The Disencumbering (Or, the Losing of John Kay)

The Disencumbering (or, The Losing of John Kay)

By Johnny Rodger

The verbal noun of the main title above is an political simplicity and clarity, is itself an example architectural term. It is given to that operation of the disencumbering aesthetic: ‘The millennial whereby city improvers, particularly those of monuments of our history,’ he said, ‘must loom the 19th century, sought to remove adjacent gigantic in their necessary solitude.’ construction, seen as auxiliary, supplementary, and non-original to the architectural integrity of One early example of disencumbering, and one a principal public building. The feeling is that any which is of particular interest to us here, was particular important public building in question that which was performed on St Giles, Edinburgh. ought to be seen as a pure architectural object, A well-known painting ‘The Parliament Close and can, through disencumbering, be liberated and Public Chambers of Edinburgh 50 Years from parasitic construction. Since’ (1855) shows a view of the church from the south across a crowded The illustration here shows Parliament Close, before the a plan of Karlskirche, Vienna, operation took place. The south before and after being side of St Giles is shown here ‘disencumbered’, when auxiliary as obscured by a ramshackle construction was removed from collection of ‘luckenbooths’ – around the main building and the goldsmiths’ and jewellers’ shops, square surrounding it redesigned etc. – built up against the church to form a platonic volume wall, and there is even a washing- carved out of the urban fabric. line hung across one of the giant gothic windows. The high point of ‘disencumbering’ was the 19th In 1817 these buildings, and also century and as an historical those which crowded up to phenomenon, it is thus not the other sides of the church unrelated to the grand style (including the Old Tolbooth of Haussmanisation – that to the west) were removed, attempt to clear away medieval and the church was reduced construction and twisted more or less, to its present narrow streets, and to drive disencumbered dimensions. major, broad boulevards through One interesting point about the city, lined with ashlar-faced this painting is that not only and carved bourgeois apartment was it painted some decades blocks. Like Haussmanisation, after those adjacent shops had disencumbering was a pan- been removed from around European phenomenon, and its the church, but it was the joint effects can be seen in the open, clear views we production of numerous artists, including Sir have of such monuments as the Milan Duomo, of David Wilkie, Alexander Nasmyth, David Roberts, Notre Dame in Paris, and of course, of Glasgow Clarkson Stanfield, James Wilson, and two called Cathedral, which latter had two asymmetrical Frazer and Williamson. and irregular western towers, built between the 13th-15th centuries, removed in the 1840s by There is however, one curious omission in Victorian formal purists. The phenomenon of the generally acknowledged roll-call of artists disencumbering was then arguably continued involved – namely John Kay. into the 20th century, with the Italian fascists being amongst the most active proponents. It John Kay was an artist and sometime barber may always be crude to quote from Mussolini, who from the 1780s until his death (1826) but sometimes it is irresistible. After clearing produced hundreds of etchings of characters the medieval slum of Borgo Pio away from the inhabiting Edinburgh at the time. Although walls of the Vatican and opening up a view of St Kay had been long dead before the painting Peter’s from the Tiber, Il Duce’s comment, in its was produced, reproductions of his 18th and

38 the drouth 19th century characters are included in the that could have been reproduced by any crowds. Indeed they form the majority of the mode of art. persons visible, presumably put there in the hope of introducing a ready-made authenticity Yet it is precisely that idea of Kay as providing to the scene. As it happens John Kay’s barber’s accurate depiction, an historical document, which shop where he worked and where he hung his seems to be the ground from which existing etchings in the window, stood itself on the south opinion of his lack of artistic merit has been side of Parliament Close and the view shown launched. In their book on Kay published in the here is substantially that (albeit from a different early 70s H & M Evans make a powerful and angle) which he would have observed from his comprehensive case for the rehabilitation of his window. But why, if authenticity is in any way the purely artistic reputation. But nonetheless even name of the artistic game here, has John Kay’s they feel it necessary to preface with an apology name regularly been omitted or forgotten when for the barber in Kay: it came to credits for this work? As documents, his prints are clearly It can be argued that this tacit removal of his of unique value; as works of