William Nelson A Memoir 3

William Nelson A Memoir 3

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 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