Part 16

Haddington Abbey, the successor of earlier buildings, and now itself partly ruined, stands by the inconstant river, the nave, now the parish church, and the choir roofless, open to the sky. It is here within these grass-grown walls that “Jane Welsh Carlyle, spouse of Thomas Carlyle, Chelsea, London,” lies, as the remorseful epitaph says, “suddenly snatched away from him, and the light of his life as if gone out.” The spot where the Abbey stands, by the dishevelled and tumbledown quarter of Nungate, is the more abject now in that it still possesses old mansions that tell of a more prosperous past. Here, on the river-bank, neglected and forlorn like everything around, is the fine old screen of the Bowling Green, where no one has, for a century past, played bowls, unless indeed the wraiths of bygone Scottish notables haunt the spot o’ nights and play ghostly games, like the Kaatskill gnomes in _Rip Van Winkle_. It is from the other side of the river that the Abbey is best seen, its roofless central tower, the _Lucernia Laudoniae_, or “Lamp of Lothian,” still showing those triple lancets in every face which, according to the legend, obtained for it that title. To obtain this view, the Abbey bridge is crossed, which even now vividly illustrates on its wall the ready way the old burgh had with malefactors. From it projects a great hook, rusty for long want of usage, from which were hanged the reivers, the horse-thieves, and casual evildoers, with jurisdiction of the most summary kind. No Calcraft science with it either, with neck broken in decent fashion, but just a hauling up of the rope and a tying of it to some handy stanchion, and the unhappy malefactor left to throttle by slow degrees. No other such picturesque hanging-place as this, but what is scenery to a criminal about to be hanged like a tom-cat caught killing chickens.

[Picture: Haddington Abbey, from Nungate]

The crest, arms, trade-mark or badge of Haddington is a goat. There is no doubt about that, for Billy (or is it a Nanny?) has his (or her) effigy on many of the old buildings. Only by comparison and by slow degrees is it that the stranger arrives at the conclusion that it is a goat, for the drawing of many of these representations leaves much to be desired. Some resemble an elephant, others a horse, others yet what “the mind’s eye, Horatio” might conceive a Boojum to be like; but in the open space where High Street and Market Street join, the modern Market Cross, surmounted by a more carefully executed carving, determines the species.

This is the centre of the town and neater than its entrance from the south. The steepled classic building close by is not a church but the Town House, masquerading in ecclesiastical disguise, very much as Berwick’s Town Hall does. From this point it is only seventeen miles into Edinburgh; but in 1750 and for long after the coach journey employed the best efforts of the local stage during the whole day. Musselburgh, little more than eleven miles away, was reached in time for dinner, and only when evening was come did the lumbering vehicle lurch into its destination in Auld Reekie, when every one went to bed, bruised and weary with the toils of the expedition. The road at that time must have resembled the specimen of roadway still adorning the south entrance to Haddington.

[Picture: Edinburgh, from Tranent]

To-day, happily, it is in good condition as far as Levenhall, seven miles short of our journey’s end, whence it is bad beyond the credibility of those who have not seen it. Gladsmuir, Macmerry, and Tranent are interposed between; places that sink their memories of the battle of Prestonpans in iron-founding and coal-digging and suchlike, disregarding the futilities of the Stuarts. As for Macmerry, whose name prefigures orgies at the most of it, or sober revelry at the very least, it is odds against your finding as depressing a place within a hundred miles. If place-names were made to fit, why, then, Macdolour might suit it to a marvel. Why? Just because it stands at the crest of a barren knowe; an ugly row of cottages on either side, with cinders and dust, clinkers and mud in front of them, and some gaunt works within eyeshot. God knows who christened the place, or if the name signified merriment, but, if it did, either the scene has changed wholly since then, or else he was a humorist of the sardonic sort who so dubbed it. Tranent, too, a townlet subsisting upon collieries: how grimly commonplace! But it at least has this advantage, that from its elevated foothold it looks down upon the Firth of Forth, that noble firth which Victor Hugo blundered over so whimsically in rendering it as “_la Premiére de la Quatrième_.” Seen under the summer sun, how glorious that seaward view, with the villages of Preston and Cockenzie, half hidden by their woodlands, by the level shores. Half-way down from Tranent’s hillside you see a fine panorama: Arthur’s Seat in front, Calton Hill and its Nelson’s column, peering from behind, and the distant shores of Fife, with blowing smoke-clouds, many miles away. Between Arthur’s Seat and the Calton, Edinburgh is hid, nine miles from this point. Down in the levels in the mid-distance there are hints of Musselburgh in smoke-wreaths and peeping towers; and mayhap, while you gaze, the southward-bound train, with its white puff of steam, is seen setting forth on its long journey Londonwards. In these levels was fought the battle of Prestonpans, Sunday, September 21, 1745, around that village of Preston and those briny meads where the salt-pans used to be and are no longer.

