Leith Walk.] ANDREW MACDONALD. J 59
in whose favour, so long as she exercised her profession,
she continued to hold the first place in
spite of their temporary enthusiasm for the great
London stars, who visited them at stated seasons.
? Our Mrs. Siddons? I frequently heard her called
in Edinburgh, not at all with the idea of comparing
her with the celebrated mother-in-law j but rather
as expressing the kindly personal goodwill with
which she was regarded by her own townsfolk who
were proud and fond of her.?
She was not a great actress, according to this
writer, for she lacked versatility, or power of assumption
in any part that was opposed to her nature
or out of her power, and she was destitute
of physical strength and weight for Shaksperian
heroines generally; yet Rosalind, Viola, Imogen,
and Label, had no sweeter exponents ; and in all
pieces that turned on the tender, soft, and faithful
Mary Stuart,?she gave an unrivalled impersonation.?
On leaving Edinburgh, after 1830, she carried
with her the good wishes of the entire people, ? for
they had recognised in her not merely the accomplished
actress, but the good mother, the refined
lady, and the irreproachable member of society.?
Northward of Windsor Street, in what was once
a narrow, pleasant, and secluded path between
thick hedgerows, called the Lovers? Loan, was
built, in 1876, at a short distance from the railway
station, the Leith Walk public school, at a cost of
L9,ooo; it is in the Decorated Collegiate style,
calculated to accommodate about 840 scholars, and
is a good specimen of the Edinburgh Board schools.
In the Lovers? Loan Greenside House was long
the property and the summer residence of James
Marshal, W.S., whose town residence was in Milne
Square, so limited were the ideas of locomotion
and exaggerated those of distance in the last century.
He was born in 1731, says Kay?s Editor,
and though an acute man of business, was one of
the most profound swearers of his day, so much so
that few could compete with him.? He died in the
then sequestered house of Greenside in 1807.
In the year 1802 the ground here was occupied
by Barker?s ? famous panorama,? from Leicester
Square, London, wherein were exhibited views of
Dover, the Downs, and the coast of France, with
the embarkation of troops, horse and foot, from ten
till dusk, at one shilling a head, opposite the
Botanical Garden.
Lower down, where we now find Albert, Falshaw,
and Buchanan Streets, the ground for more
than twenty years was a garden nursery, long the
feu of Messrs. Eagle and Henderson, some of whose
advertisements as seedsfnen go back to nearly the
middle of the last century.
At the foot of the Walk there was born, in 1755,
Andrew Macdonald, an ingenious but unfortunate
dramatic and miscellaneous writer, whose father,
George Donald, was a market-gardener there. He
received the rudiments of his education in the
Leith High School, and early indicated such literary
talents, that his friends had sanguine hopes
of his future eminence, and with a view to his
becoming a minister of the Scottish Episcopal
communion he studied at the University of Edinburgh,
where he remained till the year 1775, when
he was put into deacon?s orders by Bishop Forbes
of Leith. On this account, at the suggestion of the
latter, he prefixed the syllable Mac to his name.
As there was no living for him vacant, he left his
father?s cottage in Leith Walk to become a tutor
in the family of Oliphant of Gask, after which he
became pastor of an Episcopal congregation in
Glasgow, and in 1772 published ?Velina, a Poetical
Fragment,? which is said to have contained
much genuine poetry, and was in the Spenserian
stanza.
His next essay was ?? The Independent,? which
won him neither profit nor reputation ; but having
written ?Vimonda, a Tragedy,? with a prologue
by Henry Mackenzie, he came to Edinburgh, where
it was put upon the boards, and where he vainly
hoped to make? a living by his pen. It was received
with great applause, but won him no advantage,
as his literary friends now deserted him.
Before leaving Glasgow he had taken a step which
they deemed alike imprudent and degrading.
?This was his marrying the maid-servant of the
house in which he lodged. His reception, therefore,
on his return to Edinburgh from these friends
and those of his acquaintances who participated in
their feelings, had in it much to annoy and distress
him, although no charge could be brought against
the humble partner of his fortunes but the meanness
of her condition.? Thus his literary prospects,
so far as regarded Edinburgh, ended in total disappointment
; so, accompanied by his wife, he betook
him to the greater centre of London.
There the fame of ?Vimonda? had preceded
him, and Colman brought it out with splendour to
crowded houses in the years 1787 and 1788; and
now poor Macdonald?s mind became radiant with
hope of affluence and fame, and he had a pretty
little residence at Brompton, then a sequestered
place.
He next engaged with much ardour upon an
opera, but made his subsistence chiefly by writing
satirical papers and poems for the newspapers,
under the signature of ?Mathew Bramble.? At
last this resource failed him, and he found himself
*
160 OLD -4ND NEW EDINBURGH. [Leith Walk.
on the verge of destitution ; and DIsraeli writes of
him thus in his ? Calamities of Authors ? :-
?? It was one evening I saw a tall, famished,
melancholy man enter a bookseller?s shop, his hat
flapped over his eyes, his whole frame evidently
feeble from exhaustion and utter misery. The
bookseller inquired how he proceeded with his
tragedy ? ? Do not talk to me about my tragedy I
Do not talk to me about my tragedy! I have,
indeed, more tragedy than I can bear at home,? was
Now all the ground eastward of the Walk to
the Easter Road is rapidly being covered by new
streets, and the last of the green fields there has
well-nigh disappeared, Between the North British
Goods Station and Lorne Street the ground fronting
the Walk belongs to the Governors of Heriot?s
Hospital, while the ground between the latter and
the Easter Road is the property of the Trinity
Hospital. The ground in these districts has been
feued at from A105 to Arzo per acre, for tene-
GREENSIDE CHURCH, FROM LEOPOLD PLACE.
his reply, and his voice faltered as he spoke. This
man was ? Mathew Bramble ?-Macdonald, the
author of ?Vimonda,? at that moment the writer of
comic poetry ! ?
D?Israeli then refers to his seven children, which,
however, is an error, as he had but one child, whom,
with his Wife, he left in utter indigence, whenafter
the privations to which he had been subjected
had a fatal effect on a naturally weak constitution-
he died, in 1788, in the thirty-third year of
his age. A volume of his sermons, published soon
after his death, met with a favourable reception ;
and in 1791 appeared his ?Miscellaneous Works,?in
one volume, containing all his dramas, with ? Probationary
Odes for the Laureateship,? and other pieces.
ments four storeys in height, at an average value
each of from A1,8oo to Az,ooo. Many of these
streets are devoid of architectural features, and
meant for the residence of artisans.
The Heriot feus have tenements valued at from
.&3,000 to A4,000, and contain houses of five and
nine apartments, with ranges of commodious shops
on the ground-floor. During the changes here the
old bum of Greenside has also been dealt with;
and instead of meandering, as heretofore, towards
where of old the Lawer Quarry Holes lay-latterly
in an offensive and muddy course-it is carried in
a culvert, which will be turned to account as a main
drain for the locality.
In the map of 1804 the upper part of Leith.
?
