The Project Gutenberg EBook of William Nelson, by Daniel Wilson This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license Title: William Nelson A Memoir Author: Daniel Wilson Release Date: May 30, 2016 [EBook #52192] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WILLIAM NELSON *** Produced by Larry B. Harrison, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) [Image of the book cover unavailable.] William Nelson. {1} {2} {3} {4} [Image unavailable: photo of William Nelson] William Nelson A M E M O I R BY SIR DANIEL WILSON, LL.D., F.R.S.E., President of the University of Toronto. colophon Printed for Private Circulation. Printed for Private Circulation. T. Nelson and Sons, Edinburgh. 1889. TO Mr s . William N els on Mr s . William N els on THIS MEMOIR OF HER HUSBAND IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED BY HIS OLD FRIEND AND {5} {6} {7} T I SCHOOLMATE FOREWORD. HE volume here produced for the eye of friends is the memorial of one whose life presented a rare example of simplicity, of thoroughness in working up to a high standard in all that he undertook, and fidelity in his responsible stewardship as a man of wealth and a captain of industry. The friendship between us extended in uninterrupted union, with the maturing estimation of years and experience, from early boyhood till both had passed the assigned limits of threescore years and ten. It would have been easy to swell the volume into the bulky proportions of modern biography: for William Nelson keenly enjoyed the communion of friendship; and his correspondence furnishes many passages calculated to interest others besides those who knew and loved him as a friend. But the aim has been simply to present him “in his habit as he lived;” and thus to preserve for relatives, personal friends, and for his fellow-workers of all ranks, such a picture as may pleasantly recall some reflex of a noble life; and record characteristic traits of one of whom it can be so truly said: “To live in hearts of those we love is not to die.” D. W. University of Toronto, September 26, 1889. CONTENTS. I. INTRODUCTORY, 13 II. HAUNTS OF BOYHOOD, 26 III. SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMATES, 41 IV. THE CASTLE HILL, 61 V. HOPE PARK, 77 VI. EGYPT AND PALESTINE, 87 VII. CHURCH—MARRIAGE, 108 VIII. SALISBURY GREEN, 121 IX. GLIMPSES OF TRAVEL, 137 X. HOLIDAYS ABROAD, 156 XI. PARKSIDE, 173 XII. CIVIC INTERESTS, 194 XIII. HOME HOLIDAYS, 213 XIV. PROJECTED TRAVEL—THE END, 228 William Nelson. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. N the early years of the present century the Scottish capital retained many features of its ancient aspect still unchanged; but among all the old-world haunts surviving into modern times, the most notable, alike for its picturesque quaintness and its varied associations, was the avenue from the Grassmarket to the upper town. The West Bow, as this thoroughfare was called, derived its name from the ancient bow, or archway, which gave entrance to the little walled city before the civic area was extended by the Flodden wall of 1513. But the archway remained long after that date as the entrance to the upper town—the Temple Bar of Edinburgh—at which the ceremonial welcome of royal and distinguished visitors took place. The West Bow had accordingly been the scene of many a royal cavalcade of the Jameses and their queens; as well as of such representative men as Ben Jonson and his brother-poet Drummond of Hawthornden, of Laud, Montrose, Leslie, Cromwell, and Dundee. Among its quaint antique piles were the gabled Temple Lands, St. James’s Altar Land, and the timber-fronted lodging of Lord Ruthven, the ruthless leader in the tragedy when Lord Darnley’s minions assassinated Rizzio in Queen Mary’s chamber at Holyrood. There, too, remained till very recent years the haunted house of the prince of Scottish wizards, Major Weir; and near by the Clockmaker’s Land, noted to the last for the ingenious piece of workmanship of Paul Remieu, a Huguenot refugee of the time of Charles II. Nearly opposite was the dwelling of Provost Stewart, where, in the famous ’45, he entertained Prince Charles Edward, while Holyrood was for the last time the palace of the Stuarts. The alley which gave access to the old Jacobite provost’s dwelling bore in its last days the name of Donaldson’s Close; for here was the home of one of Edinburgh’s most prosperous typographers, James {8} {9} {10} {11} {12} {13} {14} Donaldson, who bequeathed the fortune won by his craft to found the magnificent hospital which now rivals that of the royal goldsmith of James I. Such were some of the antique surroundings amid which the subject of the present memoir passed his youth, and which no doubt had their influence in developing an archæological taste, and that reverence for every historical feature of his native city, which bore good fruit in later years. But his more intimate associations were with the singularly picturesque timber-fronted dwelling at the head of the West Bow, with another fine elevation toward the Lawnmarket, which, till 1878, stood unchanged as when the Flodden king rode past on his way to the Borough Moor. A painting of the old house adorned the walls at Salisbury Green in later years; and when at last the venerable structure was demolished, some of its oaken timbers were secured by William Nelson and fashioned into antique furniture for himself and his friends. This picturesque building was the haunt of an old Edinburgh bookseller, the founder of the well- known printing and publishing house of Thomas Nelson and Sons. Mr. Thomas Nelson, the father of the subject of the present memoir, and the originator of the great publishing firm, recurs to the present writer in the memories of his own early years as a fine example of the old Scottish type of silent, indomitable perseverance and sterling integrity. The traditions of the race are thus set forth in a memorandum in William Nelson’s handwriting:—“The Nelsons of our branch resided at Throsk, a few miles east from Stirling, not far from the field of Bannockburn. There was a tradition among us that some of our race lived there at the time the battle was fought, and