Merse, who spoke dialects of the same language, and were
only separated by a river, had little more intercourse than
those of Kent and Normandy. After the Rebellion a number of
noblemen and gentlemen amused themselves with farming in the
English style. The late Lord Eglinton spared no expense in
getting English servants. He showed his countrymen what might
be done by high cultivation. Mr. Drummond, of Blair, sent
over one of his ploughmen to learn drill husbandry, and the
culture of turnips from Lord Eglinton’s English servants.
The very next year he raised a field of turnips, which were
the first in the country. And they were as neatly dressed as
any in Hertfordshire. A single horse ploughing the drills
astonished the country people, who, till then, had never seen
fewer than four yoked. About the year 1771 our tenants were
well-disposed to the culture of turnips. They begin to have an
idea of property in winter as well as in summer; nor is it any
longer thought bad neighbourhood to drive off cattle that are
trespassing upon their winter crops.”[189]
The young Laird of Col, just before Johnson’s visit, had gone to
Hertfordshire to study farming, and had brought back “the culture of
turnips. His intention is to provide food for his cattle in the winter.
This innovation was considered by Mr. Macsweyn as the idle project of
a young head heated with English fancies; but he has now found that
turnips will grow, and that hungry sheep and cows will really eat
them.”[190] Yet progress was not so rapid but that Adam Smith held that
a better system could only be introduced “by a long course of frugality
and industry; half a century or a century more perhaps must pass away
before the old system which is wearing out gradually can be completely
abolished.”[191]
The cultivation of vegetables for the table and of fruits was also
taking a start, though much remained to be done. When Johnson was
informed at Aberdeen that Cromwell’s soldiers had taught the Scotch
to raise cabbages, he remarked, that “in the passage through villages
it seems to him that surveys their gardens, that when they had not
cabbage they had nothing.”[192] Pennant, however, the year before, in
riding from Arbroath to Montrose, had passed by “extensive fields of
potatoes—a novelty till within the last twenty years.”[193] It was
not till Johnson had travelled beyond Elgin that he saw houses with
fruit trees about them. “The improvements of the Scotch,” he remarks,
“are for immediate profit; they do not yet think it quite worth their
while to plant what will not produce something to be eaten or sold in
a very little time.”[194] The Scotch historian of Edinburgh complained
that “the apples which were brought to market from the neighbourhood
were unfit for the table.”[195] “Good apples are not to be seen,” wrote
Topham in his _Letters from Edinburgh_. “It was,” he said, “owing to
the little variety of fruit that the inhabitants set anything on their
tables after dinner that has the appearance of it, and I have often
observed at the houses of principal people a plate of small turnips
introduced in the dessert, and eaten with avidity.”[196] Smollett
indirectly alludes to this reflection on his native country when, in
his _Humphry Clinker_, he says that “turnips make their appearance,
not as dessert, but by way of _hors d’œuvres_, or whets.”[197] Even
in the present day, the English traveller far too often looks in vain
for the orchards and the fruit tree with its branches trained over
the house-wall. Yet great progress has been made. In Morayshire, in
the present day, peaches and apricots are seen ripening on the garden
walls. In the year 1852 an Elgin gardener carried off the first prize
of the London Horticultural Society for ten varieties of the finest
new dessert pears.[198] If Scotland can do such great things as this,
surely justification is found for the reproaches cast by Johnson on
Scottish ignorance and negligence.
[Sidenote: ENGLISH IGNORANCE OF SCOTLAND.]
So closely have the two countries in late years been drawn together by
the wonderful facilities of intercourse afforded by modern inventions,
that it is scarcely possible for us to understand the feelings of our
adventurous forefathers as they crossed the Borders. At the first step
they seemed to be in a foreign country. “The first town we come to,”
wrote Defoe, “is as perfectly Scots as if you were one hundred miles
north of Edinburgh; nor is there the least appearance of anything
English either in customs, habits, usages of the people, or in their
way of living, eating, dress, or behaviour.”[199] “The English,”
Smollett complained, “knew as little of Scotland as of Japan.”[200]
There is no reason to think that he was guilty of extravagance, when in
his _Humphry Clinker_ he makes Miss Tabitha Bramble, the sister of the
Gloucestershire squire, imagine that “she could not go to Scotland but
by sea.”[201] It is amazing to how late a day ignorance almost as gross
as this came down. It was in the year in which George II. came to the
throne that Defoe, in his preface to his _Tour through Great Britain_
wrote:—“Scotland has been supposed by some to be so contemptible a
place as that it would not bear a description.”[202] Eleven years
later, in 1738, we find it described much as if it were some lately
discovered island in the South Seas.
“The people in general,” we read, “are naturally inclined
to civility, especially to strangers. They are divided into
Highlanders who call themselves the antient Scots, and into
Lowlanders who are a mixture of antient Scots, Picts, Britons,
French, English, Danes, Germans, Hungarians, and others.
Buchanan describes the customs of the Highlanders graphically
thus:—‘In their diet, apparel, and household furniture they
follow the parsimony of the antients; they provide their diet
by fishing and hunting, and boil their flesh in the paunch or
skin of a beast; while they hunt they eat it raw, after having
squeezed out the blood.’... The Western Islands (the author
goes on to add) lie in the Deucaledonian Sea.... The natives of
Mull when the season is moist take a large dose of aqua-vitæ
for a corrective, and chew a piece of charmel root when they
intend to be merry to prevent drunkenness. The natives of
Skye have a peculiar way of curing the distempers they are
incident to by simples of their own product, in which they are
successful to a miracle.”[203]
Into so strange and wild a country it required a stout heart to enter.
A volunteer with the English army at the time of the Rebellion of 1745
wrote from Berwick:—“Now we are going into Scotland, but with heavy
hearts. They tell us here what terrible living we shall have there,
which I soon after found too true.”[204] How few were the Englishmen
who crossed the Tweed even so late as 1772 is shown by the hope
expressed in the _Scots Magazine_ for that year, that the publication
of Pennant’s _Tour_ would excite others to follow in his steps.[205]
Two years later Topham wrote from Edinburgh that “the common people
were astonished to find himself and his companion become stationary
in their town for a whole winter.... ‘What were we come for?’ was the
first question. ‘They presumed to study physic.’ ‘No.’ ‘To study law?’
‘No.’ ‘Then it must be divinity.’ ‘No.’ ‘Very odd,’ they said, ‘that
we should come to Edinburgh without one of these reasons.’”[206] How
ignorant the English were of Scotland is shown by the publication of
_Humphry Clinker_. The ordinary reader, as he laughs over the pages
of this most humorous of stories, never suspects that the author
in writing it had any political object in view. Yet there is not a
little truth in Horace Walpole’s bitter assertion that it is “a party
novel, written by the profligate hireling Smollett, to vindicate the
Scots, and cry down juries.”[207] It was not so much a party as a
patriotic novel. Lord Bute’s brief tenure of ignoble office as Prime
Minister and King’s Friend, the mischief which he had done to the
whole country, and the favour which he had shown to his North Britons,
a few years earlier had raised a storm against the Scotch which had
not yet subsided. “All the windows of all the inns northwards,” wrote
Smollett, “are scrawled with doggrel rhymes in abuse of the Scotch
nation.”[208] With great art he takes that fine old humorist, Matthew
Bramble, from his squire’s house in Gloucestershire on a tour to the
southern part of Scotland, and makes him and his family send to their
various correspondents lively and pleasant descriptions of all that
they saw. At the very time that he was writing his _Humphry Clinker_ a
child was born in one of the narrow Wynds of Edinburgh who was to take
up the work which he had begun, and as the mighty Wizard of the North,
as if by an enchanter’s wand, to lift up the mist which had long hung
over the land which he loved so well, and to throw over Highlands and
Lowlands alike the beauty of romance and the kindliness of feeling
which springs from the associations given by poetry and fiction.
While the English as yet knew little of Scotland, the Scotch were
not equally ignorant of England. From the days of the Union they had
pressed southwards in the pursuit of wealth, of fame, and of position.
