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CHAPTER II. OLD TOWN - THE LANDS. THE Old Town, it is pretended,
is the chief
characteristic, and, from a picturesque point of view, the liver-wing
of
Edinburgh. It is one of the most
common forms of depreciation to throw cold water on the whole by adroit
over-commendation of a part, since everything worth judging, whether it
be a
man, a work of art, or only a fine city, must be judged upon its merits
as a
whole. The Old Town depends for
much of its effect on the new quarters that lie around it, on the
sufficiency of
its situation, and on the hills that back it up.
If you were to set it somewhere else by itself, it would
look remarkably
like Stirling in a bolder and loftier edition.
The point is to see this embellished Stirling planted in
the midst of a
large, active, and fantastic modern city; for there the two re-act in a
picturesque sense, and the one is the making of the other. The Old Town occupies a sloping
ridge or tail of
diluvial matter, protected, in some subsidence of the waters, by the
Castle
cliffs which fortify it to the west. On
the one side of it and the other the new towns of the south and of the
north
occupy their lower, broader, and more gentle hill-tops.
Thus, the quarter of the Castle over-tops the whole city
and keeps an
open view to sea and land. It
dominates for miles on every side; and people on the decks of ships, or
ploughing in quiet country places over in Fife, can see the banner on
the Castle
battlements, and the smoke of the Old Town blowing abroad over the
subjacent
country. A city that is set upon a hill.
It was, I suppose, from this distant aspect that she got
her nickname of
Auld Reekie. Perhaps it was given
her by people who had never crossed her doors: day after day, from
their various
rustic Pisgahs, they had seen the pile of building on the hill-top, and
the long
plume of smoke over the plain; so it appeared to them; so it had
appeared to
their fathers tilling the same field; and as that was all they knew of
the
place, it could be all expressed in these two words. Indeed, even on a nearer view,
the Old Town is
properly smoked; and though it is well washed with rain all the year
round, it
has a grim and sooty aspect among its younger suburbs.
It grew, under the law that regulates the growth of walled
cities in
precarious situations, not in extent, but in height and density.
Public buildings were forced, wherever there was room for
them, into the
midst of thoroughfares; thorough - fares were diminished into lanes;
houses
sprang up story after story, neighbour mounting upon neighbour's
shoulder, as in
some Black Hole of Calcutta, until the population slept fourteen or
fifteen deep
in a vertical direction. The
tallest of these lands, as
they are locally termed, have long since been burnt
out; but to this day it is not uncommon to see eight or ten windows at
a flight;
and the cliff of building which hangs imminent over Waverley Bridge
would still
put many natural precipices to shame. The
cellars are already high above the gazer's head, planted on the steep
hill-side;
as for the garret, all the furniture may be in the pawn-shop, but it
commands a
famous prospect to the Highland hills. The
poor man may roost up there in the centre of Edinburgh, and yet have a
peep of
the green country from his window; he shall see the quarters of the
well-to-do
fathoms underneath, with their broad squares and gardens; he shall have
nothing
overhead but a few spires, the stone top-gallants of the city; and
perhaps the
wind may reach him with a rustic pureness, and bring a smack of the sea
or of
flowering lilacs in the spring. It is almost the correct
literary sentiment to
deplore the revolutionary improvements of Mr. Chambers and his
following.
It is easy to be a conservator of the discomforts of
others; indeed, it
is only our good qualities we find it irksome to conserve.
Assuredly, in driving streets through the black labyrinth,
a few curious
old corners have been swept away, and some associations turned out of
house and
home. But what slices of sunlight,
what breaths of clean air, have been let in!
And what a picturesque world remains untouched!
You go under dark arches, and down dark stairs and alleys.
The way is so narrow that you can lay a hand on either
wall; so steep
that, in greasy winter weather, the pavement is almost as treacherous
as ice.
Washing dangles above washing from the windows; the houses
bulge outwards
upon flimsy brackets; you see a bit of sculpture in a dark corner; at
the top of
all, a gable and a few crowsteps are printed on the sky.
Here, you come into a court where the children are at play
and the grown
people sit upon their doorsteps, and perhaps a church spire shows
itself above
the roofs. Here, in the narrowest
of the entry, you find a great old mansion still erect, with some
insignia of
its former state - some scutcheon, some holy or courageous motto, on
the lintel.
The local antiquary points out where famous and well-born
people had
their lodging; and as you look up, out pops the head of a slatternly
woman from
the countess's window. The Bedouins
camp within Pharaoh's palace walls, and the old war-ship is given over
to the
rats. We are already a far way from
the days when powdered heads were plentiful in these alleys, with
jolly,
port-wine faces underneath. Even in
the chief thoroughfares Irish washings flutter at the windows, and the
pavements
are encumbered with loiterers. These loiterers are a true
character of the scene.
Some shrewd Scotch workmen may have paused on their way to
a job,
debating Church affairs and politics with their tools upon their arm.
But the most part are of a different order - skulking
jail-birds;
unkempt, bare-foot children; big-mouthed, robust women, in a sort of
uniform of
striped flannel petticoat and short tartan shawl; among these, a few
surpervising constables and a dismal sprinkling of mutineers and broken
men from
higher ranks in society, with some mark of better days upon them, like
a brand.
