178 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Broughton Street.
ruary, Messrs. Margarot, Muir, Skirving, and
Palmer-to whose memory the grand obelisk in
the Calton burying-ground has been erected-were
transmitted from Newgate to a ship bound for
Botany Bay.
In those days, and for long after, there was a
narrow close or alley named the Salt Backet, which
ran between the head of Leith Street and the Low
Calton, and by this avenue, in 1806, Janies Mackoul,
alias ? Captain Moffat,? the noted thief, whom
we have referred to in the story of Begbie?s assassination,
effected his escape when pursued for a robbery
in the Theatre Royal.
Eastward of the head of Leith Street, and almost
in the direct line of the Regent Arch, stood the
old Methodist Meeting House.
Facing Leith Walk, at the junction of Little
King Street with Broughton Street, is the present
Theatre Royal, occupying the site of several places
of amusement its predecessors.
-About the year 1792 Mr. Stephen Kemble, in
the-course of his peripatetic life, having failed to
obtain the management of the old Theatre Royal
at the end of the North Bridge, procured leave to
erect a new house, which he called a Circus, in
what is described in the titles thereof as a piece
of ground bounded by a hedge. Mrs. Esten, an
admired actress, the lessee of the Theatre Royal,
succeeded in cjbtaining a decree of the Court of
Session against the production of plays at this
rival establishment ; but it nevertheless was permanently
detrimental to the old one, as it continued
to furnish amusements too closely akin to
the theatrical for years ; and in the scois Magazine
for 1793 we read:--? Januasy 21. The New
Theatre of Edinburgh (formerly the Circus) under
the management of Mr. Stephen Kemble, was
opened with the comedy of the RiuaZs. This
theatre is most elegantly and commodiously fitted
up, and is considerably larger than the Theatre
Royal.? By the end of that season, Kemble, however,
procured the latter, and retained it till 1800.
A speculative Italian named Signor Corri took up
the circus as a place for concerts and other entertainments,
while collaterally with him a Signor
Pietro Urbani endeavoured to have card and
music meetings at the Assembly Rooms. Urbani
was an Italian teacher of singing, long settled in
Edinburgh, where, towards the croseof the eighteenth
century, he published ?A Selection of Scots Songs,
harmonised and improved, with simple and adapted
graces,? a work extending to six folio volumes.
Urbani?s selection is remarkable in three respects :
the novelty of the number and kind of instruments
used in the accompaniments ; the filling up of the
pianoforte harmony ; and the use, for the first time
of introductory and concluding symphonies to the
melodies. He died, very poor, in Dublin, in 1816.
Corri?s establishment in Broughton Street was
eminently unsuccessful, yet he made it a species of
theatre. ? If it be true,? says a writer, ? as we are
told by an intelligent foreigner in 1800, that very
few people in Edinburgh then spent a thousand a
year, and that they were considered rather important
persons who had three or four hundred;
we shall understand how, in these circumstances,
neither the theatre, nor Corri?s Rooms, nor the
Assembly Rooms, could be flourishing concerns.?
Itis said that Com deemed himself so unfortunate,
that he declared his belief ?that if he bedme a
baker the people would give up the use of bread.?
Ultimately he failed, and was compelled to seek
the benefit of the cessio bonorum. In a theatrical
critique for 1801, which animadverts pretty freely
on the public of the city for their indifference to
theatrical matters, it is said:-?By a run of the
SchooZ for SandaZ, an Italian manager, Corri, was
enabled to swim like boys on bladders; but he
ultimately sank under the weight of his debts, and
was only released by the benignity of the British
laws. Neither the universal abilities of Wilkinson,
his private worth, nor his full company, could
draw the attention of the capital of the North till
he was some hundred pounds out of pocket; and
though he was at last assisted by the interference
of certain public characters, yet, after all, his success
did little more than make up his losses in the beginning
of the season.?
In 1809 Mr. Henry Siddons re-fitted Corri?s
Rooms as a theatre, at an expense of about L4,ooo.
There performances were continued for two seasons,
till circumstances rendered it necessary for Mr.
Siddons to occupy the old Theatre Royal.
In 1816 Corri?s Rooms, as the edifice was still
called, was the scene of a grand&? given to the
78th Highlanders, ? or Ross-shire Buffs, who had
just returned from sickly and unhealthy quarters
at Nieuport in Flanders. On this occasion, we
are told, the rooms were blazing with hundreds of
lamps, ?shedding their light upon all the beauty
and fashion of Edinburgh, enlivened by the uniforms
of the officers of the several regiments.?
The band of the Black Watch occupied the
large orchestra, in front of which was a thistle, with
the motto Pyenez garde. Festoons of the 4znd
tartan, and the shields of the Duke of Wellington
and the Marquis of Huntly, with cuirasses from the
recent field of Waterloo, were among the decorations
here. Elsewhere were ot!ier trophies, wXn
the mottoes Egypf and Corunna. At the other end