art their name from artistic history is an extreme case in appeal is less immediately obvious. the treatment of John Kay and his work. He is, after all, generally acknowledged as one of the Thus when Kay is not being erased from or main historical sources for our knowledge of completely ignored by artistic history, the value precisely how the characters – both famous and of his work as art is being denied. And there is less so – of Enlightenment late 18th and early a long tradition of such denial. The 9th edition 19th century Edinburgh actually looked. In his of Encyclopaedia Britannica says of him that he 900 or so etchings (around 600 have been ’lost’) had ‘little strictly artistic power’ and Sir Herbert Kay not only portrayed the ordinary people of Maxwell in his history of Edinburgh says in a the town – beggars, preachers, workers, soldiers, somewhat pot-callingly unmeritorious prose: pipers, lawyers, oyster-sellers, dandies – but ‘Being self-taught, Kay’s work is of negligible also many of the key intellectual figures of the merit.’ And in the recently published Scottish Art Enlightenment alongside. He is for example the (2000) by Murdo MacDonald, Kay is afforded author of the only known likeness from life of only two sentences in the whole history, and Adam Smith. And that his etchings did indeed even within that tight fit the writer takes care to present us with a true ‘likeness’ to their models stress how derivative is Kay’s work. is what’smore, not doubted by those who ought to have known. Robert Chambers in his But all this denial and negativity here surely Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen wrote only creates in the inquisitive mind a greater hunger to see the actual work. What exactly To speak of his portraits as caricatures is being dismissed repeatedly here and why? is doing them signal injustice. They were If Kay’s oeuvre does indeed constitute an the most exact and faithful likenesses important historical document then is not

39 the drouth that merit sufficient in itself – why the need barber’s shop cum studio/display window across to go further and simultaneously dismiss the the square, was not an isolated architectural possibility of artistic talent into the bargain? phenomenon, but part of a city-wide upheaval. This is Enlightenment Edinburgh, so where is The middle classes were not only removing a the difficulty, in its rational light, in distinguishing perceived undesirable clutter of structures from virtues and giving due praise? Is there not, in around the main church in Edinburgh to leave it fact, a whiff of snobbery, of class distinction, sitting free and open in its own space, but they and exclusivity in these comments? And does it were clearing themselves out of the medieval not appear that we are certainly no further in town, to settle in a newly-built neo-classical a general resolution and understanding of this town of wide streets and palace-fronted ashlar conundrum than we were before the Evans’s stone houses. The middle classes had, in effect, publication in the 1970s? Are there indeed, social since the 1780s (when Kay had begun his artistic reasons, no less valid and operative now than career) been gradually abandoning the densely they were in the late 18th century, behind the populated and built-up Old Town, with its mix choice to keep forgetting the artist, John Kay? of all the social classes and social activities, for the social monoculture and the planned order All those questions can only emphasise how of open streets and squares in Edinburgh New important it is that his work should not only Town. Indeed the architect Archibald Elliot, who remain in the public realm in some form, but undertook the job of remodelling the new freed that it should be brought continually to public St Giles, was a noted designer of churches and attention. Fortunately Sheila Szatkowski has other monuments in the New Town. done just that for us, by publishing a selection of 100 etchings, reproduced from the posthumous Edinburgh had grown up as a city along the edition (published in 1837, again in 1842, escarpment of the Castle Rock, spreading down and again in 1877, after which last the plates the ridge from the royal castle at the top to the were destroyed) by Paton and Patterson. It royal palace at the bottom. Along the summit is interesting that in Szatkowski’s volume the of this ridge was an open public space – called etchings are accompanied by text which draws the High Street, but rather an elongated market on the copious notes and anecdotes written place than an actual street. Other narrow lanes by Paton and Patterson only a few years after – called closes – ran perpendicular to the ridge Kay’s death. Thus by adaptation and minimum down off both sides of the High Street and were modernisation of the 1837 text, Szatkowski densely built up with residential construction succeeds in putting the images right back in the up to 11 and 12 storeys high. The city was thus social context as seen by the people