Preston—formerly Priest’s Town—got its name at the time when it was part of the celebrated Abbey of Newbattle. The monks of that religious house were the first discoverers of coal in Scotland, and also, in the twelfth century, made this district the seat of a manufacture of salt. Prestonpans, indeed, at one time supplied the whole of the East Coast with salt, and it was only on the repeal of the Salt Duty that this old town fell into decay. Women, known as salt-wives, a class almost as picturesque as the fish-wives of Newhaven, used to carry the salt in creels on their backs, to sell in Edinburgh and other towns.

In an orchard stands what was once the ancient village cross, erected in 1617, in place of an earlier. Well-known as the “Chapmen’s Cross,” it was the meeting-place of the chapmen, packmen, or pedlars of the Lothians. They gathered early in July, transacted the business of their guild and elected their “King” and his “Lord Deputy” for the ensuing year. The “ink-bottle,” cut in stone, into which they dipped their pens, is still visible on the base of the cross. The Bannatyne Club saved it from utter destruction, and instituted a convivial guild, the “Society of Chapmen of the Lothians,” visiting the cross every year, with Sir Walter Scott as one of their members.

The world has vastly changed since “the Forty-five.” It has, as a small detail, ceased to produce its salt by evaporation of sea water; and, a larger and more significant matter, no longer wages war for sake of dynasties. The Highlanders who fought and gained this fleeting victory for Prince Charlie were the last who drew the sword for Romance and Right Divine. Prince Charlie had moved out of his loyal Edinburgh at the approach of the English under Sir John Cope, who, of course, in that fine foolish manner of British officers, which will survive as long as the officers themselves, wholly underrated his enemy. He was defeated easily, with every circumstance of indignity, his soldiers fleeing in abject terror before the impetuous charge of the ferocious hairy-legged Highlanders, emerging, figures of grotesque horror, out of the mists slowly dispersing off the swampy fields in the laggard September sunrise.

The English numbered 2100 against the 1400 under Prince Charlie; but only four minutes passed between the attack and the flight. In that short space of time the field was deserted and the clansmen, pursuing the terror-stricken rabble which just before had been a disciplined force, slew nearly four hundred of them. The total loss of the Highlanders in slain was thirty, nearly the whole of them falling in the first discharge of musketry. Almost incredible, but well-authenticated, stories are told of the cowardice of Cope’s regiments. Cope himself was swept away in the wild rush, vainly endeavouring to stem it, and it was not until they were two miles from the field, at St. Clement’s Wells, that he could bring them to a halt. Even then, the accidental discharge of a pistol scared them off again, and although no one pursued, they rode off with redoubled energy. This precipitate retreat of mounted troops over miles of country, from an unmounted enemy who were not pursuing them, is perhaps the most disgraceful incident in the military history of the country.

The flying infantry were in far worse case. In endeavouring to escape by climbing the park walls of Preston, they were cut down in great numbers by the terrible broadswords of the Highlanders. Colonel Gardiner and a brave few were cut down defending themselves on the field of battle. One story, of a piece with many others, relates how a Highlander, pursuing alone a party of ten soldiers, struck down the hindermost with his sword, and shouting, “Down with your arms!” called upon the others to surrender. They threw their weapons away without looking behind them, and the Highlander, his sword in one hand and a pistol in the other, drove them—nine of them!—prisoners into camp. Everywhere Cope, so helter-skelter was his flight, himself brought the first news of his defeat. He reached Coldstream that night, and did not rest until the next day he was within the sheltering fortifications of Berwick.

