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"The evil that meni do lives
after them."
SHAKESi'ERE.
1840 - 1850
I may be interesting to those
who cannot see so far back as a septuagenarian can, to know something of
what Edinburgh was like seventy years ago. Speaking from the memory of
childhood, it is possible to give an impartial statement of the facts, as
the child mind does not trouble itself with architectural or esthetic
subjects. Let me endeavour to bring a picture of Edinburgh about 1845 before
the reader. Any comment that is made on the facts of course an expression of
thought of later date. We shall start an itinerary from what might be called
then the centre of Edinburgh—the Mound which was made some time before that
to cross the valley of the "Nor Loch." The road at that time went by the
east side, over the space now occupied by the National Gallery ground. West
of this there was a wide, unkept space, which on Saturdays and holidays was
the resort of low-class entertainers, who put down roulette tables, stands
where darts were fired at targets by the explosion of percussion-caps in toy
guns, cocoanut-shies, swings, tables where vendors sold what was called
"Turkey Rhubarb," and cakes of chemicals by which brass could be turned into
silver, for—well —say, twenty-four hours. Shoe-ties, penny toys, and
sweets—the "gundy'' and "gib'' of Edinburgh —were hawked by hand, and small
dogs, honestly or dishonestly come by, were offered for sale to the ladies.
They resounded with cries. "Spoor it doon, and try your luck! " shouted the
roulette man as he spun his wheel; "one to one upon the red, three to one
upon the blue, six to one upon the yellow, and twelve to one upon the royal
crown." "Try a shot, only a penny," came from the target proprietor; "nuts
for your money, and sport for nothing." "Three shies a penny," chirped the
lady at the cocoanut stand. "Cure for colic, stomach-ache, rheumatism,
headache," and several other ills named, solemnly announced the Rhubarb man,
who had the Semitic written all over him. "If", said he, "any gentleman s
troubled with any of the diseases I have mentioned, I'll give him a dose of
Turkey Rhubarb, and if he be not cured within five minits, vie standin'
'ere, I forfight all you see upon this stend." One old man—blind really or
by profession—swung back and forward rhythmically, shrilly announcing,
"Shoe-Mes at a penny the pair, and reeleeg ous tracts at a ha'penny the
piece." A spectacle vendor exhibited his glasses in a case, hung on the
ratings, and a bird dealer sold linnets in paper bags. Of course it will be
understood that I am not speaking only of the first years of the Forties.
These veritable memories belong to a period of some years, and are put
together to give an idea of how the beautiful centre of Edinburgh was
allowed to be degraded into a scene of low-class trade and entertainment
more or less discreditable to the city. No wonder Lord Cockburn said of the
Mound, "that receptacle of all things has long been disreputable."
But this was not all. On the
west side of the Mound there were four wooden erections for which the
fathers of the city were not ashamed to draw rents to bring a little to the
Corporation's bankrupt money-chest. In the middle stood a great circular
booth, of cheese-like proportions, all black with pitch, except where, 1n
enormous white letters, it was announced to Princes Street that this
abomination was the Royal Rotunda. There my infant mind was instructed in
the features of the Battle of Waterloo, by a panorama, the pictures of which
were probably as unlike as they could be to what actually happened on that
field. Farther up the slope was a building even more disgraceful, a penny or
twopenny gaff theatre, which had the distinguished name of ' he Victoria
Temple, of which It is needless to say that I was never permitted to see the
interior. The outside I remember—brown woodwork, and wooden flat pillars,
painted to lmitate—and imitating very badly—the beauties of Aberdeen red
granite. Above this incredible as it may seem, was a tanner's yard! At the
bottom was a coachbuilder's wooden shed and yard, and in front stood
vehicles in various stages of dilapidation and repair. A circle of stones
was set on the ground, at which the hammering of tires on to wheels was
something for the boys to watch.
