Writers
It seems as if almost every educated resident who lived in Albany Street spent much of their time enthusiastically bent over pen and paper, composing letters, pamphlets, diaries and books. (Front page of Corbet Catty's diary -collection St Andrews University) A web article by Matthew Taunton, describing the massive expansion of the printed word in the 19th century states: 'The sheer volume and diversity of printed matter was unprecedented: from moral and instructional works to crime novels and Gothic tales; from intellectual periodicals to domestic magazines; from etiquette manuals to cookery books.
Albany Street had a number of novelists and while some, such as Mary Brunton (see Number 35) and Susan Ferrier (see Number 38), met with critical success, other authors were less successful. William Darling Lyell (Number 12), a solicitor and later Sheriff-Substitute for Wigtownshire, wrote The House in Queen Anne’s Square, based on a famous Scottish court case. The case involved Madeleine Smith, the eldest daughter of a wealthy Glasgow architect, who had a secret liaison with Pierre Emile L'Angelier, an apprentice nurseryman. When she tried to break off the relationship he threatened to use the letters they had exchanged to expose their relationship. She bought arsenic from a chemist’s shop and soon after L'Angelier died from arsenic poisoning. Although the circumstantial evidence pointed towards her guilt the jury returned a not proven verdict. The Spectator reviewer of Lyell’s fictional take on the case was not wholly impressed. ‘The story is rich in incident and sensation. Indeed one might say it is too rich, for the development of the plot is clotted with mystery, suspicion, and sentiment as to produce bewilderment rather than suspense…This is a curious book: thrilling in some places, almost unreadable in others. Penniweather, the baffled but admirable amateur detective, has our warmest sympathy.’
Many residents wrote books related to their professions. Dr Warburton Begbie (Number 18) published anonymously A Handy Book of Medical Information and Advice, by a Physician in 1860, while the advocate William Galbraith Miller (Number 39) published The Data of Jurisprudence. Fortunately, Miller did not restrict himself to only weighty subjects, as he also published anonymously, The Points of Leading Cases in Private International Law Done into Doggerel. One example:
There once was a lady called Stavert;
With divorce she her husband would have at:
But his domicil
Was an English one still,
And so the Scotch Courts he did laugh at.
Others penned books about their personal passions. Richard Bell (Number 19), a solicitor, was an enthusiastic naturalist, antiquarian and amateur archaeologist, and he kept an extraordinary collection of animals at his family estate at Castle O’er. In 1905, he published My Strange Pets. A review of his book said: ‘Never was there such a collection of strange fowl, and four-legged creatures and creeping things, as Mr. Bell keeps in his Scottish home. This book is a mine of information, suggestions, and stories.’ One wonders whether as a child he brought home any unusual animals to Albany Street! His collection was indeed exotic. In his book he writes: ‘Emus are rather an expensive stock to lay in. This, however, did not deter me from purchasing a pair as I hoped, if successful, to recoup myself the initial outlay of £20, which was the figure charged me by Mr Charles Jamrach of 180 St George St, East London, the world-famed dealer in wild animals. When they arrived home the children named them Tommy and Jenny…. my breeding experiment succeeded, as I sold 31 young birds, at from £8 to £10 per pair, and received £16 for the original pair when I sold them. And beside this I reaped the profit from the sale of eggs not required for hatching purposes as these are worth 5 shillings each. ’ Robert William Fraser (Number 51), the Minister at St John’s Parish Church, was just one whose writings ranged across an eclectic mix. His books include Turkey, Ancient and Modern: A History of the Ottoman Empire from the Period of Its Establishment to the Present Time; The Hand-Book of Physical Science; Head and Hand: Or Thought and Action, in Relation to Success and Happiness; and Ebb and flow; the curiosities of the sea-shore. Unlike the many letters from the period that have disappeared, the banker, John Gardiner Kinnear (Number 49), packaged his into a book, Cairo, Petra, and Damascus. Its introduction claimed the book to be: ‘little more than a transcript of letters written to my own family [while travelling there in 1839] after suppressing those passages which were of a purely domestic character, and adding some observations.’ However, the rich detail of his letters are far more than simple postcards home. ‘I arrived (in Cairo)after a very wearisome and uncomfortable journey, and am now in what is called an English hotel, kept by Mr. Hill, who has similar establishments at Alexandria and Suez. I find nothing very English about the house, except the bills, which are extravagantly high, and the passengers to Suez, who in bad dinners, Khamsin (hot) winds, prickly heat and fleas, have abundant opportunities of indulging their national privilege of grumbling. Would you believe it? There is neither bottled porter nor Harvey's sauce in the house! Such are the dreadful privations of which I sometimes hear loud complaints. ….To tell the truth, I could give you no intelligible description (of The Great Pyramid in Egypt) …But it is something to say that you have been in the interior. …As to the puzzling questions. When ? By whom were the pyramids built? — that is "too hard a knot for me to untie," and I dare say you do not expect me to attempt the solution of it. Lord Lindsay would date their erection before the days of Abraham; but I do not think his argument very conclusive. There is good reason for believing that they are not native Egyptian structures, but the work of those nomad tribes known in history as the shepherd kings.'
Many individuals self-published personal opinions and these often provoked rebuttals in print. In 1835, the advocate, Andrew Coventry Dick (Number 36) published Dissertation on Church Polity, examining the issue, much debated at the time, of whether the church should be under the control of the state or not. A review said: ‘(this) is a masterly piece of sound and eloquent argumentation. Mr Dick has fairly grappled with the subject in all its bearings, planting his foot upon ground from which it will not be easy to dislodge him.’ However, the Reverend John Collinson of Gateshead, was prepared to try, publishing his own pamphlet, A Letter to Andrew C Dick, in response. Although, at over 150 pages long, a letter hardly seems an appropriate title! In it, Collinson states that, while he dislikes controversy, he must challenge Dick’s arguments. However, after protracted rebuttal of Dick’s case, the Reverend ends on an optimistic note: ‘God grant that these troubles, in Church and State, may cease and pass away, of which deliverance we are not without good hopes, so that leading quiet lives we may be enabled to serve him faithfully in all joy and thankfulness.’
Perhaps the strangest book of this type to issue from the pen of an Albany Street resident was one by David Wardlaw Scott (Number 57). He wrote a number of books, including Dora Marcelli, the last of her race: a poem, set in the period of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s unsuccessful Jacobite Revolution in 1843, but his most intriguing was Terra Firma: The Earth Not a Planet, Proved from Scripture, Reason and Fact. Published in 1901, just before his death, the book is his proof that the Earth is in fact flat. Even today, members of the Flat Earth Society refer favourably to Scott’s opus. In the preface Scott wrote: ‘I determined to undertake this work, in order to expose the fallacies of Modern Astronomy, which are so contrary to the word of God…..I do not enter the lists arrayed in the panoply of Neo-Science, to fight this great Goliath, but only with a few pebbles of the brook, yet I trust that with God’s blessing the attempt may not be altogether fruitless.....I have no hesitation in saying that I believe the real source of Modern Astronomy to have been SATAN.’