?? Letters,? that the Countess of Stair was subject
to hysterical fits-the result perhaps of all she had
undergone as a wife. After being long the queen
of society in Edinburgh, she died in November,
1759, twelve years after the death of the Marshal.
She was the first person in the city, of her time,
who had a black domestic servant. Another
dowager, the Lady Clestram, succeeded her in the
old house in the close. It was advertised for
sale, at the upset price of A250, in the Edinburgh
Advertiser of 1789; and is described as ?that
large dwelling-house, sometime belonging to the
Dowager Countess of Stair, situated at the entry
to the Earthen Mound. The sunk storey consists
of a good kitchen, servants? rooms, closets, cellars,
&c. j the second of a dining and bed rooms ; the
third storey of a dining and five bed rooms.? It has
long since been the abode of the humblest artisans.
The parents of Miss Fetrier, the well-known
novelist, according to a writer in T?jZe Bar for
November, 1878, occupied a flat in Lady Stair?s
Close after their .marriage. Mrs. Femer ( d e
Coutts) was the daughter of a farmer at Gourdon,
near Montrose, and was a woman of remarkable
beauty, as her portrait by Sir George Chalmers,
Bart. (a native of Edinburgh) in 1765 attests. At
the time of her mamage, in 1767, she had resided
in Holyrood with her aunt, the Hon. Mrs. Maitland,
widow of a younger son of Lord Lauderdale;
and the flat the young mamed couple took in
the old close had just been vacated by Sir James
Pulteney and his wife Lady Bath.
When Sir Richard Steele, of the Spectator, visited
Edinburgh, in 1717, on the business of the Forfeited
Estates Commission, we know not whether he
resided in Lady Stair?s Close, but it is recorded
that he gave, in a tavern there, a whimsical supper,
to all the eccentric-looking mendicants in the city,
giving them the enjoyment of an abundant feast,
that he might witness their various oddities.
Richard Sheils mentions this circumstance, and
adds that Steele confessed afterwards that he had
?drunk enough of native drollery to compose a
comedy.?
Upper Baxter?s Close, the adjoining alley, is
associated with the name of Robert Burns. There
the latter, in 1786, saved from a heartless and
hopeless exile by the generosity of the blind poet,
Dr. Blacklock, came direct from the plough and
the banks of his native Ayr, to share the humble
room and bed of his friend Richmond, a lawyer?s
clerk, in the house of Mrs. Carfrae. But a few
weeks before poor Bums had made arrangements
to go to Jamaica as joint overseer on an estate; but
the publication of his poems was deemed such a
jUCCeSS, that he altered his plans, and came to
Edinburgh in the November of that year. In one
Jf the numbers of the Lounger appeared a review
3f the first (or Kilmarnock) edition of his poems,
written by Henry Mackenzie, who was thus the
means, together with Dr. Blacklock, of kindly
bringing Burns before the learned and fashionable
circles of Edinburgh. His merited fame had
come before him, and he was now caressed by all
ranks. His brilliant conversational powers seem
to have impressed all who came in contact with
him as much as admiration of his poetry. Under
the patronage of Principal Robertson, Professor
Dugald Stewart, Henry Mackenzie, author of the
? Man of Feeling,?? and Sir John Whiteford of that
ilk, but more than all of James Earl of Glencaim,
and other eminent persons, a new edition of his
poems was published in April, 1787 ; but amid all
the adulation he received he ever maintained his
native simplicity and sturdy Scottish independence
of character. By the Earl of Glencaim he was introduced
to the members of the Caledonian Hunt,
and he dedicated to them the second edition of
his poems In verse he touchingly records his
gratitude to the earl :-
?( The bridegroom may forget the bride
The monarch may forget the crown
The mother may forget the child
But I?ll remember thee, Glencairn,
Was made ?his wedded wife yestreen ;
That on his head an hour has been ;
That smiles sae sweetly on her knee ;
And all that thou hast done for me!?
Bums felt acutely the death of this amiable and
accomplished noble, which occurred in 1791.