We will not further pursue the fortunes of the Young Pretender, but hurry on into Levenhall.

Where that battle was fought, there is to-day the most extensive cabbage-plant cultivation in Scotland. It is a usual thing in the early part of the year for almost daily special cabbage trains to be despatched to all parts of Britain.

And so downhill, and then over the awful cobbles into the accursed town of Musselburgh. “Accursed,” not by reason of those self-same cobbles, but for the sacrilegious doings of its magistrates who rebuilt their Tolbooth, burnt after the battle of Pinkie, with stones from the Chapel of Loretto. Now that chapel, which stood at the entrance to the town, was the place of business of one of those roadside hermits of whom we have in these pages heard so much (would that he had a successor in these times, for then the road would perhaps be in better condition), and the Pope, indignant at the injury done to the wayside shrine, solemnly anathematised town and inhabitants in sleeping or waking, eating and drinking, at every conceivable time and every imaginable function. No Pope since that period seems to have removed the curse, and no one is particularly anxious that it should be removed, Musselburgh being rather proud of it than otherwise. When it begins to take effect will be quite time enough. There were those who at the close of the coaching days perceived the beginning of it, although then three hundred years overdue, but as the town has rather increased in prosperity since that period, the time evidently is not yet. Nor do the burghers anticipate it, for they still repeat the brave old rhyme:—

Musselburgh was a burgh When Edinburgh was nane; And Musselburgh shall be a burgh When Edinburgh is gane.

This, however, is a quibble, for Musselburgh derived its name from the “broch,” or bed, of mussels at the mouth of the river Esk. Looked at in this light, the statement is true enough and the prophecy a not particularly rash one. The sponsorial shell-fish have an honoured place in the town arms, in which three mussels are seen in company with three anchors: the motto “Honesty” writ large below. This was probably adopted at some period later than the purloining of the stones of the Loretto Chapel.

[Picture: Musselburgh]

The Town Hall, with that tower whose building brought about the curse, forms the centre of Musselburgh, a fishy, stony, picturesque place with four bridges over the Esk, leading to the western bank, where the fisher quarter of Fisherrow straggles towards Joppa, two miles distant. Joppa Pans are gone now, just as those other pans at Preston, but factories of sorts, with clustered chimney-stacks, are still grouped about the melancholy sea-shore, where gales set the very high-road awash on occasion. Not vulgar, modern factories, but of a certain age; old enough and grim enough to look like the scene of some thrilling story that yet awaits the telling. Somewhat thrilling is the report as to the condition of the road here in 1680, a complaint laid before the Privy Council stating that, four miles on the London side of Edinburgh, travelling was dangerous, and travellers to be pitied, “either by their coaches overturning, their horses falling, their carts breaking, their loads casting, or horses stumbling, and the poor people with burdens on their backs sorely discouraged; moreover, strangers do often exclaim thereat.” All this reads with a very modern touch to those who know the road to-day, for it is as bad now as it could have been then, and so continues, in different kinds of badness, through adjoining Portobello into Edinburgh itself. Here seas of slimy mud, there precipitous setts, here again profound holes in the macadam, or tramway rails projecting above the road level, make these last miles wretched. Portobello, that suburban seaside resort of Edinburgh, fares in this respect no better than the rest of the way, and the original road across Figgate Whins, the lonely moor that was here before the first house of Portobello was built, could have been no worse. That house was the creation of a retired sailor who had been at the capture of Portobello in Central America by Admiral Vernon in 1739. He named it after that town, and when the present seaside resort began to spring up, it took the title. Now it has a promenade, a pier, hotels, and crowds of visitors in summer upon the sands, and calls itself “the Brighton of Scotland.” Observe that Brighton does not return the compliment, and has not yet begun to style itself “the Portobello of England.”

