Part 7

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.]

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]

[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”.]