as a boy I was willing to believe it.” There, at any rate, the Nelsons are known to have been for four or five generations; and Thomas Nelson was born at Throsk in 1780. His grandmother had seceded with the Erskines from the National Church; and the spirit of that elder race of Scottish nonconformists was inherited by their children. They joined a congregation of Reformed Presbyterians, or Covenanters, at Stirling; and the boy grew up on his father’s farm under all the influences of that earnest, unwavering religious faith, which has so often seemed the fitting complement to the ruggedness of the Scottish character, while it has, in not a few instances, furnished the best preparation, for a successful career in business. His father led a retired life on his carse farm, with Stirling sufficiently near to admit of his enjoying the privilege of regular worship with the devout little band of Presbyterian nonconformists there. So little was he affected by the enterprise of younger generations that he could not be persuaded to turn to profitable account a small pottery on the land he occupied. He was content with the humble career of a small farmer. But the monotony of farm-life was varied by long journeys, staff in hand, in which the boy accompanied his father, to attend the great gatherings at the sacramental seasons. In the persecuting times the devout adherents of the Covenant had been wont to assemble in some secluded glen to enjoy in safety the privileges of the communion service, and their descendants continued the practice in more peaceful times. Under such training the boy reached his sixteenth year, when, after a brief experience as a teacher, some chance report of prosperous adventure in the West Indies tempted the youth with its illusive visions. Bidding his friends and home farewell, his father accompanied him for some miles on the road to Alloa, giving his best counsel and advice to the lad by the way. When they reached the place of parting, his father said to him, “Thomas, my boy, have you ever thought that where you are going you will be far away from the means of grace?” “No, father,” said he, “I never thought of that, and I won’t go.” Thus abruptly the scheme was abandoned. They retraced their steps to the old farm, and the boy found employment for a time at Craigend, near Stirling. There he formed the acquaintance of Symington, whose steam-engine was first applied to navigation, and sailed with him in some of the earliest trial-trips on the Carron Water. The pottery which his father had neglected was started on a neighbouring farm, and young Nelson was anxious to get the management of it. But the scheme appears to have been distasteful to his father, whose secret desire probably was that his boy should follow his own example, and so escape the world’s trials and temptations. But the son’s ambition aimed at something more advantageous than the homely career of a lowland farmer; and so, by- and-by, he betook himself to London, entered the service of a publishing house there, and began the training which ultimately begot the great publishing firm that bears his name. The young Scottish Covenanter did not forget his early training, amid the temptations of the great metropolis. Along with a few other Scotchmen of his own age, he established a weekly meeting for religious fellowship; and it is told of one of the little band, who was employed at the dock-yard, that he forfeited his situation rather than work on the Sabbath day. But he had already won the favourable opinion of Lord Melville, who, on learning of his dismissal, severely rebuked the officials, and soon after advanced him to a higher post. From London, Thomas Nelson made his way to Edinburgh with what little capital his frugality had enabled him to accumulate, and there he started his first book-store, stocked chiefly with second-hand books, but from which ere long he began the issue of cheap reprints of the “Scots Worthies” and other popular religious works, in monthly parts. He had to proceed cautiously in this new venture, for his capital was small; but he had the courage to shape out a course of his own. With sagacious foresight he overleapt the intermediate stages of publishing and bookselling, and grafted on to the traffic of the mediæval fairs some of the most modern usages of free trade. The full results of this bold step are even now only partially developed, though its ultimate advantages are beginning to be generally recognized, and to force themselves on the attention of the great publishing houses, accustomed hitherto to cater only with small editions of costly volumes for the libraries of the wealthy, supplemented in recent years by the expedient of lending libraries. The removal of Mr. Thomas Nelson’s book-store to the picturesque tenement at the Bowhead marks the first progressive step of the young innovator. The venerable timber-fronted land projected with each successive story in advance of the lower one, after the fashion of that obsolete civic architecture in vogue before Newton had revealed his law of gravitation. The first story above the paving rested on substantial oak piers, forming a piazza opening on to the Bow, within which stood the exposed book-stall of the primitive trader. Behind this was the stone-vaulted buith, or shop, as in the old luckenbuiths alongside of St. Giles’s Cathedral. The north façade fronted on the Lawnmarket, a wide thoroughfare, where at certain seasons the dealers in linens and woollens set up their stalls, much after the fashion which the poet Dunbar describes them hampering the High Street before the Flodden wall was built. Already at that early date the printing-press of Walter Chepman, the Scottish Caxton, was at work; and before long the craft had its representatives among the traders’ buiths. In a later century Allan Ramsay began his prosperous career as a seller of his own metrical “broadsides;” and Dr. Johnson’s father, the respected bookseller and magistrate of the cathedral city of Lichfield, was wont to set up his book-stall on market days in the neighbouring towns. Here then, at the Bowhead, with its north front to the Lawnmarket, stood within our