CANNONGATE
trespasses. This was the case with Mrs. Bellamy.
Her waiting-maid, Anne Waterstone, who is mentioned
in her ?Memoirs,? lived many years after in
Edinburgh, and continued to the last to adore the
memory of her mistress. Nay, shc was, from this
cause, a zealous friend of all players, and would
never allow a slighting replark upon them to pass
unreproved. It was curious to find in a poor old
Scotchwoman of the humbler class such a sympathy
with the follies and eccentricities of the children
of Thespis.?
The erection of the New Theatre Royal in the
extended royalty eclipsed its predecessor in the
MRS. BELLAMY.
in Peter Williamson?s Directory? as an ? Excellent
Shoemaker and Leather Tormentor.?
The adjoining alley, St. John?s Close, is open
towards St. John?s Street. Narrow and ancient, it
shows over a door-lintel on its west side the
legend, within a sunk panel, THE LORD IS ONLY MY
SUPORT.
Near this a spacious elliptical archway gives
access to St. John?s Street, so named with reference
to St. John?s Cross, a broad, airy, and handsome
thoroughfare, ?one of the heralds of the New
Town,? and associated with the names of many of
the Scottish aristocracy who lingered in the old
The doorway is but three feet wide.
25
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that Mrs. Bellamy was extremely fond of singing
birds, and when visiting Glasgow was wont to have
them carried by a porter all the way, lest they
might suffer by the jolting of a carriage, and
people wondered to hear of ten guineas being
expended for such a purpose. Persons under
the social ban for their irregular lives often win the
love of individuals by their benevolence and sweetness
of disposition-qualities, it is to be remarked,
the old Playhouse Close, is a fine specimen of the
Scottish street architecture in the time of Charles I.
It has a row of dormer windows, with another of
storm-windows on a steep roof, that reminds one
of those in Bruges and Antwerp. Over a doorway
within the close is an ornamental tablet, the
inscription on which has become defaced, and the
old theatre itself has long since given place to
private dwellings, In one of these lived, in 1784,
CHESSEL?S BUILDINGS. (From a Drawirg 6y Sforrr,prtblislred in 1820.)
