William Nelson A Memoir 21

William Nelson A Memoir 21

‘Memorials of Edinburgh in the Olden Time,’ that it belonged to a worthy

old citizen, Bartholomew Somerville, a liberal benefactor to our

University in its early days.”

 

The sympathetic interest thus manifested in every ancient feature of the

special haunts of his boyhood extended to whatever contributed to the

picturesqueness and beauty of his native city. One who was very familiar

with his indefatigable exertions for the conservation of whatever

pertained to its historical antiquities--Mr. D. Scott Moncrieff--thus

writes in reply to a request for information relative to the share

borne by Mr. Nelson in recent efforts on that behalf:--“It is no easy

matter to do this, for Mr. Nelson for many years took an active interest

in every movement having for its object the enhancement of the beauties

of his native city. As you are aware, he was long a member, and latterly

one of the council, of the Cockburn Association, founded in 1875, for

promoting the improvement of Edinburgh and its neighbourhood; and as

convener of the council I had frequent opportunities of hearing his

views upon such questions. His interest was much engaged, in particular,

in the improvement of Edinburgh Castle, the Meadows, and other public

parks, the encouragement of a higher style of architecture, and the

frustration of mean and tasteless designs, vulgar advertisements, and

the depraved habit of painting stone work. He strove to obviate the

necessity for unsightly workshops and tall chimneys, for which in his

own extensive works there was found no place.” But he soon discovered

that mere criticising, remonstrating, and suggesting improvements were

of little avail; and as Mr. Scott Moncrieff adds: “His interest in the

work of the Association was not confined to attending meetings and

expressing his views. Every citizen of Edinburgh may well feel proud and

grateful that amongst them there was one gifted, not only with an

exquisite taste for all that was beautiful, but with an enthusiasm in

having his aspirations given __EXPRESSION__ to, and also with the means of

carrying his ideas into effect.” One of those practical demonstrations

of his public-spirited liberality has a history of its own.

 

The circular panel of the finely-carved mantle-piece in the council room

of Heriot’s Hospital is filled with a painting which perpetuates the

tradition that the medicinal spring of St. Bernard’s Well, on the Water

of Leith--resembling in character the famed Harrogate springs--was

discovered by a party of Heriot boys while sporting on the bank of the

stream. A more dubious legendary tale assigns the origin of the name to

the occupation of a cave on the neighbouring slope by the saint still

associated with its healing waters; but its medicinal virtues are noted

for the first time in the _Scottish Magazine_ for 1760, at which date

the water seems to have been in great repute. The old Scottish judge,

Lord Gardenstone, an eccentric valetudinarian, having derived much

benefit from the medicinal waters, in 1789 erected over the healing

fountain a fine Doric temple, designed as a reproduction of the famous

Sibyl’s Temple at Tivoli. A colossal plaster statue of Hygeia was placed

within the columns, over the vaulted chamber of the well. Thus

enshrined, it has ever since been a favourite morning resort; and

William Nelson continued for many years to be one of its most faithful

frequenters. But the picturesque and richly-wooded valley of the Leith,

to which the Heriot boys resorted in the eighteenth century, has long

been invaded by the extended new town. The temple had fallen into

disrepair, and the boys of the neighbouring village of Stockbridge had

defaced and mutilated the statue, till it presented some of the most

familiar characteristics of a genuine antique. The amenities of the spot

had suffered in all ways, and the proposed erection of a public laundry

on the adjacent area threatened the final ruin of the well, when in 1885

Mr. Nelson interposed, purchased it and the grounds in its vicinity,

restored and beautified the well, and commissioned Mr. Stephenson to

execute a marble statue of Hygeia, to replace the mutilated goddess of

earlier days. The surrounding grounds were tastefully laid out, under

the directions of a skilled landscape gardener, and the whole finished

at a cost of £5,000, and presented to the city. He did not live to see

the fine statue placed on its pedestal; but his letters to his friends

frequently refer to it, along with others of the various works of

restoration which so largely occupied his thoughts and engaged his

active sympathy in his later years. Writing to Captain Chester in

January 1886 he says: “I send you the last report of the Cockburn

Association, from which you will see that I have in hand the restoration

of several ancient buildings in the Castle, and of the mineral well on

the Water of Leith called St. Bernard’s Well, a chromo-lithograph of

which I enclose. I am glad that it has fallen to my lot to do something

ere I be ‘called hence to be no more,’ for the beauty and interest of

mine own romantic town.”

 

The shrine of his favourite healing fountain had been restored to far

more than its pristine beauty, and the generous benefactor to whom the

work was due had himself been “called hence,” when the convener of the

Cockburn Association wrote: “What Mr. William Nelson undertook he did

well and thoroughly; and so long as Edinburgh citizens look down upon

the valley of the Water of Leith, his work at St. Bernard’s Well will

keep his memory green in their hearts.”