own recollection the well-stored book-stall, {15} {16} {17} {18} {19} {20} T the nucleus and germ of the great Parkside printing establishment, with its hundreds of workmen in every branch of the trade. The busy scene of a market day in the old locality, as it could still be seen sixty-five years ago, is graphically depicted in Turner’s view of the High Street, engraved in 1825 for Sir Walter Scott’s “Provincial Antiquities.” The book-trade, as prosecuted by Mr. Thomas Nelson, depended in no inconsiderable degree on the application of the stereotyping process to the production of cheap editions of popular works of established repute. He was a pioneer in the production of literature for the million; but he catered for the taste of an age very different from our own, in his effort to put standard works, already stamped with the approval of the wise and good, within reach of the peasant and the artisan. “The Pilgrim’s Progress” was already an English classic; and with this were issued such works as Baxter’s “Saints’ Rest,” Booth’s “Reign of Grace,” “MacEwan on the Types,” and other works of a like class. To those were by-and-by added Jeremy Taylor, Leighton, Romaine, and Newton, the old Scottish and Puritan divines, and Josephus, all produced by means of stereotype plates, which admitted of a limited issue adapted to the demand of the market. With the development of the business in later years, the issues of the publishing house embraced an ampler and much more varied range. But William carefully treasured his father’s private library. The spirit of the bibliomaniac developed itself in this special line, and the collection of old theological works included many choice specimens and rare editions of his father’s favourite divines. They were latterly treasured in a cabinet at Hope Park, along with other relics on which William Nelson set a high value; and their loss on the destruction of the Hope Park Works in 1878 by fire was one of his greatest causes of regret. From his own choice collection of theological works, Mr. Thomas Nelson made his first selections; but after a time he realized the necessity of catering for the tastes of other classes of readers; and so by-and-by there were added to them “Robinson Crusoe,” “Rasselas,” “The Vicar of Wakefield,” Goldsmith’s “Essays,” his “Deserted Village,” and other poems, along with popular favourites of a like class. Thus prosecuted, the business gradually expanded until the Bowhead establishment was no longer sufficient for the accommodation required. But free trade in books was in conflict with the ideas inherited from the privileged guilds of elder centuries. Competition had hitherto been restricted within narrow limits; and the daring innovator was regarded by the regular trade with all the disfavour of a revolutionist, against whom every effort was to be employed to thwart the sale of his publications. He had accordingly to find other channels of trade. Periodical visits were made to the smaller towns, over the country, north and south, and beyond the Scottish border. Thus a safe and extended business was gradually established, destined ultimately to revolutionize the book-trade. By its means was inaugurated a system of supply of popular literature, at prices within reach of the masses, long before other publishers of this class entered into competition on the same field. The influences of early training are traceable throughout the whole of Mr. Thomas Nelson’s career, and have left their impress on the business which owed its origin to his patient assiduity. He remained to the last faithful to the Covenanting Presbyterian Church, which maintained a stern adherence to the principles for which the martyrs of the Covenant had witnessed a good confession alike on the battlefield and the scaffold. His career in business had been an arduous struggle under many disabilities. As I remember him in my own boyhood, he was a grave, silent, yet not ungenial man; but one who seemed preoccupied with thoughts and cares in which a younger generation could claim no share. He had married, somewhat late in life, a bright young wife, by whom he had a family of four sons and three daughters; of whom the eldest son, the subject of this memoir, was born on the 13th of December, 1816. On Mrs. Nelson the care and training of the young family devolved, as the successful prosecution of the business necessarily required the frequent and prolonged absence of their father. Yet his interest in them was not less fervent. An incident illustrative of this has also its bearings in relation to a characteristic feature of the devout faith of the old Covenanting fathers. He dreamt that a terrible accident had befallen his younger son John, then a youth of ten years of age, who was absent at Pettycur in Fife. He set off on the following morning, and crossed the Forth, burdened with foreboding visions of death. On his arrival, he learned that his boy had fallen into the sea, and been brought back apparently lifeless; but he had been revived, and then lay asleep after the exhaustion of this vital struggle. It fully accorded with the devout piety of the old Covenanter to recognize in his dream a divine message and proof of providential interposition. Of Mrs. Nelson, Dr. John Cairns, who knew her intimately, refers, in his “In Memoriam” address on the death of this younger son, to her look of bright intelligence and winning affection, as indelibly impressed on the memory of all who were familiar with her. She possessed the happy mixture of tender, motherly guidance with an unusual amount of firmness and decision of character; and exercised great influence in the training of her son, who was passionately devoted to her. She was in perfect sympathy with her husband in his religious opinions, and venerated the memories of the confessors and martyrs of the Covenant; so that their sons and daughters were reared in strict conformity to the devout faith of Cameron, Peden, Cargill, and other fathers and confessors of that old Scottish type. Few men were more liberal-minded in later years than William Nelson; but the influence of early training survived through life, begetting some familiar