I 66 MEMORIALS OF EDINBURGH.
the plough, to his friend Richmond, a writer’s apprentice, and accepted the offer of a share
of his room and bed, in the house of Mrs Carfrae, Baxter’s Close, Lawnmarket.’
In the first stair to the left, on entering the close, and on the first floor of the house,
is the poet’s lodging. The tradition of his residence there has passed through very few
hands ; the predecessor of the present tenant (a respectable widow, who has occupied the
house for many years) learned it from Mrs Carfrae, and the poet’# room is pointed out,
with its window looking into Lady Stair’s Close. The land is an ancient and very
substantial building, with large and neatly moulded windows, retaining the marks of
having been finished with stone mullions; in one tier in particular the windows are
placed one above another, only separated at each story by a narrow lintel, so as to
present the singular appearance of one long and narrow window from top to bottom
of the lofty land. From this ancient dwelling, Burns issued to dine or sup with the
magnates of the land, and, “when the company arose in the gilded and illuminated
rooms, some of the fair guests-perhaps
Her Grace,
Whose flambeaux flash against the morning skies,
And gild our chamber ceilings as they pass,
took the hesitating arm of the bard, went smiling to her coach, waved a graceful
good-night with her jewelled hand, and, departing to her mansion, left him in the middle
of the street, to grope his way through the dingy alleys .of the gude town,’ to his obscure
lodging, with his share of a deal table, a sanded floor, and a chaff bed, at eighteenpence
a week.” a The poet’s lodging, however, is no such dingy apartment as this description
implies ; it is a large and well-proportioned room, neatly panelled with wood, according
to a fashion by no means very antiquated then ; and if he was as well boarded as lodged,
the hardy ploughman would find. hia independence exposed to no insurmountable temptation,
for all the grandeur of the old Scottish Duchesses, most of whose carriages were
only sedan chairs, unless when they preferred the more economical conveyance of a gude
pair of pattens I ”
Over the doorway of the old house immediately opposite to that of Burns’, in
Baxter’s Close, there is a curious and evidently a very ancient lintel,-a relic of some
more stately mansion of the olden time, It bears a shield, now much defaced, surmounted
by a crown, and above this a cross, with the figure of a man leaning over it, wearing a
mitre. The initials, A. S. and E. I., are placed on either side; and above the whole, in
antique Gothic letters, is the inscription, BLISSIT BE * THE * LORD IN -
HIS * GIFTIS FOR * NOV AND EVIR. We are inclined, from the appearance
of this stone, to assign to it an earlier date than that of any other inscription in
Edinburgh. The house into which it is built is evidently a much later erection, and
no clue is furnished from its titles as to any previous building having occupied the site.
It passed by inheritance, in the year 1746, into the possession of Martha White, only
child of a wealthy burgess, whose gold won for her, some years later, the honours of
Countess of Elgin and Kincardine, Governess to her Royal Highness Princess
Charlotte of Wales, and the parentage of sundry honourable Lady Marthas, Lord
Thomases, and the like.
Allan Cunningham’s Burns, vol. i. p. 115. Ibid, vol. i p. 131.
