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Among the Slag-heaps -
Within Sight of the Pentland Hills - The Macdonalds at the House of the
Stairs - I Cross the Boathouse Bridge - Sham-English Houses in Scotland -
I Arrive at Gray's Mill - The Edinburgh Comedy - A Scots Minister's House
on the Sabbath - The City from Arthur's Seat - The End of my journey.
THERE was a slight drizzle
of rain on that Sunday morning as I set out on the road to Edinburgh. I
did not know whether I would reach my destination before dark, but I was
determined to make the effort; and the prospect of sleeping in the city
which to my dying day I will think of as my home filled me with an elation
that made me ignore the rather uninteresting countryside through which at
the start I found myself passing. I had never tramped on this road before,
although I had gone quickly over it in a motor-car, and I had caught
glimpses of it from a railway compartment. I have always agreed with
Robert Louis Stevenson that there is no more vivid way of seeing a
landscape than from the window of a railway-train, to which must now be
added that of the motor-coach ; and while one does not travel merely to
gape at a picture-gallery of landscapes, and the delicate essences of
travel are distilled from many impressions other than those which enter
the soul through the eyes, travel of any kind would be a barren affair
without its visual background. But where the walker scores over the
railway-traveller is in this: his impressions may not be so quick or
sharp, but they have time to sink deeper, and they are enriched by a man's
contact with the ground over which his own feet carry him. The country I
met after Linlithgow is not picturesque in the sense that Blair Atholl is,
and only the blind can ignore the slag-heaps which the miners call "duff."
Back at Falkirk I had looked upon a land which gave me a fairly good idea
of what I had always imagined the Potteries to be like : the horizon had
been thick in smoke, with chimneys and the machinery of pit-heads looming
up through it in a ghostly way. East of Linlithgow the air was clearer,
but again the slag-heaps assault the eye; and as I passed beside them on
that Sunday morning I saw in them, almost against my will, a unique
beauty. Yellow grass grew upon them, and there was a curious red sheen
upon their dark sides, like the blood of an otter drifting a little below
the surface of a slow-running stream. Those pit-heads and slag-heaps of
West Lothian are a subject for an artist, but they need a man of the
calibre of Wadsworth to capture their spirit.
Soon I had passed
Kingscavil, and had come to a group of cottages called Three Miletown,
where the Prince brought his men to a halt. On the previous night, he had
managed to snatch but a few hours' sleep before making the sortie from
Callendar House at Falkirk, and now Lord George Murray was eager to push
further on, but Charles decided to remain until the next morning.
O'Sullivan had selected this place on rising ground, and the Prince slept
in a small farmhouse west of where the Highlanders lay in their plaids.
After I had passed through the hamlet of Winchburgh, which is unremarkable
except for the amount of dullness that is crammed into a few yards, I was
brought to a stop by the glorious view of a countryside that rolled to the
foot of the Pentlands. Caerketton and Allermuir, Swanston and Glencorse:
these names came back to me, bringing the same little wisp of nostalgia
that is always evoked by the name of the street in Edinburgh where I
lived, and in high spirits I strode out to Kirkliston.
It was near Kirkliston that
the Prince paused on the march next day. To the south-west was the house
of Newliston, then belonging to the Earl of Stair whose grandfather the
Highlanders blamed for the massacre of Glencoe. The descendant of the
murdered Macdonald chief was in the Prince's army with many of his
clansmen; and in sudden anxiety the Prince pictured the house of the
Stairs going up in flames, with the Macdonalds dancing vengefully around
it. He suggested therefore that the Glencoe men should be guided past the
place at a safe distance, but so indignant was the Macdonald leader that
he threatened to take his clan back to the Highlands if any watch was set
upon them. He reminded the Prince that the Macdonalds were men of honour,
and at once Charles responded by giving orders that a guard of Macdonalds
from Glencoe were to be mounted at Stair's house during the halt. The
Prince himself was entertained at the farmhouse of Todhall (afterwards
rebuilt and re-christened Foxhall by some man who was not satisfied with
the old Scots word for a fox); and in the afternoon the army moved forward
in the direction of Edinburgh.
I ate a late lunch in a
field by the roadside, and crossed the river Almond at the Boathouse
Bridge, when a sprinkling of rain again began to fall[. I was beginning to
fear I would arrive at the suburbs of Edinburgh too late to follow the
Prince's route round the city before darkness came; and so I seized upon
the rain as my excuse, and boarded a passing motorbus that was shining and
blue and incredibly luxurious. And like a lord among other silent lords
and ladies (whose tongues, I noted, were stricken with the same old
familiar Edinburgh palsy which arrests talk in the presence of strangers)
I rode into Corstorphine.