traits of the best type of Scottish character evolved from that elder generation which so impressed the mind of the poet Wordsworth:— “Pure livers were they all, austere and grave, And fearing God; the very children taught Stern self-respect, a reverence for God’s Word, And a habitual piety, maintained With strictness scarcely known on English ground.” Some characteristic manifestations of the results of such early training will come under review in the narrative of later years. CHAPTER II. HAUNTS OF BOYHOOD. HE curious ancient thoroughfare, the scene of early bookselling and publishing operations, has been described in the previous chapter: for many youthful recollections of William Nelson are associated with the West Bow. In those years Edinburgh was still {21} {22} {23} {24} {25} {26} the romantic town described by Scott in his “Marmion,” piled steep and massy, close and high, along the ridge between the Cowgate and the Nor’ Loch. Since then nearly all the antique historical mansions of the Castle Hill and the adjoining Bowhead have disappeared. An extensive range was swept away about 1835 in clearing the area for Johnston Terrace and the Assembly Hall of the Scottish Church. The famous old palace of Mary of Guise has given place to the rival Assembly Hall and the New College of the Free Church; and a broad highway now sweeps round the Castle rock where in early years antique lands, closes, and wynds, once the abodes of the Scottish gentry, were crowded together on the slope reaching to the Grassmarket. The fine timber-fronted tenement at the corner of the Bowhead, constructed mainly of oak, was a choice example of the burghers’ dwellings in Old Edinburgh, with their trading booths opening on the street. Similar front lands in the High Street were the abodes of the merchants and traders. The “Gladstone Land” still stands near by in the Lawnmarket, bearing the initials of Thomas Gladstone, a merchant of Edinburgh in the days of Charles I. and Cromwell, to whose gifted descendant the restoration of the City Cross is due. The old nobles and landed gentry, judges and advocates, preferred the retirement of the closes and wynds, some of which still retain the names of patrician occupants. In one of those antique dwellings, in Trotter’s Close, near the Bowhead, with its wainscotted chambers, painted panels, and other traces of older generations, the Nelson family resided in William’s youth. The narrow approach to it admitted of no other carriage than the old-fashioned sedan chair; but the house itself was commodious, though with curious complexities of internal adaptation to its confined neighbourhood. One large chamber was shelved round, and stored with the surplus productions of publishing enterprise for which the Bowhead establishment had no room; and its miscellaneous contents furnished a tempting resort for explorations into some strange fields of literature not ordinarily lying within the range of youthful studies. When at length the West Bow was invaded by civic reformers, the Nelsons removed to a more commodious house, the dwelling in an elder century of Lady Elizabeth, Duchess of Gordon, while the duke held the Castle for James II. The Gordon House on the Castle Hill was a fine example of the town mansions of the sixteenth century; and, owing to its elevated site, commanded a beautiful view from its southern windows, looking across the Grassmarket to Heriot’s Hospital, the Greyfriars’ Churchyard, and the distant range of the Pentland Hills. On its demolition, in 1887, William Nelson secured sundry interesting relics, including a landscape by James Norie, which filled a panel over the mantlepiece in the duchess’s drawing-room. He also carried off the stone gargoils, fashioned in the shape of cannons, which projected from under the south parapet; and they now adorn the river wall of the garden at St. Bernard’s Well, the restoration of which, as will be seen hereafter, constituted one of the public-spirited works on which he was engaged when his life drew to a close. The stirring scene that the Grassmarket presented on certain days, as a regular horse-fair, may be seen in a fine engraving after Calcott in “The Provincial Antiquities of Scotland;” and is still more graphically depicted in one of Geikie’s humorous etchings. Here accordingly was a favourite resort of the boys from the neighbouring Bow. The Castle Esplanade at certain hours afforded a freer playground. At other times it offered the tempting attractions of military parade and drill. But Edinburgh has also within its civic bounds the royal park of Arthur’s Seat, the Salisbury Crags, and Duddingston Loch, looking as though a choice fragment of the Highlands had been transported thither to form an adequate pleasure-ground for the Scottish capital. Hither flocked the city boys alike from the closes and wynds of the old town and from the new town crescents and squares. There was room for all, and a choice of sport for every age. Here is a reminiscence of a very youthful pastime, recalled in 1883, in a letter to Mr. James Campbell, one of William Nelson’s old West Bow playmates:—“You will, I have no doubt, recollect a long, smooth stone near Jeanie Deans’ House, in the Queen’s Park. This stone was associated with my earliest recollections, as it was a great enjoyment for boys and girls to slide down it; and many a time, when I was a little boy, have I had this enjoyment. Well, the stone was in existence till only a few weeks ago, when some rascally fellows blew it to pieces with dynamite. The act is much to be regretted, as the stone, in addition to its being a source of enjoyment for little folks in the way I have stated, was extremely interesting to geologists as one of the finest illustrations near Edinburgh of the polish produced by glacial action.” While the boys were disporting themselves on the Castle Hill and Arthur’s Seat, without a care for the future, their father was grappling with the first difficulties inevitable to the innovator on the prescriptive usages of the book-trade. But whatever may have been the obstacles encountered by him, there was no grudging expenditure in the educational advantages provided