332 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Aliison Squam
Chloris of some of his finest lyrics, the daughter of
a prosperous farmer at a place called Kemmis
Hall, on the banks of the Nith, and who, after
undergoing many vicissitucies, and having for a
time ?had her portion with weeds and outworn
faces,? was seized with consumption, and retired to
an obscure abode in that narrow and gloomy lane.
? If Fortune smile, be not puffed up,
And if it frown, be not dismayed ;
For Providence govemeth all,
Although the world ?s turned upside down,?
It was in Alison Square that Thomas Campbell,
the poet, resided when writing the ?? Pleasures of
Hope.? He occupied the second floor of a stair
CLARINDA?S HOUSE, GENERAL?S ENTRY.
There she lingered long in loneliness and suffering,
supported by the chanty of strangers, till she found
a final home in Newington burying-ground.
Alison Square, which lay farther south, and
through which a street has now been run, was
built in the middle of the eighteenth century, upon
a venture, by Colin Alison, a joiner, who in after
iife was much reduced in circumstances by the
speculation. In his latter days he erected two
boards on different sides of his buildings, whereon
he had painted a globe in the act of falling, with
this inscription :-
on the north side of the central archway, with
windows looking partly into the Potterrow, and
partly into Nicolson Street. The poem is said to
have been written here in the night, his master?s
temper being so irritable that it was then only he
could find peace for his task.
Alison Square was completely transformed in
1876, when Marshal1 Street was constructed through
it. A Baptist church, in a most severe Lombardic
style, stands on the north side of this new street.
It was built in 1876-7, at the cost of L4,ooo.
Between 1773 and 1783, Francis, eighth Earl of
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Potterrow.] AN OLD TAVERN. 333
Moray, who died in 1810, lived in the Potterrow,
in a large mansion, which was entered through a
garden ?at the east end of the row, and another
by Chapel Street.?? An advertisement, offering it
for sale in 1783, says the earl had occupied it ?for
these ten years past;? that it consists of fifteen
apartments, with servants? hall, vaulted cellar, and
ample stabling. This was, in all probability, the
house formerly occupied by the Duke of Douglas.
The Original Seceder Congregation, afterwards
located in Richmond Street, was established in the
Potterrow about 1794, and removed to the former
quarter in 1813.
We get an idea of the class of humble Edinburgh
merchapzt, as the phrase was understood in Scotland.
On Sundays, too, Mrs. Flockhart?s little
visage might have been seen in a front gallery seat
in Mr. Pattieson?s chapel in the Potterrow. Her
abode, situated opposite to Chalmers? Entry, in
that suburban thoroughfare, was a square, about
fifteen feet each way.?
A mere screen divided her dwelling-house from
her tavern, and before it, every morning, the
bottles containing whisky, rum, and brandy, were
placed on the bunker-seat of a window, with
glasses and a salver of gingerbread biscuits. Anon
an elderly gentleman would drop in, saluting her
with ?? Hoo d?ye do, mem I ? and then proceed to
ROOM IN CLARINDA?S HOUSE, GENERAL?S ENTRY.
taverns of the old school from the description that
Chambers gives us of a famous one, Mrs. Flockhart?s-
otherwise ? Lucky Fykie?s ?-in the Potter-.
row, at the close of the last century,
It was a small as well as obscure edifice, externally
having the appearance of a huckster?s
shop. Lucky Fykie was a neat little elderly
woman, usually clad in an apron and gown of the
same blue-striped stuff, with a black silk ribbon
round her mutch, the lappets of which were tied
under her chin. ?Her husband, the umquhile
John Flucker, or Flockhart, had left her some
ready money, together with his whole stock-in-trade,
consisting of a multifarious variety of articlesropes,
tea, sugar, whipshafts, porter, ale, beer,
yellow-sand, camstune, herrings, nails, cotton-wicks,
thread, needles, tapes, potatoes, lollipops, onions,
and matches, &c., constituting ,her a respectable
help himself from one of the bottles ; another and
another would drop in, till the tiny tavern was
full, and, strange to say, all of them were men of
importance in society, many of them denizens of
George Square - eminent .barristers or wealthy
bankers-so simple were the habits of the olden
time.
In No. 7, Charles Street, which runs into Crichton
Street, near the Potterrow, Lord Jeffrey, the eminent
critic, was born in 1773, in the house of his father,
a Depute-Clerk of Session, though some accounts
have assigned his birthplace to Windmill Street.
Lady Duffus was resident in Charles Street in I 784,
Where this street is now, there was an old locality
known as Charles?s Field, which on Restoration
Day, 1712, was the scene of an ingenious piece
of marked Jacobitism, in honour of the exiled I Stuarts
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