THE route to Queensferry is classic.
There is the Forth Bridge, and no self-respecting visitor will neglect the
inspection! The coaches billed Forth Bridge are even more numerous than
those marked Roslin. You go along Princes Street and Queensferry Street,
over the Dean Bridge, past Inverleith Quarry, whence was hewn so much of
New Reekie, under the shadow of Corstorphine Hill. You call to mind, with
some aid, maybe, from the experienced conductor, the memories of this and
that spot. Raveleton, where the Keiths, Marshals of Scotland, had their
home; Craigcrook Castle, where Lord Jeffrey held those delightful
symposia that live for us yet in the pages of Lord Cockburn;
Clermiston, touched off in a line of that stirring ballad, already quoted,
wherein Scott tells the story of Dundee’s gallant exit from Edinburgh.
Farther on you cross the River
Almond by Cramond Bridge. Here is the dividing line between the counties
of Edinburgh and Linlithgow. The old bridge is a little below. It bears
inscriptions telling of five repairs, the earliest 1619. It is the
locus of a well-known adventure of James V. Gipsies set upon him. He
was assisted by a sturdy peasant, one Jock Howieson, who soundly drubbed
the marauders, and had for guerdon a good slice of the adjacent land,
which his descendants still hold. Popular fancy has adorned the legend
with various picturesque incidents, The play of Cramond Brig is
still a favourite on Scots provincial boards. The old bridge is situated
deep down in a charming hollow, and rises but a little over the stream.
You have to climb a steep brae to gain the main road. The new bridge is
high up on the level. From it you can scarce see the other in summer, the
trees are so thick. Poets impute a feeling of jealousy to two bridges so
placed. The classic example is the brigs of Ayr, for ever vocal in the
verse of Burns, but the quarrel, if there be one, of these has not yet
found its bard! You pass on, climb up a brae, and descending close to the
shore, under one of the arches of the Forth Bridge, draw up before the
Hawes Inn at Newhalls. Thence a short run and you are in the middle of the
main street of Queensferry. You are not impressed. The town is stranded;
even its latest renown as a seaside resort is vanished. It has known
strange revolutions within less than a century. The Forth suddenly
contracts. A promontory on which North Queensferry stands runs out from
the opposite Fife shore, so the way across is but two miles. Nature meant
it for the ferry, and ferry it was for many a long day. The Queen is,
of course, St Margaret of Scotland, and passagium regina
monkish chroniclers wrote the name of the place. The vision of the
fair-haired gentle girl, fleeing north with her brother and sister to
escape the Norman invader immediately after Hastings, has still its
romantic charm. She was married to Malcolm Canmore in 1067, and by this
route she passed again and again from Edinburgh to Dunfermline, where she
abode, not "drinking the blude red wine," like her shadowy descendant, but
in fasting and prayer and good works as was fit and becoming in a saint.
Here at least you will not forget her or hers. Not merely is there the
North and South Queensferry, but there is the anchorage of St Margaret’s
Hope off the Fife coast, where her small fleet rode safely through a
storm; and there is Port Edgar a little way to the west of where you
stand, named after her brother, Edgar the Atheling, who landed here with
his sisters.
No doubt the ferry was used long
before the Queen came that way, even though she were the most persistent
and remarkable traveller, but its earlier name, if it had one, is gone
beyond recall. It was the chief passage over the Fifth for many a century,
and as late as 1805 the right of running across was let at £2000 per
annum. And then Granton Pier was built some miles further down, about the
time of Queen Victoria’s accession, and the steamboat service between it
and Burntisland did for the old route altogether. But the whirligig of
time was to bring about its revenges. In another half century the great
Forth Bridge followed the very lines of the old ferry, and for the same
reason, that here was the shortest way. And the little island of
Inchgarvie, right in the middle, was a natural pier. Perhaps the very
early ferry boats used it for a half-way house. All this, if it did not
destroy, seriously damaged that Burntisland passage so familiar to many of
us in other years. Yet the Bridge takes the passenger not through
Queensferry but in the air above it, and except that folk come, therefore,
to view the Bridge it lies more than ever out of the way.