The room occupied by Bums in Baxter?s Close,
and from which he was wont to sally firth to dine
and sup with the magnates of the city, is still pointed
out, with its single window which opens into Lady
Stair?s Close. There, as Allan Cunningham records,
he had but ?his share of a deal table,a sanded
floor, and a chaff bed, at eighteenpence a week.?
According to the same biographer, the impression
which Burns made at first on the fair, the
titled, and the learned, of Edinburgh, ?though
lessened by intimacy on the part of the men,
remained unimpaired on that of the softer sex
till his dying day. His company, during the
season of balls and festivities, continued to be
courted by all who desired to be reckoned gay
or polite. Cards of invitation fell thick. on him;
he was not more welcomed to the plumed and
jewelled groups whom her fascinating Grace of
Gordon gathered about her, than he was to the
grave divines and polished scholars who assembled
ROBERT BURNS, 107
in the rooms of Stewart, Blair, or Robertson. . , .
But Edinburgh offered tables and entertainers of a
less staid character, when the glass circulated with
greater rapidity, when wit flowed more freely, and
when there were neither high-bred ladies to charm
conversation within the bounds of modesty, nor
serious philosophers nor grave divines to set a
limit to the licence of speech or the hours of
enjoyment. To those companions, who were all
of the better classes,
the levities of the rustic
poet?s wit and humour
were as welcome as
were the tenderest of
his narratives to the
accomplished Duchess
of Gordon or the beautiful
Miss Burnet of
Monboddo ; theyraised
a social roar not at all
classic, and demanded
and provoked his sallies
of wild humour, or
indecorous mirth, with
as much delight as he
had witnessed among
the lads of Kyle,
when, at mill or forge,
his humorous sallies
abounded as the ale
flowed.?
While in Edinburgh
Bums was the frequent
and welcome guest ot
John Campbell, Precentor
of the Canongate
Church, a famous
amateur vocalist in his
time, though forgotten
now ; and to him Bums
applied for an introduction
to Bailie Gentle,
After a stay of six months in Edinburgh, Burns ? set out on a tour to the south of Scotland, accompanied
by Robert Ainslie, W.S. ; but elsewhere we
shall meet him again. Opposite the house in which
he dwelt is one with a very ancient legend, BZissit.
be. th. bra. in, aZZ. His .gz)Xs. nm. and. euir. In
1746 this was the inheritance of Martha White,
only child of a wealthy burgess who became a
banker in London. She? became the wife of
to the end that he might accord his tribute to the
memory of the poet, poor Robert Fergusson, whose
grave lay in the adjacent churchyard, without a
stone to mark it. Bailie Gentle expressed his
entire concurrence with the wish of Bums, but
said that ?he had no power to grant permission
without the consent of the managers of the Kirk
funds.?
?Tell them,? said Burns, ?it is the Ayrshire
ploughman who makes the request.? The authority
was obtained, and a promise given, which we
believe has been sacredly kept, that the grave
should remain inviolate.
2s CLOSE*
Charles niIlth Earl of
Kincardine, and afterwards
Earl of Elgin,
?? undoubted heir male
and chief of d l the
Bruces in Scotland,?
as Douglas records.
The countess, who died
in 1810, filled, with
honour to herself, the
office of governess to
the unfortunate Princess
Charlotte of Wales.
One of the early
breaches made in the
vicinity of the central
thoroughfare of the city
was Bank Street, on
tlie north (the site of
Lower Baxter?s Close),
wherein was the shop
of two eminent cloth
merchants, David
Bridges and Son, which
became the usual resort
of the whole Ziteraii of
the city in its day.
David Bridges junior
had a strongly developed
bias towards
literary studies, and,
according to the memoirs
of Professor WiE
son, was dubbed by the Blackwood nits, (? Director-
General of the Fine Arts.? His love for these and
the drama was not to be controlled by his connection
with mercantile business ; and while the sefiior
partner devoted himself to the avocations of trade in
one part of their well-known premises, the younger
was employed in adorning a sort of sanctum, where
one might daily meet Sir Walter Scott and his
friend Sir Adam Ferguson (who, as a boy, had
often sat on the knee of David Hume), Professor
Tradition points to the window on the immediate right (marked *)
as that of the mom occupied by Burns.