Their migration was such that it afforded some foundation for Johnson’s
saying that “the noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees is the
high road that leads him to England.”[209] England was swiftly moving
along the road to Empire, sometimes with silent foot, sometimes with
the tramp of war. In America and in the East Indies her boundaries
were year by year pushed farther and farther on. Her agriculture, her
manufactures, her trade and her commerce were advancing by leaps and
bounds. There was a great stir of life and energy. Into such a world
the young Scotchmen entered with no slight advantages. In their common
schools everywhere an education was given such as in England was only
to be had in a few highly favoured spots. In their universities even
the neediest scholar had a share. The hard fare, the coarse clothing,
and the poor lodgings with which their students were contented, could
be provided by the labours of the vacation. In their homes they had
been trained in habits of thrift. They entered upon the widely
extending battle of life like highly trained soldiers, and they gained
additional force by acting together. If they came up “in droves,” it
was not one another that they butted. They exhibited when in a strange
land that “national combination” which Johnson found “so invidious,”
but which brought them to “employment, riches, and distinction.”[210]
Their thrift, and an eagerness to push on which sometimes amounted
to servility, provoked many a gibe; but if ever they found time and
inclination to turn from Johnny Home to Shakespeare they might have
replied in the words of Ferdinand:
“Some kinds of baseness
Are nobly undergone, and most poor matters
Point to rich ends.”
[Sidenote: ADVANTAGES OF THE UNION.]
On the advantages of the Union to Scotland Johnson was not easily tired
of haranguing. Of the advantages to England he said nothing probably
because he saw nothing. Yet it would not be easy to tell on which side
the balance lay. Before the Union, he maintained, “the Scotch had
hardly any trade, any money, or any elegance.”[211] In his _Journey to
the Western Islands_ he tells the Scotch that “they must be for ever
content to owe to the English that elegance and culture which, if they
had been vigilant and active, perhaps the English might have owed to
them.”[212]
Smollett, who in national prejudice did not yield even to him, has
strongly upheld the opposite opinion. In his _History_ he describes
Lord Belhaven’s speech against the Union in the last parliament which
sat in Scotland—a speech “so pathetic that it drew tears from the
audience. It is,” he adds, “at this day looked upon as a prophecy by
great part of the Scottish nation.”[213] The towns on the Firth of
Forth, he maintained, through the loss of the trade with France, had
been falling to decay ever since the two countries were united.[214]
In these views he was not supported by the two great writers who were
his countrymen and his contemporaries. It was chiefly to the Union that
Adam Smith attributed the great improvements in agriculture which had
been made in the eighteenth century.[215] It was to the Union that Hume
attributed the blessing “of a government perfectly regular, and exempt
from all violence and injustice.”[216] Many years later Thomas Carlyle,
in whom glowed the _perfervidum ingenium Scotorum_ as it has glowed
in few, owned that “the Union was one of Scotland’s chief blessings,”
though it was due to Wallace and to men like him “that it was not the
chief curse.”[217]
It must never be forgotten that in this Union England was no less
blessed than Scotland; that if she gave wealth to Scotland, Scotland
nobly repaid the gift in men. In the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries the English stock had been quickened and strengthened
and ennobled by fugitives seeking refuge on her shores from the
persecutions of priests and kings, which passed over the coward and
the base, and fell only on the brave and the upright. To the Fleming
and the Huguenot was now added the Scot. In philosophy, in history,
in law, in science, in poetry, in romance, in the arts of life, in
trade, in government, in war, in the spread of our dominions, in the
consolidation of our Empire, glorious has been the part which Scotland
has played. Her poet’s prayer has been answered, and in “bright
succession” have been raised men to adorn and guard not only herself
but the country which belongs to Englishmen and Scotchmen alike.
Little of this was seen, still less foreseen by Johnson. The change
which was going on in Scotland was rapid and conspicuous; the change
which she was working outside her borders was slow, and as yet almost
imperceptible. What was seen raised not admiration, but jealousy of
the vigorous race which was everywhere so rapidly “making its way to
employment, riches, and distinction.” That Johnson should exult in
the good which Scotland had derived from England through the Union
was natural. Scarcely less natural that he should point out how much
remained to be done before the Scotch attained the English level, not
only in the comforts and refinements, but even in the decencies of
life. One great peculiarity in their civilization struck him deeply.
“They had attained the liberal without the manual arts, and excelled
in ornamental knowledge while they wanted the conveniences of common
life.”[218] [Sidenote: A DISPUTATIOUS PEASANTRY.] Even the
peasantry were able to dispute with wonderful sagacity upon the
articles of their faith, though they were content to live in huts
which had not a single chimney to carry off the smoke.[219] Wesley,
each time that he crossed the Borders, found a far harder task
awaiting him than when he was upbraiding, denouncing, and exhorting
an English congregation. To the Scotch, cradled as they had been
in the Shorter Catechism, and trained as they were from their
youth up in theology, his preaching, like Paul’s to the Greeks,
was too often foolishness. He spoke to a people, as he complained,
“who heard much, knew everything, and felt nothing.”[220] Though
“you use the most cutting words still they _hear_, but _feel_ no
more than the seats they sit upon.”[221] Nowhere did he speak
more roughly than in Scotland. No one there was offended at plain
dealing. “In this respect they were a pattern to all mankind.” But
yet “they hear and hear, and are just what they were before.”[222]
He was fresh from the Kelso people and was preaching to a meeting
in Northumberland when he wrote: “Oh! what a difference is there
between these living stones, and the dead unfeeling multitudes
in Scotland.”[223] “The misfortune of a Scotch congregation,” he
recorded on another occasion, “is they know everything; so they
learn nothing.”[224]
[Sidenote: POVERTY OF THE COMMON PEOPLE.]
With their disputatious learning the meagreness of their fare and the
squalor of their dwellings but ill contrasted. “Dirty living,” said
Smollett, “is the great and general reproach of the commonalty of this
kingdom.”[225] While Scotland sent forth into the world year after year
swarms of young men trained in thrift, well stored with knowledge, and
full of energy and determination, the common people bore an ill-repute
for industry. They were underfed, and under-feeding produced indolent
work. “Flesh-meat they seldom or never tasted; nor any kind of
strong liquor except two-penny at times of uncommon festivity.”[226]
“Ale,” wrote Lord Kames, “makes no part of the maintenance of those
in Scotland who live by the sweat of their brow. Water is their
only drink.”[227] Adam Smith admitted that both in bodily strength
and personal appearance they were below the English standard. “They
neither work so well, nor look so well.”[228] Wolfe, when he returned
to England from Scotland in 1753, said that he had not crossed the
Border a mile when he saw the difference that was produced upon the
face of the country by labour and industry. “The English are clean and
laborious, and the Scotch excessively dirty and lazy.”[229]
This dirtiness would offend an Englishman more than a man of any
other nation, for “high and low, rich and poor, they were remarkable
for cleanness all the world over.”[230] Matthew Bramble, in
Smollett’s _Humphry Clinker_, notices the same change. “The boors of
Northumberland,” he wrote, “are lusty fellows, fresh-complexioned,
cleanly and well-clothed; but the labourers in Scotland are generally
lank, lean, hard-featured, sallow, soiled and shabby. The cattle
are much in the same style with their drivers, meagre, stunted, and
ill-equipt.”[231] Topham, in his _Letters from Edinburgh_, asserts the
misery, but denies the idleness. Temperance and labour were, he says,
in the extreme; nevertheless, on all sides were seen, “haggard looks,
meagre complexions, and bodies weakened by fatigue and worn down by
the inclemency of the seasons.” Neither were the poor of the capital
any better off. Their wretchedness and poverty exceeded, he thought,
what was to be found anywhere else in the whole world. But though as
a nation the Scotch were very poor, yet they were very honest.[232] A
traveller through the country in 1766 goes so far as to maintain that
the common people in outward appearance would not at first be taken to
be of the human species. Though their indigence was extreme, yet they
would rather suffer poverty than labour. Their nastiness was greater
than could be reported. Happily their rudeness was beginning to wear
off, and in the trading towns where the knowledge of the use of money
was making them eager enough to acquire it, they were already pretty
well civilized and industrious.[233] Wages were miserably low. The
Scotch labourer received little more than half what was paid to the
Englishman; yet grain was dearer in Scotland than in England.[234] The
historian of Edinburgh thus sums the general condition of the labouring
poor:—
“The common people have no ideas of the comforts of life. The
labourers and low mechanics live in a very wretched style.