of that time densely populated, with little or no building and place. The work is put under our noses again, regulation, and all classes and activities going and we are drawn inexorably to a perusal of on side by side in one small urban area. There the social nexus, but without the intrusion of an was, of course, a form of social differentiation accompanying modern key or explicatory text in terms of where in the tall buildings one was cruising off into questions of Kay’s reputation- housed, in what part of the city, and what was to-be. In that sense this small publication is the size of one’s house. It would however, be liberating: it allows us to breathe in something of very difficult, if not impossible to avoid casual the authentic Edinburgh atmosphere, to meditate encounters with one’s neighbours of all classes on the actual work and its circumstances, before when the town was so densely populated, and obfuscation of the mark with the meaning. It’s a given that, for example, no carriages were able fresh start, if you like, but the age of innocence, to travel up these narrow steep closes. At any as ever, is short lived. The dilettante may be easily rate, alongside a myriad other political and satisfied – even smug – at the idea that they historical factors, this reality of close-proximity, find their own range mirrored in the concerns of the cheek-by-jowl-with-one’s-fellows nature and abilities of John Kay. The rest of us are soon of daily life in this city, is often cited as one of the burdened by the phenomenon of these evidently conditions most favourable to the development light-hearted etchings with a guilty conscience of that intellectual and cultural flowering known and some awkward questions about the artist as the ‘Scottish Enlightenment’. As the King’s and society. chemist, Amyat, a ‘most sensible and agreeable English gentleman’ famously remarked on The fact is that the society to which John Kay standing not 50 yards from the site of Kay’s shop belonged, Edinburgh at the turn of the 19th in a visit to the city in 1750: century, was undergoing some radical structural changes. The disencumbering of St Giles church, Here I stand at what is called The Cross a process which Kay may have watched from his of Edinburgh, and can, in a few minutes,

40 the drouth take fifty men of genius and learning by different type of art to represent and portray the hand. this new type of space they inhabited. And they would also develop new ways of displaying this As Kay was only eight years old at the time of art. this English gentleman’s visit, the etcher was most certainly not included in that express In the foreword to Szatkowski’s new book category of ‘genius’. Had the gentleman been Alexander McCall Smith makes a brief alive to return to that same Cross some 60 comparison of the work of Kay and that of the years later, he could well have discovered that by famous portrait painter Sir Henry Raeburn. his same standard of reckoning of a genius, none The immediate contrast of their lives and at all could be found in the whole of the Old work is striking and enlightening, but extended Town. For the middle classes had by that time development of that comparison yields yet more largely decamped for their New Town. And their instructive material towards an understanding of geniuses – men of the stamp of Hume, and Scott those abovementioned questions about the artist – had moved with them when the opportunity and society, and about the roles of different types arose. If however, we ask why they had gone, of art and the different ways of displaying them. then the answer must be a complicated one, and we do not have the space to tell the whole Raeburn (1756-1823) and Kay (1742-1826) tale here. Old Town Edinburgh was a cramped, were contemporaries, both living and working dirty and difficult place to live in, for sure, but in Edinburgh, and as such it is hardly surprising the idea of building a new middle class adjunct that they had some models in common. Both to the medieval town was not a new one, and artists, for example, made portraits in their own nor did it originate in that city. As mentioned respective media of James Hutton, the father above, the urban mechanics of 18th and 19th of modern geology, of Lord Braxfield, the so- century New Town building – Haussmanization, called ‘hanging judge’, and of Walter Scott, the disencumbering, masterplanning by competition novelist and poet. It is doubtful however, if both and so on – were pan-European phenomena. artists studied and drew from these models The Edinbourgeoisie were simply following the under entirely the same set of conditions … precedent set by middleclassmate New Town According to McCall Smith, models would pay builders in such cities as up to 50 guineas to sit for Turin, Karlsruhe, Berlin and Raeburn. Kay, by contrast, would Bath. on the one hand catch some of his models on the hop, as it With Edinburgh New Town were, going about their daily as with numerous 18th business; and on the other