Special shows were sometimes
permitted to occupy the open parts of the Mound even opposite the Royal
Institution. I was taken to see Wombwell's Menagerie there, and had great
delight. I can think now how hideously disfiguring those yellow vans, and
the gilded front with its lion-tamer pictures, must have looked, as they
blocked the view of the Castle to the pedestrian on Princes Street. When one
recalls this picture of degradation of what by Nature is one o f the most
exquisite scenes which ever gave glory to a city, it is impossible not to
marvel at the utter want of taste and sense and decent regard for
appearance, and even for morality, which were displayed by the civic fathers
of those days, and yet as William Black's golfer, after dreaming that he was
in hell-bunker, said, "But it micht hae been waur". For incredible as it may
seem, it was gravely considered whether a two-sided street should not be
built on the Mound, with the backs of the houses looking east and west to
Princes Street, to the complete run of the view in both directions. Again,
it was only by a determined struggle that the city was saved from the
absolute destruction of its amenity, when the Town Council determined to
build a south side to Princes Street. This would have been irretrievable
loss to Edinburgh as a resort, and a standing disgrace to its inhabitants.
A. street across the valley, up the Mound, would have been scarcely less a
work of outrage. In passing, it may be recalled that an equally monstrous
outrage was brought forward when it was proposed to widen the North Bridge.
A scheme was set on foot and gravely considered for building shops on both
sides of the bridge, right across the valley And worst of all, it was only
by strenuous efforts of a lady citizen that a plot to put some twenty brick
shanties on the side of the slope below the Castle Esplanade, in full view
of Princes Street, was defeated.
Coming to Princes Street, it
was in my earliest days a narrow way, made narrower by the cabmen being
allowed to keep their horses' noses well out into the street, ready to have
a rush across whenever a hand was held up. It was amusing to us little
people to see these short and sharp races. The drvers at the horses heads,
with the whip going back from the left hand, stood watching. All in a
moment, two would dash across, regardless of other traffic, lashing their
horses with wild back swings of the left hand. The language of the loser of
the race was what the reader may imagine for himself.
The Princes Street buildings
were in all stages of alteration. Originally built—as may still be seen here
and there—with the flattest and baldest fronts, the effect was utterly dull
and uninteresting. The houses were all residential, and when they came to be
altered to shops the ground-floor was occupied by one tradesman and the area
by another. To-day there is scarcely a specimen left, but one there is still
that used to be the fashionable fruit-shop of Boyd & Bayne opposite Waverley
Station, a curiosity of the past. In those days the street was utterly
uninteresting and mean to a degree; its only attraction being the outlook to
the old town and the Castle. Some worthy buildings have taken the place of
the old bald fronts, and some, it must be confessed, by no means worthy; but
the general effect is much better than in the days when the street presented
uniformity. It was uniformity which was not dignified—paltry and inartistic.
As for the valley in front of
Princes Street, it presented a sorry sight. What might have been a beautiful
sheet of natural water — the Nor' Loch—was left :n a state of filth and
insanitary accumulation; what in Scotland is called a "free toom," into
which garbage of all kinds—cast-off clothes, dead dogs, and worried cats,
&c.— -were thrown. A filthy marsh, it was the assembling parade, of the
militant boys, where class fights took place freely, and foul matter
abounded, to foster the germs of disease. This may seem an exaggerated
picture, but here is Lord Cock burn's account of the state of things, just
before the formation of the garden was undertaken: "A fetid and festering
marsh, the receptacle for skinned horses, hanged dogs, frogs, and worried
cats. The presence of the water was looked upon as a nuisance, as well it
might be, when the municipal eye looked at it as t was, instead of as it
should be. But apparently the Corporation had little thought of "anointing
the eye with eye-salve, that it might see how the desolate might be made "to
blossom as the rose." Something may be said later as to what has happened in
that valley, and as to what might have happened, if thought and discernment
had been present with the wise rulers. Also it will be seen what golden
opportunities were lost, and what irreparable mischief was done.
