124 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. princcs Street
came into her possession, the pocket-knife, fork,
and spoon which Prince Charles used in all his
marches and subsequent wanderings. The case is
a small one, covered with black shagreen ; for
pottability, the knife, fork, and spoon are made to
screw upon handles, so that the three articles form
six pieces for close packing. They are all engraved
with an ornament of thistle-leaves, and the fork
and spoon have the prince?s initials, C. s : all have
the Dutch plate stamp, showing that they were
manufactured in Holland.
It is supposed that this case, with its contents,
came to Lady Mary Clerk through Miss Drelincourt,
daughter of the Dean of Armagh, in Ireland, ,
While her mother was still confined to bed a
Highland party, under a chieftain of the Macdonald
clan, came to her house, but the commander, on
learning the circumstances, not only chivalrously
restrained his men from levying any contribution,
but took from his bonnet his own white rose or
cockade, and pinned it on the infant?s breast,
?that it might protect the household from any
trouble by others. This rosette the lady kept to
her dying day.? In after years she became the
wife of Sir James Clerk of Pennicuick, Bart., and
when he went off to the royal yacht to present him
with the silver cross badge, the gift of ?the ladies
of Scotland.?
From the king, the case, with its contents, passed
to the Marquis of Conyngham, and from him to
his son -4lbert, first Lord Londesborough, and they
are now preserved with great care amidst the
valuable collection of ancient plate and b2jbuien2 at
Grimston Park, Yorkshire.
Sir Walter Scott was a frequent visitor at
No. 100, Princes Street, as he was on intimate
terms with Lady Clerk, who died several years
after the king?s visit, having attained a green old
age. Till past her eightieth year she retained an
( ? I Book of Days.?)
who became wife of Hugh, third Viscount Pnmrose,
in whose house in London the loyal Flora
Macdonald found a shelter after liberation from
the long confinement she underwent for her share
in promoting the escape of the prince, who had
given it to her as a souvenir at the end of his
perilous wanderings.
In the Edinburgh Obsmw of 1822 it is
recorded that when George IV. contemplated his
visit to Scotland, he expressed a wish to have
some relic of the unfortunate prince, on which
PRINCES STREET, LOOKING EAST FROM SCOTT?S MONUMENT.
erect and alert carriage, together with some oldfashioned
peculiarities of costume, which made her
one of the most noted street figures of her time.
The editor of ?The Book of Days? says that
he is enabled to recall a walk he had one day with
Sir Walter, ending in Constable?s shop, No. 10,
Princes Street, when Lady Clerk was purchasing
some books at a side counter. Sir Walter, passing
through to the stairs by which Mr. Constable?s
room was reached, did not recognise her ladyship,
%rho, catching sight of him as he was about to
PRINCES STREET, LOOKING WEST. (From a Photogmjh ay G. NI. WiZsoti and Co.)
The University Club, to. the westward, was
erected in 1866-7, from designs by Peddie and
Kinnear, in an ornate Italian style, with Grecian
decoration, at the cost of ~14,000, and has ample
accommodation for 650 members. The new Conservative
Club, a nimor edifice, stands a little to
the east of it.
Nos. 129 and 130 are now extensive shop
premises. In 1811 the former was the residence
of Sir Alexander Charles Gibson-Maitland of
Clifton Hall, in Lothian, the first baronet of the
ascend, called out, ? Oh, Sir Walter ! are you really
going to pass me?? He immediately turned to
make his usual cordial Feetings, and apologised
with demurely waggish reference to her odd dress :
?I?m sure, my lady, by this time I might know
your back as well as your face.? ?
No. 104 is now connected with the first attempt
in arcades in Edinburgh. It forms a six-storey
edifice, comprising an hotel, and is an elegant glassroofed
bazaar hall, 105 feet long by 30 feet high.
, It was completed in 1876. In 1830, No. 105
was the residence of the Honourable Baron Clerk
Rattray, It is now a warehouse; and some fifteen
years before that, No. XIO was the residence of
Drummond of Blair Drummond. It is now
Taylor?s Repository. Drummocd of Gairdrum
occupied No. I I 7.
name, who died in 1820; and in No. 136 dwelt
Mr. Henry Siddons of the Theatre Royal.
No. 146 was latterly the Osborne Hotel, which
was nearly destroyed by fire in 1879. In the
following year it was opened as the Scottish
Liberal Club, inaugurated by the Right Hon.
W. E. Gladstone, M.P. for Midlothian.
At the extreme west end of the street, and at its
junction with the Lothian Road, stands St. John?s
Episcopal Chapel, erected in 1817, after a design,
in the somewhat feeble modern Gothic of that day,
by William Burn, though modelled from and partially
detailed after St. George?s Chapel at Windsor.
It is an oblong edifice, consisting of a nave and
aisles, I 13 feet long by 62 feet wide, and has at its
western extremity a square pinnacled tower, 120
feet high. The whole cost, at first, about ,f18,ooo.
