Royal Edinburgh: Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets

One asks one's self, Is this the cost of supreme human power? is it to be bought by nothing but the agony in which failure, real or apparent, is a part, and in which all the exquisite tenement of reputation, happiness, and delightsome life seems to crumble down like a house of cards before our eyes? Dread question for the genius of the future, sad yet sublime problem of the past! At all events it was so in the life of Scott, which in all its greatness was never so great, so touching, so secure of love and honour, as in the moment when his weapons fell from his hands and his genius and being alike failed, breaking down in a last supreme struggle for justice and honour and fair dealing, to avoid what he thought disgrace and the intolerable stigma of having done any man wrong.

It is a penalty of such greatness, especially in the midst of an enthusiastic and unanimous country, that it becomes more or less a thing to trade upon, the subject of vague patriotic vapourings, and much froth of foolish talk from uninstructed lips in the following generations. As Stratford-on-Avon is in respect to Shakspeare all Scotland is in respect to Burns and Scott. It has even become a mark of culture and superiority among certain fine spirits in consequence to pretend to despise the former of these names—perhaps really to despise it, for there is no fathom that can sound the depths of human foolishness even in the learned and wise. The vulgarity of fame when it becomes the cry of the most prosaic is, however, calculated justly to alarm the literary soul, and in the excess of Scott monuments, and wooden quaighs, and tartan paper-knives, there is a damping and depressing quality which we must all acknowledge.

SIR WALTER SCOTT'S HOUSE

We need not, however, in these follies forget the illuminating presence of Scott in the midst of all the picturesque scenes of what he has proudly called "mine own romantic town." From the High School Yards and "the kittle nine steps," from George Square, lying cosy but grey in the hollow amid the enlarged and beautiful openings of the Meadows, to the Parliament House, withdrawn in the square, once blocked by the Old Tolbooth, now confronted solely by an embellished and restored cathedral, and to the sober street on the other side of the hollow, where to 39 North Castle Street he took his bride and set up his independent home, there is no corner of Edinburgh where his step and voice have not been. And some of the most characteristic scenes which we can call to mind in recent history rise before us in his narrative as if we had been there. The Porteous Mob riots in our ears, the flare of the sudden fire at the gates of the Tolbooth, the blinding smoke, the tramp of the crowd, the sudden concentrated force of that many-headed multitude stilled by stern resolve into unity and action, are as visible as if they had happened yesterday. And after ransacking all the serious volumes that tell the story and picture the aspect of old Edinburgh, we turn back to that tale, and for the first time see the tortuous passage between the church and the Tolbooth, the dark old prison with its lofty turrets, the Luckenbooths linked on to its dark shadow, oppressing the now wide thoroughfare of the High Street, where these buildings have left no trace. No topographical record or painstaking print comes within a hundred miles of that picture, dashed in boldly by the way, to the entrancing tale. I cannot refrain from placing here one or two vignettes, which I have no doubt the artist himself will allow to surpass his best efforts, and which set the landscape before us with a distinct yet ideal and poetical grace which pencil and graver can very seldom equal. The first is of the exterior aspect of Edinburgh.

"Marching in this manner they speedily reached an eminence, from which they could view Edinburgh stretching along the ridgy hill which slopes eastward from the Castle. The latter, being in a state of siege, or rather of blockade, by the northern insurgents, who had already occupied the town for two or three days, fired at intervals upon such parties of Highlanders as exposed themselves, either on the main street, or elsewhere in the vicinity of the fortress. The morning being calm and fair, the effect of this dropping fire was to invest the Castle in wreaths of smoke, the edges of which dissipated slowly in the air, while the central veil was darkened ever and anon by fresh clouds poured forth from the battlements; the whole giving, by the partial concealment, an appearance of grandeur and gloom, rendered more terrific when Waverley reflected on the cause by which it was produced, and that each explosion might ring some brave man's knell."

The second introduces us to the interior of the city.

"Under the guidance of his trusty attendant, Colonel Mannering, after threading a dark lane or two, reached the High Street, then clanging with the voices of oyster-women and the bells of pie-men, for it had, as his guide assured him, just 'chappit eight upon the Tron.' It was long since Mannering had been in the street of a crowded metropolis, which, with its noise and clamour, its sounds of trade, of revelry and of license, its variety of lights, and the eternally changing bustle of its hundred groups, offers, by night especially, a spectacle which, though composed of the most vulgar materials when they are separately considered, has, when they are combined, a striking and powerful effect on the imagination. The extraordinary height of the houses was marked by lights, which, glimmering irregularly along their front, ascended so high among the attics, that they seemed at length to twinkle in the middle sky. This coup d'œil, which still subsists in a certain degree, was then more imposing, owing to the uninterrupted range of buildings on each side, which, broken only at the space where the North Bridge joins the main street, formed a superb and uniform Place, extending from the front of the Luckenbooths to the head of the Canongate, and corresponding in breadth and length to the uncommon height of the buildings on either side."