Old Corstorphine is
delightful, but God help new Corstorphine. Those recently built houses
scattered around the villages on the road from Stirling are enough to make
a man blaspheme: they are as ugly as the worst Victorian abortions;
indeed, I think they are even uglier, for many of the new ones are
shamEnglish. On an English countryside, they would have been bad enough,
but why in heaven's name must we have them in Scotland? If it is necessary
for economic reasons to build thousands of those little gimcrack things,
surely they can be designed in a way that does not strike the eye as
foreign. The old grey sombre Scots house, however small, has its own
beauty, and it should not be beyond the wit of a Scots architect to devise
an inexpensive house that is in keeping with the new spirit that is
arising in Scotland. Far worse than the red eruption of bungalows around
London are those sham-English blemishes on the face of many a Scots town ;
and as I drew near Edinburgh, I felt my ardour being soured with an angry
despair. Down to Slateford I made my way, passing the Stank which used to
be a loch, passing the place where Hailes House used to stand and where a
village was swept away to make room for a quarry, and coming at last to
Gray's Mill. Before me as I write, there is a map printed in 1654, and on
it this place is marked Kray, which suggests that the mill was not built
by a long forgotten miller named Gray, but was called after the estate on
which it stood. It is now the meeting-place of the Union Canal, the Water
of Leith, the railway to Glasgow, and a main road. These four channels
play an intricate game of leap-frog, and each emerges triumphantly intact
and rolls on to its destination. But there was only the road and the Water
of Leith going past Gray's Mill when the Prince took up his quarters on
the evening of Monday 16th September.
On the afternoon and night
of that day a comedy was enacted. Perhaps it would be more accurate to
call it a farce, and the scenes of it changed so rapidly that a modern
revolving-stage would be required for its presentation. The curtain had
been rung up for the Prologue about a fortnight before, when news had been
received in Edinburgh that Sir John Cope had failed to intercept the
Highlanders, and they were marching south. What was to be done ? Archibald
Stewart, the Lord Provost of the city, pulled in one direction, some of
the magistrates in another, and vague letters came from Whitehall to the
Lord Advocate telling him to do everything for the best, and to keep a
wary eye on the Lord Provost. As the Highlanders approached, there was a
babel of tongues in Edinburgh, and the voices of the few men who were
ready to die in defence of the city were drowned in the caterwaul.
Gardiner's dragoons, covered with foam if not with glory, had scuttled
from Linlithgow and were now with Hamilton's dragoons at Coltbridge. Some
of the dashing cavalrymen supported by a few Edinburgh volunteers ventured
to go out towards Corstorphine, where an advance guard of the Highland
army saw them and fired a few shots. The scouts hurried back to Coltbridge
and breathlessly announced that the rebels were upon them. This was too
much for the stomachs of the dragoons : in a panic they went
hell-for-leather by the lanes through Bearford's Parks and the Lang Dykes
and did not draw bridle until they were safely on the links at Leith. This
"Canter of Coltbridge" was watched from the Castle. It took place at three
o'clock on Monday afternoon, and Edinburgh was left undefended except by
the untrained rabble of citizens, students, and apprentices who manned the
broken city wall.
That morning, between ten
and eleven o'clock, an Edinburgh man called Alves had ridden into the town
the Prince's army on the road, and the Duke of Perth had asked him to say
that if they were allowed to enter Edinburgh in peace the citizens would
be dealt with civilly. From Corstorphine, the Prince had sent to the
magistrates a formal letter summoning them to surrender the town; and at
Gray's Mill, about eight o'clock in the evening, a deputation waited upon
him.
It was well known in
Edinburgh that Cope's army was on its way by sea from Aberdeen. For days
the weather-vanes of the city had been anxiously watched by the Whigs to
see if the transports had a fair wind to bring them south. And the four
bailies of the deputation, in an awkward group at Gray's Mill, did their
best to look innocent of guile, and begged for a little delay. The Prince
replied quite simply that he demanded to be received as the son and
representative of the king, and that he expected an answer by two o'clock
in the morning. Half an hour after two o'clock a second deputation turned
up at the Mill with a fatuous message to the effect that the citizens of
Edinburgh were now snugly in bed, where all good citizens should be, and
so their views about surrendering the city could not be obtained until
morning. The Prince, urged by Lord George Murray, saw the deputies ; and
after he repeated his demand to be received as the Regent of the kingdom,
the members of the deputation trundled back in their hackney-coach. It
would have been clear to a half-wit that the magistrates were playing for
time, and Charles had already ordered Locheil with nine hundred men to try
to take the city by surprise, and if necessary to blow up one of the
gates, but to avoid bloodshed as far as possible. Guided by John Murray of
Broughton, who knew the district, Locheil made his way to the Netherbow
Port and sent forward one of his men disguised in, a riding-coat to
pretend that he was a servant of an officer in the dragoons, but he failed
to get past the guards at the gate. Locheil drew off, when to his
surprise, the Netherbow Port was opened, and the hackney-coach which had
taken the last deputation back to the city came clattering out to return
to the stables in the Canongate. The Highlanders rushed in. Dawn broke as
the capital of Scotland surrendered. It was said at the time that half of
the folk were Jacobites at heart : one-third of the men, two-thirds of the
women.
