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Old and New Edinburgh Vol. V

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74 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [The Water of Leith. After this, no one attempted to break into his grounds. No. 29, Anne Street, was for years the residence of ?? Christopher North,? before his removal to No. 6, Gloucester Place. ? Towards the end of the winter of 1819,?? says Mrs. Gordon, in her memoir of him, ?? my father, with his wife and children, five in number, left his mother?s house, 53, Queen Street, and set up his household gods in a small and somewhat inconvenient house in Anne Street. This little street, which forms the culminating point of the suburb of Stockbridge, was at that time quite out of fown, and is still a secluded place, overshadowed by the tall houses of Eton Terrace and Clarendon Crescent. In withdrawing from the more fashionable part of Edinburgh, they did not, however, exclude themselves from the pleasures of social intercourse with the world. In Anne Street they found a pleasant little community, that made residence there far from distasteful. The seclusion of the locality made it then-as it still seeins to Se-rather a favourite quarter with literary men and artists.? While here, in the following year, her father was elected Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh ; while here he wrote his pathetic ?? Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life,? and many of his finest contributions to BZackzewod?s Magazine. . Here it was that many a pleasant literary and artistic reunion took place under his hospitable roof, with such men as Sir William Hamilton; Captain Hamilton of the 29th Regiment, his brother, and author of ? Cyril Thornton,? &c. ; Galt, Hogg, and J. G. Lockhart; Sir Henry Raeburn, the future Sir William Allan, R.A., and the future Sir John Watson Gordon, P.R.S.A., who resided successively in Nos. 17 and 27, Anne Street ; De Quincey, and others. In 1829 the latter made a very prptracted stay at Anne Street, and Mrs. Gordon thus describes the daily routine of the famous opium-eater there :- ?An ounce of laudanum per diem prostrated animal life in the early part of the day. It was no unfrequent sight to find him in his room lying upon the rug in front of the fire, his head resting upon a book, with his arms crossed over his breast, in profound slumber. For several hours he would lie in this state, till the torpor passed away. The time when he was most brilliant was generally towards the early morning hours; and then, more than once, in order to show him 06 my father arranged his supper parties, so that, sitting till three or four in the morning, he brought Mr. De Quincey to that point at which, in charm and power of conversation, he was so truly wonderful? His invariable diet was coffee, boiled rice, and milk, with a slice of mutton from the loin, and owing to his perpetual dyspepsia, he had a daily audience with the cook, who had a great awe of him. De Quincey died at Edinburgh on the 8th of December, 1859. In No. 41, Anne Street, the house of his father (Captain Tulloch, of the 7th Royal Veteran Battalion), lived, all the earlier years of his life, Colonel Alexander Tulloch, that officer whose sagacity, energy, and decision of character, were so admirably evinced by the manner in which he instituted and prosecuted an inquiry into the blunders and commissariat disorders connected with our campaign in the Crimea. NO. 42, Anne Street was, in 1825, the property of Howiason Crawfurd, of Crawfurdland and Braehead, who performed the feudal homage with the basin to George IV. in ISZZ, and concerning whose family the old ? Statistical Accounts ? in I 7 92 says : -:?It is a singular circumstance in regard to the Crawfurdland family that its present representative is the twenty-first lineally descended from the original stock, without the intervention of even a second brother.?? Robert Chambers, LL.D., who, before he had risen to wealth and position, had lived at one time in No. 4, India Place (now No. 4, Albert Place), Stockbridge, dwelt for some years in the central block on the east side of Anne Street, from whence he removed to Doune Terrace. James Ballantyne, Scott?s printer, possessed a house in Anne Street, which he sold for &ioo at the time of the famous bankruptcy. One of the leading features in this locality is St. Bernard?s Well, of which we find a notice in the Edinburgh Advertiser for April 27th, 1764, which states :--?As many people have got benefit from using of the water of St. Bernard?s Well in the neighbourhood of this city, there has been such demand for lodgings this season that there is not so much as one room to be had either at the Water of Leith or its neighbourhood.? . In the council-room of Heriot?s Hospital there is an exquisitely carved mantelpiece, having a circular compartment, ?enclosing a painting, which represents a tradition of the hospital, that three of its boys, while playing on the bank of the Leith, discovered the mineral spring now bearing the name of St. Bernard?s Well. This was some time before the year 1760, as the Scots Magazine for that year speaks of the mineral well ? lately discovered between the Water of Leith and Stockbridge, which is said to be equal in quality to any of the most famous in Britain.?
Volume 5 Page 74
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