for his sons. At the school of Mr. William Lennie, and subsequently at that of Mr. George Knight, then second to none in Edinburgh, and afterwards at the High School, William Nelson pursued his earlier studies; and there, too, some of the friendships were formed which he cherished with all the warmth of his sympathetic nature to the close of life. It was in those early days, at Mr. Knight’s school, that the friendship was formed with his present biographer, along with George Wilson, subsequently Professor of Technology in the University of Edinburgh, with Dr. Philip Maclagan, and with William and James Sprunt, two young West Indians, the former of whom will reappear as British Consul in North Carolina. Of the more romantic career of the latter an account is happily preserved in the notes of an address by William Nelson at one of the gatherings of old schoolmates in later years, which were so congenial to his tastes. After telling of James Sprunt’s first settlement in the island of St. Vincent among a dissolute set of West Indians, his quitting it for New Orleans, and being lost sight of for years, he thus proceeds:—“He had landed penniless; but when his old father and mother got their first letter from him, it was an invitation for them to join him there and share his good fortune. He next appears as rector of a classical academy at Wilmington, North Carolina, where he became a clergyman and pastor of the Presbyterian Church; and when the war broke out between the North and South, he cast in his lot with the latter, marched with the Wilmington brigade into action, and as an army chaplain, under General Stonewall Jackson, went through the terrible scenes of strife and carnage in that bloody civil war, utterly regardless of danger, and even ready to face death at the call of duty. His popularity with his Wilmington congregation was not lessened, it may be believed, when he returned to resume his pastoral charge at the close of the war.” Of other boys of those first school-days may be noted Dr. J. A. Smith, in later years an active member of the Royal Society, and Secretary of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland; Dr. John Knight, the son of our old teacher; the Rev. James Huie of Wooler, Northumberland, and others, who formed themselves into “The Juvenile Society for the Advancement of Knowledge,” of which an account is given in the Memoir of George Wilson by his sister. The High School, a venerable civic institution dating from the sixteenth century, still occupied the site of the Blackfriars’ Monastery, at the east end of the ridge from which the ruined Kirk-of-Field was displaced by the newly-founded university in Queen {27} {28} {29} {30} {31} {32} Mary’s time. The modern policeman had not yet superseded the old city watch. The High School Wynd, a singularly picturesque alley of timber-fronted lands, at the foot of which stood the palace of Cardinal Beaton, gave access to the Cowgate, a plebeian haunt, the young roughs of which maintained a hereditary feud against the “puppies” of the High School. A stray High School boy, especially if he was a “guite” or freshman, venturing into that Alsatia, incurred all the risks of a wanderer into an enemy’s lines; and from time to time a bicker, or pitched battle with sticks and stones, between the “puppies” of the High School and the “blackguards” of the Cowgate, came off by mutual understanding on a Saturday in the Hunter’s Bog or on the Links. The school numbered upwards of seven hundred boys. The Yards, as the playground was called, presented the busy scene characteristic of similar juvenile gatherings. But there was then less of restraint either by masters or police than under the new régime of school boards and “peelers.” Out of school boys settled their own affairs, and righted their own wrongs, with results that seem to me on the whole to have tended to develop manliness and self-restraint. In the general sports, as well as in organized bickers or raids into the enemy’s quarters, after some Cowgate encroachment upon the amenities of the school, all were one; but the acquaintance even with the boys of our own class was partial. They naturally formed into little groups of kindred spirits, the beginnings in some cases of life-long friendships. Dr. Philip Maclagan, referring to those early school-days, says: “I was one of the original members of the Juvenile Society for the Advancement of Knowledge. The society met on Friday evening; papers were read by the members in rotation, and questions previously started were debated. I remember some of them—‘Whether the whale or the herring afforded the more useful and profitable employment to mankind?’ ‘Whether the camel was more useful to the Arab or the reindeer to the Laplander?’ and similar puzzles for youthful ingenuity.” As yet political and social questions were unheeded; and the Saturday rambles, for which Edinburgh offers such rare advantages, furnished materials for subsequent discussion in diverse geological, botanical, and antiquarian subjects of interest. Those excursions extended to Cramond; to Royston Castle, picturesquely crowning a rock near the sea-shore; to Newhaven, Leith, or Portobello; or landward, to Craigmillar Castle, Corstorphine, Colinton, the Esk; and to the Braid or Blackford Hill: a stolen pleasure, since we were at that time liable to pursuit and ejection as trespassers. The Arthur’s Seat as well as the Blackford Hill of those days, if less adapted for the proprieties of a city park, were more to the taste of youthful explorers while still in a state of nature. It was the Blackford of young Walter Scott— “On whose uncultured breast, Among the broom, and thorn, and whin, A truant boy, I sought the nest; Or listened, as I lay at rest, While rose on breezes thin The murmur of the city crowd.” Already, when Scott penned his “Marmion,” the agriculturist and the builder were working havoc on the scene. How much more may survivors of that younger circle now say,— “O’er the landscape, as I look, Nought do I see unchanged remain, Save the rude cliffs and chiming brook. To me they make a heavy moan Of early friendships past and gone.” But such feelings found