Ascending by the narrow spiral stair, we come to the second floor, now
occupied by a dealer in wool, but presenting such appearances as leave
no doubt that it once consisted of a single lofty wainscoted room, with
a carved oak ceiling. Here, then, did the fair ladies whom Allan Ramsay
and William Hamilton celebrate meet for the recreation of dancing with
their toupeed and deep-skirted beaux. There in that little side-room,
formed by an _outshot_ from the building, did the merry sons of Euterpe
retire to _rosin their bows_ during the intervals of the performance.
Alas! dark are the walls which once glowed with festive light; burdened
is that floor, not with twinkling feet, but with the most sluggish of
inanimate substances. And as for the fiddlers-room—enough:
‘A merry place it was in days of yore,
But something ails it now—the place is cursed.’[31]
[Illustration: Old Assembly-Room.]
Dancing, although said to be a favourite amusement and exercise of the
Scottish people, has always been discountenanced, more or less, in the
superior circles of society, or only indulged after a very abstemious
and rigid fashion, until a comparatively late age. Everything that
could be called public or promiscuous amusement was held in abhorrence
by the Presbyterians, and only struggled through a desultory and
degraded existence by the favour of the Jacobites, who have always
been a less strait-laced part of the community. Thus there was nothing
like a conventional system of dancing in Edinburgh till the year 1710,
when at length a private association was commenced under the name of
‘the Assembly;’ and probably its first quarters were in this humble
domicile. The persecution which it experienced from rigid thinkers and
the uninstructed populace of that age would appear to have been very
great. On one occasion, we are told, the company were assaulted by an
infuriated rabble, and the door of their hall perforated with red-hot
spits.[32] Allan Ramsay, who was the friend of all amusements, which
he conceived to tend only to cheer this sublunary scene of care, thus
alludes to the Assembly:
‘Sic as against the Assembly speak,
The rudest sauls betray,
When matrons noble, wise, and meek,
Conduct the healthfu’ play;
Where they appear nae vice daur keek,
But to what’s guid gies way,
Like night, sune as the morning creek
Has ushered in the day.
Dear E’nburgh, shaw thy gratitude,
And o’ sic friends mak sure,
Wha strive to mak our minds less rude,
And help our wants to cure;
Acting a generous part and guid,
In bounty to the poor:
Sic virtues, if right understood,
Should every heart allure.’
We can easily see from this, and other symptoms, that the Assembly
had to make many sacrifices to the spirit which sought to abolish it.
In reality, the dancing was conducted under such severe rules as to
render the whole affair more like a night at La Trappe than anything
else. So lately as 1753, when the Assembly had fallen under the control
of a set of directors, and was much more of a public affair than
formerly, we find Goldsmith giving the following graphic account of its
meetings in a letter to a friend in his own country. The author of the
_Deserted Village_ was now studying the medical profession, it must be
recollected, at the university of Edinburgh:
‘Let me say something of their balls, which are very frequent here.
When a stranger enters the dancing-hall, he sees one end of the room
taken up with the ladies, who sit dismally in a group by themselves;
on the other end stand their pensive partners that are to be; but no
more intercourse between the sexes than between two countries at war.
The ladies, indeed, may ogle, and the gentlemen sigh, but an embargo is
laid upon any closer commerce. At length, to interrupt hostilities, the
lady-directress, intendant, or what you will, pitches on a gentleman
and a lady to walk a minuet, which they perform with a formality
approaching to despondence. After five or six couple have thus walked
the gauntlet, all stand up to country-dances, each gentleman furnished
with a partner from the aforesaid lady-directress. So they dance much,
and say nothing, and thus concludes our Assembly. I told a Scotch
gentleman that such a profound silence resembled the ancient procession
of the Roman matrons in honour of Ceres; and the Scotch gentleman told
me (and, faith, I believe he was right) that I was a very great pedant
for my pains.’
In the same letter, however, Goldsmith allows the beauty of the women
and the good-breeding of the men.
It may add to the curiosity of the whole affair, that when the Assembly
was reconstituted in February 1746, after several years of cessation,
the first of a set of regulations hung up in the hall[33] was: ‘_No
lady to be admitted in a night-gown, and no gentleman in boots_.’ The
eighth rule was: ‘No misses in skirts and jackets, robe-coats, nor
stay-bodied gowns, to be allowed to dance in country-dances, but in a
sett by themselves.’
In all probability it was in this very dingy house that Goldsmith
beheld the scene he has so well described. At least it appears that the
improved Assembly Room in Bell’s Wynd (which has latterly served as a
part of the accommodations of the Commercial Bank) was not built till
1766.[34] Arnot, in his _History of Edinburgh_, describes the Assembly
Room in Bell’s Wynd as very inconvenient, which was the occasion of the
present one being built in George Street in 1784.