During the night at Gray's
Mill, the Prince slept for a couple of hours in his clothes; and sending
the heavy baggage past Morton Hall by a road south of the Braid Hills, he
led his army along the lane that crossed Caanan Muir, near the ruins of
the ancient chapel of St. Roque, out of sight of the Castle guns.
Before leaving Gray's Mill
on that Sunday afternoon, I went forward to the door of the little house
and knocked. I would have liked to see where the Prince spent the night
before entering Edinburgh, but to my repeated knocking there was no reply
; and I made my way down a side-road to Craiglockhart, passed the
Poorhouses, and came out upon the Morningside road. The name of the moor
over which the Prince marched still survives in Caanan Lane, and I walked
past Grange House, where the Prince paused to drink wine with William
Dick, " the third baron, and Anne Seton his lady," and to leave behind him
a thistle from his bonnet in exchange for the white rose Anne Seton gave
him when she kissed his hand.
I turned into Dalrymple
Crescent. There was a gentle thrill in the thought that the house where I
had spent so many years of my boyhood stood within a stone's throw of the
Prince's line of march, and it made my journey on that last day the
sweeter. When I saw Edinburgh again that evening, I was thankful I had
lived there and had memories to play with. Folk were going to church, and
the sight of them brought back all the strange salt flavour of an
Edinburgh Sabbath : the bustle of a minister's house on a Sunday morning;
an hour's silence while my father had a final glance at his sermon; the
manse pew in the gloomy church; Old Hundred and other tunes that wove
themselves into the fabric of my mind; cold midday dinner; the church
again at half-past two; Sunday school; late tea and "a good improving book
"-with luck, Treasure Island-then a tramp to the Blackford Hill, and bed
at ten. A strange sombre day, as I look back on it; and yet on that
evening as I passed the old house in the Crescent, I would not have
changed a single hour of it for anything in the world.
By Salisbury Road I went,
and down to the King's Park. The Prince's army had passed through the
policies of Prestonfield House, and by a gap in the wall had gone round to
Duddingston, to climb the hill by Dunsappie Loch. In the Hunter's Bog, a
shallow glen behind the Salisbury Crags, the Jacobite army bivouacked, and
the Prince left them at noon to go down to the Palace where Mary Queen of
Scots had spent so many of her days in Scotland, and where the Prince's
grandfather had made himself popular with the nation when he was the Duke
of York. Near St. Anthony's Well on the hillside, Prince Charles paused
for a few minutes and stood looking across at the city on its ridge of
rock. He knew he had come to the first stage in his campaign to recover
the British throne for his family. The capital of Scotland was at his
feet, but he knew that Cope's army had landed at Dunbar and was marching
to meet him. He knew how much depended upon himself; he had already seen
how delicate was to be the task of keeping the peace in his own camp. In
his hour of triumph, his thoughts were heavy as he descended to the Palace
of Holyroodhouse. On the hillside I sat down. The darkness was falling
quickly. Deep shadows lay in the valley, and my eye travelled to the
skyline of housetops and church-spires and the failing sunset above. I
thought of the Prince as I sat there, and the long journey he had made
from Borrodale in Arisaig. I recalled the stages of that journey, the
roads and the hill-tracks by which I had travelled over the royal road,
and the inns and cottages where I had slept, and the people I had met and
talked with, and the ups and downs of fortune that make a long journey on
foot so like the varied span of a human life. Had the Prince's road been
worth my travelling over, I asked myself, and out of a thankful heart I
was able to answer. I rose to my feet. My pack seemed to have become
lighter, and I was deliciously tired and hungry. At Abbeyhill I sank down
on the seat of a taxi-cab: it was good to hear an Edinburgh voice again!
Fifteen minutes later, I was in Abercromby Place at the doorway of the
Royal Scots Club.
In later volumes the author
will describe his subsequent travels in the footsteps of Prince Charlie. |
