CHAPTER TWO T 1840-44 HE manners and customs of that era were very different from those of to-day. At every corner of the residential streets there was kept, in the area below, the sedan-chair, that was freely used to convey ladies from house to house. And at the corner there stood, or sat on a little bench, the chairmen, who acted also as porters. They wore the old-fashioned leather slings over their shoulders, in which the staves of the sedan-chair rested, and these formed their official insignia, by which they were known as licensed porters. They were for the most part Highlanders, and little people like myself often had friendships with them and got rides on their shoulders. They had, by custom I suppose, a monopoly of carrying coal from cart to cellar, and the moment a coal cart was seen to enter their street they came running along with their creels, something like those of the Newhaven fish-women, but more square and strong, and in these they carried the coal to the cellar below. Free Trade, I was told as a boy, brought all this to an end, and when the sedanchair was no longer in use the chairmen gradually disappeared, although they lingered on for many years, with the chair straps on their shoulders. There were a number of them still in the Seventies, and they sat on forms at the corners. The last of them that I remember particularly was an old soldier, who stood, or sat, at a corner of George Street and Frederick Street, far down in the Seventies. He was an old 93rd Highlander, who fought in the Crimean War, and an incident of which he was the hero is worthy to live. My late friend, General Sir Frederick Burroughs, was the captain of the grenadier company, of which this soldier was the right-hand man. At the Alma, a Turkish regiment next in line to the 93rd was wavering and beginning to retire. Seeing this, Sir Colin Campbell rode past the front of the Highlanders and called out: "There's to be no retiring here; every man must die at his post," when this sturdy soldier was heard by his captain to say: "Aye, aye, Sir Colin, we'll dae that if needs be." It is because the British soldier is of this type that our arms have been successful so often, when the odds were all against us. My friend Burroughs never visited Edinburgh without going to the corner of George Street, and offering a shake of the hand to his old comrade, probably with something in it. Let us hope that if the occasion ever arises again for such an "if needs be," our men will have the same spirit that breathed so simply in response to Lord Clyde's appeal.* Although it was gradually dying out, the use of the sedan-chair was not uncommon when I was in child's frocks. It was a very pleasant way for a lady making a call on a friend or going out in * The day has come, and the men. CHAIRS AND CHAIRMEN the evening, she entering the chair, as she did, within her own lobby, and leaving it in the entrance hall of her friend's house, free from the dust or rain without, or the wind which threatened her elaborately dressed ringlets. I have seen my brother with his sister on his knee, going out to a childrens' party by chair, and I have even seen ladies coming to call by chair in the afternoon, in dresses with very short sleeves, and very long gloves coming far above the elbow, or long mittens. The chairmen carried their passengers very pleasantly, except when there had been too many drams during the day. It was so easy a mode of conveyance, that it was still employed in my boyhood's years for conveying patients to the infirmary after it had ceased to be used by the gentry. But the drams were a serious drawback, and caused many a discomfort, and sometimes much alarm. During the day the chairmen did other work, conveying goods to retail shops on barrows, and too often they got a glass when delivering. My father used to tell of two Highland chairmen who regularly brought chemical stores, that came by waggon from London, to the druggists' shops, and for whose refreshment one of the bottles on the shop shelf, supposed to contain chemical solution, was filled up with whisky. On one occasion the druggist took down the next bottle by mistake and poured out a glass of pure alcohol, much above proof, which the first chairman was about to drink, when the druggist, observing his mistake, shouted jocularly, "Stop, stop, Donal, that's aqua fortis." Acqua fortie or acqua fuftie, here goes," said Donald with a wink, and tossed off his dram, but at once coughed and sputtered violently, and only after a time recovered himself, with a very red face. "Well," said the joking druggist, "will you have a drop of the same, M'Nab?" "Na, na, she'll have none out of that same bottil," said M'Nab, pushing it from him; "it gars Donal pech, an' it's no aa thing that'll gar Donal pech." The sedan-chair could not hold its own when cities grew large. The great distances that had to be traversed made it no longer a convenient mode of moving from house to house. In the early Forties, the modern cab was beginning to appear upon the streets, but the general horsed vehicles were named the Noddy and the Minibus, both of them conveyances which seemed to have embodied in them all the possibilities of discomfort to the traveller. The Noddy was well named. It exhibited on the steep hills of Edinburgh an almost animal tendency to throw the occupant out on to the horse's back, and if the horse made even a slight stumble when going downhill, go the passenger must. There were but few of these |