186 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Picardy Place.
It would appear that so early as 1730 the
Governors of Heriot?s Hospital, as superiors of the
barony of Broughton, had sold five acres of land
at the head of Broughton Loan to the city, for the
behoof of refugees or their descendants who had
come from France, after the revocation of the
Edict of Nantes. A colony of these emigrants,
principally silk weavers, had been for some time
attempting to cultivate mulberry trees on the slope
of Moultree?s Hill, but without success, owing to
the variable nature of the climate.
The position of the houses forming the village of
Picardie, as these poor people named it, after their
native province, is distinctly shown in the map of
1787, occupying nearly the site of? the north side of
the present Picardy Place, which after the Scottish
Board of Manufacturers acquired the ground, was
built in 1809.
More than twenty years before that period the
magistrates seem to have contemplated having a
square here, as in 1783 they advertised, ?to be
feued, the several acres, for building, lying on the
west side of the new road to Leith, immediately
adjoining to Picardy Gardens. The ground is
laid out in the form of a square. The situation is
remarkably pleasant. . . . According to the plan,
the buildings will have plots of background for the
purpose of gardens and offices ; and the possessors
of these will have the privilege of the area within
the Square, &c. Further particulars may be had
on applying to James Jollie, writer, the proprietor,
Royal Bank Close, who will show the plan of the
ground.? (Edin. Advert., 1783.)
This plm would seem to have been abandoned,
aAd a street, with York Place, in direct communication
with Queen Street, substituted.
Among the earliest occupants of a house in
Picardy Place was John Clerk, Lord Eldin, who
took up his abode in No. 16, when an advocate at
the bar. The grandson of Sir John Clerk 01
Penicuick, and son of John Clerk, author of a
celebrated work on naval tactics, Lord Eldin was
born in 1757, and in 1785 was called to the bar,
and so great were his intellectual qualities-at a
time when the Scottish bar was really distinguished
for intellect-that, it is said, that at one period he
had nearly half of all the court business in his
hands; but his elevation to the bench did not
occur until 1823, when he was well advanced in
life.
In ?Peter?s Letters? he is described as the
Coryphzus of the bar. ? He is the plainest, the
shrewdest, and the most sarcastic of men; his
sceptre owes the whole of its power to its weightnothing
to glitter. It is impossible to imagine a
physiognomy more expressive of the character of a
great lawyer and barrister. The features are in
themselves good, at least a painter would call them
so, and the upper part of the profile has as fine
lines as could be wished. But then, how the
habits of the mind have stamped their traces on
every part of the face ! What sharpness, razor-like
sharpness, has indented itself about the wrinkles of
his eyelids; the eyes themselves, so quick, so grey,
such bafflers of scrutiny, such exquisite scrutinisers,
how they change in expression-it seems almost
how they change their colour-shifting from contracted,
concentrated blackness, through every
shade of brown, blue, green, and hazel, back into
their own gleaming grey again. How they glisten
into a smile of disdain! . . . He seems to be
affected with the most delightful and balmy feelings,
by the contemplation of some soft-headed,
prosing driveller, racking his poor brain, or bellowing
his lungs out, all about something which he,
the smiler, sees so thoroughly, so distinctly.?
Lord Eldin, on the bench as when at the bar,
pertinaciously adhered to the old Doric Scottish of
his boyhood, and in this there was no affectation;
but it was the pure old dialect and idiom of the
eighteenth century. He was a man of refined
tastes, and a great connoisseur in pictures He
was a capital artist; and it is said, that had he
given himself entirely to art, he would have been
one of the greatest masters Scotland has ever
produced. He was plain in appearance, and had
a halt in his gait. Passing down the High Street
one day, he once heard a girl say to her companion,
? That is Johnnie Clerk, the lame lawyer.? ?? No,
madam,? said he ; ?I may be a lame man, but not
a lame lawyer..? -
He died a bachelor in his house in Picardy
Place, where, old-maid-like, he had contracted such
an attachment to cats, that his domestic establishment
could almost boast of at least half a dozen of
them; and when consulted by a client he was
generally to be found seated in his study with a
favourite Tom elevated on his shoulder or purring
about his ears.
His death occurred on the 30th May, 1832,
after which his extensive collection of paintings,
sketches, and rare prints was brought to sale in
16 Picardy Place, where, on the 16th of March,
1833, a very serious accident ensued.