Since then this great Place has become more majestic, as well as more open, by the clearing away of the Luckenbooths: but nothing can be finer than the touch of the graphic yet reticent pencil which sets down before us the glimmering of the irregular lights which seemed at last to twinkle in the middle sky. This was how the main street of Edinburgh still appeared when Scott himself was a boy, and no doubt he must have caught the aspect of the previous sketch on some king's birthday or other public holiday, the 4th of June perhaps, that familiar festival in other regions, when the guns of the Castle were saluting and the smoke hanging about those heights like a veil.

It was one of the privations of Scott's life as it began to fall into its last subdued and suffering stage that he had to give up his Edinburgh house and the cheerful company which had so long made his winters pleasant. He loved the country and his home there at all seasons, as the readers of the poetical chapters of friendly dedication and communing addressed to different friends between the cantos of Marmion will well remember: but yet the yearly change, the natural transfer of life in the short days to the cheerful surroundings of town, the twinkling of those very lights, the assembling of bright faces, the meeting of old friends, were always dear to him, and this sacrifice was not one of the least which he made during the tremendous struggle of his waning years.

GEORGE STREET, EDINBURGH

With no other name could we so fitly close the story of our ancient capital, a story fitfully told with many breaks and omissions, yet offering some thread of connection to link together the different eras of a picturesque and characteristic national life. Had space and knowledge permitted, there is, in the records of Scottish law alone, much that is interesting, along with a still larger contribution of wit and humour and individual character, to the elucidation of the period which passed between the end of the history of Edinburgh under her native kings and the beginning of her brilliant record under the modern reign of literature and poetry. This book, however, does not pretend to set forth the Edinburgh of the Kirk or the Parliament House, each of which has an existing record of its own. Seated on the rocks which are more old than any history, though those precipices are now veiled with verdure and softness, and the iron way of triumphant modern science runs at their feet; with her crown of sacred architecture hanging over her among the mists, and the little primeval shrine mounted upon her highest ridge; with her palace, all too small for the requirements of an enlarged and splendid royalty, and the great crouched and dormant sentinel of nature watching over her through all the centuries; with her partner, sober and ample, like a comely matron, attended by all the modern arts and comforts, seated at the old mother's feet,—Edinburgh can never be less than royal, one of the crowned and queenly cities of the world. It does not need for this distinction that there should be millions of inhabitants within her walls, or all the great threads of industry and wealth gathered in her hands. The pathos of much that is past and over for ever, the awe of many tragedies, a recollection almost more true than any reality of the present, of ages and glories gone—add a charm which the wealthiest and greatest interests of to-day cannot give, to the city, always living, always stirring, where she stands amid traditionary smoke and mist, the grey metropolis of the North, the Edinburgh of a thousand fond associations,

Our Own Romantic Town

THE END

notes

1

We here take Shakspeare's Prince Hal for granted, as we feel disposed at all times to take the poet's word in defiance of history; though no doubt the historical argument is calculated to throw a chill of doubt upon that gay and brilliant image.

2

Buchanan's account is not so bloodthirsty: he represents Alexander as entertaining his guests with stories of his restoration to favour, and approaching deliverance, and dismissing them in all mirth and friendliness though heavy with wine: so that his guards having incontinently fallen asleep at their posts he was able to make his escape.

3

This name and assumed character is generally supposed to belong to James V: but all the accompanying circumstances seem to point so much more to what is recorded of James IV, that I venture to attribute them to him. If it is an error there is this, at least, to be said in favour of it, that the story is as applicable to one as to the other monarch.

4

It would be curious to know what language Mary spoke when she is reported to have made these very characteristic utterances. It is one of the points in the discussion about the famous Casket letters that she could not write Scots. Did she make love and make war, and hold courts and councils of this grave description, in French or in a broken version of her native tongue? No one ever says so, and it is surely a thing that could not be passed without remark.

5

I must explain that this chapter was written before the publication of the recent, and I believe excellent, biography of Buchanan by Mr. P. Hume.

6

In this respect I venture to think all Scotland errs. Many houses throughout the country, built roughly with a rude and irregular but solid mason-work, were made points of light in the landscape by these washes of colour which poor dwellings retain. There is a yellow which I remember on many old houses in which the stains of time and weather produced varieties of tone almost as agreeable as the mellowing of marble under the same influences, which are now stripped into native roughness and rise in sombre grey, sometimes almost black, abstracting a much-needed warmth from the aspect of the country round.