XXXIII

LEAVING the “Brighton of Scotland” behind, we come to the flat lands of Craigentinny, stretching away from the now suburban highway down to the wind-swept and desolate seashore, where the whaups and the sandpipers make mournful concerts in a minor key, to the accompaniment of the noise of the sullen breakers and the soughing of the wind amid the rustling bents. Overlooking the road, within sight and sound of the tinkling tramcars passing between Joppa, Portobello, and Edinburgh, is that singular monument, “Miller’s Tomb.”

William Henry Miller, whose remains lie beneath this pile of classic architecture, was an antiquary and bibliophile, and obtained his nickname of “Measure Miller” from his habit of measuring the margins of the “tall copies” of the scarce books he bought. His beardless face and shrill voice led to the lifelong belief that he was really a woman. The tomb is elaborately decorated with a carved marble frieze representing the Song of Miriam and the destruction of the Egyptians in the Red Sea. Miller and his father were both Quakers, and the wealth of which they were possessed derived from a prosperous seedsman’s business in Canongate, Edinburgh. To the father came an adventure which does not fall to many men. He was married in 1789 for the third time, when nearly seventy years of age, to an Englishwoman, who conveyed him against his will in a post-chaise from Edinburgh to London.

Passing Craigentinny and Jock’s Lodge we are, in the words of the old song, “Within a mile of Edinburgh town.” The more modern and acceptable name of Jock’s Lodge is Piershill, but it has been known by the other for over two hundred and seventy years. Who the original Jock was seems open to doubt, but he is supposed to have been a beggar who built himself a hut on this then lonely road leading to Figgate Whins. Even in 1650, when Cromwell besieged Edinburgh, the spot had obtained its name, and is referred to as “that place called Jockis Lodge.” Towards the close of the eighteenth century a Colonel Piers had a villa here, pulled down in 1793, when barracks—known as Piershill Barracks—were built on the site. It is a district slowly emerging from the reproach of a disreputable past, when footpads and murderers haunted the muddy roads, or took refuge amid the towering rocks of Arthur’s Seat, Crow Hill, or Salisbury Craigs, or hid in the congenial sloughs of the Hunter’s Bog. Close by the road, at the entrance to the Queen’s Park of Holyrood, is Muschat’s Cairn, the place where Scott makes Jeanie Deans meet the outlaw Robertson. This heap of stones marks the spot where Nicol Muschat of Boghall, a surgeon, a man of infamous character, murdered his wife by cutting her throat in 1720, a crime which, with Scottish old-time mysticism, he said was committed by direct personal instigation of the devil. All the same, they hanged him for it in the Grassmarket, where martyrs “testified” of old and the criminals of “Auld Reekie” expiated their crimes.

Of course the approach to Edinburgh has, from the picturesque standpoint, been spoiled. Ranges of grim stone houses and sprawling suburbs now hem in the road and hide the view of Arthur’s Seat and its neighbouring eminences; but a few steps to the left serve to disclose them, the little loch of St. Margaret, and the ruined walls of St. Anthony’s Chapel on the hillside, once guarding the holy well. St. Anthony’s Chapel, within the rule of the Abbey of Holyrood, served another turn, for from its tower glimmered a beacon which in the old days guided mariners safely up the Forth, a service paid for out of the harbour dues.

The so-called “London” and “Regent” Roads that now lead directly into the New Town of Edinburgh are modern improvements upon the old approach through Canongate into the Old Town. If steep, rugged, and winding, the old way was at least more impressive, for it lay within sight of Holyrood Palace and brought the wayfarer into the very heart of Scott’s “own romantic town,” to where the smells and the dirt, the crazy tenement-houses and the ragged clouts hanging from dizzy tiers of windows, showed “Scotia’s darling seat” in its most characteristic aspects.

As Alexander Smith puts it, Scott discovered the city was beautiful, sang its praises to the world, “and he has put more coin into the pockets of its inhabitants than if he had established a branch of manufacture of which they had the monopoly.”

