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At the first angle of the Bow, on the west side of the street, is a tall picturesque-looking house, which tradition points to as having been the first place where the fashionables of Edinburgh held their dancing assemblies. Over the door is a well-cut sculpture of the arms of the Somerville family, together with the initials P. J. and J. W., and the date 1602. These are memorials of the original owner of the mansion, a certain Peter Somerville, a wealthy citizen, at one time filling a dignified situation in the magistracy, and father of Bartholomew Somerville, who was a noted benefactor to the then infant university of Edinburgh. The architrave also bears a legend (the title of the eleventh psalm):

IN DOMINO CONFIDO.

Ascending by the narrow spiral stair, we come to the second floor, now occupied by a dealer in wool, but presenting such appearances as leave no doubt that it once consisted of a single lofty wainscoted room, with a carved oak ceiling. Here, then, did the fair ladies whom Allan Ramsay and William Hamilton celebrate meet for the recreation of dancing with their toupeed and deep-skirted beaux. There in that little side-room, formed by an outshot from the building, did the merry sons of Euterpe retire to rosin their bows during the intervals of the performance. Alas! dark are the walls which once glowed with festive light; burdened is that floor, not with twinkling feet, but with the most sluggish of inanimate substances. And as for the fiddlers-room—enough:

‘A merry place it was in days of yore,

But something ails it now—the place is cursed.’[31]

Old Assembly-Room.

Dancing, although said to be a favourite amusement and exercise of the Scottish people, has always been discountenanced, more or less, in the superior circles of society, or only indulged after a very abstemious and rigid fashion, until a comparatively late age. Everything that could be called public or promiscuous amusement was held in abhorrence by the Presbyterians, and only struggled through a desultory and degraded existence by the favour of the Jacobites, who have always been a less strait-laced part of the community. Thus there was nothing like a conventional system of dancing in Edinburgh till the year 1710, when at length a private association was commenced under the name of ‘the Assembly;’ and probably its first quarters were in this humble domicile. The persecution which it experienced from rigid thinkers and the uninstructed populace of that age would appear to have been very great. On one occasion, we are told, the company were assaulted by an infuriated rabble, and the door of their hall perforated with red-hot spits.[32] Allan Ramsay, who was the friend of all amusements, which he conceived to tend only to cheer this sublunary scene of care, thus alludes to the Assembly:

‘Sic as against the Assembly speak,

The rudest sauls betray,

When matrons noble, wise, and meek,

Conduct the healthfu’ play;

Where they appear nae vice daur keek,

But to what’s guid gies way,

Like night, sune as the morning creek

Has ushered in the day.

Dear E’nburgh, shaw thy gratitude,

And o’ sic friends mak sure,

Wha strive to mak our minds less rude,

And help our wants to cure;

Acting a generous part and guid,

In bounty to the poor:

Sic virtues, if right understood,

Should every heart allure.’

We can easily see from this, and other symptoms, that the Assembly had to make many sacrifices to the spirit which sought to abolish it. In reality, the dancing was conducted under such severe rules as to render the whole affair more like a night at La Trappe than anything else. So lately as 1753, when the Assembly had fallen under the control of a set of directors, and was much more of a public affair than formerly, we find Goldsmith giving the following graphic account of its meetings in a letter to a friend in his own country. The author of the Deserted Village was now studying the medical profession, it must be recollected, at the university of Edinburgh:

‘Let me say something of their balls, which are very frequent here. When a stranger enters the dancing-hall, he sees one end of the room taken up with the ladies, who sit dismally in a group by themselves; on the other end stand their pensive partners that are to be; but no more intercourse between the sexes than between two countries at war. The ladies, indeed, may ogle, and the gentlemen sigh, but an embargo is laid upon any closer commerce. At length, to interrupt hostilities, the lady-directress, intendant, or what you will, pitches on a gentleman and a lady to walk a minuet, which they perform with a formality approaching to despondence. After five or six couple have thus walked the gauntlet, all stand up to country-dances, each gentleman furnished with a partner from the aforesaid lady-directress. So they dance much, and say nothing, and thus concludes our Assembly. I told a Scotch gentleman that such a profound silence resembled the ancient procession of the Roman matrons in honour of Ceres; and the Scotch gentleman told me (and, faith, I believe he was right) that I was a very great pedant for my pains.’

In the same letter, however, Goldsmith allows the beauty of the women and the good-breeding of the men.

It may add to the curiosity of the whole affair, that when the Assembly was reconstituted in February 1746, after several years of cessation, the first of a set of regulations hung up in the hall[33] was: ‘No lady to be admitted in a night-gown, and no gentleman in boots.’ The eighth rule was: ‘No misses in skirts and jackets, robe-coats, nor stay-bodied gowns, to be allowed to dance in country-dances, but in a sett by themselves.’

In all probability it was in this very dingy house that Goldsmith beheld the scene he has so well described. At least it appears that the improved Assembly Room in Bell’s Wynd (which has latterly served as a part of the accommodations of the Commercial Bank) was not built till 1766.[34] Arnot, in his History of Edinburgh, describes the Assembly Room in Bell’s Wynd as very inconvenient, which was the occasion of the present one being built in George Street in 1784.