narrow plank, over a depth of upwards of two hundred feet,
and stood at the extreme end of it, noting and commenting on the various
objects spread out below.
A future career for life was as yet unthought of. But while aiming
solely at pleasure, and rejoicing in a holiday’s escape from school, the
boy was unconsciously educating himself. Already the botanical box and
the geological hammer were in vogue. Not, indeed, the luxurious
appliances with which amateur naturalists are now furnished. Any hammer
sufficed for getting at a coveted fossil; and as for our _hortus
siccus_, an old candle-box was appropriated by the botanical collector.
But the archæological tastes in which more than one of William Nelson’s
schoolmates sympathized, and to which he gave such practical expression
in later years, were already in process of development. The pleasurable
associations with historic scenes and picturesque ruins found ample
scope in those holiday rambles. Craigmillar Castle was close at hand;
and within easy distance was old Roman Cramond, with chances of a
numismatic prize to the fortunate explorer, and with the sculptured
eagle of the legionaries of the second century still visible on the
cliff at the mouth of the river Almond. This had a special charm for
boys fresh from their Cæsar and Tacitus, giving a sense of reality to
those forgotten centuries. It was an object-lesson, better even than the
Roman altar dedicated to the goddess Epona--DEÆ EPONÆ--which Dr. Carson,
the Rector of the High School, produced to his class, and won their
attentive admiration as he pointed to the focus in which the Roman
horse-jockey had poured a libation; and adduced passages from the
Satires of Juvenal in confirmation of his theme.
Farther afield lay Woodhouselee, Seton and Roslin chapels; Niddry,
Borthwick, and Crichton castles; Preston Cross and Tower; and many
another storied ruin associated with familiar historic events. Pinkie
Cleugh, Carberry Hill, Lasswade, Dalkeith, and Prestonpans, were each
linked with song or story. Maclagan was an ardent collector of plants
and insects; geology divided with botany the interest of George Wilson;
John A. Smith had already begun the collection of coins; and William
Nelson was forming the tastes which manifested themselves in later years
in his love for every venerable nook of his native city, and in his zeal
for the preservation of its historic memorials.
The change from school to college life is in every case an important
one. With the majority it involves emancipation, in a large degree,
from enforced and distasteful studies, and their exchange for congenial
pursuits. The youth begins for the first time to estimate knowledge at
its real worth, and to shape out plans of study for himself. But the
novel arena is no less important as that in which the companionships of
the playground give place to that discriminating choice of congenial
associates in which life-long friendships have so often originated. It
is the joyous season in which the springtide is just merging into life’s
early summer; when youth is animated by all generous aspirations, and
hope’s rainbow arch spans the horizon.
The period of William Nelson’s admission as an undergraduate of the
University of Edinburgh was in some respects a brilliant one in its
history; and even more so in relation to its students than its
professors. Dr. John Lee, the learned Church historian and black-letter
scholar, was principal, and Dr. Chalmers occupied the chair of divinity;
the chair of natural philosophy was successively occupied by Sir John
Leslie and by James D. Forbes. Before the abrupt close of William
Nelson’s academic career, Sir William Hamilton had assumed the lead in
its school of mental science; and the fame of John Wilson, its professor
of moral philosophy, under his pseudonym of “Christopher North,”
attracted many to his class-room for whom his professed theme would have
had no charm. But in the department of classics, for which all William
Nelson’s previous training had been specially directed, the faculty was
imperfectly equipped. Dunbar, a poor representative of Hellenic
scholarship, had then filled the Greek chair for upwards of a quarter of
a century. On the other hand, the professor of humanity was James
Pillans, an elegant scholar, and, in the words of Sir Alexander Grant,
“a born teacher and educator;” though latterly more prone to dwell on
little critical niceties than to give himself up to the drudgery which
was indispensable for the training of his large and often inadequately
prepared class. Among other traits that his old pupils will recall was
the never-failing protest at the opening of a new session, which
reminded the class that he enjoyed the dubious fame of being pilloried
by Byron in his “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.” The irate bard, in
his indiscriminate _furor_, had characterized the professor of humanity
as “Paltry Pillans;” and William Nelson used to quote this incident of
his own experience in justification of the title:--He had an essay to
give in on a certain day, and not having finished it till late on the
previous night, instead of walking to the professor’s remote residence
at Inverleith Row, he dropped his manuscript into the nearest post-box.
Next day, when the class assembled, the first intimation from the
professor was, “I will thank Mr. William Nelson to hand twopence to the
janitor for the postage of his essay!” Notwithstanding some amusing
eccentricities, Professor Pillans was held in great esteem by his old
pupil as an apt and painstaking enthusiast in his profession; and the
good feeling was mutual. William Nelson was a favourite pupil, in whose
progress he took a lively interest, and it was in spite of his most
urgent remonstrances that the classic muse was abandoned at the call of
filial duty.
