Footsteps of Dr. Johnson (Scotland)/Chapter 20

by George Birkbeck Norman Hill

Inchkenneth, Mackinnon's Cave, and Iona (October 17-20).

Our travellers having stayed but one night at Ulva, on the morning of Sunday, October 17, took boat and rowed to Inchkenneth, "an island about a mile long, and perhaps half a mile broad, remarkable for pleasantness and fertility. It is verdant and grassy, and fit both for pasture and tillage; but it has no trees." The only inhabitants were "the chief of the ancient and numerous clan of Macleane, his daughter and their servants." In a letter to Mrs. Thrale Johnson says: "Sir Allan, a chieftain, a baronet, and a soldier, inhabits in this insulated desert a thatched hut with no chambers. He received us with the soldier's frankness and the gentleman's elegance, and introduced us to his daughters, two young ladies who have not wanted education suitable to their birth, and who in their cottage neither forgot their dignity nor affected to remember it. His affairs are in disorder by the fault of his ancestors, and while he forms some scheme for retrieving them, he has retreated hither." By chambers, Johnson seems to mean rooms on an upper floor. Boswell describes the habitation as commodious, "though it consisted but of a few small buildings only one story high." In two of these huts were the servants' rooms and the kitchen. "The dinner was plentiful and delicate. Neither the comforts nor the elegancies of life were wanting. There were several dishes and variety of liquors." Sir Walter Scott many years later visited the island in company with a Gloucestershire baronet, Sir George Onesiphorus Paul:

 

"He seemed to me," writes Sir Walter, "to suspect many of the Highland tales which he heard, but he showed most incredulity on the subject of Johnson's having been entertained in the wretched huts of which we saw the ruins. He took me aside, and conjured me to tell him the truth of the matter. 'This Sir Allan,' said he, 'was he a regular baronet, or was his title such a traditional one as you find in Ireland?' I assured my excellent acquaintance that, 'for my own part, I would have paid more respect to a knight of Kerry, or knight of Glynn; yet Sir Allan Macleane was a regular baronet by patent;' and, having given him this information, I took the liberty of asking him, in return, whether he would not in conscience prefer the worst cell in the jail at Gloucester (which he had been very active in overlooking while the building was going on) to those exposed hovels where Johnson had been entertained by rank and beauty. He looked round the little islet, and allowed Sir Allan had some advantage in exercising ground; but in other respects he thought the compulsory tenants of Gloucester had greatly the advantage. Such was his opinion of a place, concerning which Johnson has recorded that 'it wanted little which palaces could afford.'"

Johnson, by the way, did not write "it wanted," but "we wanted little that palaces afford." We have from Sir Walter also an amusing story which shows how the chief of the Macleanes in the embarrassment of his affairs had learnt to hate the sight of an attorney—writers, as they are called in Scotland:

"Upon one occasion he made a visit to a friend residing at Carron lodge, on the banks of the Carron, where the banks of that river are studded with pretty villas: Sir Allan, admiring the landscape, asked his friend whom that handsome seat belonged to. 'M——; the writer to the signet,' was the reply. 'Umph!' said Sir Allan, but not with an accent of assent, 'I mean that other house.' 'Oh! that belongs to a very honest fellow, Jamie ——, also a writer to the signet.' 'Umph!' said the Highland chief of Macleane, with more emphasis than before, 'And yon smaller house?' That belongs to a Stirling man; I forget his name, but I am sure he is a writer too; for ——.' Sir Allan, who had recoiled a quarter of a circle backward at every response, now wheeled the circle entire, and turned his back on the landscape, saying, 'My good friend, I must own you have a pretty situation here ; but d—n your neighbourhood.'"^[1]

In his dislike of lawyers he would have found a common feeling in Johnson, who one day, "when inquiry was made concerning a person who had quitted a company where he was, observed that he did not care to speak ill of any man behind his back, but he believed the gentleman was an attorney." Happily there was nothing to disturb the tranquillity of the scene during the visit of our travellers. The Sunday which Johnson spent on Inchkenneth was, as he told Boswell, "the most agreeable he had ever passed." He thus describes it to Mrs. Thrale: "Towards evening Sir Allan told us that Sunday never passed over him like another day. One of the ladies read, and read very well, the evening service, 'and Paradise was opened in the wild.'"^[2] Such was the impression produced on him that he commemorated the day in some pretty Latin lines entitled, Insula Sancti Kennethi. Though he would not attend a Scotch church and hear Robertson preach, yet a woman's reading the English service did not shock him.

"Quid quod sacrifici versavit femina libros?
Legitimas faciunt pectora pura preces."

"A woman's hand, 'tis true, turned o'er the sacred leaves,
But prayer from hearts so pure God's sanction sure receives."

He thus prettily ends his verses:

"Quo vagor ulterius? quod ubique requiritur hic est;
Hic secura quies, hic et honestus amor."

