CHAPTER VII

THE BUILDING OF THE NEW TOWN: A STAMPEDE FOR FRESH AIR

Even thus, methinks, a city reared should be, Yea, an imperial city that might hold Five times a hundred noble towns in fee, And either with their might of Babel old, Or the rich Roman pomp of empery, Might stand compare, highest in arts enrolled, Highest in arms, brave tenement for the free Who never crouch to thrones, nor sin for gold. Thus should her towers be raised; with vicinage Of clear bold hills that curve her very streets, As if to vindicate, ’mid choicest seats Of Art, abiding Nature’s majesty; And the broad sea beyond, in calm or rage Chainless alike, and teaching liberty. ARTHUR HALLAM, _Sonnet to Edinburgh_.

Towards the end of the eighteenth century, Edinburgh, “a picturesque, odorous, inconvenient, old-fashioned town,” as Mr. Robert Chambers describes it, had become densely over-populated. Seventy thousand inhabitants lived, breathed, and had their being within its confined area. The quaint and impressive site of this “city set on a hill,” however, did not admit of an easy extension of its boundaries. Fields and braes lay to the north, open and ready, blazing with whins and sunshine, and swept over by the fresh winds off the sea--a perfect _El Dorado_ for the stifling and cramped inhabitants to look at from the high windows of the eyries in the dark obscurities of their closes and wynds. But, between the city and this fair open country, there lay a deep chasm filled by the Nor’ Loch; and so Edinburgh remained in its old state, a city straggling down the ridge from the Castle to Holyrood, with St. Giles’s Church and the Tolbooth standing in the centre of this street and blocking its breadth, and all the teeming wynds and closes leading from it, and with the lower-lying Cowgate over the ridge to the south, terminating in the Grassmarket beneath the Castle Rock.

“Everything,” says Mr. Robert Chambers, “was on a homely and narrow scale. The College--where Munro, Cullen, and Black were already making themselves great names--was to be approached through a mean alley, the College Wynd. The churches were chiefly clustered under one roof; the jail was a narrow building, half filling up the breadth of the street; the public offices, for the most part, obscure places in lanes or dark entries. The men of learning and wit, united with a proportion of men of rank, met as the _Poker Club_ in a tavern, the best of its day, but only a dark house in a close.... The town was, nevertheless, a familiar, compact, and not unlikable place. Gentle and

simple living within the compass of a single close, or even a single stair, knew and took an interest in each other. Acquaintances might not only be formed, Pyramus-and-Thisbe fashion, through party walls, but from window to window across alleys, narrow enough in many cases to allow of hand coming to hand, and even lip to lip.... The jostle and huddlement was extreme everywhere.” And the overcrowding!

“A country gentleman and a lawyer, not long after raised to the Bench, lived with his wife and children and servants in three rooms and a kitchen. A wealthy goldsmith had a dwelling of two small rooms above his booth, the nursery and kitchen, however, being placed in a cellar under the level of the street, where the children are said to have rotted off like sheep.”[55] Edinburgh citizens came to consider the highest storeys in their tall “lands” the most desirable; and the tale is told of one old Edinburgh gentleman who, on a visit to London, expressed pleased surprise that the top flat where he had perched himself was the cheapest in the house. On being gently enlightened that this was in consequence of its being also the least thought of, he replied that he kent fine what gentility was, and after having lived sixteen storeys up all his life, was not going to come down in the world.

The first efforts at extension of the town were due to a private commercial speculation. The open country beyond the Nor’ Loch and the “Lang Dykes” was inaccessible till an Act of Parliament could be passed and drastic measures taken; and, where Acts of Parliament are necessary, progress is slow. Whilst time was passing, and others were talking and scheming for the public good, a builder named George Brown saw that the tide had come in his affairs, and took it at the flood and made his fortune. He built, with stones from Craigmillar Quarry, two squares of substantial dwelling-houses. The first built and bigger of these was George Square, whose site had formerly been part of the park of Ross House, the suburban residence of the Lords Ross, where later--after 1753--the famous George Lockhart of Carnwath had lived. The smaller square, Brown Square, was built after the first had proved a success, and several of the houses in it been taken by well-known citizens. George Square is still, though hemmed in by poor localities on three sides, a favourite place of residence, with a pleasant garden in the centre, and “the Meadows” near at hand. Here it was, at number 25, that Scott’s father lived, and part of Scott’s boyhood was spent. Brown Square has not survived socially, though it, too, has had its notable residents. It was from Brown Square that Lord Glenlee, the last person to use a sedan-chair in Edinburgh, used to sally forth in wig and cocked hat, in knee-breeches and silk stockings and buckled shoes; and in Brown Square there once lived the author of “The Flowers of the Forest,” Miss Jeanie Elliott of Minto, one of the many gifted Jacobite ladies of Jacobite Edinburgh. These two squares formed a little southern colony by themselves, confined their hospitalities to themselves, and, in fact, as the Scottish phrase says, “kept themselves to themselves.”

At last, in 1767, the Act of Parliament for extending the city over the northern fields was passed, and the North Bridge was built from the High Street across the valley. And then, suddenly, as with the touch of a magician’s wand, the beginnings of the New Town of Edinburgh came into being: stately squares and noble buildings, wide, broad streets that put London thoroughfares to shame, graceful curved terraces and crescents; all the cold dignity of unlimited grey stone--stone pavements, stone roads, stone houses; and, nestling in every crevice of the stone, the green of the invaded country. New Edinburgh, like Jonah’s gourd, sprang up in a night, to shade many a prophet.