no place in the thoughts of the eager truants. Close at hand were the never-failing Calton Hill, or Arthur’s Seat and Duddingston, with charm enough for a pleasant ramble, but also utilized, along with more extended excursions, for collecting specimens to furnish material for subsequent discussion in their Juvenile Society, as well as contributions to the museum which was already in course of formation. The sea-shore had then, as in later years, a peculiar charm for William Nelson. To the very close of his life an excursion in company with some favourite companion to Newhaven, or to North Berwick, and off in one of the fishermen’s boats to fish for haddock or whitings, furnished one of his most prized recreations. But it was at Kinghorn, his mother’s birthplace, on the opposite shore of the Firth of Forth, that his choicest holidays were spent. In a letter written in long subsequent years to his old schoolmate and friend, the Rev. Dr. Simpson of Derby, when an event, hereafter referred to, brought him anew into intimate relations with the place, he thus recalls the memories of his early boyhood:—“My connection with Kinghorn has been very close; and my love for it, as my mother’s birthplace, and the place where I spent many very happy days in my earliest years, and during my school holidays afterwards, is very great. I was exceedingly fond of fishing, both from the rocks on the sea-shore and at Kinghorn Loch; and happier days were never spent by any youngster than were those days of mine at Kinghorn. I knew every rock on the coast from Pettycur onwards to Seafield Tower on East the Braes, which is not far from the ‘lang toon of Kirkcaldy;’ and a finer sea-coast for grand rocks there is not anywhere on the northern coast of the Firth of Forth. I was as happy as I could be from morning till night. I remember the talks, too, in those early days by the old folks, which were principally about Paul Jones’s visit to the Firth, my grandmother having seen his ship from the little hamlet of Glassmount, about two miles from Kinghorn, where she was born, and where her parents stayed at that time. “Another favourite subject of talk was the ‘windy Saturday,’ a tremendous day of wind, when only one vessel, it was said, out in the Firth of Forth, was able to face the stormy blasts without coming to grief. A third subject of talk with the old folks was the mischief that steam-boats had done to the town, as, before they began to run, there were big boats to carry passengers; and as they started only at particular times of the tide, and did not go during the night, passengers had generally to stay some time in the town till the boats were ready to start—that is, for Leith, as there was no Newhaven in those days. ‘What a good this did to the town!’ and, ‘What a mistake it was to upset the quiet, easy way of taking things, as they were in those good old days, by the introduction of steam-boats!’ My mother’s uncle, John Macallum, was the captain of the first steam-boat, or, at all events, one of the first, that sailed on the Firth of Forth, its name being the Sir William Wallace. It unfortunately was wrecked on some rocks near Burntisland. “I could enlarge upon such themes to a great extent, and upon my companions of those early days; but, alas! those companions have all passed away, with two exceptions—namely, Henry Darney, a worthy citizen of Kinghorn, and Major Greig, now of Toronto, {33} {34} {35} {36} {37} W Canada. My connection with Kinghorn came to a close about 1836, when my grandmother died; but such a liking have I for the place, that I have paid it a short visit almost every year since that time.” His more intimate relations with Kinghorn, as he states, terminated with the death of his grandmother; but his fondness for it remained through life. In 1885 his eldest sister, Mrs. George Brown, returned from Canada, and I am indebted to her for some interesting early reminiscences recalled by more than one visit made in his company to their mother’s birthplace. “It was there,” she writes, “he spent all his holidays as a boy; and so eager was he to get to the place that the very afternoon of the breaking up of school often saw him on board the ferry-boat on his way across the Forth, fishing-rod in hand and fishing-basket on back. For fishing he had a perfect passion. At Newhaven, Kinghorn, Crail, North Berwick, and Oban, he was well known and greatly liked by all the fishermen, although frequently their patience must have been pretty well put to the test when they were taken out in rough weather by William, and they knew there were no fish to be had. “When a boy at Kinghorn, late and early he might be seen either putting his tackle in order, or down on the beach digging for bait, or on the rocks, now on one and now on another, according to the state of the tide, contented to spend hours and hours together so that he only caught fish or even got what he called good nibbles. On many occasions he was so successful that he was able to keep the poor pretty well supplied with fish during his visits. “It was not only during the holiday months that William occupied himself in fishing or in preparation for it. All through the winter he and his brothers spent a good deal of their time in manufacturing lines for the next summer’s campaign. It is amusing to remember where materials for these fishing-lines sometimes came from. There was an old piano in the house which had seen better days, and the strings of it afforded a good supply of wire for fastening the hooks on the lines; the tail of any horse unfortunate enough to come in the way was put under contribution for a supply of hair. To the end of his life, his interest in and his love for Kinghorn never waned; and by the occasional visits he continued to pay, his acquaintance with the few remaining companions of his boyhood was kept up. “The second last visit he paid was in 1886. My sister Jessie and I were with him. Leaving Edinburgh early in the day, we crossed to Burntisland; and getting a carriage there, we drove to Pettycur. His recollections were all of his boyhood. He showed us a part of the beach where he used to dig for cockles and sand-eels, and