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On the north side of the esplanade—enjoying a splendid view of the Firth of Forth, Fife and Stirling shires—is the neat little villa of Allan Ramsay, surrounded by its miniature pleasure-grounds. The sober, industrious life of this exception to the race of poets having resulted in a small competency, he built this odd-shaped house in his latter days, designing to enjoy in it the Horatian quiet which he had so often eulogised in his verse. The story goes that, showing it soon after to the clever Patrick, Lord Elibank, with much fussy interest in all its externals and accommodations, he remarked that the wags were already at work on the subject—they likened it to a goose-pie[6] (owing to the roundness of the shape). ‘Indeed, Allan,’ said his lordship, ‘now I see you in it, I think the wags are not far wrong.’

Allan Ramsay’s Villa.

The splendid reputation of Burns has eclipsed that of Ramsay so effectually that this pleasing poet, and, upon the whole, amiable and worthy man, is now little regarded. Yet Ramsay can never be deprived of the credit of having written the best pastoral poem in the range of British literature—if even that be not too narrow a word—and many of his songs are of great merit.

Ramsay was secretly a Jacobite, openly a dissenter from the severe manners and feelings of his day, although a very decent and regular attender of the Old Church in St Giles’s. He delighted in music and theatricals, and, as we shall see, encouraged the Assembly. It was also no doubt his own taste which led him, in 1725, to set up a circulating library, whence he diffused plays and other works of fiction among the people of Edinburgh. It appears, from the private notes of the historian Wodrow, that, in 1728, the magistrates, moved by some meddling spirits, took alarm at the effect of this kind of reading on the minds of youth, and made an attempt to put it down, but without effect. One cannot but be amused to find amongst these self-constituted guardians of morality Lord Grange, who kept his wife in unauthorised restraint for several years, and whose own life was a scandal to his professions. Ramsay, as is well known, also attempted to establish a theatre in Edinburgh, but failed. The following advertisement on this subject appears in the Caledonian Mercury, September 1736: ‘The New Theatre in Carrubber’s Close being in great forwardness, will be opened the 1st of November. These are to advertise the gentlemen and ladies who incline to purchase annual tickets, to enter their names before the 20th of October next, on which day they shall receive their tickets from Allan Ramsay, on paying 30s.—no more than forty to be subscribed for; after which none will be disposed of under two guineas.’

The late Mrs Murray of Henderland knew Ramsay for the last ten years of his life, her sister having married his son, the celebrated painter. She spoke of him to me in 1825, with kindly enthusiasm, as one of the most amiable men she had ever known. His constant cheerfulness and lively conversational powers had made him a favourite amongst persons of rank, whose guest he frequently was. Being very fond of children, he encouraged his daughters in bringing troops of young ladies about the house, in whose sports he would mix with a patience and vivacity wonderful in an old man. He used to give these young friends a kind of ball once a year. From pure kindness for the young, he would help to make dolls for them, and cradles wherein to place these little effigies, with his own hands.[7] But here a fashion of the age must be held in view; for, however odd it may appear, it is undoubtedly true that to make and dispose of dolls, such as children now alone are interested in, was a practice in vogue amongst grown-up ladies who had little to do about a hundred years ago.

Ramsay died in 1757. An elderly female told a friend of mine that she remembered, when a girl, living as an apprentice with a milliner in the Grassmarket, being sent to Ramsay Garden to assist in making dead-clothes for the poet. She could recall, however, no particulars of the scene but the roses blooming in at the window of the death-chamber.

The poet’s house passed to his son, of the same name, eminent as a painter—portrait-painter to King George III. and his queen—and a man of high mental culture; consequently much a favourite in the circles of Johnson and Boswell. The younger Allan enlarged the house, and built three additional houses to the eastward, bearing the title of Ramsay Garden. At his death, in 1784, the property went to his son, General John Ramsay, who, dying in 1845, left this mansion and a large fortune to Mr Murray of Henderland. So ended the line of the poet. His daughter Christian, an amiable, kind-hearted woman, said to possess a gift of verse, lived for many years in New Street. At seventy-four she had the misfortune to be thrown down by a hackney-coach, and had her leg broken; yet she recovered, and lived to the age of eighty-eight. Leading a solitary life, she took a great fancy for cats. Besides supporting many in her own house, curiously disposed in bandboxes, with doors to go in and out at, she caused food to be laid out for others on her stair and around her house. Not a word of obloquy would she listen to against the species, alleging, when any wickedness of a cat was spoken of, that the animal must have acted under provocation, for by nature, she asserted, cats are harmless. Often did her maid go with morning messages to her friends, inquiring, with her compliments, after their pet cats. Good Miss Ramsay was also a friend to horses, and indeed to all creatures. When she observed a carter ill-treating his horse, she would march up to him, tax him with cruelty, and, by the very earnestness of her remonstrances, arrest the barbarian’s hand. So also, when she saw one labouring on the street, with the appearance of defective diet, she would send rolls to its master, entreating him to feed the animal. These peculiarities, although a little eccentric, are not unpleasing; and I cannot be sorry to record them of the daughter of one whose heart and head were an honour to his country.

Happy.

Contented.

Repose.

Convivial.

[1868.—It seems to have been unknown to the biographers of Allan Ramsay the painter that he made a romantic marriage. In his early days, while teaching the art of drawing in the family of Sir Alexander Lindsay of Evelick, one of the young ladies fell in love with him, captivated probably by the tongue which afterwards gave him the intimacy of princes, and was undoubtedly a great source of his success in life. The father of the enamoured girl was an old proud baronet; her mother, a sister of the Chief-Justice, Earl of Mansfield. A marriage with consent of parents was consequently impossible. The young people, nevertheless, contrived to get themselves united in wedlock.

Allan Ramsay’s Monument, Princes Street Gardens.

The speedily developed talent of Ramsay, the illustrious patronage they secured to him, and the very considerable wealth which he acquired must have in time made him an acceptable relation to those proud people. A time came when their descendants held the connection even as an honour. The wealth of the painter ultimately, on the death of his son in 1845, became the property of Mr Murray of Henderland, a grandson of Sir Alexander Lindsay and nephew of Mrs Allan Ramsay; thence it not long after passed to Mr Murray’s brother, Sir John Archibald Murray, better known by his judicial name of Lord Murray. This gentleman admired the poet, and resolved to raise a statue to him beside his goose-pie house on the Castlehill; but the situation proved unsuitable, and since his own lamented death, in 1858, the marble full-length of worthy Allan, from the studio of John Steell, has found a noble place in the Princes Street Gardens, resting on a pedestal, containing on its principal side a medallion portrait of Lord Murray, on the reverse one of General Ramsay, on the west side one of the General’s lady, and on the east similar representations of the General’s two daughters, Lady Campbell and Mrs Malcolm. Thus we find—owing to the esteem which genius ever commands—the poet of the Gentle Shepherd in the immortality of marble, surrounded by the figures of relatives and descendants who so acknowledged their aristocratic rank to be inferior to his, derived from mind alone.]

Doorway of Duke of Gordon’s House. Now built into School in Boswell’s Court.