Their houses are the receptacles of nastiness, where the spider
may in peace weave his web from generation to generation.
A garden, where nothing is to be seen but a few plants of
coleworts or potatoes, amidst an innumerable quantity of weeds,
surrounds his house. A bit of flesh will not be within his door
twice a year. He abhors industry, and has no relish for the
comforts arising from it.”[235]
Lord Elibank’s famous reply to Johnson’s definition of _oats_ had
every merit but a foundation of fact. “Oats,” wrote Johnson, “a grain
which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports
the people.” “Very true,” replied his lordship, “and where will you
find such men and such horses?”[236]
The natural result of this general poverty was seen in the number
of beggars who thronged the streets and roads. Scotland was neither
blessed with a good poor-law nor cursed with a bad one. The relief of
want was left altogether to charity. In Edinburgh Johnson thought that
the proportion of beggars was not less than in London. “In the smaller
places it was far greater than in English towns of the same extent.”
The mendicants were not, however, of the order of sturdy vagabonds.
They were neither importunate nor clamorous. “They solicit silently,
or very modestly.”[237] Smollett went so far as to maintain in his
_Humphry Clinker_, which was published only two years before Johnson’s
visit, that “there was not a beggar to be seen within the precincts
of Edinburgh.”[238] For some years, indeed, the streets had been free
of them, for a charity workhouse had been erected, to which they were
all committed. But the magistrates had grown careless, and the evil
had broken out afresh. “The streets are crowded with begging poor,”
wrote one writer. “We see the whole stairs, streets, and public walks
swarming with beggars every day,” wrote another.[239]
[Sidenote: HOUSES AND MEALS.]
The general neglect of the decencies of life was due chiefly to
poverty, but partly, no doubt, to that violent outburst against all
that is beautiful and graceful which accompanied the Reformation in
Scotland. A nation which, as a protest against popery, “thought dirt
and cob-webs essential to the house of God,”[240] was not likely in
their homes to hold that cleanliness was next to godliness. The same
coarseness of living had been found in all classes, though it was
beginning to yield before English influence. Dr. Alexander Carlyle,
in the year 1742, notices as a sign of increasing refinement, that
at the tavern in Haddington, where the Presbytery dined, knives and
forks were provided for the table. A few years earlier each guest had
brought his own. There was, however, only one glass, which went round
with the bottle.[241] The same custom had prevailed in Edinburgh when
Lord Kames was a young man. French wine was placed on the table,
he said, in a small tin vessel, which held about an English pint. A
single drinking-glass served a company the whole evening, and the first
persons who called for a new glass with every new pint were accused of
luxury.[242] Boswell could remember the time when a carving knife was
looked upon as a novelty. One of his friends was rated by his father,
“a gentleman of ancient family and good literature, for introducing
such a foppish superfluity.” In the previous generation whatever food
was eaten with a spoon, such as soup, milk, or pudding, used to be
taken by every person dipping his spoon into the common dish.[243] When
an old laird was complimented on the accomplishments which his son had
brought home from his travels, “he answered that he knew nothing he had
learnt but to cast a sark (change a shirt) every day, and to sup his
kail twice.”[244] Of the food that was served up, there was not much
greater variety than of the dishes in which it was served. When Wesley
first visited Scotland, even at a nobleman’s table, he had only one
kind of meat, and no vegetables whatever. By the year 1788, however,
vegetables were, he recorded, as plentiful as in England.[245] The
butter in these early days made in country houses, “would have turned
stomachs the least squeamish.” But by the introduction of tea a great
improvement had been made. Bread and butter was taken with it, and a
demand arose for butter that was sweet and clean. Wheaten bread, too,
began to be generally eaten. So great a delicacy had it been, that the
sixpenny loaf and the sugar used to be kept “locked up in the lady’s
press.”[246] In the Highlands, at all events, there was a great variety
as well as abundance of food. The following was the breakfast which in
Argyleshire was set before the travellers in _Humphry Clinker_:—
“One kit of boiled eggs; a second full of butter; a third full
of cream; an entire cheese made of goat’s milk; a large earthen
pot full of honey; the best part of a ham; a cold venison
pasty; a bushel of oatmeal made in thin cakes and bannocks,
with a small wheaten loaf in the middle for the strangers; a
large stone bottle full of whisky, another of brandy, and a
kilderkin of ale. There was a ladle chained to the cream kit,
with curious wooden bickers to be filled from this reservoir.
The spirits were drunk out of a silver quaff, and the ale out
of horns. Finally a large roll of tobacco was presented by way
of desert, and every individual took a comfortable quid, to
prevent the bad effects of the morning air.”[247]
Knox, in his _Tour through the Highlands_,[248] gives a still vaster
bill of fare. The houses of the country gentlemen were for the most
part small. “It was only on festivals or upon ceremonious occasions,
that the dining-room was used. People lived mostly in the family
bed-chamber, where friends and neighbours were received without
scruple. Many an easy, comfortable meal,” writes Ramsay, of Ochtertyre,
“had I made in that way.”[249] It was to this custom that the Scotch
had of turning a bed-room into an eating-room that an English traveller
refers, when he says that the Edinburgh taverns are the worst in the
world, for “you sup underground in a bed-chamber.”[250] Even at the
modern houses there was generally a total absence of an accommodation
such as would not at the present day be tolerated in a labourer’s
cottage by a sanitary inspector in any district in England.[251]
The state of the capital was far worse even than the state of the
country. It was one of the last places in the world on which would
have been bestowed that favourite and almost exalted epithet of
praise—_neat_.[252] The houses, indeed, were solidly built, and the
rooms of the well-to-do people were comfortable and clean, and often
spacious. “Nothing could form a stronger contrast than the difference
between the outside and the inside of the door.” Within all was decency
and propriety, without was a filthy staircase leading down into a
filthy street. Every story was a complete house, occupied by a separate
family. The steep and dark staircase was common to all, and was kept
clean by none. It was put to the basest uses.[253] The gentry did not
commonly occupy the lowest stories or the highest. The following is the
list of the inhabitants of a good house in the High Street:—
“First door upstairs, Mr. Stirling, fishmonger.
Second door, Mrs. Urquhart, who kept a lodging-house of good repute.
Third flat, the Dowager Countess of Balcarras.
Fourth flat, Mrs. Buchan, of Kelly.
Fifth flat, the Misses Elliots, milliners.
Garrets, a great variety of tailors and other tradesmen.”[254]
[Sidenote: THE SCAVENGING OF EDINBURGH.]
There were no water pipes, there were no drain pipes, there were no
cess-pools, and there were no covered sewers in the streets. At a fixed
hour of the night all the impurities were carried down the common
staircase in tubs, and emptied into the street as into a common sewer,
or else, in defiance of the law, cast out of the window. “Throwing
over the window” was the delicate phrase in which this vile practice
was veiled. It was “an obstinate disease which had withstood all the
labour of the Magistrates, Acts of Council, Dean of Guild Courts for
stencheling,[255] tirlesing,[256] and locking up windows, fines,
imprisonments, and banishing the city.”[257] The servants were willing
to serve for lower wages in houses where this practice was winked at.