the rocks where he and his companions made a fire to roast potatoes. He pointed out the place where Alexander III. is said to have been killed; and recalled the old times of pinnaces and open boats before steamers were heard of. Leaving Pettycur, we drove to the loch, a lovely, sequestered place, where William caught his first pike. To show his love for fishing, my brother Tom recalls the fact that on one occasion, when the holidays were over and the day had come for William to return to Edinburgh, after he had finished his preparations for starting, he looked at the clock, and saying he had still time to run up to the loch before the boat sailed, rushed off with his fishing-rod. Whether he came back with an empty basket or not tradition does not say. From the loch we made our way to the beautiful sandy beach; then up to the Braes, where he used to scamper about, and on which there still stands an old hawthorn tree, by the side of which, he told us, he fired his first shot. He loved evidently to linger in memory over these days and recall his friends and playmates, the remembrance of whom brought tears to his eyes.” CHAPTER III. SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMATES. ILLIAM Nelson was a pupil in the High School of Edinburgh when one great cycle in its history was completed. It had occupied the site of the old Blackfriars’ Monastery for upwards of two hundred and seventy years. In 1555 the town house of Cardinal Beaton, at the foot of the Blackfriars’ Wynd, which continued to be one of the most interesting historical buildings in Edinburgh till its demolition in 1871, was rented by the city for the use of the Grammar School, while a building for its permanent occupation was “being biggit on the east side of the Kirk-of-Field,” the scene, a few years later, of Lord Darnley’s mysterious assassination. Its rector was David Vocat, a prebendary of the neighbouring collegiate church of St. Mary-in-the-Field; and under his rule the cloisters of the Dominicans, built for them in 1230 by Alexander II., gave place to the halls and playground of the High School boys. But it was a turbulent age, and before the century closed the Yards became the scene of a tragic event which retained a prominent place among the traditions of the school so long as it remained on the old site. In 1598 Bailie Macmoran, one of the city magistrates, was shot in a barring out of the schoolboys by William Sinclair, a son of the Chancellor of Caithness. The contemporary diarist, Birrel, notes that “there was ane number of scholaris, being gentlemen’s bairns, made a mutinie;” and on the poor bailie interposing, the schoolboy revolt ended in dire tragedy. Great as were the changes that time had wrought on the locality where the old monastery of the Black Friars gave place to the City Grammar School, a flavour of historic antiquity pervaded it to the last. The episcopal palace of the Beatons, where the school work had been carried on for a time, still stood at the foot of the High School Wynd; and near by was the site of that of Gawain Douglas, who, while still provost of St. Giles’s collegiate church— “In a barbarous age Gave to rude Scotland Virgil’s page.” It was probably due to the vicinity of their lodgings that the poet interposed on behalf of the militant archbishop when, after the famous street feud of “Cleanse the Causeway,” Beaton had vainly sought sanctuary behind the altar of the Blackfriars’ Church, and, but for the interposition of the poet, would have been slain. His vigorous translation of the Æneid into the Scottish vernacular was a favourite with William Nelson in later years. But the associations of the locality in his school days were for the most part of more recent date. The High School Yards had been the playground of Hume, Robertson, Erskine, Horner, Jeffrey, Cockburn, Brougham, and Scott, and of many a notability before them. The memory of its gentle, scholarly rector, Dr. Adam, author of “Roman Antiquities” and other works, was still fresh; and the old school seemed a link between past generations and the living age. But neither the site, with its {38} {39} {40} {41} {42} {43} picturesque surroundings, nor the building, accorded with the ideas of civic reformers who had organized a crusade against whatever was out of keeping with the brand-new town. The age had not then reverted to the mediæval models which have since come into vogue. Classic art was regarded as most suited to academic requirements; and so a beautiful Grecian building—the finest specimen of Thomas Hamilton’s architectural skill, in the designing of which his artist friend, David Roberts, was understood to have contributed valuable aid,—had been erected on the southern slope of the Calton Hill, as a more fitting home for the city Grammar School. The migration from the antiquated building at the head of the High School Wynd to this splendid edifice in the New Town was an important change in many ways besides the mere removal to more commodious and sightly halls. It brought to an end a host of old customs and traditions; and, among the rest, to the hereditary feud between the Cowgate “blackguards” and the High School “puppies.” A grand civic ceremonial marked this transfer of the school to its new domicile. On the 23rd of June 1829—a bright, auspicious day—William Nelson, the head boy of his class, with his schoolmates, under the leadership of the rector and masters, walked in procession, each bearing an osier wand, with music, military escort, and all the civic glories that the Lord Provost and magistrates could command, to do honour to the occasion. It was a memorable epoch in schoolboy life. But it seemed to the old boys as though they never were quite at home in their stately New Town quarters. Old “Blackie,” with her famous “gib” or toffy stall, was out of place there; and as for Brown’s famous subterranean pie-shop in the old High School Wynd, it necessarily tarried behind, to the inevitable ruin of a once flourishing business. Not the building only, but the entire scholastic system carried on within its walls, soon after underwent a complete revolution; and the work of the venerable Grammar School of