DOI issue:
No. 33 (December, 1895)
DOI article:Armour, Margaret: Edinburgh as a sketching ground: illustrated by W. Brown MacDougall$nElektronische Ressource
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.17295#0185
Edinburgh as a Sketching Ground
quite as much as of sin. But a painter is hardly
fit to judge. Shivered monuments and wrecked
cathedrals crash maledictions in his ear. Beauty
and Holiness seem to him one, and to mulct
either for the sake of the other is like robbing
Peter to pay Paul. Knox was a hard man, made
for hard work, and it doubtless needed his rock-
hewn nature to front those surging times. Many
a proud noble sought audience there: now the
Queen's own messenger or some Earl of her train ;
now the Lords of the Congregation searching for
light on some debated doctrinal point. It was over
that austere threshold that, an old man of fifty-
eight, the grim divine led his second bride, Margaret
Stewart, then aged seventeen, youngest daughter of
Lord Ochiltree. He is described as having gone to
her " on ane trim gelding, nocht lyk ane prophet or
ane auld decrepit priest, as he was, but lyk as he
had been ane of the Blude Royal, with his bands
of taffettie freschnit with golden ringis and precious
stones, and as is plainly reportit in the country, be
sorcerie and witchcraft did sua allure that puir
gentlewoman that she could not leve without him."
This is the wife who saw a " blak, uglie, ill-favoured
man busily talking with him in the same chamber,"
and who was " so sudianly amazed that she took
"ANOTHER VIEW OF THE CASTLE "
BY W. BROWN MACDOUGALL
I70
sickness and dyed." The best comment on this
scandal is the pension which this lady afterwards
received, and the fact of her marrying again.
Alas ! there is no sign now of the " blak, ill-
favoured man," nothing interesting or wicked at
all. The Devil has found it too dull. The rooms
are swept and garnished, and their secrets laid bare
to the tourist—that is, the secrets not worth telling,
as is the way with enforced confession.
Picturesque as the old building is, one fancies it
chill with arrested life, and, for my own part, I
prefer those where the stream of events has flowed
on, even though the new generations efface the old.
Such a one is Symson's House. There, in the
year 1700, lived a venerable printer and poet who
issued in his own best type what we may suppose
was his own best poem, under the tremendous title
of Tripairiarchicon.
A squat little corbelled tower close to Holyrood
attracts the eye rather pleasantly. It is called
Queen Mary's Bath. Round it used to stretch
the Palace Gardens, and one likes to think of Mary
emerging radiant from her morning plunge, and
strolling through the dewy May flowers, crimes and
cares forgotten in the simple joy of living.
But I fear I have violated proportions by linger-
ing too long in one quarter. Beauty is not confined
to the Old Town. The new runs it close in many
parts. On the Princes Street side, to the east,
there is a turreted fortress, whence the cliff falls
sheer to the railway. It might be built to entrap
the intelligent stranger into premature raptures, so
naturally, on a first entrance from the south by
train, is it mistaken for the Castle. A stronghold
it is indeed, but a bolted and barred one of the law,
named the Calton Jail. In a hazy sun, or a slight
mist, the view away to the west has a nebulous,
dreamy charm.
Now perhaps I have said enough—too much if
you think it enough! Come and see and be con-
quered for yourself. You will find that the half
was not told you. I have not even touched on the
environs—the ruins, the mountains, the rivers, the
ravines—that draw you from every side. All is
significant, all classic. One can wander in Steven-
son's footprints up the shoulders of the Pentlands,
and across the grave green pastures, or loiter by the
river, named among those that made music in his
memory, "that dirty Water of Leith."
These, and kindred matters, if they interest you,
I reserve for another letter.
With cordial greetings' from both, yours very
truly,
Margaret Armour.
quite as much as of sin. But a painter is hardly
fit to judge. Shivered monuments and wrecked
cathedrals crash maledictions in his ear. Beauty
and Holiness seem to him one, and to mulct
either for the sake of the other is like robbing
Peter to pay Paul. Knox was a hard man, made
for hard work, and it doubtless needed his rock-
hewn nature to front those surging times. Many
a proud noble sought audience there: now the
Queen's own messenger or some Earl of her train ;
now the Lords of the Congregation searching for
light on some debated doctrinal point. It was over
that austere threshold that, an old man of fifty-
eight, the grim divine led his second bride, Margaret
Stewart, then aged seventeen, youngest daughter of
Lord Ochiltree. He is described as having gone to
her " on ane trim gelding, nocht lyk ane prophet or
ane auld decrepit priest, as he was, but lyk as he
had been ane of the Blude Royal, with his bands
of taffettie freschnit with golden ringis and precious
stones, and as is plainly reportit in the country, be
sorcerie and witchcraft did sua allure that puir
gentlewoman that she could not leve without him."
This is the wife who saw a " blak, uglie, ill-favoured
man busily talking with him in the same chamber,"
and who was " so sudianly amazed that she took
"ANOTHER VIEW OF THE CASTLE "
BY W. BROWN MACDOUGALL
I70
sickness and dyed." The best comment on this
scandal is the pension which this lady afterwards
received, and the fact of her marrying again.
Alas ! there is no sign now of the " blak, ill-
favoured man," nothing interesting or wicked at
all. The Devil has found it too dull. The rooms
are swept and garnished, and their secrets laid bare
to the tourist—that is, the secrets not worth telling,
as is the way with enforced confession.
Picturesque as the old building is, one fancies it
chill with arrested life, and, for my own part, I
prefer those where the stream of events has flowed
on, even though the new generations efface the old.
Such a one is Symson's House. There, in the
year 1700, lived a venerable printer and poet who
issued in his own best type what we may suppose
was his own best poem, under the tremendous title
of Tripairiarchicon.
A squat little corbelled tower close to Holyrood
attracts the eye rather pleasantly. It is called
Queen Mary's Bath. Round it used to stretch
the Palace Gardens, and one likes to think of Mary
emerging radiant from her morning plunge, and
strolling through the dewy May flowers, crimes and
cares forgotten in the simple joy of living.
But I fear I have violated proportions by linger-
ing too long in one quarter. Beauty is not confined
to the Old Town. The new runs it close in many
parts. On the Princes Street side, to the east,
there is a turreted fortress, whence the cliff falls
sheer to the railway. It might be built to entrap
the intelligent stranger into premature raptures, so
naturally, on a first entrance from the south by
train, is it mistaken for the Castle. A stronghold
it is indeed, but a bolted and barred one of the law,
named the Calton Jail. In a hazy sun, or a slight
mist, the view away to the west has a nebulous,
dreamy charm.
Now perhaps I have said enough—too much if
you think it enough! Come and see and be con-
quered for yourself. You will find that the half
was not told you. I have not even touched on the
environs—the ruins, the mountains, the rivers, the
ravines—that draw you from every side. All is
significant, all classic. One can wander in Steven-
son's footprints up the shoulders of the Pentlands,
and across the grave green pastures, or loiter by the
river, named among those that made music in his
memory, "that dirty Water of Leith."
These, and kindred matters, if they interest you,
I reserve for another letter.
With cordial greetings' from both, yours very
truly,
Margaret Armour.