_SALISBURY GREEN._
The unique site of the Scottish capital, embosomed in hills and looking
out upon the sea, furnishes many charming nooks for suburban residence
to its denizens; but among such the Nelsons’ home stood in some respects
unrivalled. Salisbury Green, a jointure house of the Prestonfield
family, when purchased in 1770 by Lady Dick Cunningham, had, according
to the traditions of the family, a ghost as its sole tenant; and
notwithstanding the genial hospitalities, and all the brightness and
beauty of its home-life in later years, the venerable ghost, a lady of
grim visage, in antique coif and farthingale, continued to flit at rare
intervals about her old haunts, and drew the curtains of fair young
dreamers who had invaded her precincts. It was a plain old-fashioned
house, though already graced with some of the undesigned picturesqueness
due to additions of various dates, when William Nelson acquired the
property in 1860. But, with his keen eye for beauty, he discerned at
once the capabilities of the place, embosomed in stately trees, and
commanding a view of almost unmatched grandeur and beauty.
Under his tasteful care, the old house was renovated, assuming
externally the picturesque features of the domestic architecture of
Scotland in the sixteenth century; and in accordance with the practice
of the age of the Reformation, he carved round the entablature this apt
motto, from the third chapter of Hebrews, “EVERY HOUSE IS BUILDED BY
SOME MAN; BUT HE THAT BUILT ALL THINGS IS GOD.” Internally the
drawing-room, an addition of its earlier proprietors, was a
reproduction, in style and proportions, of that of Barley Wood, the
charming abode of the amiable and gifted Hannah More. The house, so
familiar to many strangers from other lands as well as to the citizens
of Edinburgh, by reason of its hospitalities, was enriched in later
years, by the accumulated acquisitions of its owner, with choice works
of art and _virtu_, and especially with a valuable collection of bronzes
and antique ceramic ware, not displayed for purposes of show, but
scattered over the mantel-shelves and cabinets, or disposed about in
every available nook and corner of the old house, as natural and fitting
adjuncts of the tasteful owner’s home.
But the unique charm of Salisbury Green as a city dwelling lies in its
natural surroundings. The terraced lawn slopes to the east, and commands
a historic landscape of rare beauty. The couchant lion of Arthur Seat,
a mountain in miniature, rises on the left in a succession of bold
cliffs and grassy slopes to a height of eight hundred feet. The basaltic
columns of Samson’s Ribs form a singularly bold feature at its base. On
the right, the rich undulating landscape terminates in an insulated rock
crowned with the picturesque ruin of Craigmillar Castle, famous in
Scottish history in the days of the Jameses and Mary Stuart. Right
below, Duddingston Loch forms the central feature, with the old village
churchyard beyond. Under its mouldering heaps the rude forefathers of
many a generation lie around the venerable parish church. Though defaced
by tasteless modern additions, the church still retains the
richly-moulded Norman chancel arch and south doorway, the work of the
same builders who reared the Abbey of Holyrood in the time of David I.;
while away in the distant landscape are North Berwick Law, Aberlady Bay,
the Bass Rock, and beyond the Firth of Forth the Fifeshire hills. The
sudden transition from the dust and bustle of the Dalkeith Road to the
garden terrace and the unique landscape beyond, never failed to excite
admiring wonder in the visitor who saw it for the first time. It
includes such a variety of attractive features, and differs so greatly
from anything usually visible from the windows or garden-terrace of a
city dwelling, that even the most unimpressible yielded to some sense
of surprise. Many a hearty tribute has accordingly been paid to its
beauty. The French artist, Gustave Doré, was charmed with the
magnificent panorama; J. J. Hayes, the Arctic explorer, and Bayard
Taylor, familiar as a traveller with the beauties of many lands, owned
its attractions as exceptionally rare; and the expression of quiet
delight with which Augustus Hare--fortunate in an unusually warm, bright
day of early summer--lingered over every detail of the historic
landscape, has left a vivid impression on the minds of those who recall
the incidents of his visit. It was no show-place for strangers, for few
men shrank with more instinctive reserve than William Nelson from
anything savouring of display; but to friends and friends’ friends it
was ever accessible. An American visitor, who, like so many others from
beyond the Atlantic, received a hospitable welcome at Salisbury Green,
thus recalls the place and its owner:--“I shall never forget the
greeting that made us all so much at home, the gentle humour of our host
at table, and then the quiet saunter in the summer evening in the
garden; Samson’s Ribs, a most curious geological formation, and the hill
beyond reflecting the setting sun, on one of those long summer evenings
we know nothing of in America. Mr. Nelson pointed out a ruined castle
where Queen Mary resided, and a rock out in the sea that had been a
prison of the Covenanters. Altogether the scene and its pleasant
associations are unforgetable.”
