Footsteps of Dr. Johnson (Scotland)/Chapter 10
Inverness (August 28-30).
From Cawdor Johnson and Boswell drove to Fort George, "the most regular fortification in the island," according to Johnson; "where," he continues, "they were entertained by Sir Eyre Coote, the Governor, with such elegance of conversation, as left us no attention to the delicacies of his table." Wolfe, who saw it in 1751, when it was partly made, writes: "I believe there is still work for six or seven years to do. When it is finished one may venture to say (without saying much) that it will be the most considerable fortress, and the best situated in Great Britain."[1] In the evening our travellers continued their journey to Inverness—a distance of twelve miles. The reviewer of Johnson's narrative in the Scots Magazine expresses his wonder that as "he must have passed near the Field of Culloden he studiously avoided to mention that battle."[2] Boswell is equally reticent. The explanation is perhaps merely due to the dusk of evening, in which they passed by the spot. It is not unlikely, on the other hand, that the silence was intentional. Johnson shows a curious reticence in a passage in which he refers to the Rebellion of 1745. In his description of Rasay he writes: "Not many years ago the late laird led out one hundred men upon a military expedition." Had he visited Culloden or described the campaign, his indignation must have flamed forth at the cruelties of the butcher duke. Boswell, Lowlander though he was, said "that they would never be forgotten." With Smollett, in his Tears of Scotland, they might well have exclaimed:—
"Yet when the rage of battle ceased,
The victor's soul was not appeased:
The naked and forlorn must feel
Devouring flames and murd'ring steel."
THE FIDDLER'S WALK IN THE DRAWING ROOM, CAWDOR CASTLE
Johnson does indeed speak of "the heavy hand of a vindictive conqueror."[3] It was about this time, or only a little later, that Scott was learning "to detest the name of Cumberland with more than infant hatred."[4] That an Englishman could travel in safety, unarmed and unguarded, through a country which only seven and twenty years before had been so mercilessly treated seems not a little surprising. For the next day or two he was to follow a course where fire and sword had swept along. Wolfe, whose "great name," we boast, was "compatriot with our own," who had so little of the savage spirit of war that he would rather have written Gray's Elegy than take Quebec, even he exulted that "as few prisoners were taken of the Highlanders as possible. We had an opportunity of avenging ourselves. The rebels left near 1,500 dead." Yet he did not think that enough had been done. The carnage-pile was not lofty enough. Surveying the battle-field five years later, he writes in a letter to his father, a general in the army, "I find room for a military criticism. You would not have left those ruffians the only possible means of conquest, nor suffered multitudes to go off unhurt with the power to destroy."[5] Ruffians indeed they had shown themselves in their raid into England, but enough surely had been done in the way of slaughter to satisfy the most exacting military critic. How merciless our soldiers had been is proved by the letters that were written from the camp. A despatch sent off from Inverness on April 25, nine days after the battle, says that "the misery and distress of the fugitive rebels was inexpressible, hundreds being found dead of their wounds and through hunger at the distance of twelve, fourteen, and even twenty miles from the field."[6] On June 5 an officer wrote from Fort Augustus: "His Royal Highness has carried fire and sword through their country, and driven off their cattle, which we bring to our camp in great quantities, sometimes 2,000 in a drove. The people are deservedly in a most deplorable way, and must perish either by sword or famine, a just reward for traitors."[7]
On July 26 another officer wrote from the same fort to a friend at Newcastle: "We hang or shoot everyone that is known to conceal the Pretender, burn their houses and take their cattle, of which we have got some 8,000 head within these few days past, so that if some of your Northumberland graziers were here they might make their fortunes."[8] The author of a Plain Narrative of the Rebellion, tells with exultation how "they marched to Loch Yell, the stately seat of old Esquire Cameron," the Lochiel of Campbell's spirited lines. "His fine chairs, tables, and all his cabinet goods were set on fire and burnt with his house. His fine fruit garden, above a mile long, was pulled to pieces and laid waste. A beautiful summer-house that stood in the pleasure garden was also set on fire. From hence the party marched along the sea-coast through Moidart, burning of houses, driving away the cattle, and shooting those vagrants who were found about the mountains. For fifty miles round there was no man or beast to be seen."[9] Andrew Henderson, in his History of the Rebellion, after admitting that in the rout several of the wounded were stabbed, and some who were lurking in houses were taken out and shot, urges by way of excuse that "the rebels had enraged the troops; their habit was strange, their language still stranger, and their way of fighting was shocking to the utmost degree."[10] Besides the massacre after the battle and the executions by courts-martial, there were the hangings, drawings and quarterings, and beheadings by judge and jury. Seventy-six had been sent to the scaffold by September, 1747,[11] and above one thousand were transported.[12] Even George II. "said that he believed William had been rough with them."