At the bottom of a close a little way below the Canongate Church,
there is a house which a few years ago bore the appearance of one of
those small semi-quadrangular manor-houses which were prevalent in
the country about the middle of the seventeenth century. It is now
altered, and brought into juxtaposition with the coarse details of
an ironfoundry, yet still is not without some traits of its original
style. The name of Panmure House takes the mind back to the Earls of
Panmure, the fourth of whom lost title and estates for his concern in
the affair of 1715; but I am not certain of any earlier proprietor of
this family than William Maule, nephew of the attainted earl, created
Earl of Panmure as an Irish title in 1743. _He_ possessed the house in
the middle of the last century.
[Illustration: Back of Canongate Tolbooth—Tolbooth Wynd.]
All reference to rank in connection with this house appears trivial
in comparison with the fact that it was the residence of Adam Smith
from 1778, when he came to live in Edinburgh as a commissioner of the
customs, till his death in 1790, when he was interred in a somewhat
obscure situation at the back of the Canongate Tolbooth. In his time
the house must have seen the most intellectual company to be had in
Scotland; but it had not the honour of being the birthplace of any
of Smith’s great works. His last and greatest—the book which has
undoubtedly done more for the good of the community than any other
ever produced in Scotland—was the work of ten quiet, studious years
previous to 1778, during which the philosopher lived in his mother’s
house in Kirkcaldy.
The gentle, virtuous character of Smith has left little for the
anecdotist. The utmost simplicity marked the externals of the man. He
said very truly (being in possession of a handsome library) that ‘he
was only a beau in his books.’ Leading an abstracted, scholarly life,
he was ill-fitted for common worldly affairs. Some one remarked to a
friend of mine while Smith still lived: ‘How strange to think of one
who has written so well on the principles of exchange and barter—he
is obliged to get a friend to buy his horse-corn for him!’ The author
of the _Wealth of Nations_ never thought of marrying. His household
affairs were managed to his perfect contentment by a female cousin, a
Miss Jeanie Douglas, who almost necessarily acquired a great control
over him. It is said that the amiable philosopher, being fond of a bit
sugar, and chid by her for taking it, would sometimes, in sauntering
backwards and forwards along the parlour, watch till Miss Jeanie’s
back was turned in order to supply himself with his favourite morsel.
Such things are not derogatory to greatness like Smith’s: they link
it to human nature, and secure for it the love, as it had previously
possessed the admiration, of common men.
The one personal circumstance regarding Smith which has made the
greatest impression on his fellow-citizens is the rather too well-known
anecdote of the two fishwomen. He was walking along the streets one
day, deeply abstracted, and speaking in a low tone to himself, when he
caught the attention of two of these many-petticoated ladies, engaged
in selling their fish. They exchanged significant looks, bearing strong
reference to the restraints of a well-managed lunatic asylum, and then
sighed one to the other: ‘Aih, sirs; and he’s weel put on too!’—that
is, well dressed; his gentleman-like condition making the case appear
so much the more piteous.