The fame of his collection had attracted a great
crowd of men and women of taste and letters, and
when the auctioneer was in the act of disposing of
a famous Teniers, which had been a special favourite
of Lord Eldin, the floor of the drawing-room gave
way. ?The scene which was produced may be
York Place.] DR. ABERCROMBIE. 187
imagined, but can scarcely be described,? says the
CaZedonian Mercury of the 18th March. ?? From
eighty to a hundred persons, ladies as well as
gentlemen, were precipitated in one mass into an
apartment below, filled with china and articles of
vertu. The cries and shrieks, intermingled with
exclamations? and ejaculations of distress, were
heartrending ; but what added to the unutterable
agony of that awful moment, the density of the
cloud of dust, impervious to the rays of light, produced
total darkness, diffusing a choking atmosphere,
which nearly stifled the terrified multitude,
and in this state of suspense they remained several
minutes.? Among the mass of people who went
down with the floor were Lord Moncrieff, Sir
James Riddell of Ardnam~rchan, and Sir Archi-
. bald Campbell of Succoth. Many persons were
most severely injured, and Mr. Smith, banker, of
Moray Place, on whom the hearth-stone fell, was
killed.
. York Place, the continuation of this thoroughfare
to Queen Street, is nearly all unchanged since
it was built, and is broad and stately, with spacious
and lofty houses, which were inhabited by Sir
Henry Raeburn, Francis Homer, Dr. John Abercrombie,
Dr. John Coldstream, Alexander Geddes,
A.R.A., and other distinguished men.
No. 10 was the abode of Lord Craig, the successor
on the bench of Lord Hailes in 1792, and
whose well-known attainments, and especially his
connection with the Mirror and bunger, gave his
name an honourable place among local notorieties.
He was the cousin-german of the celebrated Mrs.
McLehose, the Clarinda of Robert Burns, and to
her he bequeathed an annuity, at his death, which
occurred in 1813. His house was afterwards occupied
by the gallant Admiral Sir David Milne, who,
when a lieutenant,. took possession of the P i p e
frigate, after her surrender to the Blanche, in the
West Indies ; captured L z Seine,, in I 798, and Lu
Vengeance, of 38 guns, in I 800, and who commanded
the hprepable, in the attack on Algiers, when he
was Rear-Admiral, and had 150 of his crew killed
and wounded, as Brenton records in his ?Naval
History.? He died a Knight Grand Cross of the
Bath, and left a son, Sir Alexander Milne, also
K.C.B., and Admiral, more than once commander
of fleets, and who first went to sea with his father
in the flag-ship hander, in 1817. Sir David died
on board of a Granton steamer, when returning
home, in 1845, and was buried at Inveresk.
Doctor John Abercrombie, Physician to Her
Majesty, lived in No. 19, and died there in 1844,
aged 64. He was a distinguished consulting
physician, and moral writer, born at Aberdeen, in
1781; F,RC.S. in 1823; and was author of
? Inquiries concerning the Intellectual Powers,?
which has gone through many editions, ?The Philosophy
of the Moral Feelings,? &c. His bust is
in the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons.
Concerning his death, the following curious story
has found its way into print. A Mrs. M., a native
of the West Indies, was at Blair Logie at the time
of the demise of Dr. Abercrombie, with whom she
had been very intimate. He died suddenly, without
any previous indisposition, just as he was about to
enter his carriage in York Place, at eleven o?clock
on a Thursday morning. On the night between
Thursday and Friday Mrs. M. dreamt that she saw
the whole family of Dr. Abercrombie dressed entirely
in white,dancing a solemn hneral dance, upon which
she awoke, wondering that she should have dreamt
anything so absurd, as it?was contrary to their
custom to dance on any occasion. Immediately
afterwards her maid came to tell her that she had
seen Dr. Abercrombie reclining against a wall
?with his jaw fallen, and a livid countenance,
mournfully shaking his head as he looked at her.?
She passed the day in great uneasiness, and wrote
to inquire for the Doctor, relating what had h i p
pened, and expressing her conviction that he was
dead, and her letter was seen by several persons
in Edinburgh on the day of its amval.
No. 22 was the house of Lord Newton, known
as the wearer of ? Covington?s gown,? in memory
of the patriotism and humanity displayed by the
latter in defending the ?Jacobite prisoners on their
trial at Carlisle in 1747. His judicial talents and
social eccentricities formed the subject of many
anecdotes. He participated largely in the bacchanalian
propensities so prevalent among the legal
men of his time, and was frequently known to put
?? three lang craigs ? (i.e. long-necked bottles of
claret) ? under his belt ? after dinner, and thereafter
dictate to his clerk a paper of more than skty pages.
The MS. would then be sent to press, and the
proofs be corrected next morning at the bar of the
Inner House.
He would often spend the whole night in con,
vivial indulgence at the Crochallan Club, perhaps
be driven home to York Place about seven in the
morning, sleep for two hours, and be seated on the
bench at the usual hour. The French traveller
Simond relates his surprise ?on stepping one
morning into the Parliament House to find in the
dignified capacity and exhibiting all the dignified
bearing of a judge, the very gentleman with whom
he had just spent a night of debauch and parted
from only one hour before, when both were excessively
intoxicated.?
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