In a place no larger than Edinburgh, and where the traffic
is mostly
centred in five or six chief streets, the same face comes often under
the notice
of an idle stroller. In fact, from this
point of view, Edinburgh is not so much a
small city as the largest of small towns. It
is scarce possible to avoid observing your neighbours; and I never yet
heard of
any one who tried. It has been my
fortune, in this anonymous accidental way, to watch more than one of
these
downward travellers for some stages on the road to ruin.
One man must have been upwards of sixty before I first
observed him, and
he made then a decent, personable figure in broad-cloth of the best.
For three years he kept falling -- grease coming and
buttons going from
the square-skirted coat, the face puffing and pimpling, the shoulders
growing
bowed, the hair falling scant and grey upon his head; and the last that
ever I
saw of him, he was standing at the mouth of an entry with several men
in
moleskin, three parts drunk, and his old black raiment daubed with mud. I fancy that I still can hear him laugh.
There was something heart-breaking in this gradual
declension at so
advanced an age; you would have thought a man of sixty out of the reach
of these
calamities; you would have thought that he was niched by that time into
a safe
place in life, whence he could pass quietly and honourably into the
grave. One of the earliest marks of
these degringolades is,
that the victim begins to disappear from the New Town thoroughfares,
and takes
to the High Street, like a wounded animal to the woods.
And such an one is the type of the quarter.
It also has fallen socially. A
scutcheon over the door somewhat jars in sentiment where there is a
washing at
every window. The old man, when I saw him
last, wore the coat in which he
had played the gentleman three years before; and that was just what
gave him so
pre-eminent an air of wretchedness. It is true that the over-population was at least as
dense in the epoch of lords and ladies, and that now-a-days some
customs which
made Edinburgh notorious of yore have been fortunately pretermitted.
But an aggregation of comfort is not distasteful like an
aggregation of
the reverse. Nobody cares how many lords
and ladies, and divines and
lawyers, may have been crowded into these houses in the past - perhaps
the more
the merrier. The glasses clink
around the china punch-bowl, some one touches the virginals, there are
peacocks'
feathers on the chimney, and the tapers burn clear and pale in the red
firelight. That is not an ugly
picture in itself, nor will it become ugly upon repetition.
All the better if the like were going on in every second
room; the land
would only look the more inviting. Times
are changed. In one house, perhaps,
two-score families herd together; and, perhaps, not one of them is
wholly out of
the reach of want. The great hotel
is given over to discomfort from the foundation to the chimney-tops;
everywhere
a pinching, narrow habit, scanty meals, and an air of sluttishness and
dirt.
In the first room there is a birth, in another a death, in
a third a
sordid drinking-bout, and the detective and the Bible-reader cross upon
the
stairs. High words are audible from
dwelling to dwelling, and children have a strange experience from the
first;
only a robust soul, you would think, could grow up in such conditions
without
hurt. And even if God tempers His
dispensations to the young, and all the ill does not arise that our
apprehensions may forecast, the sight of such a way of living is
disquieting to
people who are more happily circumstanced.
Social inequality is nowhere more ostentatious than at
Edinburgh.
I have mentioned already how, to the stroller along
Princes Street, the
High Street callously exhibits its back garrets.
It is true, there is a garden between.
And although nothing could be more glaring by way of
contrast, sometimes
the opposition is more immediate; sometimes the thing lies in a
nutshell, and
there is not so much as a blade of grass between the rich and poor.
To look over the South Bridge and see the Cowgate below
full of crying
hawkers, is to view one rank of society from another in the twinkling
of an eye. One night I went along the
Cowgate after every one
was a-bed but the policeman, and stopped by hazard before a tall land.
The moon touched upon its chimneys, and shone blankly on
the upper
windows; there was no light anywhere in the great bulk of building; but
as I
stood there it seemed to me that I could hear quite a body of quiet
sounds from
the interior; doubtless there were many clocks ticking, and people
snoring on
their backs. And thus, as I
fancied, the dense life within made itself faintly audible in my ears,
family
after family contributing its quota to the general hum, and the whole
pile
beating in tune to its timepieces, like a great disordered heart.
Perhaps it was little more than a fancy altogether, but it
was strangely
impressive at the time, and gave me an imaginative measure of the
disproportion
between the quantity of living flesh and the trifling walls that
separated and
contained it. There was nothing fanciful, at least, but every circumstance of terror and reality, in the fall of the LAND in the High Street. The building had grown rotten to the core; the entry underneath had suddenly closed up so that the scavenger's barrow could not pass; cracks and reverberations sounded through the house at night; the inhabitants of the huge old human bee-hive discussed their peril when they encountered on the stair; some had even left their dwellings in a panic of fear, and returned to them again in a fit of economy or self-respect; when, in the black hours of a Sunday morning, the whole structure ran together with a hideous uproar and tumbled story upon story to the ground. The physical shock was felt far and near; and the moral shock travelled with the morning milkmaid into all the suburbs. The church-bells never sounded more dismally over Edinburgh than that grey forenoon. Death had made a brave harvest, and, like Samson, by pulling down one roof, destroyed many a home. None who saw it can have forgotten the aspect of the gable; here it was plastered, there papered, according to the rooms; here the kettle still stood on the hob, high overhead; and there a cheap picture of the Queen was pasted over the chimney. So, by this disaster, you had a glimpse into the life of thirty families, all suddenly cut off from the revolving years. The land had fallen; and with the land how much! Far in the country, people saw a gap in the city ranks, and the sun looked through between the chimneys in an unwonted place. And all over the world, in London, in Canada, in New Zealand, fancy what a multitude of people could exclaim with truth: 'The house that I was born in fell last night!' |