From the Academy

Stones that Cry Out

Up seven flights of stairs in a great tumbledown house off the Lawnmarket of Edinburgh lives George Scott-Moncrieff, Esquire, man of letters. He has a country house and a town house, he says: the country house is a but-and-ben in the misty Isle of Eigg, away in the Hebrides; and the town house is his lodging in James’s Court, a “condemned slum” of high dignity and character, where Hume and Boswell and Adam Smith lodged before him. Davy Hume dwelt here on the frugal allowance of sixpence a day; and Mr. Scott-Moncrieff lives nearly as frugally, boiling his tea among his books and papers, and writing better than almost anyone ever did in Murger’s Latin Quarter. The floor of his lodging slopes at an alarming angle; but then, it has sloped so for centuries; and the splendid view from his windows of the Mound and the New Town is more than sufficient compensation.

RK

About the Author

Russell Kirk

Featured Tags

Stones that Cry Out

Up seven flights of stairs in a great tumbledown house off the Lawnmarket of Edinburgh lives George Scott-Moncrieff, Esquire, man of letters. He has a country house and a town house, he says: the country house is a but-and-ben in the misty Isle of Eigg, away in the Hebrides; and the town house is his lodging in James’s Court, a “condemned slum” of high dignity and character, where Hume and Boswell and Adam Smith lodged before him. Davy Hume dwelt here on the frugal allowance of sixpence a day; and Mr. Scott-Moncrieff lives nearly as frugally, boiling his tea among his books and papers, and writing better than almost anyone ever did in Murger’s Latin Quarter. The floor of his lodging slopes at an alarming angle; but then, it has sloped so for centuries; and the splendid view from his windows of the Mound and the New Town is more than sufficient compensation.