EDINBURGH FROM SCOTT MONUMENT, LOOKING WEST, 1847
Meanwhile, I return to the
child-days—to describe what the child saw, and I take the time when the
Walter Scott monument was built, as it marks a period when recoiled ion is
vivid. At that time, immediately below the site of the monument, there was a
cottage, with a potato-garden surrounding it, of which all that can be said
is that it was not so offensive as what's there now, and certainly not so
offensive as a walled in and paved vegetable market, which was one of the
schemes considered to be sensible by some, and would have been carried out
in all probability but for the demand of the railway interest, which in this
one particular saved the city from a grevous dis-figurernent. In what are
now the West Princess Street Gardens, the part next the street was kept for
amenity ground; but I saw when I was a child the space below the Castle Rock
ploughed down and bearing a crop of excellent turnips. When the weather was
wet, the water formed a loch in the low ground, in which much offensive
matter accumulated. Altogether the valley, which should have been regarded
as a beautiful foreground for the old town and the Castle Rock, was
neglected, and its capabilities for adding to the beauty of the city
remained unconsidered. Indeed, there was at one time, as Lord Cockburn
mentions, a scheme for filling up the valley with spoil and rubbish, the
Lord Provost of the day, when remonstrated with, giving as an unanswerable
reason that it would provide ground for "building more streets"!
Such was the centre of the
town in these olden days, a jewel besmirched with what was defiling, because
those who had it in charge could see nothing worth preserving in it. Like
chanticleer in the fable, who found a beautiful string of precious pearls
when scratching «n the dung-heap, and said he would not give a good handful
of corn for the whole gewgaw, so our representatives saw not the value of
their jewel, and were ready to sacrifice it to the railway moloch It is to a
Lord Provost who said in the Council, without raising even a murmur of
dissent: "Nature has framed this place for a railway station,' that we owe
the fact that what might have been a lovely garden, with a beautiful piece
of water in it, lying n the very bosom of the city, presents now to the eye
its dismal thirteen acres of dirty brown glass and its semaphore
signal-posts, and has many lines of rails running along the base of the old
town hill and the Castle Rock, and hideous signals and signal-boxes
disfiguring the valley perhaps the most unaesthetic mode of laying out
such a piece of ground that human perversity could devise. If Lord Cockburn
could speak of the proposal for a small railway station as "a lamentable and
irreparable blunder,'' what is to be said now when it has practically
swallowed up the whole breadth and half the length of the valley? One can
well believe that if the worthy Lord Provost had known what was to follow,
he would have hesitated to say what he did. Lord Cockburn thought that it
was not intended to express approbation of those worlds of stations, booths,
coal-depots, and stores, and waggons, and stairs by which the eastern
portion of the valley has been nearly destroyed." It's now totally
destroyed. People say, "What's the use of crying over spilt milk?" That's
all very well, but it is only the loss of the milk that is considered, and
it was only by accident that the loss took place. It would be a most futile
consolation if the milk could never be wiped up, and the carpet on which it
fell brought back to its pristine neatness. But when the most disfiguring
things- —the dirty glass, and the formal rails and the signal appliances are
put down—where Nature, aided by cultivation, should for ever have held sway,
presenting a thing of beauty—so that there they must remain in their
hideousness to the end of tune, and this not by an accident, but by the
wilful doing of those who should have shielded the citizens from such an
affliction, one feels almost justified in suggesting that a certain bronze
statue of a former Lord Provost, which if supposed to adorn Princes Street,
should be turned round, so that it may be compelled to face what the mans
life represents assisted to bring about, when he thoughtlessly accused
Nature of having prepared a place for the perpetration of such a wrong to
our beautiful city. Uncle Toby said: "Wipe it up, and say no more about it."
Alas! we cannot wipe it up, and as to saying no more about it, we are surely
at least entitled, when the stranger within our gates sees this
disfigurement, to assure him that we are ashamed, and groan over our
impotence which compels us to bear the sight of such wounds and bruises
deliberately inflicted on the lovely face of our incomparable Edina.
