[Illustration: Courtyard, Hope House.]
One often finds significant voices proceeding from the builders of
these old houses, generally to express humility. Sir Thomas here
quotes a well-known passage in Persius, as if to tell the beholder to
confine himself to a criticism of his own house; and then, with more
certain humility, uses a passage of the Psalms (cxix. 19): ‘I am a
stranger upon earth,’ the latter being an anagram of his own name, thus
spelt: THOMAS HOUPE. It is impossible without a passing sensation of
melancholy to behold this house, and to think how truly the obscurity
of its history, and the wretchedness into which it has fallen, realise
the philosophy of the anagram. Verily, the great statesman who once
lived here in dignity and the respect of men was but as a stranger who
tarried in the place for a night, and was gone.
The _Diary of Sir Thomas Hope_, printed for the Bannatyne Club (1843),
is a curious record of the public duties of a great law-officer in
the age to which it refers, as well as of the mixture of worldly and
spiritual things in which the venerable dignitary was engaged. He is
indefatigable in his religious duties and his endeavours to advance
the interests of his family; at the same time full of kindly feeling
about his sons’ wives and their little family matters, never failing,
for one thing, to tell how much the midwife got for her attendance on
these ladies. There are many passages respecting his prayers, and the
‘answers’ he obtained to them, especially during the agonies of the
opening civil war. He prays, for instance, that the Lord would pity
his people, and then hears the words: ‘I will preserve and saiff my
people’—‘but quhither be me or some other, I dar not say.’ On another
occasion, at the time when the Covenanting army was mustering for Dunse
Law to oppose King Charles, Sir Thomas tells that, praying: ‘Lord,
pitie thy pure [i.e. poor] kirk, for their is no help in man!’ he heard
a voice saying: ‘I will pitie it;’ ‘for quhilk I blissit the Lord;’
immediately after which he goes on: ‘Lent to John my _long carabin of
rowet wark_ all indentit;’ &c.[54]
The Countess of Mar, daughter of Esme, Duke of Lennox, died of a
_deadly brash_ in Sir Thomas’s house in the Cowgate, May 11, 1644.
It is worthy of notice that the Hopes are one of several Scottish
families, possessing high rank and great wealth, which trace their
descent to merchants in Edinburgh. ‘The Hopes are of French extraction,
from Picardy. It is said they were originally Houblon, and had their
name from the plant [hop], and not from esperance [the virtue in the
mind]. The first that came over was a domestic of Magdalene of France,
queen of James V.; and of him are descended all the eminent families
of Hopes. This John Hope set up as a merchant of Edinburgh, and his
son, by Bessie or Elizabeth Cumming, is marked as a member of our first
Protestant General Assembly, anno 1560.’[55]