Отрывок из книги
W. T. Fyfe
Published by Good Press, 2021
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The locality was not even at that time considered quite a desirable one, but socially it was regarded as satisfactory, even for a family of gentle birth. The fact is that about this time certain new ideas regarding health and fresh air were beginning to excite attention among the inhabitants of the old city. The rate of infant mortality was frightfully high, and the doctors began to ascribe it to the closeness and damp of the nurseries. In the lofty old mansions these were frequently located, for obvious reasons of convenience, in the 'laigh rooms' or sunk floors below the level of the street. The time was ripe for a great change. Building had already been begun on the site of Princes Street and George Street. Plans for a New Town had been approved in 1761, the architect being Mr. James Craig, who was a nephew of Thomson the poet. The North Bridge, which was to connect the New Town with the Old, was finished in 1772. At the same time a more conservative policy led others to try to confine the desired improvement to the Old Town. Brown's Square, part of which still may be seen at the top of Chambers Street, was built, and this was for the time the exclusively fashionable quarter of the city. It was to Brown's Square, as we read in Redgauntlet (Letter II.), that the Fairfords removed, when, as Alan relates to his friend Darsie Latimer, 'the leaving his old apartments in the Luckenbooths was to him' (the elder Fairford) 'like divorcing the soul from the body; yet Dr. R—— did but hint that the better air of this new district was more favourable to my health, as I was then suffering under the penalties of too rapid a growth, when he exchanged his old and beloved quarters, adjacent to the very Heart of Midlothian, for one of those new tenements [entire within themselves] which modern taste has so lately introduced.'
CHAPTER II
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