When there is so much to
record of what is unsatisfactory regarding the conservation of the amemty of
Edinburgh, what is good must not be overlooked. A great improvement was made
on the view from Princes Street, which had been terribly disfigured by a
building discreditable in every respect to the architect who planned it—the
Bank of Scotland, of which Lord Cockburn spoke as "a prominent deformity."
Prominent it was, and bulking large in view. !t had not one single feature
to commend it, and least of all to recommend it for the site on which it was
placed. It was really an eyesore. The evil was remedied by its being
enveloped in a new building, which may be said to be worthy of the site, and
now that it is well weathered/ does not offend the eye as did the great
packing-case front of former days, to which weathering only added more
offensiveness. After this improvement, the slope running down from the
Castle, except for the building next the Free Church College on the west,
presented no objectionable feature, unless it were the huge monotonous back
viiew of the City Chambers, which cannot be said to be ornamental, but for
which the own Council of our day were not responsible. It is to be hoped
that ere long this great, almost factory-like square-windowed wall will be
dealt with, so as to break it up and give it a face morein harmony with the
almost Nuremberg character of the other buildings on the slope. Speaking of
the Council Chambers leads me to say something about Cockburn Street, which
was made to give a new access to the old town from Princes Street, a
much-needed improvement to relieve the then existing great hindrance to
traffic on the old narrow North Bridge and the congestion at the Register
House, where all vehicles coming by South Bridge or by Canon-gate to the
Waverley Station and vice versa had to pass round by Princes Street. The new
street being named after Lord Cockburn, Edinburgh's earnest devotee, It was
to be expected that the buildings would be in character with the old houses
on that side of the valley, seeing that he had done all he could—alas, too
often without success—to prevent evil deeds in the valley and beyond it. It
may be admitted that the street is not discreditable to its position. But
one thing was done after it was opened which was little to the credit of our
civic rulers. The south side of the street opposite the City Chambers
consists of a retaining wall, there being a slope of grass between it and
the building. This was for a time allowed to be used as a green for hanging
out clothes to dry, which was bad enough. But there was worse to come. Our
city rulers, who might be expected to be our protectors from the hideous
disfigurement of the ten-foot advertising poster, were not ashamed to let
out this slope that the merits of Pears' Soap and Monkey Brand, &c., or some
other such concoctions, might be proclaimed by flaming placards, shutting
out the slope of grass from view, and vulgarising the street by gaudy,
glaring colours—and all this to draw in a few pounds of rent. It is cause
for thankfulness that—it is to be hoped for very shame—this civic
encouragement to others to disfigure the city was not persisted in for long.
Had it been, the votaries of the poster would have been furnished with an
unanswerable argument against the! own Council at a later date, When they
asked Parliament to give power to veto objectionable advertisements. But
even to-day our rulers are not free from reproach in the matter of
advertising disfigurement, as will be pointed out presently.
The streets which were built
at the same time as Princes Street, George Street, Queen Street, and the
cross streets j lining them, were all in the same bald style, which s only
gradually being broken up, and again to good effect here, and to evil effect
there. Had George Street been built in a well- designed street style, so as
to remain unaltered in front, it would have been one of the finest streets
in the world. Broad, straight, running on a ridge practically level, the eye
earned along by the three statues at the crossings, over a distance
approaching to a mile, and—with a feature which is rare—being complete, the
church at one end and the monument at the other making the finish excellent
at both ends; t has advantages for appearance which are rare indeed. Even
although the buildings are not what they might have been, I know of no other
street that can compare with it, certainly no street in this country.
A good story ;s told
regarding Sir John Steell's bronze group which stands at the east end of
George Street. When the hoarding was being erected for the building of the
plinth, one of two worthy citizens coming along the street asked the other :
"Daursay, whet's that shed
they're pittiii' up noo?"
"Oh," the other replied,
"that's for Alexander and Booceaphihs, ye know."
