Part 31

A careful investigation was made into every circumstance connected with this fatal affair, but without demonstrating anything except the passionate rashness or magnanimity of the fair homicide. Mr Macfarlane was discharged upon his own affirmation that he knew nothing of the deed till after it had taken place. A pamphlet was published by Mrs Murray, Mr Cayley’s landlady, who seems to have kept a grocery shop in the Cowgate, vindicating herself from the imputation which Mrs Macfarlane’s tale had thrown upon her character; but to this there appeared an answer, from some friend of the other party, in which the imputation was fixed almost beyond the possibility of doubt. Mrs Murray denied that Mrs Macfarlane had been in her house on the Saturday before the murder; but evidence was given that she was seen issuing from the close in which Mrs Murray resided, and, after ascending the Back Stairs, was observed passing through the Parliament Square towards her own house.

It will surprise every one to learn that this Scottish Lucrece was a woman of only nineteen or twenty years of age, and some months _enceinte_, at the time when she so boldly vindicated her honour. She was a person of respectable connections, being a daughter of Colonel Charles Straiton, ‘a gentleman of great honour,’ says one of the letters already quoted, and who further appears to have been entrusted with high negotiations by the Jacobites during the reign of Queen Anne. By her mother, she was granddaughter to Sir Andrew Forrester.

Of the future history of Mrs Macfarlane we have but one glimpse, but it is of a romantic nature. Margaret Swinton, who was the aunt of Sir Walter Scott’s mother, and round whom he and his boy-brothers used to close to listen to her tales, remembered being one Sunday left by her parents at home in their house of Swinton in Berwickshire, while the rest of the family attended church. Tiring of the solitude of her little nursery, she stole quietly downstairs to the parlour, which she entered somewhat abruptly. There, to her surprise, she beheld the most beautiful woman she had ever seen, sitting at the breakfast-table making tea. She believed it could be no other than one of those enchanted queens whom she had heard of in fairy tales. The lady, after a pause of surprise, came up to her with a sweet smile, and conversed with her, concluding with a request that she would speak only to her mamma of the stranger whom she had seen. Presently after, little Margaret having turned her back for a few moments, the beautiful vision had vanished. The whole appeared like a dream. By-and-by the family returned, and Margaret took her mother aside that she might talk of this wonderful apparition. Mrs Swinton applauded her for thus observing the injunction which had been laid upon her. ‘Had you not,’ she added, ‘it might have cost that lady her life.’ Subsequent explanations made Margaret aware that she had seen the unfortunate Mrs Macfarlane, who, having some claim of kindred upon the Swinton family, had been received by them, and kept in a secret room till such time as she could venture to make her way out of the country. On Margaret looking away for a moment, the lady had glided by a sliding panel into her Patmos behind the wainscot, and thus unwittingly increased the child’s apprehension of the whole being an event out of the course of nature.

FOOTNOTES

[232] The Back Stairs, built on the site of St Giles’ Churchyard, gave direct communication between the Cowgate and Old Parliament Square. It was by this way that Robertson the smuggler escaped from the Tolbooth Church, where he and his accomplice Wilson had been taken, as was usual with condemned prisoners, the Sunday before their execution. It was Porteous’s behaviour at the execution of Wilson that led to the riot and his own death in the Grassmarket.

[233] The pistols belonged to Mr Cayley himself, having been borrowed a few days before by Mr Macfarlane.

THE CANONGATE.

DISTINGUISHED INHABITANTS IN FORMER TIMES—STORY OF A BURNING—MOROCCO’S LAND—NEW STREET.