It gave rise to numerous quarrels which caused constables more trouble
than any other part of their duty.[258] According to the account given
by the English maid in _Humphry Clinker_, when “the throwing over”
began, “they called _gardy loo_ to the passengers, which signifies
_Lord have mercy upon you_.”[259] A young English traveller, who, the
first night of his arrival in Edinburgh, was enjoying his supper, as he
tells us, and good bottle of claret with a merry company in a tavern,
heard, as the clock was striking ten, the beat of the city drum, the
signal for the scavenging to begin. The company at once began to
fumigate the room by lighting pieces of paper and throwing them on the
table. Tobacco smoking, it is clear, could not have been in fashion. As
his way to his lodgings lay through one of the wynds he was provided
“with a guide who went before him, crying out all the way, _Hud your
Haunde_.”[260] The city scavengers cleansed the streets as fast as they
could, and by opening reservoirs which were placed at intervals washed
the pavement clean.[261]
To this intolerable nuisance the inhabitants generally seemed
insensible, and were too apt to imagine the disgust of strangers as
little better than affectation.[262] Yet it was not affectation which
led John Wesley, in May, 1761, to make the following entry in his
Journal:—
“The situation of the city on a hill shelving down on both
sides, as well as to the east, with the stately castle upon a
craggy rock on the west, is inexpressibly fine. And the main
street so broad and finely paved, with the lofty houses on
either hand (many of them seven or eight stories high) is far
beyond any in Great Britain. But how can it be suffered that
all manner of filth should still be thrown, even into this
street, continually? Where are the Magistracy, the Gentry,
the Nobility of the Land? Have they no concern for the honour
of their nation? How long shall the capital city of Scotland,
yea and the chief street of it, stink worse than a common
sewer?”[263]
Ten years earlier he had described the town as dirtier even than
Cologne. According to Wolfe, it was not till after Christmas, when
the company had come into it from the country, that it was “in all
its perfection of dirt and gaiety.”[264] Gray called it “that most
picturesque (at a distance) and nastiest (when near) of all capital
cities.”[265] “Pray for me till I see you,” he added, “for I dread
Edinburgh and the —.”[266] To add to the insalubrity, the windows
would not readily open. In Scotland they neither opened wide on hinges,
nor were drawn up and down by weights and pulleys. For the most part
the lower sash only could be raised; and when lifted, it was propped
open by a stick or by a pin thrust into a hole.[267] “What cannot be
done without some uncommon trouble or particular expedient will not
often be done at all. The incommodiousness of the Scotch windows keeps
them very closely shut.”[268] From this closeness Johnson suffered not
a little, for he loved fresh air, “and on the coldest day or night
would set open a window and stand before it,” as Boswell knew to his
cost.[269] Topham, who sided with his Scotch friends against Johnson,
scoffed at these observations on window-frames and pulleys. “Men of the
world,” he wrote, “would not have descended to such remarks. A petty
and frivolous detail of trifling circumstances are [_sic_] the certain
signs of ignorance or inexperience.”[270] Johnson, in introducing
the subject, had guarded himself against such reflections. “These
diminutive observations,” he said, “seem to take away something from
the dignity of writing. But it must be remembered that the true state
of every nation is the state of common life.”[271] This indifference
to pure air no doubt spread death far and wide. In Sir Walter Scott’s
family we see an instance of the unwholesomeness of the Old Town. His
six elder brothers and sisters, who were all born in the College Wynd,
died young. It was only by sending him to breathe country air that he
was reared. His father’s younger children were born in one of the new
squares, and they for the most part were healthy.[272]
[Sidenote: ABOLITION OF VAILS.]
From one burthen that weighed heavily in England the guests in
most houses in Scotland were free. It was the Scotch, who, as
Boswell boasted, “had the honour of being the first to abolish the
unhospitable, troublesome, and ungracious custom of giving vails to
servants. ‘Sir,’ said Johnson, ‘you abolished vails, because you were
too poor to be able to give them.’”[273] How heavily they weighed on
all but the rich is shown by an anecdote that I have read somewhere
of a poor gentleman, who refused to dine with his kinsman, a nobleman
of high rank, unless with the invitation a guinea were sent him to
distribute among the expectant servants, who, with outstretched hands,
always thronged the hall and blocked up the doorway as he left. “I
paid ten shillings to my host’s servants for my dinner and retired,”
is the record of a man who had received the honour of an invitation
to the house of an English nobleman of high rank.[274] Even Queen
Caroline had complained of “the pretty large expense” to which she had
been put in the summer of 1735 in visiting her friends, not at their
country houses, but in town. “That is your own fault (said the King),
for my father, when he went to people’s houses in town, never was fool
enough to be giving away his money.”[275] It was to the gentlemen of
the county of Aberdeen that was due the merit of beginning this great
reformation. About the year 1759 they resolved at a public meeting
that vails should be abolished and wages increased.[276] Early in
February, 1760, the Select Society of Edinburgh, following their lead,
passed a resolution to which their President, the historian Robertson,
seems to have lent the graces of his style. They declared that “this
custom, being unknown to other nations and a reproach upon the manners
and police of this country, has a manifest tendency to corrupt the
hospitality and to destroy all intercourse between families. They
resolved that from and after the term of Whitsuntide next every member
of the Society would absolutely prohibit his own servants to take vails
or drink-money, and that he would not offer it to the servants of
any person who had agreed to this resolution.”[277] Like resolutions
followed from the Faculty of Advocates, the Society of Clerks to His
Majesty’s Signet, the Heritors of Mid-Lothian headed by the Earl of
Lauderdale, the Grand Lodge of Freemasons, headed by the Earl of Leven,
and the Honourable Company of Scots Hunters headed by the President,
the Earl of Errol.[278] The same good change was attempted a few
years later in England, but apparently without success. The footmen,
night after night, raised a riot at Ranelagh Gardens, and mobbed and
ill-treated some gentlemen who had been active in the attempt. “There
was fighting with drawn swords for some hours; they broke one chariot
all to pieces. The ladies go into fits, scream, run into the gardens,
and do everything that is ridiculous.”[279]
That “felicity” which England had in its taverns and inns was not
equally enjoyed in Scotland. Certainly it was not in Edinburgh that
was to be found “that throne of human felicity a tavern chair.”[280]
Yet in the Lowlands generally the fare in the inns was good and the
accommodation clean. Along both the eastern and the western roads John
Wesley was well pleased with the entertainment with which he met. “We
had all things good, cheap, in great abundance, and remarkably well
dressed.”[281] In the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ for December, 1771, a
curious list is given of the inns and innkeepers in Scotland. According
to this account the fare generally was good, while everywhere was
found “excellent clean linen both for bed and board.” The traveller
did well, however, who had his sheets _toasted_ and his bed warmed,
for the natives, used as they were to sleeping in their wet plaids,
were careless about a damp bed. Goldsmith, on the other hand, spoke
as ill of the Scotch inns as he did of the Scotch landscape. In them,
he says, “vile entertainment is served up, complained of, and sent
down; up comes worse, and that also is changed, and every change
makes our wretched cheer more unsavoury.”[282] The scantiness of his
purse, however, would have made him resort to the humblest houses,
and probably his experience did not extend much outside of Edinburgh.
Of the inns of that city, no one, whether native or stranger, had a
good word to say. The accommodation that was provided, writes the
historian of Edinburgh, “was little better than that of a waggoner or
a carrier.”[283] “The inns are mean buildings,” he continues, “their
apartments dirty and dismal; and if the waiters happen to be out of the
way, a stranger will perhaps be shocked with the novelty of being shown
into a room by a dirty sun-burnt wench without shoes or stockings.
If he should desire furnished lodgings, he is probably conducted to
the third or fourth floor, up dark and dirty stairs, and there shown
into apartments meanly fitted up. The taverns in general are dirty and
dismal as the inns; an idle profusion of victuals, collected without
taste, and dressed without skill or cleanliness, is commonly served
up. There are, however, exceptions, and a Scots tavern, if a good one,
is the best of all taverns.”[284] Smollett, willing as he was to see
the good side of everything in Scotland, yet represents the inn in
Edinburgh at which Matthew Bramble alighted as being “so filthy and so
disagreeable in every respect, that the old man began to fret.”[285]
Perhaps it was the same house which is described by Topham in the
following lively passage in his _Letters_:[286]
“Nov. 15, 1774. There is no inn that is better than an
alehouse, nor any accommodation that is decent or cleanly.
On my first arrival my companion and myself, after the
fatigue of a long day’s journey, were landed at one of these
stable-keepers (for they have modesty enough to give themselves
no higher denomination) in a part of the town called the
Pleasance.[287] We were conducted by a poor devil of a girl,
without shoes or stockings, and only a single linsey-wolsey
petticoat, which just reached half-way to her ankles, into
a room where about twenty Scotch drovers had been regaling
themselves with whiskey and potatoes. You may guess our
amazement when we were informed that this was the best inn in
the metropolis, that we could have no beds, unless we had an
inclination to sleep together, and in the same room with the
company which a stage-coach had that moment discharged.”
