Part 28

In the reign of Charles II. other buildings were added behind, forming a neat quadrangle; and here was the Scottish coin produced till the Union, when a separate coinage was given up and this establishment abandoned; though, to gratify prejudice, the offices were still kept up as sinecures. This court with its buildings was a sanctuary for persons prosecuted for debt, as was the King’s Stables, a mean place at the west end of the Grassmarket. There was, however, a small den near the top of the oldest building, lighted by a small window looking up the Cowgate, which was used as a jail for debtors or other delinquents condemned by the Mint’s own officers.

In the western portion of the old building, accessible by a stair from the court, is a handsome room with an alcove ceiling, and lighted by two handsomely proportioned windows, which is known to have been the council-room of the Mint, being a portion of the private mansion of the master. Here, in May 1590, on a Sunday evening, the town of Edinburgh entertained the Danish lords who accompanied James VI. and his queen from her native court—namely, Peter Monk, the admiral of Denmark; Stephen Brahe, captain of Eslinburg [perhaps a relative of Tycho?]; Braid Ransome Maugaret; Nicholaus Theophilus, Doctor of Laws; Henry Goolister, captain of Bocastle; William Vanderwent; and some others. For this banquet, ‘maid in Thomas Aitchinsoune, master of the cunyie-house lugeing,’ it was ordered ‘that the thesaurer caus by and lay in foure punsheouns wyne; John Borthuik baxter to get four bunnis of beir, with foure gang of aill, and to furneis breid; Henry Charteris and Roger Macnacht to caus hing the hous with tapestrie, set the burdis, furmis, chandleris [_candlesticks_], and get flowris; George Carketill and Rychert Doby to provyde the cupbuirds and men to keep thame; and my Lord Provest was content to provyde naprie and twa dozen greit veschell, and to avance ane hunder pund or mair, as thai sall haif a do.’

In the latter days of the Mint as an active establishment, the coining-house was in the ground-floor of the building, on the north side of the court; in the adjoining house, on the east side, was the finishing-house, where the money was polished and fitted for circulation. The chief instruments used in coining were a hammer and steel dies, upon which the device was engraved. The metal, being previously prepared of the proper fineness and thickness, was cut into longitudinal slips, and a square piece being cut from the slip, it was afterwards rounded and adjusted to the weight of the money to be made. The blank pieces of metal were then placed between two dies, and the upper one was struck with a hammer. After the Restoration another method was introduced—that of the mill and screw, which, modified by many improvements, is still in use. At the Union, the ceremony of destroying the dies of the Scottish coinage took place in the Mint. After being heated red-hot in a furnace, they were defaced by three impressions of a broad-faced _punch_, which were of course visible on the dies as long as they existed; but it must be recorded that all these implements, which would now have been great curiosities, are lost, and none of the machinery remains but the press, which, weighing about half a ton, was rather too large to be readily appropriated, or perhaps it would have followed the rest.

The floors over the coining-house—bearing the letters, C. R. II., surmounting a crown, and the legend, GOD SAVE THE KING, 1674, originally the mansion of the master—were latterly occupied by the eminent Dr Cullen, whose family were all born here, and who died here himself in 1792.

ROBERT CULLEN.

Robert Cullen, the son of the physician, made a great impression on Edinburgh society by his many delightful social qualities, and particularly his powers as a mimic of the Mathews genus. He manifested this gift in his earliest years, to the no small discomposure of his grave old father. One evening, when Dr Cullen was going to the theatre, Robert entreated to be taken along with him, but for some reason was condemned to remain at home. Some time after the departure of the doctor, Mrs Cullen heard him come along the passage, as if from his own room, and say at her door: ‘Well, after all, you may let Robert go.’ Robert was accordingly allowed to depart for the theatre, where his appearance gave no small surprise to his father. On the old gentleman coming home and remonstrating with his lady for allowing the boy to go, it was discovered that the voice which seemed to give the permission had proceeded from the young wag himself.