The Hawes Inn strikes you as the
most flourishing institution about the place. Romance does something more
than build castles in the air; it can make, or at any rate increase, the
reputation and takings of a hostelry, though no means have as yet been
devised whereby the heirs of Scott and Stevenson can levy toll for the
unearned increment that accrues to Boniface from labours in no sense his
own. The first chapter of the Antiquary takes us straight to the
Hawes Inn. That chapter is a charming prologue to the work. It reminds,
with a difference, of the delicious comedietta
which opens the Taming
of the Shrew. The scene
in the High Street between Jonathan Oldbuck, Esq., of Monkbarns, and Mrs
Macleuchar, arising out of the non-appearance of the Queensferry diligence
or Hawes fly, however excellent, is surpassed by the business at the inn,
where that pearl of Scots landlords, Mackitchinson, sets before Oldbuck
and Lovel their banquet of "fish, chops and cranberry tarts" whilst he
discusses his "ganging plea," that "weel kind plea" which has perplexed
the "fifteen," and then brings in "that immense doublequart bottle covered
with sawdust and cobwebs, the warrant of its antiquity." He pooh-poohs the
idea of them drinking either punch or port; "it’s claret that’s fit for
you lairds," he remarks as he proceeds to decant it. And then, in genuine
admiration of his own wares, declares" it parfumes the very room." Scott,
like Shakespeare and Dumas and all the great jovial Masters of literature,
had the tavern sentiment strong within him. They loved, in reason be it
said, to talk of eating and drinking. Stevenson strikes a gentler and a
thinner note. His heroes do not sit down to mighty meals, but the charm of
old wine has inspired him with many a happy touch. It is not the grosser
aspects of the Hawes Inn that takes his fancy; he finds a
suggestion of romance. "The old Hawes Inn at Queensferry makes a similar
call upon my fancy. There it stands, apart from the town, beside the pier,
in a climate of its own, half inland, half marine; in front the ferry
bubbling with the tide and the guardship swinging to her anchor; behind
the old garden with the trees. Americans seek it already for the sake of
Lovel and Oldbuck, who dined there at the beginning of the Antiquary.
But you need not tell me that is not all; there is some story,
unrecorded or not yet complete, which must express the meaning of that inn
more freely." He tells us he has lived at the Hawes "in a perpetual
flutter, on the heels of some adventure that should justify the place."
Nothing happened. "The man or the hour had not yet come; but some day I
think a boat shall put off from Queensferry fraught with a dear cargo." So
far Stevenson in A Gossip on Romance, and in a note to this, when
republished in Memories and Portraits,
he tells us that in Kidnapped he has
launched the boat David Balfour arrives from Shaws. "We came to the top of
the hill and looked down on the Ferry and the Hope; on the south shore
they had built a pier for the service of the ferry, and at the end of the
pier, on the other side of the road and backed against a pretty garden of
holly trees and hawthorns, I could see the building which they call the
Hawes Inn." He goes inside but the landlord is a mere shadow vox et
praeterea nihil. David is presently taken possession of by Captain
Elias Hoseason, who by a trick gets him aboard the brig Covenant of
Dysart. I need not trace his exciting adventures aboard that most ungodly
craft. At the end he returns with Alan Breck to Queensferry, but it is
only to seek out Mr Rankeillor, the writer, and get him with them to Shaws.
I stood by the pier on a day when the Forth was bathed in brilliant
sunshine. Coaches with their cargoes of Americans came and went, and it
was, I found, as much for Stevenson as for Scott. In what whimsical way
had the place attracted him? The inn looked stolid, respectable, but far
from romantic. There was, I believe, a garden, but I forgot to search for
the holly bushes and the hawthorns. Was it the idea of the
thousand-years-old ferry with Margaret as its patron saint that drew him?
He loved the high road winding on through hill and dale, with its constant
movement of travellers. This ancient ferry has all of the high road and
something more—the mystery of the sea.
The Forth Bridge is wondrous
graceful despite its size and massy strength. You shall find many accounts
of the millions of rivets that hold it together and the countless tons of
metals contained therein, and the expansive acreage that requires
painting, and so forth. The marvel of its erection reads like a fairy tale
of science. If any reader has not seen the Bridge, or even a picture of
it, let him imagine three eggs longwise and touching, and two pier-like
structures at the ends, and there you have the Bridge, only you must call
the eggs cantilevers!
If Queensferry were more remote you
might recommend it as a centre, but Edinburgh is too near for that. Anyhow
the round about is interesting. To the west the road runs through the
grounds of Hopetoun House, a very charming place, and by the seashore is
Blackness Castle, once a prison like the Bass but now a Government store.
And to the east is Dalmeny Park, where, as all the world knows, a former
Prime Minister ploughs his lonely furrow, or at any rate holds on his
individual way with every aid that lettered culture and well-applied
wealth can give. In the grounds stands Barnbougle Castle, of late
restored, so that perhaps the Black Man and his hound will no more come
with winding of bugle to announce the demise of the reigning baron. Every
part of this historic shore has its own interest. If you push your way as
far westward as Bo’ness you will not call that somewhat decayed town
wholly lacking if you remember that here begins Antoninus Wall, otherwise
Graham’s Dyke, in effect a very early attempt made by their southern
neighbours to persuade the Picts and Scots to remain in their own country.
History records the hopeless failure of the effort.