The Canongate, which takes its name from the Augustine canons of Holyrood (who were permitted to build it by the charter of David I. in 1128, and afterwards ruled it as a burgh of regality), was formerly the court end of the town. As the main avenue from the palace into the city, it has borne upon its pavement the burden of all that was beautiful, all that was gallant, all that has become historically interesting in Scotland for the last six or seven hundred years. It still presents an antique appearance, although many of the houses are modernised. There is one with a date from Queen Mary’s reign,[234] and many may be guessed, from their appearance, to be of even an earlier era. Previously to the Union, when the palace ceased to be occasionally inhabited, as it had formerly been, by at least the vicar of majesty in the person of the Commissioner to the Parliament, the place was densely inhabited by persons of distinction. Allan Ramsay, in lamenting the death of Lucky Wood, says:

‘Oh, Canigate, puir elrich hole, What loss, what crosses does thou thole! London and death gars thee look droll, And hing thy head; Wow but thou has e’en a cauld coal To blaw indeed;’

and mentions in a note that this place was ‘the greatest sufferer by the loss of our members of parliament, which London now enjoys, many of them having had their houses there;’ a fact which Maitland confirms. Innumerable traces are to be found, in old songs and ballads, of the elegant population of the Canongate in a former day. In the piteous tale of Marie Hamilton—one of the Queen’s Maries—occurs this simple but picturesque stanza:

‘As she cam’ doun the Cannogait, The Cannogait sae free, Mony a lady looked owre her window, Weeping for this ladye.’

An old popular rhyme expresses the hauteur of these Canongate dames towards their city neighbours of the male sex:

‘The lasses o’ the Canongate, Oh they are wondrous nice; They winna gi’e a single kiss But for a double price.

Gar hang them, gar hang them, Hich upon a tree; For we’ll get better up the gate For a bawbee!’

Even in times comparatively modern, this faubourg was inhabited by persons of very great consideration.[235] Within the memory of a lady living in 1830, it used to be a common thing to hear, among other matters of gossip, ‘_that there was to be a braw flitting[236] in the Canongate to-morrow_;’ and parties of young people were made up to go and see the fine furniture brought out, sitting perhaps for hours in the windows of some friend on the opposite side of the street, while cart after cart was laden with magnificence.[237] Many of the houses to this day are fit for the residence of a first-rate family in every respect but _vicinage_ and _access_. The last grand blow was given to the place by the opening of the road along the Calton Hill in 1817, which rendered it no longer the avenue of approach to the city from the east. Instead of profiting by the comparative retirement which it acquired on that occasion, it seemed to become the more wretchedly squalid from its being the less under notice—as a gentleman dresses the least carefully when not expecting visitors. It is now a secluded and, in general, meanly inhabited suburb, only accessible by ways which, however lightly our fathers and grandfathers might regard them, are hardly now pervious to a lady or gentleman without shocking more of the senses than one, besides the difficulty of steering one’s way through the herds of the idle and the wretched who encumber the street.

One of the houses near the head of the Canongate, on the north side of the street, was indicated to me by an old lady a few years ago as that which tradition in her young days pointed to in connection with a wild story related in the notes to _Rokeby_. She had often heard the tale told, nearly in the same manner as it has been given by Scott, and the site of the house concerned in the tragedy was pointed out to her by her seniors. Perhaps the reader will again excuse a quotation from the writings of our late gifted fellow-townsman: if to be related at all—and surely in a work devoted to Edinburgh popular legends it could not rightly be overlooked—it may as well be given in the language of the prince of modern _conteurs_:

‘About the beginning of the eighteenth century, when the large castles of the Scottish nobles, and even the secluded hotels, like those of the French _noblesse_, which they possessed in Edinburgh, were sometimes the scenes of strange and mysterious transactions, a divine of singular sanctity was called up at midnight to pray with a person at the point of death. This was no unusual summons; but what followed was alarming. He was put into a sedan-chair, and after he had been transported to a remote part of the town, the bearers insisted upon his being blindfolded. The request was enforced by a cocked pistol, and submitted to; but in the course of the discussion, he conjectured, from the phrases employed by the chairmen, and from some part of their dress, not completely concealed by their cloaks, that they were greatly above the menial station they assumed. After many turns and windings, the chair was carried upstairs into a lodging, where his eyes were uncovered, and he was introduced into a bedroom, where he found a lady, newly delivered of an infant. He was commanded by his attendants to say such prayers by her bedside as were fitting for a person not expected to survive a mortal disorder. He ventured to remonstrate, and observe that her safe delivery warranted better hopes. But he was sternly commanded to obey the orders first given, and with difficulty recollected himself sufficiently to acquit himself of the task imposed on him. He was then again hurried into the chair; but as they conducted him downstairs he heard the report of a pistol. He was safely conducted home; a purse of gold was forced upon him; but he was warned, at the same time, that the least allusion to this dark transaction would cost him his life. He betook himself to rest, and after long and broken musing, fell into a deep sleep. From this he was awakened by his servant, with the dismal news that a fire of uncommon fury had broken out in the house of ——, near the head of the Canongate, and that it was totally consumed; with the shocking addition that the daughter of the proprietor, a young lady eminent for beauty and accomplishments, had perished in the flames. The clergyman had his suspicions, but to have made them public would have availed nothing. He was timid; the family was of the first distinction; above all, the deed was done, and could not be amended. Time wore away, however, and with it his terrors. He became unhappy at being the solitary depositary of this fearful mystery, and mentioned it to some of his brethren, through whom the anecdote acquired a sort of publicity. The divine, however, had been long dead, and the story in some degree forgotten, when a fire broke out again on the very same spot where the house of —— had formerly stood, and which was now occupied by buildings of an inferior description. When the flames were at their height, the tumult which usually attends such a scene was suddenly suspended by an unexpected apparition. A beautiful female, in a nightdress extremely rich, but at least half a century old, appeared in the very midst of the fire, and uttered these tremendous words in her vernacular idiom: “_Anes_ burned, _twice_ burned; the _third_ time I’ll scare you all!” The belief in this story was formerly so strong that on a fire breaking out, and seeming to approach the fatal spot, there was a good deal of anxiety testified, lest the apparition should make good her denunciation.’

A little way farther down the Canongate, on the same side, is an old-fashioned house called _Morocco’s Land_, having an alley passing under it, over which is this inscription[238]—a strange cry of the spirit of man to be heard in a street:

MISERERE MEI, DOMINE: A PECCATO, PROBRO, DEBITO, ET MORTE SUBITA, LIBERA ME.

From whom this exclamation proceeded I have never learned; but the house, which is of more modern date than the legend, has a story connected with it. It is said that a young woman belonging to Edinburgh, having been taken upon a voyage by an African rover, was sold to the harem of the Emperor of Morocco, with whom she became a favourite. Mindful, like her countrymen in general, of her native land and her relations, she held such a correspondence with home as led to a brother of hers entering into merchandise, and conducting commercial transactions with Morocco. He was successful, and realised a little fortune, out of which he built this stately mansion. From gratitude, or out of a feeling of vanity regarding his imperial brother-in-law, he erected a statue of that personage in front of his house—a black, naked figure, with a turban and a necklace of beads; such being the notion which a Scottish artist of those days entertained of the personal aspect of the chief of one of the Mohammedan states of Africa. And this figure, perched in a little stone pulpit, still exists. As to the name bestowed upon the house, it would most probably arise from the man being in the first place called _Morocco_ by way of sobriquet, as is common when any one becomes possessed by a particular subject, and often speaks of it.

A little farther along is the opening of New Street, a modern offshoot of the ancient city, dating from a time immediately before the rise of the New Town. Many persons of consequence lived here: Lord Kames, in a neat house at the top, on the east side—an edifice once thought so fine that people used to bring their country cousins to see it; Lord Hailes, in a house more than half-way down, afterwards occupied by Mr Ruthven, mechanist; Sir Philip Ainslie, in another house in the same row. The passers-by were often arrested by the sight of Sir Philip’s preparations for a dinner-party through the open windows, the show of plate being particularly great. Now all these mansions are left to become workshops. _Sic transit._[239] Opposite to Kames’s house is a small circular arrangement of causeway, indicating where St John’s Cross formerly stood. Charles I., at his ceremonial entry into Edinburgh in 1633, knighted the provost at St John’s Cross.[240]

FOOTNOTES

[234] A little below the church.

[235] Subjoined is a list of persons of note who lived in the Canongate in the early days of the late Mr Chalmers Izett, whose memory extended back to 1769:

‘DUKES.