But it was the fortune of William Nelson, in those happy days of student
life, to find himself among a rare band of undergraduates, many of whom
subsequently won a name for themselves in ampler fields. Edward Forbes
was then a zealous volunteer on the staff of the _University Maga_,
contributing with pen and pencil, in prose and verse, to its columns. He
had a rare power of winning co-operation in whatever he set on foot; and
he gathered around him a band of kindred spirits, who, as sharers in the
exuberant frolic and satire of the _Maga_, formed themselves at length
into the Magi, or members of the Maga Club. Out of this grew the famous
“Brotherhood of the Friends of Truth,” with its archimagus, its ribbon,
and its mystic motto:-
ΟΙΝΣ ΕΡΩΣ ΜΑΘΗΣΙΣ,
which still survives under its later guise of the Red Lions of the
British Association gatherings. There was a curious admixture of
youthful exuberance and frolic with a lofty earnestness of aim in the
Brotherhood. The search after truth was declared, in its programme, not
only to be man’s noblest occupation, but his duty; and the spirit of the
order is thus set forth: “This brotherhood is a union of the searchers
after truth, for the glory of God, the good of all, and the honour of
the order, to the end that mind may hold its rightful sway in the
world.”
Of the youthful band of undergraduates, John Goodsir, Bennett, Blackie,
Lyon Playfair, George Wilson, and Edward Forbes, all ultimately filled
chairs in their own university. Day succeeded to a professorship in St.
Andrews, and Struthers to one in Aberdeen. Henry Goodsir, a youth of
high ability, accompanied Sir John Franklin as naturalist in the
ill-fated Arctic expedition, from which none returned. Dr. Stanger
distinguished himself, with better fortune, in the Niger expedition of
1844; Andrew Ramsay rose to be chief of the Geological Survey; and other
fellow-students and members of the order have occupied professors’
chairs in Canada and in India, have represented their university in
Parliament, or made their mark in no less useful ways. Among the latter
the name of William Nelson claims an honourable rank. For the scheme of
the brotherhood required each member “to devote his time and his
energies to the department for which he feels and proves himself best
fitted, communicating his knowledge to all, so that all may benefit
thereby, casting away selfishness, and enforcing precepts of love.”
Assuredly when those maxims came to be tested in the daily business of
life, no one gave their spirit of unselfishness more practical
manifestation than the subject of this memoir.
In Professor Pillans’s class he maintained the standing which he had
achieved at the High School. His foremost but unequal rival in the
composition of Latin verse was the late George Paxton Young, the
esteemed Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in the University of
Toronto. It was while William Nelson was still a student that John
Cairns--the friend and fellow-student both at Edinburgh and Berlin of
his younger brother, John Nelson, and now the venerable Principal and
Professor of Systematic Theology in the Divinity Hall of the United
Presbyterian Church--came fresh from the pastoral hills of Berwickshire
to win for himself a distinguished place among the men of his time.
Amid the stimulus and rivalry of such competitors for fame, the young
student devoted himself with renewed zeal to the classics, with
undefined visions of some honourable professional or academic reward as
his life-prize; and fulfilled the high anticipations of his earlier
career. But while thus steadily pursuing a course which gave abundant
promise of triumph, his father was suddenly prostrated by disease; and
William, as the eldest son of a large family, abandoned all the bright
prospects of his university career, and the dream of professional or
academic achievements, to grapple with the unfamiliar difficulties of a
commercial enterprise, till then conducted on a scale commensurate with
the modest aims of an elder generation in the Old Town of Edinburgh.
The business of Mr. Thomas Nelson was a curious survival of the system
borrowed from the great fairs of the Middle Ages, and grafted on to
their older traffic by the successors of Guttenburg and Fust; of Caxton,
Wynkin de Worde, and Chepman and Miller. Allan Ramsay had followed in
their steps, with his booth at the sign of the Mercury, opposite the
head of Niddry’s Wynd, from whence he transferred it to the Luckenbooths
at the City Cross. It was in just such another luckenbooth at the
Bowhead that Mr. Thomas Nelson originated the business which has since
developed into such great proportions.
William Nelson threw himself at once, with characteristic singleness of
aim, into his new vocation; nor did he ever express regret at his
enforced desertion of scholarship for trade. But few men have carried
away from school or college a keener sense of the attachments of student
life. To the last the plea of an old schoolmate ever presented an
irresistible claim which scarcely any demerit could cancel. The fate of
one whose life, by his own misconduct, had closed in miserable failure
is thus charitably noted in one of his letters: “Poor ---- died two days
ago of congestion of the lungs; and it is a wonder that he hung on so
long, as he has been in a very dilapidated condition for years. The last
time I saw him, his condition was truly pitiable. I sent him a fresh
bolster and bedding, for the ones he had were hard and foul. Poor
fellow! he did a great deal to hasten the approach of the last enemy.”
His loyalty to early friends was unfailing. He kept a record of his
classmates in the High School, and noted with keenest interest their
success or failure in life. He told with kindly humour of the refusal of
a liberal “tip” offered to a porter at Cairo who had been specially
serviceable, and then claimed fellowship by reminding him of old High
School doings. B---- was the ne’er-do-weel of Mackay’s class, who had
thus found his vocation in the land of the Pharaohs. His sympathy was
unbounded in any honour or good fortune achieved by a schoolmate; and
latterly, as he watched the rapidly diminishing numbers of the old group
of school and college companions, he recorded at the close of each year
the minutes of Death’s roll-call. To one who entered so keenly into
academic life, and whose career was so replete with promise, it was a
trying ordeal to abandon college for the uncongenial drudgery of a
trading venture for which such experiences seemed to promise no helpful
training. But in Scotland a university career is by no means regarded as
unsuitable preparation for trade and commerce; and William Nelson was
speedily to show what success the classical gold medalist of the High
School and the best writer of Latin verse in the College could achieve
in business life.