century new towns across hand, as so many of his models Europe, the middle classes were the poor, the ordinary set out a different pattern and the underprivileged, then of urban spaces from those their paying to be portrayed in their original medieval by him would be out of the town, and they established question. Thus not only did the different ways of inhabiting subjects of Kay’s etchings often those spaces. There were neither pay to be drawn nor more strictly demarcated purchase a completed work, spaces set aside for the but often they did not give him different classes (the smaller permission, nor even, ultimately lanes for domestic servants’ approve of his drawing them. lodgings, for example, This, as we shall see below, got were only built to serve Kay into some trouble. But, for the principal inhabitants) the moment, let’s concentrate and each house was set wider apart from its on making the comparison of Kay and Raeburn neighbours, and often with its own separate through the most obvious and direct of routes: front door. There were different areas set aside an examination of their work. for different activities – ’the genteel and well ordered arcady’, as Youngson called the New Two composite sets of images have been Town, was to be completely residential, and have prepared and appear on the page opposite. none of the noise, smell or traffic of industry or the workplace. But most interesting for us here, The first set of images shows a (rather late) part is that the middle classes would also nurture a of the plan of Edinburgh New Town, with below

41 the drouth 42 the drouth it two oil paintings by Raeburn. New Town – the first, the RSA, a Doric temple completed by Playfair in 1826. This was too The second set shows an engraving of the Old late for Raeburn and Kay as living artists, but Town as a huddle of buildings stretching up to nonetheless the effects of the grand project the Castle Rock (by Lacey in 1829), and below of New Town building were felt long before in two etchings by John Kay. the Old Town. The last Society ball was held in the Old Town in 1817, and then by 1833, with a The street plan in the first set, showing the change in Town Council, Edinburgh was found to ordered New Town with its regular street fronts, be bankrupt. An isolated and resentful underclass built of course, of regulated building materials had been abandoned on the penniless rock of and to uniform heights, stands in contrast to the the Old Town while the ‘better off’ had built vernacular jumble of the Old Town shown below. themselves a ‘genteel and well ordered arcady’ to The production of this homogenous, refined, the north. clean (industry and trade were banned by law from the New Town) hierarchical and regularised John Kay’s shop on the south side of Parliament space was a project of the Edinburgh middle Close (latterly Parliament Square) where he classes from the mid-18th century on. It is a posted his etchings in the window may once formalised and socially exclusive space planned have been at the hub of the town. But as the by and for people like those portrayed in oils New Town developed and grew in importance, here by Raeburn: namely Sir Walter Scott and the centrality of Parliament Close and the High Mrs Rattray. As seen here Raeburn’s New Town Street to a broad cross-section of Edinburgh middle class models could well be said to be social life dwindled. Raeburn’s oils may well have typically portrayed as ‘loom(ing) gigantic in their hung in many of the drawing rooms and galleries necessary solitude’. of the New Town, but during at least the first three decades of his artistic career Kay’s etchings In the second set of images we see the Old Town were unlikely to be seen there. That’s not to say with its crammed irregular forms and shapes Kay’s work did not attract the attention of the of its buildings: an ad hoc collection of public, well-connected and the figures of authority and commercial, residential, refined and decrepit, and the ruling classes. What attracted their interest monumental buildings. Right above the middle however was not simply or only the fine or of the picture can be seen the crown of St Giles. clever execution of the work, but the fact that Kay worked thus, right in the middle of this as an ‘independent’ man (Kay had been left an crowded Old Town, and his etchings often show annuity by a gentleman customer of his barber’s busy street scenes with a mix of classes, sexes shop in 1784) he was perceived by some as and occupations – the ‘human comedy’ as McCall a loose social cannon, as it were, a maverick Smith calls it. In one image here we have a man taking liberty to disrespect the new-found and cudgelling another, while two well-to-do ladies developing social space and standing of some look on. In the other we see a lawyer, Hamilton well-to-do citizens. Kay had indeed not only Bell, carrying a vintner’s boy on his back for been threatened, but actually attacked – verbally, a bet, while two oyster sellers walk by in the