Hamilton. Queensberry.

EARLS.

Breadalbane. Hyndford. Wemyss. Balcarras. Moray. Dalhousie. Haddington. Mar. Srathmore. Traquair. Selkirk. Dundonald. Kintore. Dunmore. Seafield. Panmure.

COUNTESSES.

Tweeddale. Lothian.

LORDS.

Haddo. Colvill. Blantyre. Nairn. Semple. A. Gordon. Cranstoun.

L. OF SESSION.

Eskgrove. Hailes. Prestongrange. Kames. Milton. Montgomery. Bannatyne.

BARONETS.

Sir J. Grant. Sir J. Suttie. Sir J. Whiteford. Sir J. Stewart. Sir J. Stirling. Sir J. Sinclair, Glorat. Sir J. Halkett. Sir James Stirling. Sir D. Hay. Sir B. Dunbar. Sir J. Scott, Ancrum. Sir R. Anstruther. Sir J. Sinclair, Ulbster.

COMMANDERS-IN-CHIEF.

General Oughton. General Skene. Lord A. Gordon. Lord Moira.

EMINENT MEN.

Adam Smith. Dr Young. Dugald Stewart. Dr Gardner. Dr Gregory.

BANK.

Douglas, Heron, and Company.

LADIES’ BOARDING-SCHOOL.

Mrs Hamilton, Chessels’s Court.

PRINCIPAL INNS.

Ramsay’s, St Mary’s Wynd. Boyd’s, Head of Canongate.

‘Two coaches went down the Canongate to Leith—one hour in going, and one hour in returning.’

[236] Removal.

[237] ‘At a former period, when the Canongate of Edinburgh was a more fashionable residence than at present, a lady of rank who lived in one of the closes, before going out to an evening-party, and at a time when hairdressers and peruke-makers were much in demand, requested a servant (newly come home) to tell Tam Tough the hairdresser to come to her immediately. The servant departed in quest of Puff, but had scarcely reached the street before she forgot the barber’s name. Meeting with a caddy, she asked him if he knew where the hairdresser lived. “Whatna hairdresser is ’t?” replied the caddy. “I ha’e forgot his name,” answered she. “What kind o’ name wus ’t?” responded Donald. “As near as I can mind,” said the girl, “it was a name that wad neither _rug_ nor _rive_.” “The deil ’s in ’t,” answered Donald, “but that’s a tam’d tough name.” “Thank ye, Donald, that’s the man’s name I wanted—_Tam Tough_.”’—[_From an Edinburgh Newspaper._]

[238] The inscription is now removed.

[239] With the exception of Lord Kames’s house, all the others referred to have been swept away by the North British Railway and the Corporation Gasworks, which at one time occupied the eastern side of the street.

[240] Although it was outside the wall, the city authorities claimed jurisdiction over the Canongate as far as St John’s Cross, notwithstanding that the Canongate was a separate burgh, which it continued to be till the middle of the nineteenth century. Proclamations were made at St John’s Cross as well as at the Mercat Cross in the High Street, and at it the Canongate burgh officials joined the city fathers when paying ceremonial visits to Holyrood.

ST JOHN STREET.

LORD MONBODDO’S SUPPERS—THE SISTER OF SMOLLETT—ANECDOTE OF HENRY DUNDAS.

St John Street, so named with reference to St John’s Cross above mentioned, was one of the heralds of the New Town. In the latter half of the last century it was occupied solely by persons of distinction—nobles, judges, and country gentleman; now it is possessed as exclusively by persons of the middle rank. In No. 13 lived that eccentric genius, Lord Monboddo, whose supper-parties, conducted in classic taste, frequented by the _literati_, and for a time presided over by an angel in the form of a daughter of his lordship, were of immense attraction in their day. In a stair at the head of this street lived the sister of the author of _Roderick Random_.

