270 OLD AND *NEW EDINBURGH. [Brown Square.
Till about 1780 the inhabitants of these districts
formed a distinct class of themselves, and had their
own places of amusement, independent of all the
rest of the city. Nor was it until the New Town
was rather far advanced that the sowfh side lost its
attractions; and we are told that, singular as it
may appear, there was one instance, if not more, of
a gentleman living and dying in this southern district
without having once visited, or even seen, the
New Town, although at the time of his death it
had extended westward to Castle Street. (Scott?s ?? Provincial Antiquities.?)
In the notes to ? Redgauntlet,? the same author
tells us, that in its time Brown Square was hailed
?as an extremely elegant improvement ? on Edmburgh
residences, even witli its meagre plot of
grass and shabby iron railings. It is here he
places the house of Saunders Fairford, where Man
is described as first beholding the mysterious Lady
GreenmanfZe, and as being so bewildered with her
appearance, that he stood as if he had been
senseless. ? The door was opened, out she went,
walked along the pavement, turned down the
close (at the north-east end of the square leading
into the Cowgate), and put the sun, I believe,
into her pocket when she disappeared, so suddenly
did dulness and darkness sink down on the
square when she was no longer visible.?
To show how much this new locality was thought
of, we will here quote a letter in the Edinburgh
Adverfiser of 6th March, 1764 (Vol. I.) :-
?Su,-\Vith pleasure I have observed of late
the improvements we are making in this metropolis,
and there is nothing which pleases me yore than
the taste for elegant buildings, than which nothing
can be a greater ornament to a city, or give a
stranger a greater impression of the improvement
of the inhabitants in polite and liberal arts.
? That very elegant square, called Brown Square,
which, in my opinion, is a very great beauty to the
town, is now almost finished, and last day the
green pasture was railed in. Now, I think, to
complete the whole, an elegant statue in the
middle would be well worth the expense; and I
dare say the gentlemen who possess houses there
would not grudge a small sum to have that part
adorned with an equestrian statue of his present
Majesty George the Thud, and which I should think,
would be contributed to by public subscriptions,
set a-foot for that purpose. Whie we are thus
making such improvements, I am surprised nobody
has ever mentioned an improvement on our
College [the old one was then extant] which, as it
now is, gives strangers but an unfavourable idea of
our University, which, however, is at present so
flourishing. . . . , To have a handsome building
for that purpose is surely the desire of every good
citizen. This could be easily accomplished by
various means. Suppose a lottery should be proposed,
every student I dare say would take a
ticket, and I would venture to ensure the success
of it.?
But George 111. was fated not to have a statue
either in Brown Square or Great King Street, according
to a suggestion some sixty years afterwards
; yet as a proof that the square was deemed
alike fashionable and elegant, we may enumerate
some of those who resided there. . Among them
were the Dowager Lady Elphinstone (daughter of
John sixth Earl of Wigton) who had a house here
in 1784; Henry Pundas (afterwards Viscount
Melville), when a member of the Faculty of Advocates;
Sir Islay Campbell, Bart., of Succoth, in the
days when it was the custom of the senators to
walk to court in the morning, with nicely powdered
wigs, and a small cocked hat in the hand-a practice
retained nearly to the last by Lord Glenlee:
he was afterwards Lord President. He bought
Lord Melville?s house in Brown Square, and after
a time removed to York Place.
His successor in the same residence, No. 15,-
was John Anstruther of that ilk, Advocate, with
whom resided the family of Charles Earl of
Traquair, whose mother was a daughter of Sir
Philip Anstruther of Anstrutherfield. Other residents
were Lord Henderland and the future Lord
President Blair of Avontoun, both when at the bar,
and William Craig, afterwards a Lord of Justiciary
in 1792; Sir John Forbes-Drummond, when a
captain of the Royal Navy, and before he became
Baronet of Hawthornden ; Henry Mackenzie, the
ubiquitous ? Man of Feeling ; ? Lord Woodhouselee,
and the Lord President Miller, whose residence
was the large house (No. 17) with the painted front,
on the north side, the interior of which, with its
frescoes and panelings, is now one of the finest
specimens remaining of a fashionable Edinburgh
mansion of the eighteenth century; and therein
lived and died his son Lord Glenlee, who (uZtimus
Scoforum 2) resisted the attraction of three successive
New Towns, to which all his brethren had
long before fled.
He retained, until within a few years of his death,
the practice referred to, of walking daily to Court,
hat in hand, with a powdered wig, through Brown
Square, down Crombie?s Close, across the Cowgate,
xnd up the Back Stairs to the Parliament Houser
ittended by his valet, and always scrupulously
kessed in black. In 1838, when nearly eighty
years of age, this grand lord of the old school,
B- Sq-I MISS JEANNIE ELLIOT. =7*
-was compelled to have recourse to a sedan chair
by which he was wont to be carried to Court by
.George IV. Bridge. He died in No. 17, in 1846,
lsurviving for thirty-one years the death of his
favourite and lamented son, Colonel William Miller
of the 1st Foot Guards, who fell mortally wounded
-at Quatre Bras.
