378 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Duddingston.
were the Duke of Buccleuch, the Earl of Errol, the
Earl of Dalhousie, the Earl of Roden, Lord Elcho,
Couqt Piper, Sir John Stuart, Sir William Forbes,
Admiral Purves, Sir James Hall, the Countesses of
Errol and Dalhousie, Lady Charlotte Campbell
(the famous beauty), Lady Elizabeth Rawdon,
M y Helen Hall, Lady Stuart, Lady Fettes, Admiral
Vashon (who conquered the Jygate pirates), and
a great number of naval and military gentlemen,
most of the judges, &c. The saloon was brilliantly
fitted up with festoons of flowers, and embellished
with a naval pillar, on which were the names ol
Howe, Duncan,?.% Yincent, and NeZsun. The
dancing commenced at ten dclock, and was continued
till two in the morning.?
In this year the earl also had a residence in
Queen Street (where Lady Charlotte Campbell also
resided in Argyle House), but whether it was there
or at Duddingston that his daughter, the celebrated
Lady Flora Hastings, was born, there are now nc
means of ascertaining, as no other record of he1
birth seems to remain but its simple announcemeni
in the Scots Magazine: ?At Edinburgh, 11th
March,. 1806, the Countess of Loudon and Moira
of a daughter.? The story of this amiable and
unfortunate lady, her poetical talent, and the inhumanity
with which she was treated at Court, are toc
well known to need more than mention here, On
his appointment as Govemor-General? of India,
in 1813, the earl, to the regret of all Scotland,
bade farewell to it, and, as the song has it, tc
?( Loudon?s bonnie woods and braes,? whither he
did not return till the summer of 1823 ; he was then
seventy-one years of age, but still erect and soldierly
in form, ?The marchioness is forty-six,? says the
editor of the Free Press on this occasion, :?and seem:
to have suffered little from the scorching climate.
She has all the lady in her appearance-modest,
dignified, kind, and affectionate. Lady Flora is a
young lady of most amiable disposition, miid and
attractive manners.? The earl died and was buried
at Malta ; but Lady Flora lies beside her mother in
the family vault at Loudon, where she was laid in
1839, in her thirty-third year. An edition of he1
poems, seventy in number, many of them full 01
touching pathos and sweetness, was published in
1842 by her sister, who says in her preface thal
the profits of the volume would be dedicated ?? tc
the service of God in the parish where her mother?s
family have so long resided . . . . to aid in
the erection of a school in the parish of Loudon, a
an evidence of her gratitude to Almighty God
and her good will to her fellow creatures.?
Prior to the purchase of Sandringham, the estate
of Duddingston, it is said, would have been pur.
chased by H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, but for
some legal difficulties that were in the way.
At the south-east end of Duddingston Loan,
where the road turns off tqwards the Willow Brae
and Parson?s Green,. stands, at the point of the
eastern slope of Arthur?s Seat, Cauvin?s Hospital,
the founder of which, Louis Cauvin (Chauvin or
Calvin),was a teacher of French in Edinburgh, whose
parents were Louis Cauvin and Margaret Edgar.
? It is not correctly ascertained,? says Kay?s editor,
?? on what account the father was induced to leave
his native country and settle in the metropolis
of Scotland. According to some accounts, he was
forced to expatriate himself, in consequence of
the fatal issue of a duel in which he had been
implicated. According to others, he was brought
over to Edinburgh as a witness in the ?Douglas
Cause,? having seived in the capacity of a fcotman
in the family of Lady Jane Douglas for a
considerable time during her residence in Paris.
A portrait of him in his youth, in military garb, is
still preserved.?
After teaching for a time, he became tenant of a
small farm near the hamlet of Jock?s Lodge, where
he died in 1778, and was buried in Restalrig.
His son Louis, after being educated at the High
School and the Universities of Edinburgh and of
Paris, became a teacher of French in the former
city, where he retired from work in 1818 with a
handsome fortune, realised by his own exertions.
Imitating his father, for twenty years before relinquishing
his scholastic labours he rented a large
farm in Duddingston, now named the Woodlands,
and during his occupation of it he built, on the
opposite side of the Loan, then, as now, wooded
and bordered by hedges, the house of Louisfield,
which forms the central portion of his hospital. He
died in 1824, and was laid beside his father in
Restalrig.
By a codicil to his will, dated Duddingston
Farm, 28th April, 1823, he thus arranges for his
sepu1ture:-?My corpse isto bedeposited in Restalrig
churchyard, and watched for a proper time.
The door of the tomb must be taken off, and the
space built up strongly with ashlar stones. The tomb
must be shut forever,and never to be opened There
is a piece of marble on the tomb door, which I put
up in memory of my father ; all I wish is that there
may be put below it an inscription mentioning the
time of my death. I beg and expect that my
trustees will order all that is written above to be
put in execution.?