Here, in this bright home, William Nelson dwelt, surrounded by wife and
children, with an ever-welcome circle of friends; and also with other
objects of his kindly consideration--his pet cockatoo, his peacocks, his
children’s rabbits, etc., for his sympathetic nature displayed itself
strongly in his love for the lower animals. His favourite dogs made him
subservient to their caprices, for he could not bear to see an animal
neglected. The birds that frequented Salisbury Green were a source of
constant delight, and any injury done to them excited his pity. He
mourned over the disappearance of the larks, after a succession of wet
seasons, as a personal loss; and an ill-timed jest about larkpies seemed
to give him acute pain. The reappearance of the birds in the spring, and
their pairing and building, were a source of ever-renewed pleasure. But
no one entered more heartily into the humorous aspect of things, even
when the laugh was at his own expense; and an occasion of this kind
transpired during one of my later visits to Salisbury Green. He had been
greatly charmed by the appearance of a pair of herons that remained day
after day stalking about the lawn, wading in the pond, and seemingly
well contented to make themselves at home in the grounds. The household
was warned not to disturb the graceful strangers; but after a time they
disappeared, and then some stray fish-bones on the margin of the pond
revealed the secret of their visit. They had only left when the last of
its gold-fish had been disposed of!
The tenderness of William Nelson for the lower animals was shown in many
ways. A companion of his boyhood recalls an incident of those early
years. A party of boys at Kinghorn were off in a boat. They had obtained
the prized loan of a gun, and each in his turn was to have a shot at the
sea-gulls. William eagerly waited his chance; loaded and pointed his gun
at a gull within shot; then, after a pause, he quietly laid it down,
with the remark, “No, no! let the poor thing live!” One of the foremen
at Hope Park furnishes an incident of later years. Walking down Preston
Street, on his way to the office, Mr. Nelson saw a poor little sparrow,
just fledged; and having with some difficulty caught it, he gave a boy
sixpence to take it to Salisbury Green, and set it free among the trees.
Another incident I glean from one of Mrs. Nelson’s letters. “One day,
when we were walking together in the grounds, he stooped down and lifted
up so tenderly a worm which was on the gravel walk, and laying it on the
lawn, he said, ‘I cannot bear to see worms trampled upon; but this one
will be safe here.’” This is a specific instance of what was a
characteristic trait. In some manuscript “Recollections of the late
William Nelson,” noted down by Mr. Dalgleish, the superintendent of the
literary department of the publishing work for many years, the same
familiar trait is thus referred to:--“The birds were his constant and
most familiar friends. In the veranda of his beautiful house at
Salisbury Green he had quaintly-fashioned rustic boxes hung up for the
birds to build their nests in. It is a simple matter of fact that, not
once or twice, but many times, when walking round his garden after a
shower, he lifted a worm from the path, and laid it daintily on the
grass.” The tenderness that spared the gull, and cared for the worm on
his garden path, went even beyond this. He could not bear to see a
mousetrap set, and nothing pleased him more than when his children gave
evidence of a like sympathy. “None of us,” writes Mrs. Nelson, “will
ever forget the delight he was in one morning when he learned from Alice
that she, unknown to any one, had been cutting the string with which the
spring of a trap set in the nursery was held, so that no mice might be
caught. The servant, on her morning visits to the room, was mortified at
the failure of her plans to entrap the intruders, and only after a good
deal of questioning found out the delinquent.” Yet such are the curious
inconsistencies of human nature, no such thoughts seem to have intruded
to mar the enjoyment of his favourite pastime of fishing.
He was _en rapport_ with living nature in that peculiar way that seems
to distinguish an exceptional class of men. Dogs manifested for him an
instinctive sympathy, and he was perfectly fearless with regard to them.
