Part 6

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]