[Sidenote: EDINBURGH STABLERS.]
In the _Edinburgh Directory_ for 1773-4, among the different trades,
there is no entry under the heading of _inn-keepers_. There are
_vintners_, who, I suppose, were also tavern-keepers, and _stablers_,
who kept the inns. It was to this curious appellation that Topham
referred when he said that the inn-keepers had the modesty to call
themselves stable-keepers.
A few years after Johnson’s visit a good hotel was at last opened
in the New Town. The accommodation was elegant, but the charges
extravagant.[288] The French traveller, Saint Fond, who stayed in it
about the year 1780, said that the house was magnificent and adorned
with columns, as his bill was with flourishes and vignettes. Half a
sheet of note-paper was charged threepence, with sixpence added for
the trouble of fetching it. He paid twice as much for everything as in
the best inn on the road from London. In all his journeyings through
England and Scotland he was only twice charged exorbitantly—at Dunn’s
Hotel in Edinburgh, and at the Bull’s Head in Manchester.[289]
[Sidenote: THE HIGH STREET OF EDINBURGH.]
Johnson, coming from Berwick by the coast-road, entered Edinburgh by
the Canongate. It was on a dusky night in August that, arm in arm
with Boswell, he walked up the High Street. “Its breadth and the
loftiness of the buildings on each side made,” he acknowledged, “a
noble appearance.”[290] In the light of the day he does not seem to
have been equally impressed. “Most of the buildings are very mean,” he
wrote to Mrs. Thrale; “and the whole town bears some resemblance to
the old part of Birmingham.”[291] In his Letters he does not touch on
that appearance so unusual to Englishmen which, as we learn from his
narrative, generally struck him in the ancient towns of Scotland.[292]
Wesley’s attention was caught by this same “peculiar oddness” and
“air of antiquity.” They were like no places that he had ever seen in
England, Wales, or Ireland.[293] It was not, however, to Birmingham
that that great traveller likened the famous High Street. There was
nothing, he said, that could compare with it in Great Britain. Defoe’s
admiration had risen still higher. In his eyes it ranked as almost
the largest, longest, and finest street in the world. Its solidity of
stone he contrasted with the slightness of the houses in the South.
Lofty though the buildings were, placed, too, on “the narrow ridge
of a long ascending mountain,” with storms often raging round them,
“there was no blowing of tiles about the streets to knock people on
the heads as they passed; no stacks of chimneys and gable-ends of
houses falling in to bury the inhabitants in their ruins, as was often
found in London and other of our paper-built cities in England.”[294]
“The High Street is the stateliest street in the world,” said another
writer; “being broad enough for five coaches to drive up a-breast,
while the houses are proportionately high.”[295] According to Topham
it surpassed “the famous street in Lisle, La Rue Royale.”[296] “It
would be undoubtedly one of the noblest streets in Europe,” wrote
Smollett, “if an ugly mass of mean buildings, called the Luckenbooths,
had not thrust itself into the middle of the way.”[297] Pennant had
the same tale to tell. “As fine a street as most in Europe, was spoilt
by the Luckenbooth Row and the Guard House.”[298] Carlyle, when he
came to Edinburgh as a boy-student, in the year 1809, had seen “the
Luckenbooths, with their strange little ins and outs, and eager old
women in miniature shops of combs, shoe-laces, and trifles.”[299] One
venerable monument had been wantonly removed, while so much that was
mean and ugly was left to encumber the street. In 1756 those “dull
destroyers,” the magistrates, had pulled down “Dun-Edin’s Cross.”[300]
From the bottom of the hill “by the very Palace door,” up to the gates
of the Castle the High Street, even so late as Johnson’s time, was
the home of men of rank, of wealth, and of learning. It did not bear
that look of sullen neglect which chills the stranger who recalls its
past glories. The craftsmen and the nobles, the poor clerks and the
wealthy merchants, judges, shopkeepers, labourers, authors, physicians,
and lawyers, lived all side by side, so that “the tide of existence”
which swept up and down was as varied as it was full. The coldness
of the grey stone of the tall houses was relieved by the fantastic
devices in red or yellow or blue on a ground of black, by which each
trader signified the commodities in which he dealt. As each story was
a separate abode, there were often seen painted on the front of one
tall house half-a-dozen different signs. Here was a quartern loaf over
a full-trimmed periwig, and there a Cheshire cheese or a rich firkin
of butter over stays and petticoats.[301] To the north, scarcely
broken as yet by the scattered buildings of the infant New Town,
the outlook commanded that “incomparable prospect” which delighted
Colonel Mannering, as he gazed from the window of Counsellor Pleydell’s
library on “the Frith of Forth with its islands; the embayment which is
terminated by the Law of North Berwick, and the varied shores of Fife,
indenting with a hilly outline the clear blue horizon.”[302]
Every Sunday during the hours of service the streets were silent and
solitary, as if a plague had laid waste the city. But in a moment the
scene was changed. The multitude that poured forth from each church
swept everything before it. The stranger who attempted to face it was
driven from side to side by the advancing flood. The faithful were so
intently meditating on the good things which they had just heard that
they had no time to look before them. With their large prayer-books
under their arms, their eyes fixed steadily on the ground, and wrapped
up in their plaid cloaks, they went on regardless of everything that
passed.[303]
Less than thirty years before Johnson, on that August night, “went up
streets,”[304] the young Pretender, surrounded by his Highlanders, and
preceded by his heralds and trumpeters, had marched from the Palace
of his ancestors to the ancient Market Cross, and there had had his
father proclaimed King by the title of James the Seventh of Scotland
and Third of England. Down the same street in the following Spring his
own standard, with its proud motto of _Tandem Triumphans_, and the
banners of thirteen of his chief captains, in like manner preceded
by heralds and trumpeters, had been borne on the shoulders of the
common hangman and thirteen chimney-sweepers, to the same Cross, and
there publicly burnt.[305] Here, too, was seen from time to time the
sad and terrible procession, when, from the Tolbooth, some unhappy
wretch was led forth to die in the Grass Market. As the clock struck
the hour after noon, the City Guard knocked at the prison door. The
convict at once came out, dressed in a waistcoat and breeches of
white, bound with black ribands, and wearing a night-cap, also bound
with black. His hands were tied behind him, and a rope was round his
neck. On each side of him walked a clergyman, the hangman followed
bemuffled in a great coat, while all around, with their arms ready,
marched the Town Guard. Every window in every floor of every house was
crowded with spectators.[306] Happily the criminal law of Scotland was
far less bloody than that which at this time disgraced England, and
executions, except for murder, were rare.[307] There was also much
less crime. While the streets and neighbourhood of London were beset
by footpads and highwaymen, in Edinburgh a man might go about with
the same security at midnight as at noonday. Street robberies were
very rare, and a street murder was, it is said, a thing unknown. This
general safety was due partly to the Town Guard,[308] partly also to
the Society of Cadies, or Cawdies, a fraternity of errand-runners. Each
member had to find surety for good behaviour, and the whole body was
answerable for the dishonesty of each. Their chief place of stand was
at the top of the High Street, where some of them were found all the
day and most of the night. They were said to be acquainted with every
person and every place in Edinburgh. No stranger arrived but they knew
of it at once. They acted as a kind of police, and were as useful as
Sir John Fielding’s thief-takers in London.[309] In spite of these
safeguards, in the autumn before Johnson’s visit there was an outbreak
of crime. A reward of one guinea each was offered for the arrest of
forty persons who had been banished the city, and who were suspected of
having returned.[310] The worthy Magistrates, it should seem, were like
Dogberry, and did not trouble themselves about a thief so long as he
stole out of their company.
[Sidenote: THE EDINBURGH TOLBOOTH.]
[Illustration: THE TOLBOOTH.]