The hospital he founded resembles a large and
elegant villa, and was opened in 1833, for the
maintenance of twenty boys, sons of teachers and
Arthur?s Seat.1 ST. ANTHONY?S CHAPEL. 319
farmers, who are maintained in it for six years;
?whom failing, the sons of respectable master
pnnters or booksellers, and the sons of respectable
servants in the agricultural line,? and who, when
admitted, must be of the age of six, and not more
than eight, years. They are taught the ordinary
branches of education, and Latin, Greek, French,
German, and mathematics.
The management of this institution is in the
survivor of certain individuals nominated by the
founder, and in certain e.T-o@cib trustees, viz., the
Lord Provost, the Principal of the University, the
Rector of the High School, the Ministers of Duddingston,
Liberton, Newton, the Laird of Niddrie,
and the factor of the Duke of Abercorn.
On the north-east side of Arthur?s Seat, overhoked
by those portions of it known as the Whinny
Hill and Sampson?s Grave, is the Mansion House
of Parson?s Green, which was terribly shaken by
three distinct shocks of an earthquake on the 30th
September, 1789, that caused a dinner party there
to fly from the table, while the servants also fled
frm the kitchen.
Here the hand of change has been at work, and
though the mansion house and much of its surrounding
timber have been retained, streets have been
run along the slope and close to Piershill Tollbar,
and westward of these was the great dairy,
long known as the Cow palace, and the temporary
railway station for the use of the royal family.
Above the curious little knoll, named the Fairies?
or Haggis Knowe, on a plateau of rock overlooking
St. Margaret?s artificial loch, on the northern
slope of Arthur?s Seat, we find the ruined
chapel and hermitage of St. Anthony-a familiar
feature in the landscape.
The former, which terminated in a square tower,
with two gables at its summit-as shown in the
view of the city in 15444s 36 feet long by 12
inside the walls, and was roofed by three sets of
groined arches that sprang from corbels. It had
two entrance doors, one on the south and one on
the north, where the hole yet remains for the bar that
secured it. Near it was the elegantly-sculptured
font A press, grooved for shelves, yet remains
in the north-east corner; and a stair ascended
to the tower, which rose on groins about forty feet
high.
Nine yards south-east is the ruin of the hermitage,
partly formed of the rock, irregular in shape, but
about I 7 feet by I z in measurement. The hermit who
abode here must, in the days when it was built, have
ied a lonely life indeed, though beneath him lay a
wealthy abbey and a royal palace, from whence a
busy city,gkt by embattled walls, coveredall theslope
to the castled rock. More distant, he could see on
one side the cheerful fields and woods that spread
away towards the Firth of Forth, but elsewhere only
the black basaltic rocks ; and, as a writer has excellentlyexpressedit,
he had butto step a few pacesfrom
the brow of the rock on which his cell and chapel
stood to immure himself in such a grim mountain
solitude as Salvator Rosa might have thought an appropriate
scene forthe temptationsof that saint of the
desert to whom the chapel was dedicated. Kincaid
says that a handsome stone seat projected from the
outside of the wall at the east end, and the whole
appeared to have been enclosed by a stone wall.
So simple is the architecture of the edifice that it
is difficult to assign any precise date for it. There
remains not a single vestige of record to say when,
or by whom, it was erected or endowed, though it
stands in the centre of a tract that for ages has
been a royai park. No reference to it occurs in
the muniments of the Abbey of Holyrood, nor is
there any evidence-though it has often been
asserted-that it was a chaplaincy or pendicle of
the Knights Hospitallers of St. Anthony in Leith.
Yet it is extremely probable that it was in some
wzy connected with them.
Tradition says it was merely founded for the
guardianship of the holy well in its vicinity, and
that it was a spot for watching vessels, the impost
on which formed part of the revenues of the
adjacent abbey, and also that a light was hung in
the tower to guide mariners in the Birth at night,
that, as Grose says in his ?Antiquities,? they might
be induced to make vows to its titular saint.
At the foot of the rock there still bubbles up the
little spring named St. Anthony?s Well, which flows
pleasantly down through the rich grass of the
valley. Originally the spring flowed from under
the little stone arch, but about the year 1674 it
dried up, and after a time broke out lower down,
where we now find it. The well is referred to in
the old song which begins ? 0 waly, waly !? the
Scottish exclamatior, for ? Alas ! ? In Robert
Chambers?s ?Scottish Songs? there is anote upon it,
from which we may give the following passage :-
?This beautiful old song has hitherto been sup
posed to refer to some circumstance in the life of
Queen Mary, or at least to some unfortuna:e love
affair which happened at her Court. It is now discovered,
from a copy which has been found as
forming part of a ballad in the Pepysian Library at
Cambridge (published in Motherwell?s ? Minstrelsy,?
1827, under the title of ?Lord Jamie Douglas?), to
have been occasioned by the affecting tale of Lady
Barbara Erskine, daughter of John (sixteenth Lord
Erskine), ninth Earl of Mar, and wife of James II.,