No. 3 was the residence, in IS! I, of James Haig,
-of Beimerside and that ilk, who is mentioned in the
? Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border,? with reference
-to the old prophecy said to have been made by
?Thomas the Rhymer, that,
?? Tide tide, whatever betide,
There ?U aye be a Haig in Beimerside?
?The family have possessed the estate for many
.centuries. ?The grandfather of the present proprietor
of Beimerside,? wrote Scott in 1802, ?had
twelve daughters before his lady brought him a
male heir. The common people trembled ?for their
favourite soothsayer. The late Mr, Haig was at
length born, and their belief in the prophecy confirmed
beyond the shadow of a doubt.?
No. 14 was the residence of stout and portly
?Sir John Leslie, Bart., K.H., Professor of Natural
History in the University, the celebrated mathematician,
the successor of playfair, who died in
1832 ; and though mentioned last, not least, this
now nearly defunct square held the residence of
Miss Jeannie Elliot, authoress, about the middle of
-the last century, of the song ?The Flowers of
-the Forest,? who is said to have composed it in
consequence of a wager with her brother that she
.could not write a ballad on the subject of Flodden
.as they were driving homeward one evening in the
.carriage. ?? Yielding,? says the biographer of the
? Songstresses of Scotland,? ? to the influence of
the moment, Jean accepted the challenge. Leaning
back in her corner with all the most mournful
.stories of the country-side for her inspiration, and
two lines of an old ballad which had often rung in
her ears and trembled on her lips for a foundation,
she planned and constructed the rude framework
.of her ?Flowers of the Forest,? in imitation of
the older song to the same air.?
Miss Elliot of Minto dwelt on the first floor
.of a house beside the archway or pend which gave
-access to Brown Square from the Candlemaker
Row, in the south-west corner, opposite the Greyfriars?
Gate. She spent the latter part of her life
.chiefly in Edinburgh, where she mingled a good
deal in the better sort of society. ?? I have been
-told,? says Chambers in his ?? Scottish Songs,? ?? by
one who was admitted in youth to the privileges
of her conversation, that she was a remarkably
agreeable old lady, with a prodigious fund of
Scottish anecdote, but did not appear to have been
handsome.? Miss Tytler describes her, when
advanced in years, to have been a little delicate
old woman, in a close cap, ruffle, and ample snowwhite
neckerchief; her eyebrows well arched, but
having a nose and mouth that belonged to an
expressive, rather than a handsome face. She
generally went abroad in a sedan.
Eastward of this quarter lay Argyle Square (now
swept away to make room for Chambers Street), an
open area of 150 feet long, by the Same in breadth,
including the front gardens of, the houses on the
north side. The houses were all massive, convenient,
and not inelegant, and in some instances,
three storeys in height. The exact date of its being
built seems doubtful, tradition takes it back nearly
to 1730, and it is said to have been named from
the following circumstances :-A tailor named
Campbell having got into the graces of his
chief, the great John Duke of Argyle and Greenwich,
was promised the first favour that peeis
acquaintance or interest might throw in his way.
Accordingly, on the death of George I., the Duke
having early intelligence of the event, let his clans
man, the tailor, instantly know it, and the latter,
before his brethren in the trade were aware, bought
up all the black cloth in the city, and forthwith
drove such a trade in supplying the zealous Whigs
with mourning suits at his own prices, that he
shortly realised a little fortune, wherewith he laid
the foundation of a greater.
He began to build the first houses of this square,
and named it Argyle in hbnour of his patron, and
much of it appears to have been finished when
Edgar drew his first plan of the city in 11/42. In
the plan of 1765 the whole of the south side was
still called Campbell?s New Buildings. But prior
to any edifice being erected here, a retired bookseller
of the Parliament Close, who had once been
Lord Provost, built himself a mansion in what he
deemed a very rustic and suburban quarter, at the
head of Scott?s Close, latterly used as a ministers?
hall. Prior to that, and after the Provost?s death,
it had been the family mansion of Sir Andrew Agnew
of Lochnaw.
Lord Cullen dwelt here in a flat above what was
in 1824 a grocery store; and in the central house,
on the north side, lived Dr. Hugh Blau, the eminent
divine and sermon writer, one of the greatest
ornaments of the Scottish Church and of his native
capital ; and in that house (when he was Professor
of Rhetoric) died his wife, on the 9th February,
1795 ; she was his cousin Catharine, daughter of
the Rev. James Bannatyne, a city minister.