 

But, as his letters show, other and still more extensive and costly

restorations engaged William Nelson’s practical liberality, and

continued to be objects of deepest interest to him till the close of his

life. So early as 1847, attention had been recalled, in the “Memorials

of Edinburgh in the Olden Time,” to the fact that the ancient hall of

the palace in the Castle still existed, though so defaced and overlaid

by later transmutations as to have passed out of knowledge of the living

generation. But the matter was once more forgotten till near the close

of 1883, when Lord Napier and Ettrick published in the _Scotsman_ an

account of his explorations above the modern ceiling of the hospital

ward, where, “on creeping up a ladder, through a trap-door, he found

himself in a maze of mighty beams, on which the dust of centuries lay

thick and soft.” It was the fine old open timbered ceiling, of carved

chestnut, of the great hall of the Castle. Public attention was now

keenly awakened to the interest of this historic relic. Here was the

_aula Castri_, or great hall of the Castle, where there is little doubt

the Scottish Parliament assembled in 1437 to inaugurate the reign of the

young king, James II. Here, too, if the legend is to be accepted as a

verity, only two years later Chancellor Crichton had the fatal symbol of

the bull’s head served up for the Earl of Douglas. It was here that

Charles I. held his coronation banquet in 1633, and that Argyle

entertained the Lord Protector Cromwell in 1650. Of the historic worth

of the ancient hall there could be no question; and not only its

degradation to the purposes of a garrison hospital, but the general

neglect and disfigurement of the Castle, had long been a subject of

public complaint.

 

The council of the Cockburn Association followed up the letter of Lord

Napier with a memorial to the Marquis of Hartington, then Secretary of

State for War, complaining of the misappropriation and defacement of the

ancient hall, and urging its restoration. But the wonted formalities and

circumlocution of official correspondence ensued, with little prospect

of any satisfactory result, “when,” as Mr. Scott Moncrieff writes, “we

were still hoping that the building might be rendered available for uses

more in harmony with its history and associations; and while the matter

was still under the consideration of the authorities, Mr. Nelson,

knowing the well-nigh insurmountable obstacles in the way of Government

dealing effectively, timeously, and reasonably, in affairs of the kind,

in the most generous and patriotic way offered at his sole expense to

undertake the restoration, not only of the old Parliament Hall, but also

of two other most interesting and picturesque features of the Castle,

the Argyle Tower and St. Margaret’s Chapel.”

 

The little oratory of St. Margaret had been a subject of interest to him

from the time when it was anew brought under notice, in 1845, as a

long-forgotten historical relic; and as for the Argyle Tower, it was

associated in his mind with the reverence due to the martyrs of the

Covenant. The fine old Edinburgh cemetery, the Greyfriars’ Churchyard,

was only separated from the West Bow by the Grassmarket, where in the

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the public gallows was erected, for

the execution not only of degraded criminals, but of many of the victims

of intolerance in Covenanting times, to whom a common grave was assigned

in the neighbouring cemetery. There, accordingly, in happier days the

Martyrs’ Monument was erected, with its tribute to the memory of “about

a hundred noblemen and gentlemen, ministers, and others, noble martyrs

for Jesus Christ,” all executed at Edinburgh, “from May 27th, 1661, that

the most noble Marquis of Argyle was beheaded, to the 17th February

1688, that Mr. James Renwick suffered.” It was but a step from the early

home in the West Bow to the Greyfriars’ Churchyard, where the Martyrs’

Monument had been an object of veneration to William Nelson from his

youth. The same spirit of reverent piety which led to the erection of

the Martyrs’ Monument on the spot selected, as a mark of ignominy, for

the graves of the victims of Stuart persecution, associates the name of

Argyle with the tower in the neighbouring fortress in which Archibald,

Earl of Argyle, was imprisoned before his execution in 1685. He had gone

up to London to pay his homage to Charles II., relying on the indemnity

which had been granted, as far as England was concerned. But Scotland

was still a separate kingdom; and as a prominent leader of the Scottish

Covenanters, Argyle was regarded with special antipathy. He was

accordingly arrested, cast into the Tower, and from thence transferred

to the state prison in the Castle of Edinburgh. It was from that prison

chamber that the earl addressed to his friends letters marked by a rare

spirit of calm Christian resignation, including the simple farewell note

to his own son, written immediately before his execution. Of the latter

William Nelson had a facsimile made. Still more, according to current

belief, it was in the same prison chamber that a member of the council,

on coming to interview him, was startled at finding the victim of

intolerance calmly asleep immediately before he walked with quiet

composure to the scaffold. The scene associated with such memorable

occurrences appealed to William Nelson’s religious no less than to his

archæological sympathies; so that the restoration of the Argyle Tower

was for him, in a very special sense, a labour of love.

 

The work thus generously undertaken proceeded slowly, amid endless

official routine and red-tape formalities. Plans were prepared and

submitted to the critical revision of his colleagues in the council of

the Cockburn Association before asking official approval. But hospital

accommodation had to be found elsewhere; and the patience he manifested,

and the calm perseverance with which he overcame the _vis inertiæ_ of

the Circumlocution Office, were a source of admiration to his friends

and of amusement to himself. His unostentatious liberality, along with

the taste and judgment he displayed, naturally gave weight to his

opinions; and, notwithstanding his instinctive reserve, he was induced

on more than one occasion to remonstrate with the authorities on plans

that had received official approval. In 1887 the sketch of a tasteless

design for a new entrance gateway, to form the main approach to the