1868.
I am about to do what very few could do without emotion—revise a
book which I wrote forty-five years ago. This little work came out in
the Augustan days of Edinburgh, when Jeffrey and Scott, Wilson and
the Ettrick Shepherd, Dugald Stewart and Alison, were daily giving
the productions of their minds to the public, and while yet Archibald
Constable acted as the unquestioned emperor of the publishing world. I
was then an insignificant person of the age of twenty; yet, destitute
as I was both of means and friends, I formed the hope of writing
something which would attract attention. The subject I proposed was
one lying readily at hand, the romantic things connected with Old
Edinburgh. If, I calculated, a first _part_ or _number_ could be
issued, materials for others might be expected to come in, for scores
of old inhabitants, even up perhaps to the very ‘oldest,’ would then
contribute their reminiscences.
The plan met with success. Materials almost unbounded came to me,
chiefly from aged professional and mercantile gentlemen, who usually,
at my first introduction to them, started at my youthful appearance,
having formed the notion that none but an old person would have thought
of writing such a book. A friend gave me a letter to Mr Charles
Kirkpatrick Sharpe, who, I was told, knew the scandal of the time of
Charles II. as well as he did the merest gossip of the day, and had
much to say regarding the good society of a hundred years ago.
Looking back from the year 1868, I feel that C. K. S. has himself
become, as it were, a tradition of Edinburgh. His thin effeminate
figure, his voice pitched _in alt_—his attire, as he took his daily
walks on Princes Street, a long blue frock-coat, black trousers,
rather wide below, and sweeping over white stockings and neat
shoes—something like a web of white cambric round his neck, and a
brown wig coming down to his eyebrows—had long established him as
what is called a character. He had recently edited a book containing
many stories of diablerie, and another in which the original narrative
of ultra-presbyterian church history had to bear a series of cavalier
notes of the most mocking character. He had a quaint biting wit, which
people bore as they would a scratch from a provoked cat. Essentially,
he was good-natured, and fond of merriment. He had considerable gifts
of drawing, and one caricature portrait by him, of Queen Elizabeth
dancing, ‘high and disposedly,’ before the Scotch ambassadors, is the
delight of everybody who has seen it. In jest upon his own peculiarity
of voice, he formed an address-card for himself consisting simply of
the following anagram:
[Illustration]
_quasi dicitur_ C sharp. He was intensely aristocratic, and cared
nothing for the interests of the great multitude. He complained that
one never heard of any gentlefolks committing crimes nowadays, as if
that were a disadvantage to them or the public. Any case of a Lady
Jane stabbing a perjured lover would have delighted him. While the
child of whim, Mr Sharpe was generally believed to possess respectable
talents by which, with a need for exerting them, he might have achieved
distinction. His ballad of the ‘Murder of Caerlaverock,’ in the
_Minstrelsy_, is a masterly production; and the concluding verses haunt
one like a beautiful strain of music:
‘To sweet Lincluden’s haly cells
Fu’ dowie I’ll repair;
There Peace wi’ gentle Patience dwells,
Nae deadly feuds are there.
In tears I’ll wither ilka charm,
Like draps o’ balefu’ yew;
And wail the beauty that cou’d harm
A knight sae brave and true.’
After what I had heard and read of Charles Sharpe, I called upon him at
his mother’s house, No. 93 Princes Street, in a somewhat excited frame
of mind. His servant conducted me to the first floor, and showed me
into what is generally called amongst us the back drawing-room, which
I found carpeted with green cloth, and full of old family portraits,
some on the walls, but many more on the floor. A small room leading
off this one behind, was the place where Mr Sharpe gave audience. Its
diminutive space was stuffed full of old curiosities, cases with family
bijouterie, &c. One petty object was strongly indicative of the man—a
calling-card of Lady Charlotte Campbell, the once adored beauty, stuck
into the frame of a picture. He must have kept it at that time about
thirty years. On appearing, Mr Sharpe received me very cordially,
telling me he had seen and been pleased with my first two numbers.
