Royal Society of Edinburgh

“ You are well aware that the establishment of the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh was first brought about by the energy of a few enlightened individuals. "These youthful aspirants after truth perceived that it was not merely the frigid plodding over books, nor the doctrines and precepts of age and authority, nor the detail of empirical practice, that could inspire that taste and spirit, and give that manly tone to our inquiries which alone can render study agreeable, vigorous, and successful. ”

“ There is as good skating-ground, and as good curling-ground, at Lochend and Duddingston, as anywhere in all Scotland—nor is there anywhere else better beef and greens. There is no perfection anywhere, but Edinburgh society is excellent. We are certainly agreeable citizens; with just a sufficient spice of party spirit to season the feast of reason and the flow of soul, and to prevent society from becoming drowsily unanimous. Without the fillip of a little scandal, honest people would fall asleep ”

“ There is a bevy of Scottish queens of society, each in her generation; clever and brilliant women, who, if they did not contribute to literature themselves, were the patrons and inspirers of those who did. James V. enlivened Edinburgh by the foundation of the Court of Session, since which time her society has been dominated by lawyers, and many a Scottish judge has left his name for wit and oddity among the glories of the Parliament House. James VI. enriched Edinburgh by the foundation of a University ”

“ It was rather that the one consisted of men independently resident in the place as lawyers, clergymen, and what not, and employing their leisure in literature, while the other consisted, to far greater extent, of authors by profession. This difference is pointed out by one of the old Edinburgh set itself, as serving to account for what he considered the greater geniality and cordiality of the habits of that set in their intercourse with each other in comparison with the contemporary habits of London literary society under the dogmatic presidency of Johnson. ”

“ There have been at all periods, we believe, many societies of this kind for the young aspirants at Edinburgh University. Naturally the young bloods of the law are the most anxious to shine in such arenas. Naturally also the prize of reputation usually falls to the glib and fluent speaker, especially if he has some real ability and learning to second his tongue. The better the society is attended, the more genuine is the mettle required in its leaders. ”

“ In Edinburgh the standard of the highest income is much lower, and the standard of the lowest is perhaps higher, than in Glasgow; nor is wealth of so much relative importance in the social estimate. Roughly classified, the society of Edinburgh in the days to which we are now looking back consisted, as the society of Edinburgh still consists, of an upper stratum of lawyers and resident gentry, college officials, and clergy, reposing on, but by no means separated from, a community of shopkeepers and artisans sufficient for the wants of the place. ”

“ It might have been supposed that when facts similar to those stated in these Notes have been reiterated from various quarters, so that no adult in Edinburgh can plead ignorance concerning the state of the poor, that the appeal for visitors made by the Society aforesaid would have met a tremendous and immediate response, and that the gentlemen of Edinburgh would have come forward, as those of other and busier cities have done, to offer willing aid. ”

“ Who has not heard of the Speculative Society of Edinburgh, founded in 1764 in connection with the University, and kept up from that time to this by successive generations of students; of which Lord Cockburn says that it “has trained more young men to public spirit, talent, and liberal thought, than all the other private institutions in Scotland”? Between 1780 and 1800 this society was in all its 180glory, discussing, week after week, as its minutes inform us, such topics as these:—“Ought any permanent support to be provided for the poor?” “Ought there to be an established religion?” ”

“ In 1837 it received its charter, and was henceforth known as the Royal Scottish Academy; its annual exhibition was the chief art event of the year in Scotland, and since 1855 this exhibition has been held in the Grecian temple on the Mound, which is one of the most prominent architectural effects in Edinburgh. It is a mere commonplace to say there is no art without wealth, and, as far as Edinburgh is concerned, it is only after a new town began that she had painters worth the naming. ”

