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Robert Mudie
The Modern Athens
A dissection and demonstration of men and things in the Scotch Capital
Published by Good Press, 2021
EAN 4064066169268
Table of Contents
CHAPTER I.
THE AUTHOR AND THE KING ARE INDUCED TO VISIT THE MODERN ATHENS.
“Ego et Rex meus.”—Wolsey.
The renown of the Scottish Metropolis,—that city of wonders and of wisdom, of palaces and of philosophy, of learned men and of lovely women, had sounded so long and so loudly in their ears, that toward the close of summer 1822, the Author of these pages and the Sovereign of these realms, were induced to pay it a visit, each in that state and with that pomp and circumstance which was becoming his station in the world. The one, in that unmarked guise which is fitting for one who lives more for the glory of others than of himself, and who sets more value upon the single sentence which preserves his memory when he is no more, than upon all that he can possess or enjoy in this world. The other, in that glow and grandeur, which gains in intensity what it stands some chance of losing in duration,—which is the grand idol of its day; and which, when that day has closed, is gathered to the sepulchre of its fathers, to make room for another—and the same.
The Author of these pages must not be blamed, or deemed disloyal, for having given his own name the precedence of that of his Sovereign. Every man in reality prefers himself before all the sovereigns in the world; and wherefore should not one man state this preference in words? The courtier declares that all his services are devoted to his king,—but he devotes them no longer than that king can afford to pay for them: the soldier swears that he will die in defence of the crown,—but he never dies till he is compelled by the superior strength or skill of another. Even upon general grounds, therefore, there is candour if not courtesy in this order of precedence.
But, when the specialities of the case are considered,—when it is borne in mind that the monarch, all-gracious and polite as he is, visited the Athens, as well to dazzle the Athenians by his grandeur, as to delight them by his bounty,—that the native luminaries of that centre of many twinkling lights were shorn of their beams by his overwhelming radiance,—that this instance of kingly condescension taught the ΔΕΜΟΣ of Athena to regard as haply something less even than men, those whom they had formerly looked upon as possessing some of the attributes of divinity; and when, on the other hand, it is taken into the account that the author of these pages made his visit solely with a view of seeing with his own eyes, hearing with his own ears, and proclaiming with his own lips, the truth of those reports which had come to him through so many channels, and of which the fruition had proved so much more delectable than the foretaste: then, assuredly, ought Athena herself, from all the castles of her strength, the halls of her wisdom, the drawing-rooms of her beauty, and the alleys of her retirement, to confess that she owes to the author of these pages more than kingly gratitude.—The King noticed but a few of her people, enriched not many, and ennobled almost none: those pages are intended to enwrap the whole in one pure and perennial blaze of glory.
It was on the evening of the same day that the Monarch took shipping at Greenwich amid the shouts of assembled multitudes, and the Author took his seat on the top of the Edinburgh mail, amid piles of tailors’ boxes, each containing a courtier’s habit, in which some fond, and fawning, and fortune-desiring son of Caledonia was to bend the supple knee in the presence of Majesty, within the ancient palace of the Holyrood. The voyages of kings, and the velocity of mail-coaches, are already known and appreciated; and thus there needs no more to be said, than that here also the Author had by several days the precedence of the King.
The jolting of the wooden cases of my courtly neighbours, together with forty-eight hours’ exposure to drought by day and damp by night, prepared me, in spite of all my burning anxiety to see the far-famed city, for the enjoyment of several hours of repose; and, as Athena was at this time too much excited for permitting me to enjoy this till towards morning, the sun had risen high before I left my chamber.
Upon hurrying into the street,—into that Princes’ street, which, as I afterwards learned, is at certain seasons of the year the favourite lounge of the Athenian dandies, and at certain hours of the day the favourite haunt of the Athenian fair, who resort thither as the clock strikes four, to feast their fair and anxious eyes upon the self-important forms of dashing advocates, the more dapper and pursey ones of pawkie writers to his Majesty’s signet, or the attenuated striplings of the quill—the future Clerks and Jefferys, who at that hour are returning from the harvest of law and profits to such feast as awaits them in ample hall or elevated cock-loft, according to their talents, their connexions, or their purses;—upon hurrying into that street, in the expectation of feasting my eyes upon the natural and architectural glories of the city, I found that those glories were in the mean time veiled in the maddening preparations of a whole people, who had come from every portion of the main land, and from the remotest isle of Thulè, to wonder at and to admire that mightiest marvel of human nature—a king.
So novel and so varied were the costumes, so unexpected and so singular were the features and expressions, and so uncouth and Babylonish were the voices, that the eye and the ear were confounded, the judgment could not understand, and the memory could preserve no record. Here you might see some brawny and briefless barrister—the younger son of a loyal family, with a pedigree at least twice as long as its rental, with trowsers and jacket à la Robin Hood, and huge blue bonnet adorned with the St. Andrew’s cross and a turkey-cock’s feather—looking for all the world like a chimney-sweep’s Jack-o’-the-Green, or a calf dressed entire and garnished with cabbage-leaves; while close by him trotted a loyal toast-composing crown-lawyer, with his hinder end cased in a phillibeg, a feathered bonnet, at least a third of his own height, an iron-hilted sword somewhat more than the whole, and a dirk that might have served for a plough-share, puffing and blowing under the weight of his own importance, and the accoutrements of the Celtic society. In close juxtaposition with these was a genuine Glhuine dhu, plaided, plumed, and whiskered, and looking as if all the kings of the earth were nothing to that swaggering chieftain, of whose tail he formed no inconsiderable portion.