The Edinburgh Tolbooth and the other Scotch gaols were worse even than
those cruel dens in which the miserable prisoners were confined in
England. They had no court-yard where the fresh air of heaven might be
breathed for some hours at least of every weary day. Not even to the
unhappy debtor was any indulgence shown. That air was denied to him
which was common to all. Even under a guard, said an expounder of the
law, he had no right to the benefit of free air; “for every creditor
has an interest that his debtor be kept under close confinement, that
by his _squalor carceris_ he may be brought to the payment of his
just debt.”[311] He was to learn the fulness of the meaning of “the
curse of a severe creditor who pronounces his debtor’s doom, _To Rot
in Gaol_.”[312] At the present time even in Siberia there cannot, I
believe, be found so cruel a den as that old Edinburgh Tolbooth, by
whose gloomy walls Johnson passed on his way to Boswell’s comfortable
home close by, where Mrs. Boswell and tea were awaiting him. In one
room were found by a writer who visited the prison three lads confined
among “the refuse of a long succession of criminals.” The straw which
was their bed had been worn into bits two inches long. In a room on
the floor above were two miserable boys not twelve years old. But the
stench that assailed him as the door was opened so overpowered him that
he fled. The accumulation of dirt which he saw in the rooms and on the
staircases was so great, that it set him speculating in vain on the
length of time which must have been required to make it. The supply
of the food and drink was the jailer’s monopoly; whenever the poor
wretches received a little money from friends outside, or from charity,
they were not allowed the benefit of the market price. The choice of
the debtor’s prison was left to the caprice of his creditor, and that
which was known to be the most loathsome was often selected.[313] The
summer after Johnson’s visit to Edinburgh John Wesley, in one of the
streets of that town, was suddenly arrested by a sheriff’s officer on a
warrant to commit him to the Tolbooth. Happily he was first taken to an
adjoining building—some kind of spunging-house, it is probable—whence
he sent word to his friends, and obtained bail. The charge brought
against him was ridiculous, and in the end the prosecutor had heavy
damages to pay.[314] Nevertheless, monstrous though the accusation was,
had Wesley been not only a stranger and poor, but also friendless,
it was in that miserable den that he would have been lodged. His
deliverance might have been by gaol-fever.
[Sidenote: THE DOUGLAS CAUSE RIOT.]
Boswell himself, if we may trust the tradition, little more than four
years before he welcomed Johnson, had run a risk of becoming acquainted
with the inside of that prison. Scotland was all ablaze with the great
Douglas cause. The succession to the large estates of the last Duke
of Douglas was in dispute; so eagerly did men share in the shifting
course of the long lawsuit, that it was scarcely safe to open the lips
about it in mixed company. Boswell, with all the warmth of his eager
nature, took the part of the heir whose legitimacy was disallowed by
the casting vote of the President in the Court of Session. The case was
carried on appeal to the House of Lords, and on Monday, February 27,
1769, the Scotch decision was reversed. A little before eight o’clock
on Thursday evening the news reached Edinburgh by express. The city was
at once illuminated, and the windows of the hostile judges were broken.
Boswell, it is said, headed the mob. That his own father’s house was
among those which he and his followers attacked, as Sir Walter Scott
had heard,[315] is very unlikely: Lord Auchinleck had voted in the
minority, and so would have been in high favour with the rioters. A
party of foot soldiers was marched into the city, a reward of fifty
pounds was offered for the discovery of the offenders, and for some
nights the streets were patrolled by two troops of dragoons.[316]
“Boswell’s good father,” writes Ramsay of Ochtertyre, “entreated the
President with tears in his eyes to put his son in the Tolbooth. Being
brought before Sheriff Cockburn for examination, he was desired to
tell all that happened that night in his own way. ‘After,’ said he,
‘I had communicated the glorious news to my father, who received it
very coolly, I went to the Cross to see what was going on. There I
overheard a group of fellows forming their plan of operations. One
of them asked what sort of a man the sheriff was, and whether he was
not to be dreaded. ‘No, no,’ answered another; ‘he is a puppy of the
President’s making.’ On hearing this exordium Mr. Cockburn went off,
leaving the culprit to himself.”[317]
[Illustration: HUME’S HOUSE.]
[Sidenote: THE NEW TOWN OF EDINBURGH.]
Among the sights which Johnson was shown at Edinburgh, the New Town
was not included. Yet some progress had been made in laying out those
streets, “which in simplicity and manliness of style and general
breadth and brightness of effect” were destined to surpass anything
that has been attempted in modern street architecture.[318] From
Boswell’s windows, over the tops of the stately elm-trees which at that
time ran in front of James’s Court and across a deep and marshy hollow,
the rising houses could be easily seen. Full in view among the rest was
the new home Hume had lately built for himself at the top of a street
which was as yet unnamed, but was soon, as St. David’s, to commemorate
in a jest the great philosopher who was its first inhabitant. Had the
change which was so rapidly coming over Auld Reekie been understood
in its full extent, surely Johnson’s attention would have been drawn
to it. Boswell only mentions the New Town to introduce the name of
“the ingenious architect” who planned it, Craig, the nephew of the
poet Thomson.[319] His mind, perhaps, was so set on escaping from “the
too narrow sphere of Scotland,” and on removing to London, that of
Edinburgh and its fortunes he was careless. Yet, shrewd observer as he
was of men and manners, he must have noticed how the tide of fashion
had already begun to set from the Old Town, and was threatening to
leave the ancient homes of the noble and the wealthy like so many
wrecks behind. In many people there was a great reluctance to make
a move. To some the old familiar life in a flat was dear, and the
New Town was built after the English fashion, in what was known as
“houses to themselves.” “One old lady fancied she should be lost if
she were to get into such an habitation; another feared being blown
away in going over the New Bridge; while a third thought that these
new fashions could come to _nae gude_.”[320] Nevertheless, in spite
of all these terrors, the change came very swiftly. So early as 1783,
“a rouping-wife, or saleswoman of old furniture,” occupied the house
which not many years before had been Lord President Craigie’s, while a
chairman who had taken Lord Drummore’s house had “lately left it for
want of accommodation.”[321] There were men of position, however, who,
fashion or no fashion, clung to their old homes for many years later.
Queensberry House, nearly at the foot of the Canongate, which in later
years was turned into a Refuge for the Destitute, so late as 1803 was
inhabited by the Lord Chief Baron Montgomery. Lord Cockburn remembered
well the old judge’s tall, well-dressed figure in the old style, and
the brilliant company which gathered round him in that ancient but
decayed quarter.[322]
It was full five years before Johnson’s arrival that Dr. Robertson,
pleading the cause of his poverty-stricken University, pointed out
how the large buildings that were rising suddenly on all sides, the
magnificent bridge that had been begun, and the new streets and squares
all bore the marks of a country growing in arts and in industry.[323]
It was in 1765 that the foundations were laid of the bridge which was
to cross the valley that separates the Old and New Town. It was not
till 1772 that “it was made passable.”[324] In 1783 the huge mound
was begun which now so conveniently joins the two hills. The earth of
which it is formed was dug out in making the foundations of the new
houses. Fifteen hundred cartloads on an average were thrown in daily
for the space of three years.[325] The valley, which with its lawns,
its slopes, its trim walls, its beds of flowers, and its trees, adds
so much to the pleasantness and beauty of Edinburgh, was when Johnson
looked down into it “a deep morass, one of the dirtiest puddles upon
earth.”[326] It was in its black mud that Hume one day stuck when he
had slipped off the stepping-stones on the way to his new house. A
fishwife, who was following after him, recognizing “the Deist,” refused
to help him unless he should recite first the Lord’s Prayer and the
Belief.[327] This he at once did to her great wonder. His admiration
for the New Town was unbounded. If the High Street was finer than
anything of its kind in Europe the New Town, he maintained, exceeded
anything in any part of the world.[328] “You would not wonder that I
have abjured London for ever,” he wrote to his friend, Strahan, in
the year 1772, “if you saw my new house and situation in St. Andrew’s
Square.”[329] Adam Smith told Rogers the poet, who visited Edinburgh in
1789, that the Old Town had given Scotland a bad name, and that he was
anxious to move with the rest.[330]
[Sidenote: THE “EDINBURGH FLY”.]
