Old Edinburgh
Edinburgh. By Eric Linklater. (Islewnes, 25s.) ONCE again the trains have taken their freight of critics to the Edinburgh Festival and the critics have lifted up their sad eyes to the friendly whale of Arthur's Seat and to the school of surround- ing hills, seen the embattled slope of the Canon- gate, bristling with souvenirs, and seen the famous austerity of the New Town. In common with most visitors, the critics are unlikely to look very long at the areas where people, apart from Sir Compton Mackenzie, tend to live. When they say they admire Edinburgh, which they do, what they admire is the centre, with its contrast be- tween the romantic mediwvalism of the Old Town and the classical refinement of the New, between teetering, smoky tenements and the clarity of Charlotte Square. Cities have become a favourite literary theme, and it is natural that some false or fabulous views should appear as a result of these tender and intensive studiet: And Edinburgh for years has been misleading') '11 depicted. The misleading. rosy paradox is pat' ticularly popular. Edinburgh, they insist, is n°1 decent and businesslike, it is the Athens of thol North. Alternatively, Edinburgh is not bashf and severe, it is bohemian and rough, just tbg place for the latter-day Villons who are alwa/1 supposed to be rife in Scottish literary socielf; This last view is commemorated in the ;tor% : the Scottish poet riding in a taxi through Pari,• and waving gaily at a group of tarts 'StoP., cried his wife. 'This is not Edinburgh. Mr. Lot later leans a little to that view himself and ba book has snatches of his recent majestic susplci,° that the city is rank with unbridled lust. The Mu: familiar fable of all, however, is the view thin' the contemporary city may be summed up sing' in terms of the contrast between the Old TO, and the New. Anyone who knows the subut' —Corstorphine with its steep zoo, Gilmel with its steep pit, Morningside, the local bYvv for affluence and affectation—will be reluctant,' believe this. There is really rather a lot in Ed‘r burgh which owes nothing to Regency design', , to Mary Queen of Scots. To many citizens n' notably philistine the formality of the New TO must sometimes seem like the 'despondent' VI mality glimpsed by Goldsmith in Edinburgh minuets and assemblies; one can be Oppres, by these squares and crescents and one can 11 that a certain rude roadhouse on the way to .wir aerodrome is more important in the life of t' city than Drummond Place or John Knox's a"„ puted residence. Mr. Linklater writes with his usual flair. Glis!lo measured, self-consciously reasonable, V1,1 Churchillian words like 'privily' and arch references to 'good sense' and 'enthusiasm, prose conveys an obvious pleasure in the Pla THE SPECTATOR. SEPTEMBER 2, dispensing plenty of good stories and ripe examples. He tells how the defensive walls flung round the town after Flodden drove the people to build upwards, so that the twelve-storey tenements are skyscrapers and the Royal Mile is a modest Manhattan. Major Weir is discussed, Man of God, monster of carnality, wizard; and Itoughead's demure description of his incest is neatly recalled: 'it is necessary to add that their relations were those of Hilarion and Palmyre Houteroue, in Zola's La Terre.' Lord Hermand 0. f the Scottish Bar who had 'a sincere respect,' In Cockburn's words, for drinking, for whom as for Humphrey Bogart it was the nurse of verY many estimable things, provides a name, an precept, to remember. The whole book, WIth its emphasis on battles and memorials and wine and wit and rugby (not soccer), and its ia.ssages on statues, great men and delectable b) ,its of botany, reveals the author once more, 71n°1111 all those Villons, as the Laird of Scottish Letters.
8° the past does tremendously well in this ;eenunt. But after a while it is possible to pine ;Ora clearer and more cordial account of the jsitv'es led by people in Edinburgh now. The city has inhabitants and the book seems to Promi n se to describe them. The Edinburgh that iltilterges instead is a shrine consecrated chiefly to e eighteenth-center y virtues as they are some- ft breezily invoked by a writer who can speak Li Hunle's 'blandly brilliant percipience.' Mr. :Mater also presses his lairdly role too hard eftd unbends and unbuttons too much in the 4ort to be trim and timely. There are moments nePUre Morningside, in fact: of Ronald Ches- il, Y, who murdered his mother, was considerately elpated by the police as a member of the respect- abheap - classes and survived to murder his wife, °oelude, 'the boy who had so early in life learntnnnt the advantage of a good home, had never is i enough to deserve one.' Edinburgh's past ani Ile and vivacious, and this study gives due
Pr
nSe to the power and honour of the past. It
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cs'es within a mile of Edinburgh town, as the t .rbg Peohe gnas it, but a mile is as good as a miss, and 00k surfeit a rfeit of flair and a scarcity of ple.
KARL MILLER
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