On the north side of the esplanade—enjoying a splendid view of the
Firth of Forth, Fife and Stirling shires—is the neat little villa of
Allan Ramsay, surrounded by its miniature pleasure-grounds. The sober,
industrious life of this exception to the race of poets having resulted
in a small competency, he built this odd-shaped house in his latter
days, designing to enjoy in it the Horatian quiet which he had so often
eulogised in his verse. The story goes that, showing it soon after to
the clever Patrick, Lord Elibank, with much fussy interest in all its
externals and accommodations, he remarked that the wags were already at
work on the subject—they likened it to a goose-pie[6] (owing to the
roundness of the shape). ‘Indeed, Allan,’ said his lordship, ‘now I see
you in it, I think the wags are not far wrong.’
[Illustration: Allan Ramsay’s Villa.]
The splendid reputation of Burns has eclipsed that of Ramsay so
effectually that this pleasing poet, and, upon the whole, amiable and
worthy man, is now little regarded. Yet Ramsay can never be deprived
of the credit of having written the best pastoral poem in the range of
British literature—if even that be not too narrow a word—and many of
his songs are of great merit.
Ramsay was secretly a Jacobite, openly a dissenter from the severe
manners and feelings of his day, although a very decent and regular
attender of the Old Church in St Giles’s. He delighted in music and
theatricals, and, as we shall see, encouraged the Assembly. It was also
no doubt his own taste which led him, in 1725, to set up a circulating
library, whence he diffused plays and other works of fiction among
the people of Edinburgh. It appears, from the private notes of the
historian Wodrow, that, in 1728, the magistrates, moved by some
meddling spirits, took alarm at the effect of this kind of reading on
the minds of youth, and made an attempt to put it down, but without
effect. One cannot but be amused to find amongst these self-constituted
guardians of morality Lord Grange, who kept his wife in unauthorised
restraint for several years, and whose own life was a scandal to his
professions. Ramsay, as is well known, also attempted to establish a
theatre in Edinburgh, but failed. The following advertisement on this
subject appears in the _Caledonian Mercury_, September 1736: ‘The New
Theatre in Carrubber’s Close being in great forwardness, will be opened
the 1st of November. These are to advertise the gentlemen and ladies
who incline to purchase annual tickets, to enter their names before the
20th of October next, on which day they shall receive their tickets
from Allan Ramsay, on paying 30s.—no more than forty to be subscribed
for; after which none will be disposed of under two guineas.’
The late Mrs Murray of Henderland knew Ramsay for the last ten years of
his life, her sister having married his son, the celebrated painter.
She spoke of him to me in 1825, with kindly enthusiasm, as one of the
most amiable men she had ever known. His constant cheerfulness and
lively conversational powers had made him a favourite amongst persons
of rank, whose guest he frequently was. Being very fond of children,
he encouraged his daughters in bringing troops of young ladies about
the house, in whose sports he would mix with a patience and vivacity
wonderful in an old man. He used to give these young friends a kind
of ball once a year. From pure kindness for the young, he would help
to make dolls for them, and cradles wherein to place these little
effigies, with his own hands.[7] But here a fashion of the age must
be held in view; for, however odd it may appear, it is undoubtedly
true that to make and dispose of dolls, such as children now alone are
interested in, was a practice in vogue amongst grown-up ladies who had
little to do about a hundred years ago.
Ramsay died in 1757. An elderly female told a friend of mine that
she remembered, when a girl, living as an apprentice with a milliner
in the Grassmarket, being sent to Ramsay Garden to assist in
making _dead-clothes_ for the poet. She could recall, however, no
particulars of the scene but the roses blooming in at the window of the
death-chamber.
The poet’s house passed to his son, of the same name, eminent as a
painter—portrait-painter to King George III. and his queen—and a man
of high mental culture; consequently much a favourite in the circles
of Johnson and Boswell. The younger Allan enlarged the house, and
built three additional houses to the eastward, bearing the title of
Ramsay Garden. At his death, in 1784, the property went to his son,
General John Ramsay, who, dying in 1845, left this mansion and a large
fortune to Mr Murray of Henderland. So ended the line of the poet. His
daughter Christian, an amiable, kind-hearted woman, said to possess a
gift of verse, lived for many years in New Street. At seventy-four she
had the misfortune to be thrown down by a hackney-coach, and had her
leg broken; yet she recovered, and lived to the age of eighty-eight.
Leading a solitary life, she took a great fancy for cats. Besides
supporting many in her own house, curiously disposed in bandboxes,
with doors to go in and out at, she caused food to be laid out for
others on her stair and around her house. Not a word of obloquy would
she listen to against the species, alleging, when any wickedness of a
cat was spoken of, that the animal must have acted under provocation,
for by nature, she asserted, cats are harmless. Often did her maid go
with morning messages to her friends, inquiring, with her compliments,
after their pet cats. Good Miss Ramsay was also a friend to horses, and
indeed to all creatures. When she observed a carter ill-treating his
horse, she would march up to him, tax him with cruelty, and, by the
very earnestness of her remonstrances, arrest the barbarian’s hand. So
also, when she saw one labouring on the street, with the appearance of
defective diet, she would send rolls to its master, entreating him to
feed the animal. These peculiarities, although a little eccentric, are
not unpleasing; and I cannot be sorry to record them of the daughter of
one whose heart and head were an honour to his country.
[Illustration: Happy.]
[Illustration: Contented.]
[Illustration: Repose.]
[Illustration: Convivial.]
[1868.—It seems to have been unknown to the biographers of Allan
Ramsay the painter that he made a romantic marriage. In his early
days, while teaching the art of drawing in the family of Sir Alexander
Lindsay of Evelick, one of the young ladies fell in love with him,
captivated probably by the tongue which afterwards gave him the
intimacy of princes, and was undoubtedly a great source of his success
in life. The father of the enamoured girl was an old proud baronet; her
mother, a sister of the Chief-Justice, Earl of Mansfield. A marriage
with consent of parents was consequently impossible. The young people,
nevertheless, contrived to get themselves united in wedlock.
[Illustration: Allan Ramsay’s Monument, Princes Street Gardens.]
The speedily developed talent of Ramsay, the illustrious patronage they
secured to him, and the very considerable wealth which he acquired must
have in time made him an acceptable relation to those proud people. A
time came when their descendants held the connection even as an honour.
The wealth of the painter ultimately, on the death of his son in 1845,
became the property of Mr Murray of Henderland, a grandson of Sir
Alexander Lindsay and nephew of Mrs Allan Ramsay; thence it not long
after passed to Mr Murray’s brother, Sir John Archibald Murray, better
known by his judicial name of Lord Murray. This gentleman admired the
poet, and resolved to raise a statue to him beside his goose-pie house
on the Castlehill; but the situation proved unsuitable, and since his
own lamented death, in 1858, the marble full-length of worthy Allan,
from the studio of John Steell, has found a noble place in the Princes
Street Gardens, resting on a pedestal, containing on its principal side
a medallion portrait of Lord Murray, on the reverse one of General
Ramsay, on the west side one of the General’s lady, and on the east
similar representations of the General’s two daughters, Lady Campbell
and Mrs Malcolm. Thus we find—owing to the esteem which genius ever
commands—the poet of the _Gentle Shepherd_ in the immortality of
marble, surrounded by the figures of relatives and descendants who so
acknowledged their aristocratic rank to be inferior to his, derived
from mind alone.]