The distant view of Edinburgh is magnificent. The peaked and jagged masses of Arthur’s Seat and Salisbury Craigs, the monument-cumbered Calton Hill, the Castle Rock—all these combine to make the traveller eager to reach so picturesque a spot. Approaching it and seeing the smoke-cloud drifting with the breeze away from the hollow from which Edinburgh’s million chimneys are seen peering, one instantly notes the peculiar appropriateness of the Scots endearing epithet, “Auld Reekie.” But it was not only—if indeed at all—an admiration of the picturesque that made the sight of Edinburgh so welcome to old-time travellers. It was rather the prospect of coming to the end of their journey, and almost in sight of a comfortable hotel, that rendered the view so welcome to those who in the last thirty years or so of the coaching era made this trip of almost four hundred miles; but those who had come this way at an earlier period had no such comfortable prospect before them. Instead of putting up at some fine hospitable inn, such as they were used to even in the smaller English towns, they were set down at a “stabler’s,” the premises of one whose first business was to horse the coaches and to let saddle-horses, and who, as in some sort of an after-thought, lodged those who were obliged to journey about the country.

[Picture: Calton Hill]

A traveller arriving at Edinburgh in 1774, for instance, had indeed little comfort awaiting him. “One can scarcely form in imagination the distress of a miserable stranger on his first entrance into this city,” says one writing at this period. No inn better than an alehouse, no decent or cleanly accommodation, nor in fact anything fit for a gentleman. “On my first arrival,” says this traveller, “my companion and self, after the fatigue of a long day’s journey, were landed at one of these stable-keepers’ (for they have modesty to give themselves no higher denomination) in a part of the town which is called the Pleasance; and on entering the house we were conducted by a poor girl without shoes or stockings, and with only a single linsey-woolsey petticoat which just reached half-way to her ankles, into a room where about twenty Scotch drovers had been regaling themselves with whisky and potatoes. You may guess our amazement when we were informed that this was the best inn in the metropolis, and 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. ‘Well,’ said I to my friend, ‘there is nothing like seeing men and manners; perhaps we may be able to repose ourselves at some coffee-house.’ Accordingly, on inquiry, we discovered that there was a good dame by the Cross who acted in the double capacity of pouring out coffee and letting lodgings to strangers, as we were. She was easily to be found out, and, with all the conciliating complaisance of a _Maitresse d’Hôtel_, conducted us to our destined apartments, which were indeed six stories high, but so infernal in appearance that you would have thought yourself in the regions of Erebus. The truth is, I will venture to say, you will make no scruple to believe when I tell you that in the whole we had only two windows, which looked into an alley five feet wide, where the houses were at least ten stories high and the alley itself was so sombre in the brightest sunshine that it was impossible to see any object distinctly.”

Private lodgings, just as those described above, were the resort of those who had neither friends nor acquaintance in Edinburgh at that time; but travellers in Scotland were nearly always exercising their ingenuity to come, at the end of their day’s journey, to the house of some friend or some friend’s friend, to whom before starting they had been careful to obtain letters of introduction. So old and so widespread a custom was this that, so far back as 1425, we find an Act of James the First of Scotland actually forbidding all travellers resorting to burgh towns to lodge with friends or acquaintances, or in any place but the “hostillaries,” unless indeed he was a personage of consequence, with a great retinue, in which case he might accept a friend’s hospitality, provided that his “horse and meinze” were sent to the inns.

Of course such an Act was doomed to fall into neglect, but the innkeepers, equally of course during a long series of years, almost ceased to exist. A few “stablers’” establishments became known as “inns” at about the period of Doctor Johnson’s visit to Edinburgh. They were chiefly situated in the Pleasance, or in that continuation of it, St. Mary’s Wynd (now St. Mary Street). These inns, such as they were, burst upon the by no means delighted gaze of the wayfarer from England as he entered the historic town of Edinburgh, and when he saw them he generally lifted up his voice and cursed the fate that had sent him so far from home and into so barbarous a country.