In maturer years, Cullen could not only mimic any voice or mode of speech, but enter so thoroughly into the nature of any man that he could supply exactly the ideas which he was likely to use. His imitations were therefore something much above mimicries—they were artistic representations of human character. He has been known in a social company, where another individual was expected, to stand up, in the character of that person, and return thanks for the proposal of his health; and this was done so happily that when the individual did arrive and got upon his legs to speak for himself, the company was convulsed with an almost exact repetition of what Cullen had previously uttered, the manner also and every inflection of the voice being precisely alike. In relating anecdotes, of which he possessed a vast store, he usually prefaced them with a sketch of the character of the person referred to, which greatly increased the effect, as the story then told characteristically. These sketches were remarked to be extremely graphic and most elegantly expressed.

When a young man, residing with his father, he was very intimate with Dr Robertson, the Principal of the university. To show that Robertson was not likely to be easily imitated, it may be mentioned, from the report of a gentleman who has often heard him making public orations, that when the students observed him pause for a word, and would themselves mentally supply it, they invariably found that the word which he did use was different from that which they had hit upon. Cullen, however, could imitate him to the life, either in his more formal speeches or in his ordinary discourse. He would often, in entering a house which the Principal was in the habit of visiting, assume his voice in the lobby and stair, and when arrived at the drawing-room door, astonish the family by turning out to be—Bob Cullen. Lord Greville, a pupil of the Principal’s, having been one night detained at a protracted debauch, where Cullen was also present, the latter gentleman next morning got admission to the bedroom of the young nobleman, where, personating Dr Robertson, he sat down by the bedside, and with all the manner of the reverend Principal, gave him a sound lecture for having been out so late last night. Greville, who had fully expected this visit, lay in remorseful silence, and allowed his supposed monitor to depart without saying a word. In the course of a quarter of an hour, however, when the real Dr Robertson entered, and commenced a harangue exactly duplicating that just concluded, he could not help exclaiming that it was _too bad_ to give it him twice over. ‘Oh, I see how it is,’ said Robertson, rising to depart; ‘that rogue Bob Cullen must have been with you.’ The Principal became at length accustomed to Bob’s tricks, which he would seem, from the following anecdote, to have regarded in a friendly spirit. Being attended during an illness by Dr Cullen, it was found necessary to administer a liberal dose of laudanum. The physician, however, asked him, in the first place, in what manner laudanum affected him. Having received his answer, Cullen remarked, with surprise, that he had never known any one affected in the same way by laudanum besides his son Bob. ‘Ah,’ said Robertson, ‘_does the rascal take me off there too_?’

Mr Cullen entered at the Scottish bar in 1764, and, distinguishing himself highly as a lawyer, was raised to the bench in 1796, when he took the designation of Lord Cullen. He cultivated elegant literature, and contributed some papers of acknowledged merit to the _Mirror_ and _Lounger_; but it was in conversation that he chiefly shone.

The close adjoining to the Mint contains several old-fashioned houses of a dignified appearance. In a floor of one bearing the date 1679, and having a little court in front, Alexander Wedderburn, Earl of Rosslyn and Lord Chancellor of England, resided while at the Scottish bar. This, as is well known, was a very brief interval; for a veteran barrister having one day used the term ‘presumptuous boy’ with reference to him, and his own caustic reply having drawn upon him a rebuke from the bench, he took off his gown, and making a bow, said he would never more plead where he was subjected to insult, but would seek a wider field for his exertions. His subsequent rapid rise at the English bar is matter of history. It is told that, returning to Edinburgh at the end of his life, after an absence of many years, he wished to see the house where he had lived while a Scotch advocate. Too infirm to walk, he was borne in a chair to the foot of the Mint Close to see this building. One thing he was particularly anxious about. While residing here, he had had five holes made in the little court to play at some bowling game of which he was fond. He wished, above all things, to see these holes once more, and when he found they were still there, he expressed much satisfaction. Churchill himself might have melted at such an anecdote of the old days of him who was

‘Pert at the bar, and in the senate loud.’