Indeed, he and Sir Walter Scott had talked together of writing a book
of the same kind in company, and calling it _Reekiana_, which plan,
however, being anticipated by me, the only thing that remained for him
was to cast any little matters of the kind he possessed into my care. I
expressed myself duly grateful, and took my leave. The consequence was
the appearance of notices regarding the eccentric Lady Anne Dick, the
beautiful Susanna, Countess of Eglintoune, the Lord Justice-clerk Alva,
and the Duchess of Queensberry (the ‘Kitty’ of Prior), before the close
of my first volume. Mr Sharpe’s contributions were all of them given
in brief notes, and had to be written out on an enlarged scale, with
what I thought a regard to literary effect as far as the telling was
concerned.
By an introduction from Dr Chalmers, I visited a living lady who might
be considered as belonging to the generation at the beginning of the
reign of George III. Her husband, Alexander Murray, had, I believe,
been Lord North’s Solicitor-general for Scotland. She herself, born
before the Porteous Riot, and well remembering the Forty-five, was
now within a very brief space of the age of a hundred. Although she
had not married in her earlier years, her children, Mr Murray of
Henderland and others, were all elderly people. I found the venerable
lady seated at a window in her drawing-room in George Street, with her
daughter, Miss Murray, taking the care of her which her extreme age
required, and with some help from this lady, we had a conversation of
about an hour. She spoke with due reverence of her mother’s brother,
the Lord Chief-justice Mansfield, and when I adverted to the long
pamphlet against him written by Mr Andrew Stuart at the conclusion
of the Douglas Cause, she said that, to her knowledge, he had never
read it, such being his practice in respect of all attacks made upon
him, lest they should disturb his equanimity in judgment. As the old
lady was on intimate terms with Boswell, and had seen Johnson on his
visit to Edinburgh—as she was the sister-in-law of Allan Ramsay the
painter, and had lived in the most cultivated society of Scotland
all her long life—there were ample materials for conversation with
her; but her small strength made this shorter and slower than I could
have wished. When we came upon the _poet_ Ramsay, she seemed to have
caught new vigour from the subject: she spoke with animation of the
child-parties she had attended in his house on the Castle-hill during a
course of ten years before his death—an event which happened in 1757.
He was ‘charming,’ she said; he entered so heartily into the plays of
children. He, in particular, gained their hearts by making houses for
their dolls. How pleasant it was to learn that our great pastoral poet
was a man who, in his private capacity, loved to sweeten the daily life
of his fellow-creatures, and particularly of the young! At a warning
from Miss Murray, I had to tear myself away from this delightful and
never-to-be-forgotten interview.
I had, one or two years before, when not out of my teens, attracted
some attention from Sir Walter Scott by writing for him and presenting
(through Mr Constable) a transcript of the songs of the _Lady of the
Lake_, in a style of peculiar calligraphy, which I practised for want
of any better way of attracting the notice of people superior to
myself. When George IV. some months afterwards came to Edinburgh, good
Sir Walter remembered me, and procured for me the business of writing
the address of the Royal Society of Edinburgh to His Majesty, for
which I was handsomely paid. Several other learned bodies followed the
example, for Sir Walter Scott was the arbiter of everything during that
frantic time, and thus I was substantially benefited by his means.
According to what Mr Constable told me, the great man liked me, in
part because he understood I was from Tweedside. On seeing the earlier
numbers of the _Traditions_, he expressed astonishment as to ‘where
the boy got all the information.’ But I did not see or hear from him
till the first volume had been completed. He then called upon me one
day, along with Mr Lockhart. I was overwhelmed with the honour, for Sir
Walter Scott was almost an object of worship to me. I literally could
not utter a word. While I stood silent, I heard him tell his companion
that Charles Sharpe was a writer in the _Traditions_, and taking up the
volume, he read aloud what he called one of his _quaint bits_. ‘The
ninth Earl of Eglintoune was one of those patriarchal peers who live to
an advanced age—indefatigable in the frequency of their marriages and
the number of their children—who linger on and on, with an unfailing
succession of young countesses, and die at last leaving a progeny
interspersed throughout the whole of Douglas’s _Peerage_, two volumes,
folio, re-edited by Wood.’ And then both gentlemen went on laughing for
perhaps two minutes, with interjections: ‘How like Charlie!’—‘What a
strange being he is!’—‘_Two volumes, folio, re-edited by Wood_—ha,
ha, ha! There you have him past all doubt;’ and so on. I was too much
abashed to tell Sir Walter that it was only an impudent little bit
of writing of my own, part of the solution into which I had diffused
the actual notes of Sharpe. But, having occasion to write next day to
Mr Lockhart, I mentioned Sir Walter’s mistake, and he was soon after
good enough to inform me that he had set his friend right as to the
authorship, and they had had a _second_ hearty laugh on the subject.