physically, and also by law suit – by some of the street. There are heterogeneous, multiple and characters he had etched. One magistrate, John intimate relations across classes, occupations and Spottiswood, who had been drawn in an image gender presented in Kay’s etchings: that’s not to of the balloon flight of Lunardi in Edinburgh in say that there is no social order in the Old Town the 1780s, objected to being shown alongside as he represents it, but it is a complicated, and people he evidently considered to be his social inclusive order, just like that of the architecture inferiors. Kay, said Spottiswood, ‘ought to be in the Old Town. horsewhipped’. He continued: ‘It is one of the horriblest things on earth to put me on a level It is clear with Raeburn’s work that the art with a caddy.’ In another etching from 1796, a approved, commissioned and purchased by gentleman is shown berating Kay in the latter’s the middle classes of the late 18th and early own shop, with a ribbon from the former’s 19th centuries reinforced the sense of social mouth containing the words: ‘You’re a damn’d exclusivity which they found for themselves in caricature painter! I’ve a good mind to give you the New Town. By contrast the heterogeneous a damn’d threshing!’ Szatkowski speaks in her social and civic life as represented in the art book of Kay actually being ‘cudgelled at least of John Kay was gradually disappearing as the once’. But perhaps the most curious attack came middle classes left the Old Town for the New. in court from the lawyer, Hamilton Bell. Bell is Those middle classes had their own galleries shown above in the composite images as the for display of their art built on the edge of the man carrying a boy on his back. Despite the fact

43 the drouth that Bell had indeed carried a tavern-keeper’s put it, gives us ‘fair indication of sympathy with boy thus in a race for a wager, he took exception “left wing” ideas’, and who clearly put great care to Kay’s representation of him in such a socially and a promotional spirit into his portrait of the compromised position and prosecuted. Needless political radical and agitator Thomas Muir, should to say, when the judges threw the case out, Kay be so evidently congenial with Braxfield. It was took revenge by composing an etching of the the latter after all, who had sentenced Muir to court proceedings, with Bell himself shown ‘black be deported to Botany Bay in 1793 (the same in the face with anger’. year both their etchings were completed). And surely Braxfield, with his sneering and cynical But does this tale of two artists and two cities put-downs and one-liners from the bench, a consist simply and purely in the crudest of man who – in typical representations at any rate juxtapositions: viz. drawing rooms and catalogues – seemed to gloat with an almost medieval glee for one, and courtrooms and cudgels for the over the punishment of the unorthodox, was other? Or are there, in fact, more subtle and ripe material for social satire and caricature. telling comparisons to be drawn? In The Drouth issue 20 (Image) we published reproductions of Yet Kay forbore. And if his portrait has more in some Raeburn portraits alongside a commentary common with Raeburn’s than their respective on a Raeburn exhibition social standing, histories by R L Stevenson, written and inclinations would have almost 60 years after led us to imagine could be Raeburn’s death. Stevenson the case, then perhaps the was particularly fascinated truth is that we can read by the portrait of the into Stevenson’s criticism judge Lord Braxfield, and a comment equally on went on in later life to use the ‘zeitgeist’ of that era, Braxfield as the model as much as about one for his gruff, captious and particular work. Was not overbearing father in the that age of Enlightenment unfinished novelWeir of in Edinburgh characterised Hermiston. His comment and indeed made great on the painting of this across all sections of reactionary old character, society by its artistic and also known as the ‘hanging intellectual outlook, by judge’, gives us a keen, ‘sympathy’ as much for unexpected insight to the Smith with his ‘Moral artistic sensibility at work: Sentiments’ and Hume with his ‘Human Nature’, So sympathetically to McKenzie with his is the character ‘Man of Feeling’, Burns conceived by the his ‘Mouse’ his ‘Hare’ and portrait painter, that it is hardly possible his ‘Brithers’, and Kay with his etchings? But to avoid some movement of sympathy equally Braxfield and Kay must both have known on the part of the spectator. And that the morally self-sufficient, densely packed, sympathy is a thing to be encouraged, cohesive, multiculture that was Edinburgh Old apart from humane considerations, Town was coming to an end as the middle because it supplies us with the materials classes found a new space free from the clamour for wisdom. It is probably more of those they now considered socially inferior, instructive to entertain a sneaking parasitic, and even to be the ‘horriblest things’. kindness for any unpopular person, and Just as Braxfield’s alleged smug and axiomatic among the rest for Lord Braxfield, than moral sententiousness would no longer span to give way to perfect raptures of moral the Nor Loch-wide gap between the rulers and indignation against his abstract vices. the ruled (the middle classes were, for example, rapidly dropping his and the lower classes’ native When we turn to inspect Kay’s etching of the Scots language), so an artist hoping to exploit same model, we find, to our surprise, that the and illustrate the tensions caused by the new very same emotions are stirred in us again, social spacing would have to bring some keen and that Stevenson’s description of Raeburn’s and subtle techniques to bear. portrait would fit as well for Kay’s. It’s surprising at first that Kay, whose work, as H & M Evans This brings us to the question of Kay’s

44 the drouth designation as a ‘caricaturist’. It is one point immediately rejected? where we have to agree with Robert Chalmers’ comment in his Dictionary, and take issue with Could it be that this knee-jerk ‘Gillray and Szatkowski’s otherwise excellent and timely Rowlandson’ is, in itself, a form of metaphorical publication. Capital Caricatures is only the title, cudgelling? What we have is the continual for sure, and as a ‘taster’ – as the publisher application here of a sub-, or at any rate an describes it – for the full republished facsimile of inferior artistic, genre label to Kay’s work the 1837 edition, we recognise that something regardless of its relevance; and the standard catchy is called for up front. It has been a long raising of a comparison in that genre, only, by the established custom, pace Chalmers, to refer repeated admission of the authors themselves, to to Kay’s work as ‘caricatures’; but if we are dismiss it immediately as offering no worthwhile to have a revival – and Szatkowski’s laudable insight to the work in question. A violence is efforts could certainly provoke one – then done to Kay here with this phony crit. His art what is the point if there is no re-evaluation? is forced by a double bluff back into a minor It’s true that Kay did sometimes choose to corner, and acknowledgement of its validity and draw the physically abnormal and freakish, to worth in its own artistic right, and on a par with contrast the abruptly different social orders and any other genre, is denied. often employ exaggeration of form and content in the Kay’s work thus encounters way of a caricaturist. But he a similar prejudice which used a wide range of other writers in non-standard, non- techniques of representation bourgeois forms – writers in his art. We may ask, given such as James Kelman and all said in the final part of the Tom Leonard – claim to comparison with Raeburn face. Kelman made reference immediately above, if the to this type of exclusion in etching of Braxfield can be his acceptance speech at considered a caricature? And his Booker prize winning what about that of Adam presentation in 1994. Smith, that of Thomas Paine, of Unfortunately coverage of the William Wilson, Francis Jeffrey, speech, on BBC television, was or Geordie Syme? cut off after 30 seconds, but amongst what he did say, was: It’s notable whatsmore that every modern writer you A couple of weeks ago a care to read on the subject feature writer for a quality – be it Sheila Szatkowski, newspaper suggested that the Hilary and Mary Evans, McCall use of the term ‘culture’ was Smith, Nick Prior or Alan inappropriate in relation to Taylor – every one, will make my words, that the characters a comparison of the work of peopling my pages were Kay with that of Gillray and Rowlandson. It is de ‘preculture’ or was it ‘primeval’? This rigueur, that is to say, not simply to conjure up was explicit, generally it isn’t. But, the aquatinted spectre of that pair of Georgian as Tom Leonard pointed out more satirists, but in almost the same breath to dismiss than 20 years ago, the gist of the the possibility of comparison there given the argument amounts to the following, coloured temper of their work. And indeed both that vernaculars, patois, slangs, dialects, the much larger and much more open society gutter-languages might well have a they operated in, and its more wide ranging place in the realms of comedy (and the political and royal intrigues, and the different frequent references to Billy Connolly methods and techniques of composition within or Rab C Nesbit substantiate this) but which Gillray and Rowlandson worked, are they are inferior linguistic forms and immediately and strikingly different from those of have no place in literature. And a priori Kay. Both those London artists also began their any writer who engages in such so- artistic careers long after Kay had been launched called language is not really engaged in on his, so the question of their influence on him literature at all. could never have been a straightforward one to say the least. Why then is this comparison always To make the connection to the work of Kay and the one that is raised if, in effect, it is always the prejudice he faced, and continues to face,