“ These were the Krames, so famous at Edinburgh firesides. Singular places of business they assuredly were; often not presenting more space than a good church-pew, yet supporting by their commerce respectable citizenly families, from which would occasionally come men of some consequence in society. At the same spot the constable (Earl of Errol) was wont to sit upon a chair at the ridings of the parliament, when ceremonially receiving the members as they alighted. ”

“ The influence of the Edinburgh Review can scarcely be realised in these days of numberless periodicals, and it was from Edinburgh that its great rival, the Quarterly, drew much of its early support, and one of its great editors, John Gibson Lockhart. Edinburgh, moreover, was still a national metropolis, for the railway systems had not yet brought about the real union of England and Scotland, and it possessed a society not less distinctively Scots than the Established Church or the code of law. ”

“ But the Edinburgh society which Scott remembered in his youth or met in his prime included a long series of remarkable men. Some of them, like Robertson the historian; Hugh Blair; John Home, the author of Douglas; Henry Mackenzie, 'The Man of Feeling'; John Leyden; Dugald Stewart; and John Wilson, 'Christopher North,' were more or less permanent residents. Others, like Adam Smith, Thomas Campbell, Lady Nairne, Thomas De Quincey, Sir James Mackintosh, and Sydney Smith, spent a smaller portion of their lives in Edinburgh. Not only was the city full of great writers ”

“ The reputation of the Medical School of Edinburgh, in particular, has always invested the professors in the Medical Faculty of the University with special distinction; and, as these professors have been generally also at the head of the medical practice of the city, the Medical element, and with it the Scientific element, in Edinburgh society have from times long past been, to a considerable extent, in union with the professorial.
In all Scottish cities The Clergy have, from time immemorial, exercised an amount of social influence not willingly allowed to any other class of persons. ”

“ There was at least one branch of the better sort of Edinburgh society which never manifested any disinclination to her acquaintance. This was the class of loose young men of good birth, who daily paraded at the Cross with flowing periwigs and glancing canes, and nightly drowned their senses in a vulgar debauch, from which they occasionally awoke in the morning with the duty of settling scores by a rencontre in St Ann’s Yards, or at St Leonard’s Crags. ”

“ Modern conditions have changed the character of Edinburgh society. In Scott’s early days a journey to London was beset with difficulties and even dangers; but railways have now brought it within a few hours’ distance, and Scottish artists and literary men are tempted to seek a wider field. Nevertheless, the influence of the past survives in many ways. Edinburgh is not markedly a manufacturing city, but preserves its character as the Scottish capital. ”

“ The foundation was at length laid of that revolution which has ended in making Edinburgh a kind of double city—first, an ancient and picturesque hill-built one, occupied chiefly by the humbler classes; and second, an elegant modern one, of much regularity of aspect, and possessed almost as exclusively by the more refined portion of society. The New Town, keeping pace with the growing prosperity of the country, had, in 1790, been extended to Castle Street ”

“ His ideal society, as we have seen, was the simple but high-toned friendliness, with courtly attention to old manners and customs of the social board—the ways of the old-fashioned generation before 1800, when Edinburgh society still took its tone from the Scottish aristocracy and gentry. After this period Edinburgh table-talk and manners were led by the lawyers. Men shone in society by contests of dialectics, brilliant disquisitions, 'such as might be transferred without alteration to the pages of a critical review.' Scott was of another world from this. ”

“ This edifice affords accommodation for the lecture rooms in the faculties of arts, law and theology, and for the museums and library. The opening up of the wide thoroughfare of Chambers Street, on the site of College Wynd and Brown and Argyll Squares, cleared the precincts of unsightly obstructions and unsavoury neighbours. The Royal Scottish Museum, structurally united to the university, contains collections illustrative of industry, art, science and natural history; and Minto House college and Heriot-Watt college are practically adjuncts of the university. ”