Smollett’s life as a literary adventurer in London, and the full participation he had in the woes of authors by profession, have perhaps conveyed an erroneous idea of his birth and connections. The Smolletts of Dumbartonshire were in reality what was called in Scotland a good old family. The novelist’s own grandfather had been one of the commissioners for the Union between England and Scotland. And it is an undoubted fact that Tobias himself, if he had lived two or three years longer, would have become the owner of the family estate, worth about a thousand a year. All this, to any one conversant with the condition of the Scottish gentry in the early part of the last century, will appear quite consistent with his having been brought up as a druggist’s apprentice in Glasgow—‘the bubbly-nosed callant, wi’ the stane in his pouch,’ as his master affectionately described him, with reference to his notorious qualities as a Pickle.

The sister of Smollett—she who, failing him, did succeed to the family property—was a Mrs Telfer, domiciled as a gentle widow in a common stair at the head of St John Street (west side), first door up. She is described as a somewhat stern-looking specimen of her sex, with a high cast of features, but in reality a good-enough-natured woman, and extremely shrewd and intelligent. One passion of her genus possessed her—whist. A relative tells me that one of the city magistrates, who was a tallow-chandler, calling upon her one evening, she said: ‘Come awa, bailie, and take a trick at the cartes.’

‘Troth, ma’am,’ said he, ‘I hav’na a bawbee in my pouch.’

‘Tut, man, ne’er mind that,’ replied the lady; ‘let’s e’en play for a pund o’ candles!’

During his last visit to Edinburgh (1766)—the visit which occasioned _Humphry Clinker_—Smollett lived in his sister’s house. A person who recollects seeing him there describes him as dressed in black clothes, tall, and extremely handsome, but quite unlike the portraits at the front of his works, all of which are disclaimed by his relations. The unfortunate truth appears to be that the world is in possession of no genuine likeness of Smollett! He was very peevish, on account of the ill-health to which he had been so long a martyr, and used to complain much of a severe ulcerous disorder in his arm.

His wife, according to the same authority, was a Creole, with a dark complexion, though, upon the whole, rather pretty—a fine lady, but a silly woman. Yet she had been the Narcissa of _Roderick Random_.[241]

In _Humphry Clinker_, Smollett works up many observations of things and persons which he had made in his recent visit to Scotland. His relative Commissary Smollett, and the family seat near Loch Lomond, receive ample notice. The story in the family is that while Matthew Bramble was undoubtedly himself, he meant in the gay and sprightly Jerry Melford to describe his sister’s son, Major Telfer, and in Liddy to depict his own daughter, who was destined to be the wife of the major, but, to the inexpressible and ineffaceable grief of her father, died before the scheme could be accomplished. Jerry, it will be recollected, ‘got some damage from the bright eyes of the charming Miss R——n, whom he had the honour to dance with at the ball.’ Liddy contracted an intimate friendship with the same person. This young beauty was Eleonora Renton, charming by the true right divine, for she was daughter of Mr Renton of Lamerton, by Lady Susan Montgomery, one of the fair offshoots of the house of Eglintoune, described in a preceding article. A sister of hers was married to Smollett’s eldest nephew, Telfer, who became inheritor of the family estate, and on account of it took the surname of Smollett: a large modern village in Dumbartonshire takes its name from this lady. It seems to have been this connection which brought the charming Eleonora under the novelist’s attention. She afterwards married Charles Sharpe of Hoddam, and became the mother of Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, the well-known antiquary. Strange to say, the lady whose bright eyes had flamed upon poor Smollett’s soul in the middle of the last century, was living so lately as 1836.

When Smollett was confined in the King’s Bench Prison for the libel upon Admiral Knowles, he formed an intimacy with the celebrated Tenducci. This melodious singing-bird had recently got his wings clipped by his creditors, and was mewed up in the same cage with the novelist. Smollett’s friendship proceeded to such a height that he paid the vocalist’s debts from his own purse, and procured him his liberty. Tenducci afterwards visited Scotland, and was one night singing in a private circle, when somebody told him that a lady present was a near relation of his benefactor; upon which the grateful Italian prostrated himself before her, kissed her hands, and acted so many fantastic extravagances, after the foreign fashion, that she was put extremely out of countenance.