45 the drouth we need only substitute ‘drawings’ for ‘words’ the Caricatures (oops!) of John Kay’ argues that and ‘etchings’ for ‘pages’ in the first sentence. the etchings only appeared safe once a decent In the third sentence, try putting ‘caricature’ chronological as well as physical space was put for ‘comedy’, ‘Gillray and Rowlandson’ for between the middle classes and the Old Town. ‘Billy Connolly and Rab C Nesbit’, and ‘art’ for Of the display of Kay’s etchings at these New ‘literature’. And so on. The reaction, the attempt Town exhibitions Prior says: to shove Kay, like Kelman and Leonard, back into the ‘precultural’ corner with the comics (in both His etchings, as with other drawings, senses of the word) is substantially the same. photographs and visual miscellanea, It might indeed be interesting to ask if Kelman were steadily incorporated as quaint or Leonard have ever been actually as well as nostalgia for a museofied Old Town metaphorically ‘cudgelled’ as a direct result of past. Busy thoroughfares, antiquated their work. But why should this be, why is there housing and mingling crowds were this violent reaction to the non-bourgeois work? transformed into picturesque images, Again Kelman speaks up, and mutatis mutandis, we evaluated by collectors as signs of a can again see the application to John Kay: romantic historical past and contrasted to the bright new modernity … Kay’s Writers have to develop the habit of work … was finally severed from the relying on themselves. It’s as if there’s space that gave it its ambiguous flavour a massive KEEP OUT sign hoisted and inserted into the Romantic order above every area of literature. This is an of things that was becoming Scotland’s obvious effect of the hopeless elitism hallmark under the influence of Sir referred to earlier. But there are other Walter Scott. reasons. The very idea of literary art as something alive and lurking within The New Town, that is to say, had by the second reach of ordinary women and men is decade of the 19th century achieved so secure not necessarily the sort of idea those a physical separation and purity that no more who control the power in society will ‘actual’ cudgellings of Kay were necessary. This welcome with open arms. It’s naïve to sense of ‘achievement’ is reinforced in Youngson, expect otherwise. Literature is nothing the historian’s (The Making of Classical Edinburgh) when it isn’t being dangerous in some assertion some 150 years later that the beauty of way or another and those in positions Edinburgh as a city lies in the ‘visible conjunction of power will always be suspicious of but physical separation of the Old and New anything that could conceivably affect Towns’. The middle classes can now view Kay’s their security. work without feeling the threat of undesirable social encounters. The language of Kay’s art was not acceptable to some people in his time – witness actual Kay, however, like Kelman and Leonard, was not cudgellings; but nor even to those evidently about to surrender to ‘those in positions of ‘sympathetic’ to him is it acceptable now power’, and kept on drawing until he died in his – witness metaphorical cudgellings. Yet clearly it 80s. He keeps his barber’s shop in the Old Town would not be true to say that there has never and would neither conform to new middle class been a change in his status and acceptability. Even proprieties in terms of his background, nor in by 1811, Kay was actually exhibiting his work in terms of his continuing interests and operation. the New Town with the Edinburgh Associated He will not grant the bourgeoisie the free space Artists. He continued doing so for several they desire, unburdened by uncomfortable social years, and then by 1822, he exhibited with the realities. We could though, never say of the Institution for the Encouragement of the Arts in mixed, heterogeneous society of Old Edinburgh Scotland. The ‘drawing rooms’ of the New Town that we see in some of his prints, that it was in seemed to be beckoning. any way idyllic or prelapsarian. There was too much filth, disease, poverty and dilapidation But does this mean that there was some let-up to make any such claim sustainable – we need by the New Town middle classes in their quest to only think of Johnson saying to Boswell as they escape the crowded and mixed social conditions scurried home of an evening: ‘I can smell you in which pertained, and had been all too evident in the dark’ to be assured of some nasty realities. Kay’s images, and had been considered by some What can be said nonetheless, is that Kay’s early to be amongst ‘the horriblest things on earth’? etchings belong to an era in which the middle Not according to Nick Prior, who in his excellent classes were still, socially and spatially speaking, essay ‘Etching the City: Edinburgh, Urbanism, and and only just, predisencumbered.

46 the drouth