“ An infantry regiment is always stationed in the castle, and there are in addition the barracks at Piers-hill (or “Jock’s Lodge”) , half-way between Edinburgh and Portobello.
Social Life.—Edinburgh society still retains a certain old-fashioned Scottish exclusiveness. It has been said that the city is “east-windy” and the folk “west-endy.” But this criticism needs judicious qualification. The local patriotism and good taste of the citizens have regulated recreation and have also preserved in pristine vigour many peculiarly Scottish customs and pastimes. ”

“ The continuation in the society of Edinburgh of a considerable sprinkling of such free-speaking gentlewomen of the old Scottish school, intermingled with as many of the other sex using a still rougher rhetoric, imparted, we are told, a flavour of originality to the convivial conversation of the place for which there is now no exact equivalent.
Presided over by such seniors, the young educated men of the time did not stint themselves in the choice or the range of their convivial topics. ”

“ We become, in a special degree, sensible of this truth when we see the house of a royal personage sunk amidst the impurities of a narrow close in the Old Town of Edinburgh. Such was literally the case of an aged pile of buildings on the north side of the Castle-hill, behind the front line of the street, and accessible by Blyth’s, Nairn’s, and Tod’s Closes, which was declared by tradition to have been the residence of Mary de Guise, the widow of James V., and from 1554 to 1560 regent of this realm. ”

“ The atmosphere of Edinburgh with its large enthusiastic classes in the hospitals, its cultivated and intellectual society outside, supplied just what was wanted to foster the genius of a young man on the threshold of his career. In London, centres of culture were too widely diffused, indifference and apathy too prevalent, conservatism in principles and methods too strongly entrenched. ”

“ After a comparatively private form of entertainment had been in vogue some years, the lovers of harmony in Edinburgh constituted themselves in 1728 into a regular society, with a governor and directors, the entire number of members being seventy, and, for the sake of room, transferred their meetings to St Mary’s Chapel, where they continued to assemble for a long course of years. ”

“ THE interests of the poorer classes of society are so interwoven with those of every part of the community, that there is no subject more deserving of general attention, nor any knowledge more entitled to the exalted name of science, than that in which their well-being is concerned;—than that, the tendency of which is to carry domestic comfort into the recesses of every cottage, and to add to the virtue and morality of a nation, by increasing its happiness. ”

“ Old Edinburgh Society—Manners of the older Generation—St. Cecilia's Hall—Buccleuch Place Rooms—Rules of the Assemblies—Drinking Customs—Recollections of Lord Cockburn.
The great transformation process of Edinburgh life and society was a striking feature of the years during which Walter Scott grew from boyhood to manhood. The rise of the New Town, with the consequent rapid migration of the much greater part of the well-to-do population, was naturally the most active factor in the change. There was a general alteration of habits. Families changed their style of living. ”

“ Sir Walter has informed us, from his own recollections, that the inhabitants of these southern districts formed for a long time a distinct class of themselves, having even places of polite amusement for their own recreation, independent of the rest of Edinburgh. He tells us that the society was of the first description, including, for one thing, most of the gentlemen who wrote in the Mirror and the Lounger. There was one venerable inhabitant who did not die till half the New Town was finished, yet he had never once seen it! ”

“ Just take our Edinburgh Association, in many respects one of the best, having admirable and devoted men, as its managers, what is the chance that any of the thousand members, when he draws a prize, gets a picture he cares one straw for, or which will do his nature one particle of good? Why should we be treated in this matter, as we are treated in no way else? Who thinks of telling us, or founding a Royal Association with all its officers, to tell us what novels or what poetry to read, or what music to listen to? ”

“ James’s Court, a well-known pile of building of great altitude at the head of the Earthen Mound, was erected about 1725-27 by James Brownhill, [40] a joiner, as a speculation, and was for some years regarded as the quartier of greatest dignity and importance in Edinburgh. The inhabitants, who were all persons of consequence in society, although each had but a single floor of four or five rooms and a kitchen, kept a clerk to record their names and proceedings, had a scavenger of their own, clubbed in many public measures, and had balls and parties among themselves exclusively. ”