A very few days after this visit, Sir Walter sent me, along with a kind
letter, a packet of manuscript, consisting of sixteen folio pages, in
his usual close handwriting, and containing all the reminiscences he
could at the time summon up of old persons and things in Edinburgh.
Such a treasure to me! And such a gift from the greatest literary man
of the age to the humblest! Is there a literary man of the present
age who would scribble as much for any humble aspirant? Nor was this
the only act of liberality of Scott to me. When I was preparing a
subsequent work, _The Popular Rhymes of Scotland_, he sent me whole
sheets of his recollections, with appropriate explanations. For years
thereafter he allowed me to join him in his walks home from the
Parliament House, in the course of which he freely poured into my
greedy ears anything he knew regarding the subjects of my studies. His
kindness and good-humour on these occasions were untiring. I have since
found, from his journal, that I had met him on certain days when his
heart was overladen with woe. Yet his welcome to me was the same. After
1826, however, I saw him much less frequently than before, for I knew
he grudged every moment not spent in thinking and working on the fatal
tasks he had assigned to himself for the redemption of his debts.
All through the preparation of this book, I was indebted a good deal
to a gentleman who was neither a literary man nor an artist himself,
but hovered round the outskirts of both professions, and might be
considered as a useful adjunct to both. Every votary of pen or pencil
amongst us knew David Bridges at his drapery establishment in the
Lawnmarket, and many had been indebted to his obliging disposition. A
quick, dark-eyed little man, with lips full of sensibility and a tongue
unloving of rest, such a man in a degree as one can suppose Garrick to
have been, he held a sort of court every day, where wits and painters
jostled with people wanting coats, jerkins, and spotted handkerchiefs.
The place was small, and had no saloon behind; so, whenever David
had got some ‘bit’ to show you, he dragged you down a dark stair to
a packing-place, lighted only by a grate from the street, and there,
amidst plaster-casts numberless, would fix you with his glittering eye,
till he had convinced you of the fine handling, the ‘buttery touches’
(a great phrase with him), the admirable ‘scummling’ (another), and
so forth. It was in the days prior to the Royal Scottish Academy and
its exhibitions; and it was left in a great measure to David Bridges
to bring forward aspirants in art. Did such a person long for notice,
he had only to give David one of his best ‘bits,’ and in a short
time he would find himself chattered into fame in that profound, the
grate of which I never can pass without recalling something of the
buttery touches of those old days. The Blackwood wits, who laughed at
everything, fixed upon our friend the title of ‘Director-general of the
Fine Arts,’ which was, however, too much of a truth to be a jest. To
this extraordinary being I had been introduced somehow, and, entering
heartily into my views, he brought me information, brought me friends,
read and criticised my proofs, and would, I dare say, have written
the book itself if I had so desired. It is impossible to think of him
without a smile, but at the same time a certain melancholy, for his
life was one which, I fear, proved a poor one for himself.
Before the _Traditions_ were finished, I had become favourably
acquainted with many gentlemen of letters and others, who were pleased
to think that Old Edinburgh had been chronicled. Wilson gave me a
laudatory sentence in the _Noctes Ambrosianæ_. The Bard of Ettrick,
viewing my boyish years, always spoke of and to me as an unaccountable
sort of person, but never could be induced to believe otherwise than
that I had written all my traditions from my own head. I had also
the pleasure of enjoying some intercourse with the venerable Henry
Mackenzie, who had been born in 1745, but always seemed to feel as if
the _Man of Feeling_ had been written only one instead of sixty years
ago, and as if there was nothing particular in antique occurrences.
The whole affair was pretty much of a triumph at the time. Now, when I
am giving it a final revision, I reflect with touched feelings, that
all the brilliant men of the time when it was written are, without an
exception, passed away, while, for myself, I am forced to claim the
benefit of Horace’s humanity:
‘Solve senescentem mature sanus equum, ne
Peccet ad extremum ridendus, et ilia ducat.’