[13] When it was proposed to confer on the duke the freedom of the City of London, an alderman was heard to say that it ought to be the freedom of the Butchers' Company. So late as the summer of 1753 seven rebels were seized in a hut on the side of Loch Hourn, at no great distance from the way along which Johnson was to pass only twenty years later.[14] Nevertheless he everywhere travelled in safety. Among the chieftains, no doubt, "his tenderness for the unfortunate House of Stuart" was known, but to the common people he would only be an Englishman—a man of the race that had slaughtered their fathers and wasted their country. That both he and Boswell were not free from uneasiness they avowed when at Auchnasheal they were surrounded by the wild McCraas. In the memory of men not much past the middle age, tales of the cruel duke used to he told in the winter evenings in the glens of these Western Highlands. They have at last died away, and "infant hatred" is no longer nourished.[15]
Our travellers, whatever may have been their motive, leaving the Field of Culloden unvisited and unnoticed, arrived at Inverness, the capital of the Highlands. They put up at Mackenzie's Inn. Of their accommodation they say nothing; but it can scarcely have been good, if we may trust an English traveller who two years earlier had found, he said, the Horns Inn, kept by Mrs. Mackenzie, dirty and ill-managed.[16] Perhaps they felt as Wolfe did when he was stationed in the town with his regiment. "It would be unmanly," he wrote, "and very unbecoming a soldier to complain of little evils, such as bad food, bad lodging, bad fire. . . . With these reflections I reconcile myself to Inverness, and to other melancholy spots that we are thrown upon." He adds that the post goes but once a week, and that as there are rapid rivers on the road that have neither bridge nor boat, it is often delayed by the floods.[17] Wesley describes Inverness as the largest town he had seen in Scotland after Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen. "It stands in a pleasant and fruitful country, and has all things needful for life and godliness. The people in general speak remarkably good English, and are of a friendly, courteous behaviour."[18] Their good English they were said to derive from the garrison which Cromwell had settled among them. It had been noticed by Defoe. "They speak," he said, "perfect English, even much better than in the most southerly provinces of Scotland; nay, some will say that they speak it as well as at London, though I do not grant that neither."[19] Their behaviour had greatly improved in the thirteen years which had elapsed between Wolfe's second and Wesley's first visit, unless the soldier had viewed them with the stern eye of the conqueror, or they had displayed the sullenness of the conquered. "A little while," he wrote, "serves to discover the villainous nature of the inhabitants and brutality of the people in the neighbourhood."[20] Yet the brutality was quite as much on the side of the army, for a year later, five full years after the battle, we find the people still treated with harshness and insolence. The magistrates had invited Lord Bury, the general in command, to an entertainment on the Duke of Cumberland's birthday. "He said he did not doubt but it would be more agreeable to the duke if they postponed it to the day following, the anniversary of Culloden. They stared, said they could not promise on their own authority, but would go and consult their body. They returned, told him it was unprecedented and could not be complied with. Lord Bury replied he was sorry they had not given a negative at once, for he had mentioned it to his soldiers, who would not bear a disappointment, and was afraid it would provoke them to some outrage upon the town. This did; they celebrated Culloden."[21]
The old town had witnessed a strange sight in the first days after the battle. The soldiers had held a fair for the sale of the plunder which they had made. "The traffic on the Rialto Bridge was nothing in comparison to the business done by our military merchants; here being great sortments of all manner of plaids, broad-swords, dirks and pistols, and plaid-waistcoats, officers' laced waistcoats, hats, bonnets, blankets, and oatmeal bags."[22] The severity that was so long exercised by government at length sank into neglect. Only five years before the arrival of our travellers all the prisoners, just before the opening of the Assize, made their escape from the town jail; "so the Lord Pitfour," a writer to the Signet wrote, "will have the trouble only of fugitation and reprimanding the magistrates."[23] How miserable the jail was is shown in a memorial from the Town Council, dated March 17, 1786, stating that "it consists only of two small cells for criminals, and one miserable room for civil debtors. Their situation is truly deplorable, as there are at present and generally about thirty persons confined in these holes, none of which is above thirteen feet square."[24] While the poor prisoners were so cruelly treated, the lawyers had a merry time of it every time that so hospitable a judge as Boswell's father came the circuit:
"Lord Auchinleck made a most respectable figure at the head of his circuit table. It was his rule to spend every shilling of his allowance for the circuit—a thing less to be expected that in everything else he was supposed to be abundantly economical. He had a plentiful table. He laughed much at the rule laid down by some of his brethren of asking gentlemen but once to dinner. 'It is,' said he, 'treating them like beggars at a burial, who get their alms in rotation.'"[25]
We are not surprised that Boswell found that "everybody at Inverness spoke of Lord Auchinleck with uncommon regard."