And who wielded the magician’s wand? The name of Lord Provost Drummond ought to be remembered in Edinburgh, of which, like a veritable Dick Whittington, he was six times Lord Provost. He was a man of public spirit and large enterprise, who brought dignity on himself and his office and his city. The New Town dates from his Provostship. At first, however, as all pioneers must do, he saw men look askance at the triumphs of his energy. He was probably called extravagant, and accused of squandering public money. “The scheme was at first far from popular,” Mr. Robert Chambers tells his readers. “The exposure to the north and east winds was felt as a grievous disadvantage, especially while houses were few. So unpleasant even was the North Bridge considered, that a lover told a New Town mistress--to be sure only in an epigram--that when he visited her he felt as performing an adventure not much short of that of Leander. The aristocratic style of the place alarmed a number of pockets, and legal men trembled lest their clients and other employers should forget them, if they removed so far from the centre of things as Princes Street and St. Andrew Square. Still, the move was unavoidable, and behoved to be made.”[56]

And then the bees swarmed.

Those of the Scottish nobles whom the Union had left in the capital took their persons and their households across the valley to the New Town, and left their family mansions and their family traditions behind them in the Old. All the legal dignitaries--Lord President, Lord Justice Clerk, Lord Advocate, Dean of Faculty, Solicitor-General, Lords of Council and Session--all those “carls” whom James VI. had made “lairds,” accompanied by the “carlins” whom he had declined to make “leddies”; the advocates, the “writers”; all the old Scottish “gentry,” the wealthy burghers: all hurried out of their closes and took up their residences in the big new houses across the Nor’ Loch.

Nature, however, abhors a vacuum, and so do landlords; and the deserted High Street and Canongate filled up rapidly with humbler citizens. “The Lord Justice Clerk Tinwald’s house possessed by a French teacher, Lord President Craigie’s house by a rouping wife or saleswoman of old furniture, and Lord Drummore’s house left by a chairman for want of accommodation; ... the house of the Duke of Douglas at the Union, now possessed by a wheelwright!”[57]

David Hume was one of the bees who swarmed. He was buzzing busily on the third floor of a house in James’s Court with (what was particularly characteristic of Edinburgh houses of that period, but perhaps not so appealing to Hume as to some others) two little oratories, one off his dining-room and one out of his drawing-room. But neither the oratories nor the view to the north from his windows had the power to retain him. He spread his wings and alighted on the west corner house on the south side of St. Andrew Square. When his house at the corner was almost the only one in the street leading from Princes Street to St. Andrew Square, and before the names of the New Town streets had been inscribed on them, Dr. Webster, a humorous minister, wrote in chalk on the great sceptic’s dwelling “Saint David’s Street.” Hume’s old servant ran indignantly to her master to tell him; but Hume was a humorist too. “Weel, weel, Janet,” he said, “never mind. I am not the first man of sense that has been made a saint of.”

St. David Street it remains to this day.

Sir Laurence Dundas built himself a house in St. Andrew Square, but lost it in play to General Scott, a noted gambler, who staked £30,000 against it. Sir Laurence retained his house, however, by building General Scott another mansion-house, “Bellevue,” which for long stood in the centre of Drummond Place.

Along the line of the present Princes Street had formerly been the “Lang Gait,” or “Lang Dykes,” a rough road through rough country, where Claverhouse had clattered angrily towards the Highlands at the head of his troopers. This had been the scene of many a footpad robbery and murder, and many lovers’ evening strolls; but, when the New Town was built, it gradually was feued out, from east to west; and along it were built a single line of houses looking right across the valley and up towards the Old Town. It was proposed to call this--the principal street of New Edinburgh--“St. Giles Street,” after the patron saint of Edinburgh, which would have been a very appropriate name, and a slight offer of amends to the Saint for the insult offered to his effigy when the rude-minded rabble ducked it in the Nor’ Loch in the first days of the Reformation. However, George III. objected. “Hey, hey--what, what? St. Giles Street! never do! never do!” No doubt to Londoners the name might awaken associations with a neighbourhood unknown beyond London; but George III. showed some ignorance of Scottish history, for the district of St. Giles in London owes its name to the founder of a leper hospital--Maud, daughter of Malcolm Canmore and Queen Margaret, who, when Queen of England, evidently sometimes felt a little homesick and very patriotic, and bestowed on her charity the name of the patron saint of Edinburgh.

And what became of the Nor’ Loch? The citizens had no longer to swim across it two at a time on a collier’s horse, as had the Hamiltons after the “Cleanse the Causeway” battle. The Nor’ Loch, formed in 1450 when first Edinburgh was walled, had done its duty and had its day, and was drained; and its place--now well-kept gardens--was for long a boggy morass. Across this morass some Lawnmarket shopkeepers were accustomed to make their way to investigate the progress of the new city; and, as the ground was marshy and muddy, they laid a few planks across to form a foot-bridge. George Boyd, a dealer in tartan, called “Five o’clock,” in jocular allusion to his bandy legs, seems to have been particularly impressed by the plank bridge; and, when some loose earth from a quarry fell on it and made the bridge more secure, his mind, which worked better than his legs, caught at the suggestion that the earth flung out by the builders from the foundations of the New Town might form a bridge across the valley. The suggestion was adopted, and the earth, to the amount, it has been calculated, of about two million cartloads, was deposited and a great mound formed in the valley of the Nor’ Loch, just below the centre of the High Street; and “Geordie Boyd’s brig” became “the Earthen Mound,” and so continued to be called until well on in the nineteenth century. So, indeed, one well-known and venerable Edinburgh citizen still speaks of it.

And this is how, within about forty years of its first conception, the New Town of Edinburgh spread itself over the plain and superseded the crumbling cluster of seven centuries. And this is how modern Edinburgh presents that curious spectacle, unknown in any other town, of two distinct divisions, divided topographically as well as historically and socially--Old Edinburgh and New Edinburgh.