The age which I am attempting to describe was looked upon by Lord
Cockburn as “the last purely Scotch age that Scotland was destined
to see. The whole country had not begun to be absorbed in the ocean
of London.”[331] The distance between the two capitals as measured
by time, fatigue, and money was little less than the distance in the
present day between Liverpool and New York. Johnson, who travelled in
post-chaises, and therefore in great comfort, was nine days on the
road. “He purposed,” he wrote, “not to loiter much by the way;”[332]
but he did not journey by night, and he indulged in two days’ rest
at Newcastle. Hume, three years later, travelling by easy stages on
account of his failing health, took two days longer.[333] Had Johnson
gone by the public conveyance, the “Newcastle Fly” would have brought
him in three days as far as that town at a charge of £3 6_s._ On the
panels of the “Fly” was painted the motto, _Sat cito si sat bene_.
Thence he would have continued his journey by the “Edinburgh Fly,”
which traversed the whole remaining distance in a single day in
summer, and in a day and a half in winter. The charge for this was
£1 11_s._ 6_d._ In these sums were not included the payments to the
drivers and guards. The “Newcastle Fly” ran six times a week, starting
from London an hour after midnight. The “Edinburgh Fly” ran only on
Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. A traveller then who lost no time
on the road, leaving London at one o’clock on Sunday night, would in
the summer-time reach Edinburgh by Thursday evening, and in the winter
after mid-day on Friday.[334] Even the mail which was carried on
horse-back, and went five times a week, took in good weather about 82
hours.[335] The news of the battle of Culloden, though it was forwarded
by an express, was seven days all but two or three hours in reaching
London.[336] There were men living in 1824 who recollected when the
mail came down with only one single letter for Edinburgh.[337] By 1793
a great acceleration had been effected in the coach-service. It was
possible, so the proud boast ran, to leave Edinburgh after morning
service on Sunday, spend a whole day in London, and be back again by
six o’clock on Saturday morning.[338] The weary traveller would have
had to pass every night in the coach. By the year 1800 the journey was
done from London to Edinburgh in fifty-eight hours, and from Edinburgh
to London in sixty and a half.[339] But such annihilation of time and
space, as no doubt this rapid rate of travelling was then called, was
not dreamed of in Johnson’s day. The capitals of England and Scotland
still stood widely apart. It was wholly “a Scotch scene” which the
English traveller saw, and “independent tastes and ideas and pursuits”
caught his attention.[340] Nevertheless in one respect Edinburgh,
as I have already said, felt strongly the influence of England. In
its literature and its language it was laboriously forming itself on
the English model. There had been a long period during which neither
learning nor literature had shone in Scotland with any brightness of
light. Since the days of the great classical scholars not a single
famous author had been seen. There had been “farthing candles” from
time to time, but no “northern lights.”[341] The two countries were
under the same sovereign, but there was no Age of Queen Anne north of
the Tweed. There was indeed that general diffusion of learning which
was conspicuously wanting in England. An English traveller noticed with
surprise how rare it was to find “a man of any rank but the lowest who
had not some tincture of learning. It was the pride and delight of
every father to give his son a liberal education.”[342] Nevertheless it
had been “with their learning as with provisions in a besieged town,
every man had a mouthful and no one a bellyful.”[343] That there was a
foundation for Johnson’s pointed saying was many years later candidly
admitted by Sir Walter Scott.[344] So great had been the dearth of
literature that the printer’s art had fallen into decay. About the year
1740 there were but four printing-houses in Edinburgh, which found
scanty employment in producing school-books, law-papers, newspapers,
sermons, and Bibles. By 1779 the number had risen from four to seven
and twenty.[345] This rapid growth was by no means wholly due to an
increase in Scotch authors. Edinburgh might have become “a hot-bed
of genius,” but such productiveness even in a hot-bed would have
been unparalleled. The booksellers in late years, in defiance of the
supposed law of copyright, had begun to reprint the works of standard
English writers, and after a long litigation had been confirmed in what
they were doing by a decision given in the House of Lords.[346]
[Sidenote: ENGLISH STUDIED BY THE SCOTCH.]
The growth of literature in Scotland had taken a turn which was not
unnatural. In the troubles of the seventeenth century the nation,
while yet it was in its power, had neglected to refine its language.
No great masters of style had risen. There had been no Sir William
Temple “to give cadence to its prose.”[347] The settled government and
the freedom from tyranny which the country enjoyed on the fall of the
Stuarts, the growth of material wealth which followed on the Union, the
gradual diminution of bigotry and the scattering of darkness which was
part of the general enlightenment of Europe had given birth to a love
of modern literature. The old classical learning no longer sufficed.
Having no literature of their own which satisfied their aspirations,
the younger generation of men was forced to acquire the language of
their ancient rivals, brought as it had been by a long succession of
illustrious authors to a high degree of perfection.[348] It was to the
volumes of Addison that the Scotch student was henceforth to give his
days and nights. To read English was an art soon acquired, but to write
it, and still more to speak it correctly, demanded a long and laborious
study. Very few, with all their perseverance, succeeded like Mallet
in “clearing their tongues from their native pronunciation.”[349]
Even to understand the language when spoken was only got by practice.
A young lady from the country, who was reproached with having seen
on the Edinburgh stage some loose play, artlessly replied:—“Indeed
they did nothing wrong that I saw; and as for what they said, it was
high English, and I did not understand it.”[350] Dr. Beattie studied
English from books like a dead language. To write it correctly cost
him years of labour.[351] “The conversation of the Edinburgh authors,”
said Topham, “showed that they wrote English as a foreign tongue,”
for their spoken language was so unlike their written.[352] Some men
were as careless of their accent as they were careful of their words.
Hume’s tone was always broad Scotch, but Scotch words he carefully
avoided.[353] Others indulged in two styles and two accents, one for
familiar life, the other for the pulpit, the court of Session, or
the professor’s chair. In all this there was a great and a strange
variety. Lord Kames, for instance, in his social hour spoke pure
Scotch, though “with a tone not displeasing from its vulgarity;” on
the Bench his language approached to English.[354] His brother judge,
Lord Auchinleck, on the other hand, clung to his mother tongue. He
would not smooth or round his periods, or give up his broad Scotch,
however vulgar it was accounted. The sturdy old fellow felt, no doubt,
a contempt for that “compound of affectation and pomposity” which
some of his countrymen spoke—a language which “no Englishman could
understand.”[355] In their attempt to get rid of their accent they too
often arrived at the young lady’s _High English_, a mode of speaking
far enough removed no doubt from the Scotch, but such as “made ‘the
fools who used it’ truly ridiculous.”[356] There were others who were
far more successful. “The conversation of the Scots,” wrote Johnson,
“grows every day less unpleasing to the English; their peculiarities
wear fast away; their dialect is likely to become in half a century
provincial and rustic, even to themselves. The great, the learned,
the ambitious, and the vain, all cultivate the English phrase, and
the English pronunciation; and in splendid companies Scotch is not
much heard, except now and then from an old lady.”[357] The old lady
whom he chiefly had in his memory when he wrote this was probably the
Duchess of Douglas. He had met her at Boswell’s table. “She talks broad
Scotch with a paralytick voice,” he wrote to Mrs. Thrale, “and is
scarce understood by her own countrymen.”[358] Boswell himself, by the
instruction of a player from Drury Lane, who had brought a company to
Edinburgh, succeeded so well in clearing his tongue of his Scotch that
Johnson complimented him by saying: “Sir, your pronunciation is not
offensive.”[359]
In their pursuit of English literature the Scotch proved as successful
as in everything else which they took in hand. Whatever ill-will may
have existed between the two nations, there was no grudging admiration
shown in England for their authors. In popularity few writers of
their time surpassed Thomson, Smollett, Hume, Robertson, John Home,
Macpherson, Hugh Blair, Beattie, and Boswell; neither had Robert
Blair, Mallet, Kames, John Dalrymple, Henry Mackenzie, Monboddo, Adam
Ferguson, and Watson, any reason to complain of neglect. If Adam Smith
and Reid were not so popular as some of their contemporaries it was
because they had written for the small class of thinkers; though the
_Wealth of Nations_, which was published little more than two years
after Johnson’s visit, was by the end of the century to reach its
ninth edition. “This, I believe, is the historical age, and this the
historical nation,” Hume wrote proudly from Edinburgh.[360] He boasted
that “the copy-money” given him for his _History_ “much exceeded
anything formerly known in England.” It made him “not only independent
but opulent.” Robertson for his _Charles V._ received £3,400, and £400
was to be added on the publication of the second edition.[361] Blair
for a single volume of his Sermons was paid £600.[362]
Whatever ardour Scotchmen showed for English literature as men of
letters, yet they never for one moment forgot their pride in their
own country. In a famous club they had banded themselves together for
the sake of doing away with a reproach which had been cast upon their
nation. Just as down to the present time no Parliament has ventured to
trust Ireland with a single regiment of volunteers, so Scotland one
hundred years ago was not trusted with a militia. In the words of Burns,
“Her lost militia fired her bluid.”[363]
[Sidenote: THE POKER CLUB.]