When travelling with me in the Muskoka Lake district in Canada, a
backwood farmer shouted a warning as he approached the kennel of a
half-breed wolf-dog, such as are common with the Indians. But the
animal, though ordinarily fierce, responded to his caresses. His own
favourite dog, Leo, a fine Italian greyhound, watched for him, and
contended with the children for a share of his attention. He would coax
and whimper to be allowed to accompany him to the counting-room, where
his favourite corner was behind his master in his chair at the writing
table, to the manifest inconvenience and satisfaction of both. In a
retired nook in the grounds the visitor would come unexpectedly upon the
mound, with its little marble pillar, that marked the grave of canine
favourites of earlier years, and especially of poor Bronté, whose memory
was a source of bitter self-reproach to his master. William Nelson was
in the habit for many years of going down to the neighbouring sea-coast
before breakfast to bathe. This he did summer and winter, leaving early
in the cold dark mornings, accompanied by his faithful companion,
Bronté, a large Newfoundland dog. They travelled together in the train
to the Chain Pier. But when Mr. Nelson was absent from home, Bronté
missed his master, and setting off at the usual early hour, took the
train and went off to the beach in search of him. The fact only became
known when an account was presented from the railway company for
Bronté’s travelling expenses. He and his master were well known to the
railway officials, and so Master Bronté, as it proved, had regularly
journeyed for his morning bath in a first-class carriage! But the span
of life runs within straitened limits for our canine favourites, and ere
the close it had become a burden to poor Bronté. The feeling associated
with his death, which had long secretly preyed on his master’s mind,
found utterance when, in subsequent years, old age once more rendered
life a burden to another household pet. A fine large tom cat had passed
from kittenhood to extreme old age, and was nursed till its condition of
helplessness became so pitiable that some one suggested the
administration of poison as an act of mercy. “No, no! don’t give it
poison!” exclaimed Mr. Nelson; “you would never forget it. I have never
forgiven myself for allowing poor Bronté to be poisoned. It haunts me
still. I shall never forget it as long as I live.” So poor Tom was left
to die a natural death two days later.
Brighter associations connect themselves with a scene in the
drawing-room of Salisbury Green which transpired in recent years. On a
lovely Sabbath morning, when the windows were open on to the lawn, and
all were assembled for family worship, as William Nelson was reading a
chapter from the Bible, a starling flew into the room. It alighted and
kept hopping about his chair, till all knelt down; when, instead of
being startled, it perched on his shoulder, remaining quietly there all
the time of prayer. When the family rose from their knees, it was
thought that the bird would fly away; but it refused to quit its novel
perch. He walked with it on his shoulder up to the nursery, where a
large bowl of water was placed upon the table, when “Charlie,” as their
pet starling was subsequently named, hopped down to enjoy the luxury of
a bath. A cage was procured; but Mr. Nelson would not hear of its being
shut in. Ultimately, Charlie was housed in a large open cage in the
laundry, with free access to the garden. There he made himself entirely
at home, and became a great favourite; but after some time he flew off
into the garden and did not return. One evening, at a later date, when
the family were seated on the lawn, a starling--possibly
Charlie--perched on one of the children’s shoulders; and that was the
last they ever saw of their little visitor.
There was a rare naturalness and simplicity in William Nelson. He was at
ease in any company, and equally accessible to poor as to rich. Yet,
with all this, he was singularly undemonstrative. As one of his old
friends writes, “he was no hand-shaker;” so that a stranger could never
have guessed the deep sympathies that lay concealed under his quiet
manner. Yet when his pity was excited his emotion was extreme, and he
betrayed the tender sensitiveness of a woman, his tears flowing
unrestrained. When his mother, to whom he was passionately attached, lay
dying, he shrank from entering the room, where the sight of her
suffering overpowered him. But he lingered about the door of the
apartment, and could not stay away. When moved with apprehension of the
safety of those most dear to him--as on one occasion which I recall,
when in deep anxiety about the safety of his son--his emotion was even
painful to witness. But his capacity for enjoyment was equally great,
and retained in it to the last much of the freshness of childhood. A
“Punch and Judy,” especially with a group of children enjoying the show,
never lost its charm for him. Another kindly trait of unsophisticated
naturalness was the pleasure he derived from street music. He would wait
to listen to a ballad-singer, and after a liberal gift, ask to have the
song over again. A blind bagpiper was irresistible, though more, I
suspect, as an object of charity than for the charm of his music. A
cornopean player and sundry German bands came regularly to his office
window, and “the Rhine Watch” was sure to call forth half-a-crown.
After his death, the comment of an old Parkside workman on the changes
that his absence had created was summed up with the remark, “The beggars
on the Dalkeith Road and the bands of music have ceased to come now.”
The pleasure which he derived from music was intense. It was, indeed, no
uncommon thing to see him moved to tears under its influence. But much
of this, doubtless, was the pleasure of association: as in the plaintive
national airs of Scotland, the songs and ballads familiar to him from
childhood, and the sacred music linked to hymns, many of which have
become part of the national psalmody, and entered into the religious
life of the whole English-speaking race.
