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Authors: Rick Wilson
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commercial premises and caterings for basic human needs in this well-gardened residential plan: then, as now to some extent, it had relatively few shops, taverns, workshops, hotels or clubs and minimal general social buzz. So with little in the way of fine goods, furnishings and social contact immediately to hand in their still-growing community, this higher society began to regard the Old Town – before Princes Street emerged with luxury shops and products to satisfy their new expectations – as a place to revisit. Not just for shopping and snuff but for the intellectual stimulation of the Enlightenment magnet personified by people like the philosopher David Hume, the economist Adam Smith and, of course, the most intriguing draw of them all, Ayrshire’s ploughman poet Robert Burns, lured to ‘Edina’ in 1786 to be celebrated as ‘Caledonia’s Bard’ for his revised edition of Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect .
Grand personages invited the handsome bard-in-buckskin-breeches to their homes for him to be regarded with wonder – especially by much-impressed ladies. In reciprocal tribute, and thinking for a moment that he ought to be posh in the manner of his well-born admirers, he briefly abandoned his Ayrshire roughage to write a less-than-successful ‘English’ tribute to the capital whose eight verses began with:
Edina! Scotia’s darling seat!
All hail thy palaces and tow’rs;
Where once, beneath a Monarch’s feet,
Sat Legislation’s sovereign pow’rs:
From marking wildly-scatt’red flow’rs,
As on the banks of Ayr I stray’d,
And singing, lone, the ling’ring hours,
I shelter in thy honour’d shade.
As it happened, Burns’s lodging in Scotia’s darling seat was in Baxter’s Close (near today’s Writers’ Museum in Lady Stair’s Close), almost immediately opposite Deacon Brodie’s premises in the cobbled Lawnmarket. And while the star visitor was making a raft of illustrious local contacts like the Earl of Glencairn, distinguished lawyer Henry Erskine and Encyclopaedia Britannica editor William Smellie, not to mention the celebrated painters Nasmyth and Raeburn, it is said that the two near-neighbours became acquainted and that Brodie even attended the party at which Burns met, and was smitten by, Clarinda, his unfulfilled love and poetic inspiration.
The men certainly shared at least one drinking den: Johnnie Dowie’s, a dark but convivial alcove of a tavern in Libberton’s Wynd (the now-demolished address of Brodie’s mistress Jean Watt, roughly locatable today as the east pavement of George IV Bridge), where in a long narrow backroom affectionately dubbed The Coffin the poet would hold court on matters political and romantic among his admirers.
These included a mutual acquaintance, William Creech, the staunchly moralistic bookseller-publisher of Burns’s Edinburgh edition who, as a fellow town councillor and another near neighbour, was always wary of Brodie. Creech was to have his suspicions confirmed when he served on the jury at the famous burglar’s trial, and he then published his own musings on the event, printed just days later. He was also a co-founder of Edinburgh’s Speculative Society, a debating club whose members included various great figures such as Francis Horner and Sir Walter Scott.
So the Old Town remained the city’s beating heart, despite its continuing squalor in places, and could not be written off by the gradual coming to life of James Craig’s great vision. Not only was the city’s ancient centre a stage for ‘all human life is there’ day-to-day theatre, it had, along its fishlike High Street backbone with closes shooting off like ribs on either side, thriving retail premises and offices, clubs and tobacconists, booksellers and busy workshops, such as that of the Brodies. With the great lowering castle at its top end and the delicately handsome French-style Palace of Holyroodhouse at the lower end, the Royal Mile also had close proximity to
Grand personages invited the handsome bard-in-buckskin-breeches to their homes for him to be regarded with wonder – especially by much-impressed ladies. In reciprocal tribute, and thinking for a moment that he ought to be posh in the manner of his well-born admirers, he briefly abandoned his Ayrshire roughage to write a less-than-successful ‘English’ tribute to the capital whose eight verses began with:
Edina! Scotia’s darling seat!
All hail thy palaces and tow’rs;
Where once, beneath a Monarch’s feet,
Sat Legislation’s sovereign pow’rs:
From marking wildly-scatt’red flow’rs,
As on the banks of Ayr I stray’d,
And singing, lone, the ling’ring hours,
I shelter in thy honour’d shade.
As it happened, Burns’s lodging in Scotia’s darling seat was in Baxter’s Close (near today’s Writers’ Museum in Lady Stair’s Close), almost immediately opposite Deacon Brodie’s premises in the cobbled Lawnmarket. And while the star visitor was making a raft of illustrious local contacts like the Earl of Glencairn, distinguished lawyer Henry Erskine and Encyclopaedia Britannica editor William Smellie, not to mention the celebrated painters Nasmyth and Raeburn, it is said that the two near-neighbours became acquainted and that Brodie even attended the party at which Burns met, and was smitten by, Clarinda, his unfulfilled love and poetic inspiration.
The men certainly shared at least one drinking den: Johnnie Dowie’s, a dark but convivial alcove of a tavern in Libberton’s Wynd (the now-demolished address of Brodie’s mistress Jean Watt, roughly locatable today as the east pavement of George IV Bridge), where in a long narrow backroom affectionately dubbed The Coffin the poet would hold court on matters political and romantic among his admirers.
These included a mutual acquaintance, William Creech, the staunchly moralistic bookseller-publisher of Burns’s Edinburgh edition who, as a fellow town councillor and another near neighbour, was always wary of Brodie. Creech was to have his suspicions confirmed when he served on the jury at the famous burglar’s trial, and he then published his own musings on the event, printed just days later. He was also a co-founder of Edinburgh’s Speculative Society, a debating club whose members included various great figures such as Francis Horner and Sir Walter Scott.
So the Old Town remained the city’s beating heart, despite its continuing squalor in places, and could not be written off by the gradual coming to life of James Craig’s great vision. Not only was the city’s ancient centre a stage for ‘all human life is there’ day-to-day theatre, it had, along its fishlike High Street backbone with closes shooting off like ribs on either side, thriving retail premises and offices, clubs and tobacconists, booksellers and busy workshops, such as that of the Brodies. With the great lowering castle at its top end and the delicately handsome French-style Palace of Holyroodhouse at the lower end, the Royal Mile also had close proximity to
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