The English chapel, which Johnson describes as "meanly built, but with a very decent congregation," was pulled down many years ago. On its site, in the midst of the same old graveyard, another building has been raised in what may be perhaps called the churchwarden style. Of Macbeth's castle—"what is called the castle of Macbeth," writes Johnson with his usual caution—nothing remains. If we may trust Boswell, "it perfectly corresponded with Shakespeare's description." It has been replaced by "a modern building of chaste castellated design," to borrow the language of the guide-book. I was told, however, that our travellers had been misinformed, and that "the old original Macbeth's castle" stood on a height a little distance from the town. This "pleasant seat" has been treated, I found, even worse than its rival; for a builder, thinking that the air "might nimbly and sweetly recommend itself" to the public as well as to a king, began the erection of a crescent. Owing to a difficulty about a right of way, the speculation hitherto has not been so successful as might have been feared.
At Inverness the Lowland life came to an end. To the west of that town no road had ever been made till some years after the rising of 1715. All beyond was the work of General Wade and the other military engineers. "Here," writes Johnson, "the appearance of life began to alter. I had seen a few women with plaids at Aberdeen, but at Inverness the Highland manners are common. There is, I think, a kirk in which only the Erse language is used." The plaid, which was not peculiar to the Highlands, had been rapidly going out of fashion. Ramsay of Ochtertyre says that in 1747, when he first knew Edinburgh, nine-tenths of the ladies still wore them. Five years later "one could hardly see a lady in that piece of dress. In the course of seven or eight years the very servant girls were ashamed of being seen in that ugly antiquated garb."[26] The Gaelic language does not seem to have lost much ground in Inverness, for I was told that there are five churches in which it is used every Sunday at one of the services.
- ↑ Wright's Life of Wolfe, p. 178.
- ↑ Scots Magazine, 1775, p. 26.
- ↑ Johnson's Works, ix. 86.
- ↑ Lockhart's Life of Scott, i. 24.
- ↑ Wright's Life of Wolfe, 1864, pp. 84-5, 179.
- ↑ Gentleman's Magazine, 1746, p. 263.
- ↑ Ib., p. 324.
- ↑ Gentleman's Magazine, 1746, p. 429.
- ↑ Michael Hughes's Plain Narrative of the Rebellion, p. 56.
- ↑ Henderson's History of the Rebellion, p. 117.
- ↑ Scots Magazine, 1747, p. 649. According to Smollett the number executed was eighty-one. History of England, ed. 1800, iii. 188.
- ↑ Gentleman's Magazine, 1747, p. 246.
- ↑ Marchmont Papers, i. 196.
- ↑ Gentleman's Magazine, 1753, p. 391.
- ↑ My informant is the late Rev. Alexander Matheson, minister of Glenshiel.
- ↑ Gentleman's Magazine, 1771, p. 544.
- ↑ Wright's Life of Wolfe, pp. 182, 195.
- ↑ Wesley's Journal, iii. 181.
- ↑ Defoe's Account of Scotland, p. 196.
- ↑ Wright's Life of Wolfe, p. 177.
- ↑ Letters of Horace Walpole, ii. 288.
- ↑ M. Hughes's Plain Narrative, p. 51.
- ↑ E. Dunbar's Social Life in Former Days, i. 133.
- ↑ Ib., p. 89.
- ↑ Scotland and Scotsmen in the Eighteenth Century, i. 164.
- ↑ Scotland and Scotsmen in the Eighteenth Century, ii. 88.