In art his taste was pure. He delighted to have artists about him,
criticised their works with frank sincerity, and at times with an
unconventional bluntness that was a little startling. Sir George Harvey,
James Drummond, Sir Noel Paton and his brother Waller, Sir Daniel
Macnee, Keeley Halswell, Alfred H. Forrester (Alfred Crowquill), with
Doré, Giacomelli, and other foreigners, were all among his
artist-friends; and to those must be added Mrs. D. O. Hill, William
Brodie, Stevenson, and other sculptors, to whom the charms of his
tasteful home and its beautiful surroundings were familiar. His
remarkably fine and expressive head was a model they prized to work
from. His feelings in regard to artists and their works find expression
in his letters from time to time, as he notes his sense of the loss
created by their death.
William Brodie, a self-taught artist of great simplicity and true
genius, whose fine statue of Lord Cockburn holds its place in the old
Parliament Hall of Edinburgh alongside of Roubiliac’s Forbes of
Culloden, Chantrey’s Lord Melville, and Steel’s Lord Jeffrey, was
engaged in 1881 on a marble bust of William Nelson. He had been
commissioned to execute for Toronto a bronze statue of Mr. Nelson’s
brother-in-law, the Hon. George Brown, leader of the Liberal party in
Upper Canada in its protracted struggle for constitutional government.
His death, after long suffering, by the pistol-shot of an assassin,
created a wide-spread sympathy in Canada, and awakened in the mind of
William Nelson the keenest sympathy on behalf of his widowed sister.
This, accordingly, gave an exceptional interest to the proposed statue.
He discussed the plans with the sculptor, and eagerly anticipated its
execution. But the commission had not been long intrusted to him, and
the plans for its realization settled, when death arrested the gifted
sculptor in the midst of his work. More than one day had been spent in
the studio, examining some of his latest productions, including the
unfinished bust, and discussing the treatment of the proposed statue. In
the following November, William Nelson thus writes:--“You will have
heard, ere this reaches you, intelligence of the death of poor William
Brodie, the sculptor. He had been suffering for several months past from
fatty degeneration of the heart, and on Sunday morning last he was
released from earthly care and trouble. I had a note from his wife about
a week before his death, in which she stated that he was a little
better, and that he had been able to make some drawings for the statue
of George Brown, but that no further progress had been made in the
matter. The loss is great to art, for he was at his very best, and
improving as he progressed. His Sir James Simpson I do not like; but he
blamed its low site, buried among the trees, and wanted it removed to
the open area of Nicolson Square, where, I daresay, it would show much
better. As for his Lord Cockburn, it is the finest thing in the
Parliament House. It is not for me to suggest who should now be
intrusted with the work; but there can be no doubt that Mrs. D. O. Hill
will be looking out for the commission; and if it should come her way,
and she were to produce a work equal to her statue of Livingstone, the
committee would not have occasion to regret having intrusted her with
it.”
Art had ever a charm for William Nelson, and he watched with jealous
sensitiveness the memorial statues which adorn the streets and squares
of his native city. But a keen personal sympathy gave intensity to his
interest in the one to be erected in honour of his own brother-in-law.
The execution of it was ultimately intrusted to Mr. C. Bell Birch,
A.R.A.; and in February 1884 Mr. Nelson thus writes from London to Mr.
James Campbell:--“I am here for a short time, with Mrs. Nelson and my
daughter Florence. We have all been out this afternoon at the studio of
Mr. Birch, the sculptor, seeing the model of the statue that is to be
erected to the memory of poor George Brown. I am glad to say that we are
all of opinion that the statue will be a noble one, though we are not
quite sure if the likeness will be what can be called a speaking
likeness.” The statue did ultimately satisfy in this respect, and now
forms an attractive feature in the Queen’s Park at Toronto. As to the
love of art here referred to, it is perpetuated by the younger
generation. Salisbury Green has its own studio, where both modelling and
painting were pursued by a group of young artists with more than
ordinary amateur skill. But art has found other rivals in the new home
to which the fair critic of Mr. Birch’s model has transferred her
_penates_.
As time wore on, and the thick clustering black locks of early years
whitened with the frosts of time, William Nelson courted more than ever
his own family reunions, delighted to gather his friends about him, and
noted with tender regrets the blanks that death made in the old circle.
Thus he writes to me in January 1882: “Several weel kent faces have
fled wi’ the year that’s awa’, including old artist-friends who have
recently disappeared from our midst that you will mourn.” After
referring to William Brodie and Sir Daniel Macnee, he proceeds: “And now
I have to inform you that your old friend William Miller [the eminent
engraver] has been called away, he having died at Sheffield yesterday. I
met him not long ago in the Meadows, as he was going in the direction of
Millerfield; and he walked as erect as he ever did, which was a most
remarkable thing for a man only four years short of being a
nonagenarian. In addition to those I have mentioned as having joined the
majority, the name of Sheriff Hallard has to be added; and Edinburgh has
lost in him a great deal of happy sunshine.”