About midway up the close is a turreted mansion, accessible from Hyndford’s Close, and having a tolerably good garden connected with it. This was, in 1742, the residence of the Earl of Selkirk; subsequently it was occupied by Dr Daniel Rutherford, professor of botany. Sir Walter Scott, who, being a nephew of that gentleman, was often in the house in his young days, communicated to me a curious circumstance connected with it. It appears that the house immediately adjacent was not furnished with a stair wide enough to allow of a coffin being carried down in decent fashion. It had, therefore, what the Scottish law calls a _servitude_ upon Dr Rutherford’s house, conferring the perpetual liberty of bringing the deceased inmates through a passage into that house and down _its_ stair into the lane.

FOOTNOTES

[220] Now removed and the site built over. There was also a Cunyie House in Candlemaker Row, which was used as the Mint during the regency of Mary of Guise.

MISS NICKY MURRAY.

The dancing assemblies of Edinburgh were for many years, about the middle of the last century, under the direction and dictatorship of the Honourable Miss Nicky Murray, one of the sisters of the Earl of Mansfield. Much good sense, firmness, knowledge of the world and of the histories of individuals, as well as a due share of patience and benevolence, were required for this office of unrecognised though real power; and it was generally admitted that Miss Murray possessed the needful qualifications in a remarkable degree, though rather more marked by good manners than good-nature. She and her sisters lived for many years in a floor of a large building at the head of Bailie Fife’s Close—a now unhallowed locality, where, I believe, Francis Jeffrey attended his first school. In their narrow mansion, the Miss Murrays received flights of young lady-cousins from the country, to be finished in their manners and introduced into society. No light task must theirs have been, all things considered. I find a highly significant note on the subject inserted by an old gentleman in an interleaved copy of my first edition: ‘It was from Miss Nicky Murray’s—a relation of the Gray family—that my father ran off with my mother, then not sixteen years old.’

The Assembly Room of that time was in the _close_ where the Commercial Bank was afterwards established.[221] First there was a lobby, where chairs were disburdened of their company, and where a reduced gentleman, with pretensions to the title of Lord Kirkcudbright—descendant of the once great Maclellans of Galloway—might have been seen selling gloves; this being the person alluded to in a letter written by Goldsmith while a student in Edinburgh: ‘One day, happening to slip into Lord Kilcobry’s—don’t be surprised, his lordship is only a glover!’ The dancing-room opened directly from the lobby, and above stairs was a tea-room. The former had a railed space in the centre, within which the dancers were arranged, while the spectators sat round on the outside; and no communication was allowed between the different sides of this sacred pale. The lady-directress had a high chair or throne at one end. Before Miss Nicky Murray, Lady Elliot of Minto and Mrs Brown of Coalstoun, wives of judges, had exercised this lofty authority, which was thought honourable on account of the charitable object of the assemblies. The arrangements were of a rigid character, and certainly tending to dullness. There being but one set allowed to dance at a time, it was seldom that any person was twice on the floor in one night. The most of the time was spent in acting the part of lookers-on, which threw great duties in the way of conversation upon the gentlemen. These had to settle with a partner for the year, and were upon no account permitted to change, even for a single night. The appointment took place at the beginning of the season, usually at some private party or ball given by a person of distinction, where the fans of the ladies were all put into a gentleman’s cocked hat; the gentlemen put in their hands and took a fan, and to whomsoever the fan belonged, that was to be his partner for the season. In the general rigours of this system, which sometimes produced ludicrous combinations, there was, however, one palliative—namely, the fans being all distinguishable from each other, and the gentleman being in general as well acquainted with the fan as the face of his mistress, and the hat being open, it was possible to peep in, and exercise, to a certain extent, a principle of selection, whereby he was perhaps successful in procuring an appointment to his mind. All this is spiritedly given in a poem of Sir Alexander Boswell:

‘Then were the days of modesty of mien! Stays for the fat, and quilting for the lean; The ribboned stomacher, in many a plait, Upheld the chest, and dignified the gait; Some Venus, brightest planet of the train, Moved in a lustering _halo_, propped with cane. Then the _Assembly Close_ received the fair— Order and elegance presided there— Each gay Right Honourable had her place, To walk a minuet with becoming grace. No racing to the dance, with rival hurry— Such was thy sway, O famed Miss Nicky Murray! Each lady’s fan a chosen Damon bore, With care selected many a day before; For, unprovided with a favourite beau, The nymph, chagrined, the ball must needs forego; But, previous matters to her taste arranged, _Certes_, the constant couple never changed; Through a long night, to watch fair Delia’s will, The same dull swain was at her elbow still.’

A little before Miss Nicky’s time, it was customary for gentlemen to walk alongside the chairs of their partners, with their swords by their sides, and so escort them home. They called next afternoon upon their Dulcineas to inquire how they were and drink tea. The fashionable time for seeing company in those days was the evening, when people were all abroad upon the street, as in the forenoon now, making calls and _shopping_. The people who attended the assemblies were very _select_. Moreover, they were all known to each other; and the introduction of a stranger required nice preliminaries. It is said that Miss Murray, on hearing a young lady’s name pronounced for the first time, would say: ‘Miss ——, of what?’ If no territorial addition could be made, she manifestly cooled. Upon one occasion, seeing a man at the assembly who was born in a low situation and raised to wealth in some humble trade, she went up to him, and, without the least deference to his fine-laced coat, taxed him with presumption in coming there, and turned him out of the room.

Major Topham praises the regularity and propriety observed at the assemblies, though gently insinuating their heaviness. He says: ‘I was never at an assembly where the authority of the manager was so observed or respected. With the utmost politeness, affability, and good-humour, Miss Murray attends to every one. All petitions are heard, and demands granted, which appear reasonable. The company is so much the more obliged to Miss Murray, as the task is by no means to be envied. The crowd which immediately surrounds her on entering the room, the impetuous applications of _chaperons_, maiden-aunts, and the earnest entreaties of lovers to obtain a ticket in one of the first sets for the dear object, render the fatigue of the office of lady-directress almost intolerable.’[222]

Early hours were kept in those days, and the stinted time was never exceeded. When the proper hour arrived for dissolving the party, and the young people would crowd round the throne to petition for one other set, up rose Miss Nicky in unrelenting rigidity of figure, and with one wave of her hand silenced the musicians:

‘Quick from the summit of the grove they fell, And left it inharmonious.’

FOOTNOTES

[221] The Assembly Room, afterwards occupied by the Commercial Bank, was in Bell’s Wynd, to which place it was removed in 1756 from the older room in Assembly Close. A scallop-shell above the entrance to Bell’s Wynd long commemorated the site of the Clamshell Turnpike, the lodging of the Earl of Home, to which Queen Mary, accompanied by Darnley, retreated on their return from Dunbar in 1566, rather than enter Holyrood so soon after the murder of Rizzio.

[222] It must have been after Miss Nicky Murray’s day that an Edinburgh Writer to the Signet, describing the unruliness of an assembly, writes: ‘I saw an English lady stand up at the head of a sett with a ticket No. 1 of that sett. By-and-bye my namesake, Miss Mary ——, came up, hauling after her a foolish-looking young man, who did as he was bid, and with all the ease in the world placed herself above the stranger, No. 1. The lady politely said there must be some mistake, for she had that place. “No,” said Miss Mary, “I can’t help your ticket, for I have the Lady Directress’s permission to lead down the sett!” The lady had spunk, and scolded, for which I liked her the better; only she dealt her sarcasms about Scotch politeness, Edinburgh manners, and so forth, rather too liberally and too loudly.’

[THE BISHOP’S LAND.