"Alexander and Booceaphihs! I
wus nut aware that there was a firm of that name in George's Street."
It may give some idea of the
circumscrbed character of the city when I was a child, to mention that there
were country houses, still occupied, where now the city extends far
outwards. In Drummond Place there stood in the middle of the gardens the old
mansion-house of Bellevue, some of the trees of the park being still alive
even now. This house was only removed when the tunnel between Princes Street
and Scotland Street was made for the Edinburgh, Perth and Dundee Railway. I
remember a portion of the tunnel falling in, and being taken to see the
wreck. That must have been in the early Forties. My father remembered when a
farmhouse still stood opposite where Wemyss Place is now, occupied by a
progenitor of Lord Wood; and it is only twenty years ago that a farmhouse
stood at the end of Buckingham Terrace. On the south side, the
EDINBURGH FROM SCOTT MONUMENT, LOOKING EAST, 1847.
Grange House stood in the
fields, and I was taken there when the Dick-Lauder*s were living in it. To
visit it was looked upon as a drive into the country. On the west stood
Drumsheugh House, and farther out East Coates House, and beyond this again
West Coates House, which was in a wooded park, practically on the site of
what is now Grosvenor Crescent, some of the trees in which are to me as old
friends. As children we were often invited to West Coates, as Mr. and Mrs.
George Forbes, my uncle and aunt, lived there. To reach it we drove into a
high-walled lane at the end of Manor Place, and on passing out of sight of
the houses a shout would rise: "Hurrah' now we're in the country." I have
played hide-and-seek round some of the trees now standing in Grosvenor
Crescent gardens, and have many happy recollections associated with dear old
West Coates. Farther out, on the west, was Dairy House. On the east side of
Edinburgh there was a house occupied by Mr. Mitchell Junes —quite close to
Queen's Park—which had the countrified name of "Parson's Green"; on the
north were Inverleith House, and the two Warristons, now far within the
city's boundaries. From these country places I have named, some idea may be
got by the present generation of the extraordinary increase of the city
since the time of my childhood.
But perhaps the most striking
instance of the change that has taken place, is that even now it is possible
to appeal to many persons still living to vouch for the fact that well into
the last century there was at a point, now two miles within the city
boundary, an active colony of rooks. The great trees in Randolph Crescent
were crowded with rooks nests, and some had nests in St. Bernard's Crescent,
and their cawing was not unlike a city concert. Rooks never set up their
rookery in a town; in this case it was the town which enclosed the rookery.
But they held on bravely for some time, and it was only when they became
surrounded by town streets that they withdrew, probably deeply disgusted
with the extension of modern civilisation.
Although, before my time, the
residential quarter of Moray Place, Ainslie Place, and Randolph Crescent,
and the streets off them, had been built, they were by no means complete.
Many corners and gaps were left unbuilt on, and were only gradually filled
up. It must be confessed that although this part of the town is worthily
occupied, it is much to be regretted that the ground was laid off in its
present arrangement. It would have been infinitely better if the alternative
plan had been adopted, of building along the natural terrace formed by the
Water of Leith river, instead of framing that really fine view by the shabby
rubble-walled backs of the houses. Doubtless a greater profit came to the
landowner by adopting the latter design, but a Nemesis followed; for in my
boyhood I often saw in the gardens below the retaining wall and arches,
which the proprietor had to build at enormous expense, when threatened by
the prospect of the foundations giving way, and the great line of houses
sliding down into the river.
It was when I was a very
little boy that 1 used to go before breakfast to see the foundations being
laid of Clarendon Crescent, being the first row of buildings on the north
side of the river, the Dean Bridge having been erected for the purpose of
opening out the Learmonth property for building. It must have been
distressing to the people in Moray Place and Ainslie Place to watch the
gradual closing to them of the beautiful view to the westward by the
building of the crescents and terraces on the other side of the Water of
Leith; although inevitable, it could not but have been a trying experience. |