Prebendary Vocat, the classic arena of Adam, Pillans, and Carson, has since devolved on Fettes College, a creation of the present century. But the old classic system still prevailed in William Nelson’s time; and, notwithstanding some glaring defects, was turned by him to good account. As to the school itself, it must be owned that it stood in need of reform. The class of Mr. Benjamin Mackay, under whose training William Nelson remained for four years, numbered upwards of a hundred boys. Those in the two front forms worked with more or less persistency under a somewhat coercive system; the remainder idled in the most flagrant fashion, and not a few of them looked back in later years on those dreary hours with an indignant sense of wasted time. But William Nelson was foremost among the studious workers. The same quiet, resolute perseverance which marked his later career in business characterized him as a schoolboy. He maintained his place as the dux of his class, carried off the chief prizes of the school, and at the close of his course under the rector, Dr. Carson, he passed to the university with the highest honours, as classical gold medalist. Among the carefully preserved papers of his early years are a bundle of old letters from schoolmates, enclosed in an envelope addressed to his mother, with an endorsation begging her to see to their safe keeping. They furnish pleasant glimpses of the affectionate relations already established with more than one of the friends of later years. The solemn protest of the learned Principal, Dr. Lee, against “that most objectionable and pernicious practice of making balls of snow,” is humorously commented on, along with graver matters, such as pertained to the themes and discussions of the Juvenile Literary Society, and the more ambitious debating societies of the university. His own sense of humour found free play both in early and later years; but above all, his youthful letters are full of pleasant gossip of the old sailors of Kinghorn, who told him yarns of the victories in which they had shared in the great French war, and the pranks they indulged in when flush with prize-money. Old Charlie Mackenzie had been in the Mars in her action with the Hercules, one of the bloodiest naval conflicts of the war. Another of the Kinghorn story-tellers—Orrock, who died in 1836, upwards of ninety years of age—claimed to have known the man who acted as drummer at the Porteous mob, and to have learned from him some details of the burning of the doors, and so gaining admission to the Tolbooth. The intense feeling of local attachment which such reminiscences reveal manifested itself in later years in the interest he took in improvements at Kinghorn, as well as in the more costly restorations in his native city. But one of the first fruits of his intercourse with the old pensioners of Kinghorn, who, as he says, “were great fishers for podlies from certain rocks on the sea-shore,” was the capture of a crab with a double claw, a lusus naturæ, which furnished a novel subject for discussion at a meeting of the Juvenile Literary Society. His contributions to its collections and learned discussions were generally of the same class—algæ, shells, or other marine curiosities, the fruits of his last holiday ramble by the sea. Among stray waifs that have survived from those old days is a letter, bearing date February 20, 1829, addressed to the secretary of the Juvenile Society by the elder brother of one of its members. With all the condescension of an undergraduate placing his mature knowledge at the service of schoolboys, the writer sets forth “the very great pleasure I take in hearing of the proceedings of your society, and my unqualified approbation of your plan of keeping a journal as a sort of record of your proceedings.” He proceeds: “I daresay you are unaware that the duties of a student of medicine are of a very arduous nature.” But, as he goes on to state, he had laid before the Plinian Society in the previous summer a paper on certain “Discoveries made behind Edinburgh Castle in digging the foundation of the new bridge,”—part of the terraced road which involved the destruction of Trotter’s Close and the Nelson homestead,—and this, he says, “I shall copy out in a style which I hope will prove interesting to my young friends, and which may, perhaps, form a contribution to their journal.” The writer, whose seniority, by the years that separate the College student from the High School boy, entitled him thus condescendingly to address his brother Philip and the other juvenile savants, is now Sir Douglas Maclagan, the genial veteran Professor of Medical Jurisprudence in his own university; and, it may be added, the author of some of the most popular of a younger generation’s student-songs. At a later stage the juvenile debaters awoke to an interest in the stirring questions of the day. Mr. Alexander Sprunt, writing from Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1859, says: “During the period of our High School curriculum, questions were occupying the public mind, and startling events taking place in Europe: the final struggle of the Poles, the French ‘Three Days of July,’ the reform movement, etc. The subject of the immediate or gradual emancipation of the negro slaves in the colonies was also keenly discussed about that time. Some of us, being related to families of the colonists, were familiar with the arguments for a gradual abolition of slavery.” William Nelson took up the question warmly, and was an uncompromising advocate for immediate emancipation. As to the oft-renewed struggle in France between Bourbon Royalists, Imperialists, and Red Republicans, it was forcibly brought home to the realization of the young debaters by the presence of the exiled Charles X. and his little court at Holyrood; and by the occasional sight of the royal refugee as he passed the High School Yards on foot, in company with one or two of his suite, to enjoy the magnificent panorama from the Calton Hill. The fruits of those early experiences could be discerned in later years. The boy’s education was progressing under other {44} {45} {46} {47} {48} {49} teachings besides those of t...