On the north side of the High Street, a hundred yards or so below the North Bridge, there existed previous to 1813 an unusually large and handsome old _land_ or building named the _Bishop’s Land_. It rested upon an arcade or _piazza_, as it is called, and the entry in the first floor bore the ordinary legend:

BLISSIT BE ZE LORD FOR ALL HIS GIFTIS,

together with the date 1578, and a shield impaled with two coats of arms. Along the front of this floor was a balcony composed of brass, a thing unique in the ancient city. The house had been the Edinburgh residence of Archbishop John Spottiswood. Most unfortunately the whole line of building towards the street was burned down in the year 1813.

In the latter part of the last century the Bishop’s Land was regarded as a very handsome residence, and it was occupied accordingly by persons of consideration. The dictum of an old citizen to me many years ago was: ‘Nobody without livery-servants lived in the Bishop’s Land.’ Sir Stuart Threipland of Fingask occupied the first floor. His estate, forfeited by his father in 1716, was purchased back by him, with money obtained through his wife, in 1784; and the title, which was always given to him by courtesy, was restored as a reality to his descendants by George IV. He had himself been engaged in the affair of 1745-6, and had accompanied ‘the Prince’ in some part of his wanderings. In the hands of this ‘fine old _Scottish_ gentleman,’ for such he was, his house in the Bishop’s Land was elegantly furnished, there being in particular some well-painted portraits of royal personages—_not of the reigning house_. These had all been sent to his father and himself by the persons represented in them, who thus showed their gratitude for efforts made and sufferings incurred in their behalf. There were five windows to the street, three of them lighting the drawing-room; the remaining two lighted the eldest son’s room. A dining-room, Sir Stuart’s bedroom, his sister Janet’s (who kept house for him) room, and other apartments were in the rear, some lighted from the adjacent close—and these still exist, having been spared by the fire. The kitchen and servants’ rooms were below.

In the next floor above lived the Hamiltons of Pencaitland; in the next again, the Aytouns of Inchdairnie. Mrs Aytoun, who was a daughter of Lord Rollo, would sometimes come down the stair in a winter evening, lighting herself with a little wax-taper, to drink tea with _Mrs_ Janet Threipland, for so she called herself, though unmarried. In the uppermost floor of all lived a reputable tailor and his family. All the various tenants, including the tailor, were on good neighbourly terms with each other; a pleasant thing to tell of this bit of the old world, which has left nothing of the same kind behind it in these later days, when we all live at a greater distance, physical and moral, from each other.]

JOHN KNOX’S MANSE.

The lower portion of the High Street, including _the Netherbow_, was, till a recent time, remarkable for the antiquity of the greater number of the buildings, insomuch that no equal portion of the city was more distinctly a memorial of the general appearance of the whole as it was in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. On the north side of the High Street, immediately adjacent to the Netherbow, there was a nest of tall wooden-fronted houses of one character, and the age of which generally might be guessed from the date existing upon one—1562. This formed a perfect example of the _High Gait_ as it appeared to Queen Mary, excepting that the open booths below had been converted into close shops. The _fore-stairs_—that is, outside stairs ascending to the _first floor_ (technically so called), from which the women of Edinburgh reviled the hapless queen as she rode along the street after her surrender at Carberry—were unchanged in this little district.

The popular story regarding houses of this kind is that they took their origin in an inconvenience which was felt in having the Boroughmoor covered with wood, as it proved from that circumstance a harbour for robbers. To banish the robbers, it was necessary to extirpate the wood. To get this done, the magistrates granted leave to the citizens to project their house-fronts seven feet into the street, provided they should execute the work with timber cut from the Boroughmoor. Robert Fergusson follows up this story in a burlesque poem by relating how, consequently,

‘Edina’s mansions with lignarian art Were piled and fronted. Like an ark she seemed To lie on mountain’s top, with shapes replete, Clean and unclean—— To Jove the Dryads prayed, nor prayed in vain, For vengeance on her sons. At midnight drear Black showers descend, and teeming myriads rise Of bugs abhorrent’——