In 1759 a Bill for establishing this force had been brought into
Parliament, and though Pitt acquiesced in the measure, it was thrown
out by “the young Whigs.” Most Englishmen probably felt with Horace
Walpole, when he rejoiced that “the disaffected in Scotland could not
obtain this mode of having their arms restored.”[364] Two or three
years later the literary men in Edinburgh, affronted by this refusal,
formed themselves into a league of patriots. The name of The Militia
Club, which they had at first thought of adopting, was rejected as
too directly offensive. With a happy allusion to the part which they
were to play in stirring up the fire and spirit of the country, they
decided on calling themselves “The Poker.” Andrew Crosbie, the original
of Mr. Counsellor Pleydell, was humorously elected Assassin, and David
Hume was added as his Assessor, “without whose assent nothing should
be done.”[365] It was urged with great force that Scotland was as
much exposed as England to plunder and invasion. Why, it was asked,
was she refused a militia when one had been granted to Cumberland and
Westmoreland, and Lancashire? Had not those countries contributed
more adventurers to the forces of the Young Pretender than all the
Lowlands? “Why put a sword in the hands of foreigners for wounding the
Scottish nation and name? A name admired at home for fidelity, regaled
[_sic_] in every clime for strictness of discipline, and dreaded for
intrepidity.”[366] In 1776 the Bill was a second time brought in,
but was a second time rejected. “I am glad,” said Johnson, “that the
Parliament has had the spirit to throw it out.”[367] By this time
it was not timidity only which caused the rejection. The English
were touched in their pockets. It was maintained that as Scotland
contributed so little to the land-tax, so if she needed a militia she
ought to bear the whole expense herself. “What enemy,” asked Johnson
scornfully, “would invade Scotland where there is nothing to be
got?”[368] It was not till the year 1793, in the midst of the alarms of
a war with France, that the force was at last established, and Scotland
in one more respect placed on an equality with England.
In Edinburgh such a club as this, formed of all the eager active
spirits in the place, could act with the greater vigour from the ease
with which the members could meet. In whatever quarter of the town men
lived, even if they had moved to the squares which had lately been
built to the north and south, they were not much more widely separated
than the residents in the Colleges of Oxford. The narrowness of the
limits in which they were confined is shown by the small number of
hackney-coaches which served their wants. In London, in 1761, there
were eight hundred; by 1784 they had risen to a thousand.[369] In
Edinburgh there were but nine; and even these, it was complained, were
rarely to be seen on the stand after three o’clock in the afternoon.
It was in sedan chairs that visits of ceremony were paid; the bearers
were Highlanders, as in London they were generally Irishmen.[370]
The dinner-hour was still so early that the meal of careless and
cheerful hospitality was the supper. In 1763 fashionable people dined
at two; twenty years later at four or even at five.[371] At the time
of Johnson’s visit three was probably the common hour. Dr. Carlyle
describes the ease with which in his younger days a pleasant supper
party was gathered together. “We dined where we best could, and by
cadies[372] we assembled our friends to meet us in a tavern by nine
o’clock; and a fine time it was when we could collect David Hume, Adam
Smith, Adam Ferguson, Lord Elibank, and Drs. Blair and Jardine on an
hour’s warning.”[373] Though the Scotch were “religious observers
of hospitality,”[374] yet a stranger did not readily get invited to
their favourite meal. “To be admitted to their suppers is a mark of
their friendship. At them the restraints of ceremony are banished,
and you see people really as they are.” The Scotch ladies, it was
noticed, at these cheerful but prolonged repasts drank more wine than
an English woman could well bear, “but the climate required it.”[375]
The “patriotic Knox” describes the inhabitants of Edinburgh as being
“not only courteous, obliging, open, and hospitable, but well-inclined
to the bottle.” It was not to the climate that he attributed this
joyous devotion, but “to their social dispositions and the excellence
of their wines.”[376] Boswell has left us a description of a supper
which he enjoyed at Hume’s new house in St. Andrew’s Square. He had
Dr. Robertson and Lord Kames for his fellow-guests, and three sorts of
ice-creams among the dishes. “What think you of the northern Epicurus
style?” he asked. He complained, however, that he could recollect no
conversation. “Our writers here are really not prompt on all occasions
as those of London.”[377] He had been spoilt by the talk in the taverns
of Fleet Street and the Turk’s Head Club, and was discontented because
he did not find in St. Andrew’s Square a Johnson, a Burke, a Wilkes,
and a Beauclerk.
[Sidenote: JOHNSON AND DAVID HUME.]
Into Hume’s pleasant house Johnson unhappily never entered.[378] He
even thought that his friend Dr. Adams, the Master of Pembroke College,
had done wrong when he had met by invitation “that infidel writer” at
dinner, and “had treated him with smooth civility.”[379] Yet a man who
could yield to the temptation of the talk of Jack Wilkes had no right
to stand aloof from David Hume. We should like to know what he would
have thought of that philosopher’s _soupe à la reine_ made from a
receipt which he had copied in his own neat hand, or of his “beef and
cabbage (a charming dish) and old mutton and old claret, in which,”
he boasted, “no man excelled him.” Perhaps, however, if Johnson could
have been persuaded to taste the claret, old as it was, he would have
shaken his head over it and called it “poor stuff.”[380] The sheep-head
broth he would certainly have refused, though one Mr. Keith did speak
of it for eight days after,[381] and the Duke de Nivernois would have
bound himself apprentice to Hume’s lass to learn it.[382] “The stye of
that fattest of Epicurus’s hogs” he failed to visit. “You tell me,”
wrote the great Gibbon to a friend who was at Edinburgh just at the
time of Johnson’s arrival, “you tell me of a long list of Dukes, Lords,
and Chieftains of renown to whom you are introduced; were I with you I
should prefer one _David_ to them all.”[383] Boswell could easily have
brought the two men together, intimate as he was with both. Early in
his life he was able to boast that one of them had visited him in the
forenoon and the other in the afternoon of the same day.[384] Hume’s
conversation perhaps was not after the fashion which Johnson liked. It
certainly would not have come recommended to him by his broad Scotch
accent. Nevertheless there was that about it which endeared it to his
friends. For innocent mirth and agreeable raillery he was thought to
be unmatched.[385] Adam Smith has celebrated his constant pleasantry.
In his wit there was not the slightest tincture of malignity.[386] But
Johnson would have nothing to do with him.[387] In Boswell’s house in
James’s Court, that Sunday he spent there in Dr. Robertson’s company,
he said “something much too rough both as to Mr. Hume’s head and
heart,” which Boswell thought well to suppress. In the quiet stillness
of that summer sabbath day in Edinburgh, the strong loud voice might
almost have been carried across the narrow valley to St. Andrew’s
Square, and startled the philosopher in his retirement.
Neither did Johnson see Adam Smith, who in Hume’s house had his room
whenever he chose to occupy it. To meet a famous stranger he would,
we may well believe, have willingly crossed the Firth from his house
in Kirkaldy. But the two men had once met in London, and “we did not
take to each other,” said Johnson. Had he been more tolerant, and
sought the society of these two great Scotchmen, he would have seen in
Scotland the best which Scotland had to show. Even as it was, in his
visit to the capital and the seats of the other universities, in his
tour through Lowlands, Highlands and Isles, he saw perhaps as great
a variety of men and manners as had been seen in that country by any
Englishman up to his time.