Cmigcrook.1 ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE. I09
them in the middle of the West Bow, and offered
to write the bond which they had agreed to subscribe
with their blood; but on Thomson demurring,
this stranger immediately disappeared. No contemporasy,
of course, could be at any loss to surmise
who this stranger was ! ?
Into Mr. Strachan?s house the assassins made
their way, broke open his study and cash-box, from
which they carried off a thousand pounds sterling
in bags of fifty pounds each, all ? milled money,?
except one hundred pounds, which were in gold.
strange stories regarding the discovery of Thornson?s
guilt.
It is more to the purpose that twelve months after
the murder of Helen Bell, Lady Craigcrook dreamed
that she saw the criminal, in whom she recognised
an old servant, kill the girl and hide the money in
two old barrels filled with rubbish, and that her
husband on making inquiries, found him possessed
of an unusual amount of money, had him arrested,
his house searched, and found .his. bags, which
he identified, with a portion of the missing coin.
CRAIGCROOK IN 1770. (After an Etching by Clerk df E/din).
Robertson actually proposed to set the house on
fire before departing, but Thomson said ?he had
done wickedness enough already, and was resolved
not to commit more, even though Robertson
should attempt to murder him for his refusal.?
Five hundred merks reward was offered by Mr.
jtrachan for the detection of the perpetrators of
these crimes ; but it was not until after some weeks
elapsed that suspicion fell upon Thomson, who
was arrested, made a voluntary confession, and was
executed in the Grassmarket.
As no reference is made to the other culprit, he
must have effected his escape. But the credulous
Wodrow, in his ?Analecta,? records one of his
In 1736 Craigcrook Castle and grounds were let
on a lease for ninety-nine years, on which early
in the present century they became possessed by
Archibald Constable, the eminent publisher, who
made great improvements upon the mansion and
grounds. Without injuring the appearance of
antiquity in the former, he rendered it partly
the commodious modem residence which Lord
Jeffrey found it for so many summers of his life,
and, like John Hunter, made the old fortalice
sacred in a manner to literary and philosophic
culture.
Here was born, in I 8 I 2, the late Thomas Constable,
who began business in 1833, and by his
taste and care did more than any other man
I I0 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Claigcrook.
perhaps to raise the printing trade in Edinburgh to
the high position it now holds. ? For a time, too,
beginning with the year 185 17 says the Scotsman,
?it seemed as if he were minded to restore the
publishing honours of the house of Constable and
Co. His foreign miscellany, his educational series,
his ? Life of Chalmers ? and the posthumous works
of that eloquent divine, his edition of ?Calvin?s
Commentaries ? ; his ? Life of Perthes,? the highminded
German publisher, promised for a season
to place his name beside the Murrays and
Longmans, and to bring back to Edinburgh its old
reputation as a centre for the diffusion of highclass
literature.?
Ere long, however, he would?seem to have found
the difficulties of competing fairly with the London
book market ; thus his publishing enterprise began
to slacken, and was finally relinquished, but the
well-known firm of Thomas and Archibald Constable,
printers to Her Majesty for Scotland and to
the Edinburgh University still continues at NO. I I,
Thistle Street.
There yet remained to him a little independent
literary work, the most notable of which was the
life of his father, which was published in 1873, and
of which it was said that, while containing much
interesting information about men of note at that
time, if it erred in anything it was ?in filial piety,
by labouring somewhat too much to vindicate
a memory which after all did not need to be
cleared of any moral charge but only of business
confusion.?
Thomas Constable died in the end of May, 1881.
Jeffrey first occupied Craigcrook in the spring
of 1815, when it was simply an old Keep, in the
midst of a large garden, which he proceeded at
once to enlarge and make beautiful and scenic.
He describes the place thus, in a letter to Charles
Wilkes in that year, as ?an old manor-house,
eighteen feet wide and fifty long, with irregular projections
of all sorts, three staircases, turrets, and a
large round tower at one end, with a multitude of
windows of all sorts and sizes,? situated at the
bottom of ?? a green slope about 400 feet high.?
Among the many reunions at Craigcrook, in
?Peter?s Letters to his Kinsfolk,? published in
1819, we have a description of one, when the
whole party of learned pundits-including Playfair,
who died in the July of that year aged seventyone--
took off their coats and had a leaping match,
a feature in the gathering which Lord Cockbum,
in his Life of Jefiey,? seems rather disposed to
discredit.
In a letter written in April, 1829, to Mr. Pennington,
from Craigcrook, Jeffrey says :-? It is an
infinite relish to get away (here) from courts and
crowds, to sink into a half slumber on one?s own
sofa, without fear of tinkling bells and importunate
sttorneys; to read novels and poems by a crackling
wood fire, and go leisurely to sleep without feverish
anticipations of to-morrow ; to lounge over a long
breakfast, looking out on glittering evergreens?and
chuckling thrushes, and dawdle about the whole
day in the luxury of conscious idleness.?
Lord Cockburn, in this life of his friend, writes
thus :-? During the thirty-four seasons that he
passed there (at Craigcrook), what a scene of happiness
was that spot! To his own household
it was all their hearts desired. Mr. Jeffrey knew
the genealogy and personal history of every shrub
and flower it contained. It was the favourite
resort of his friends, who knew no such enjoyment
as Jeffrey at that place. And, with the exception
of Abbotsford, there were more interesting strangers
there than at any other house in Scotland. Saturday
during the summer session of the courts was
always a day of festivity, but by no means exclusively
for his friends at the Bar, many of whom
were under general invitations. Unlike some barbarous
tribunals, which feel no difference between
the last and any other day of the week, but moil
on With the same stupidity, our legal practitioners,
like most of the other sons of bondage in Scotland,
are liberated earlier on Saturday, and thus
the Craigcrook party began to assemble about
three, each taking to his own enjoyment. The
bowling green was sure to have its matches, in
which the host joined with skill and keenness ; the
garden had its loiterers ; the flowers, not forgetting
the glorious wall of roses, their admirers ; and the
hill its prospect seekers. The banquet which
followed was generous ; the wines never spared,
but rather various ; mirth unrestrained, except by
propriety; the talk always good, but never ambitious,
and mere listeners in no disrepute. What
can efface those days, or indeed any day, at Craigcrook
from the recollection of those who had the
happiness of enjoying them ! ?
Before quitting this quarter, it is impossible to
omit a reference to the interesting little fortalice
called Lauriston Castle, which in the present century
gave a title to the Marquis of Lauriston,
Governor of Venice, Marshal and Grand Veneur of
France, and which stands about a mile northward
from Craigcrook, with a hamlet or village between,
properly called Davidson?s Mains, but locally
known by the grotesque name of ?? Muttonhole,? a
name which, however, goes back to the middle of
the last century.
In the Cuurant of 5th October, 1761, an adver