"Why should we further roam? here what all seek we gain,
Both peace without a care, and love without a stain."

INCHKENNETH CHAPEL.

INCHKENNETH CHAPEL.

Sir Allan had chosen well his hermitage. The landing-place is on the south-eastern side of the island, in a little bay with a sandy beach, sheltered by a low point from the storms coming from the north-west, while the cold blasts from the north and the north-east are kept off by a low hill. The ground slopes up from the shore in pleasant meadow land. At the bottom of the slope, a little above the beach, Sir Allan, I conjecture, had his habitation. Here are the ruins of a farmhouse which was burnt down a few years ago. It is very likely that it occupied the same site as his cottages. The road marked with cart-wheels, as on the main land, at the sight of which Dr. Johnson's heart was cheered, I failed to discover. We wandered up the little path to where on the rising ground the ruined chapel stands within the hearing of the wave.

"We walked uncovered into the chapel," writes Johnson, "and saw in the reverend ruin the effects of precipitate reformation. The floor is covered with ancient grave-stones, of which the inscriptions are not now legible. The altar is not yet quite demolished; beside it, on the right side, is a bas relief of the Virgin with her child, and an angel hovering over her. On the other side still stands a hand-bell, which, though it has no clapper, neither Presbyterian bigotry nor barbarian wantonness has yet taken away. The chapel is thirty-eight feet long and eighteen broad. Boswell, who is very pious, went into it at night to perform his devotions, but came back in haste for fear of spectres. Near the chapel is a fountain, to which the water, remarkably pure, is conveyed from a distant hill through pipes laid by the Romish clergy, which still perform the office of conveyance though they have never been repaired since Popery was suppressed."

Our boatman, whom I had in vain questioned about Johnson's host, led me up to the tomb of an old knight, clothed in armour, with a dog lying at his feet, and said, "That is Sir Allan." The little fountain, in spite of the lapse of years and the long drought, still ran with a stream of pure water. Besides the chapel, there had once been on the island a seminary of priests. "Sir Allan," writes Johnson, "had a mind to trace the foundations of a college, but neither I nor Mr. Boswell, who bends a keener eye on vacancy, were able to perceive them." Where they failed we could not hope to succeed. We next explored, as they had done, a neighbouring islet.

"Even Inchkenneth," says Johnson, "has a subordinate island, named Sandiland, I suppose in contempt, where we landed, and found a rock, with a surface of perhaps four acres, of which one is naked stone, another spread with sand and shells, some of which I picked up for their glossy beauty, and two covered with a little earth and grass, on which Sir Allan has a few sheep. I doubt not but when there was a college at Inchkenneth, there was a hermitage upon Sandiland."

The shells, perhaps, he kept to add to the collection of Mrs. Thrale's eldest daughter. "I have been able," he wrote later on, "to collect very little for Queeney's cabinet." The name which our boatman gave to the island was, so far as I could catch it, not Sandiland, but Sameilan. At the time of our visit it had for inhabitants four sheep, and flocks of sea-birds who made it their breeding ground. They flew circling and screaming over our heads, while a mother bird led off a late brood of little ones into the sea. Before each of the burrows in which they made their nests was a litter of tiny

SANDILAND.

shells thrown up like sand before a rabbit-warren. The sun shone brightly, the little waves beat on the shore, while all around us there were mountains, islands, and lochs. As I picked up a few shells, I thought that on this lonely rock, perhaps, none had been gathered since the day when they caught Johnson's eye by

MACKINNON'S CAVE.

MACKINNON'S CAVE.

their glossy beauty. In sailing back to the mainland of Mull we saw four seals popping up their heads in the water near the shore.

So pleasant did Johnson find the life in Inchkenneth that he remained a day longer than he had intended. "We could have been easily persuaded," he writes, "to a longer stay, but life will not be all passed in delight. The session at Edinburgh was approaching from which Mr. Boswell could not be absent." On the morning of Tuesday, October 19, they started for Iona in a good strong boat, with four stout rowers under the guidance of the chief of the Macleanes. On the shore they took their last farewell of poor Col, "who," wrote Johnson, "had treated us with so much kindness, and concluded his favours by consigning us to Sir Allan." On the way they visited Mackinnon's Cave, on the opposite coast of Mull, the greatest natural curiosity," said Johnson, "he had ever seen." He thus describes it in a letter to Mrs. Thrale.

"We had some difficulty to make our way over the vast masses of broken rocks that lie before the entrance, and at the mouth were embarrassed with stones, which the sea had accumulated as at Brighthelmstone; but as we advanced we reached a floor of soft sand, and as we left the light behind us walked along a very spacious cavity vaulted overhead with an arch almost regular, by which a mountain was sustained, at least, a very lofty rock. From this magnificent cavern went a narrow passage to the right hand, which we entered with a candle, and though it was obstructed with great stones, clambered over them to a second expansion of the cave, in which there lies a great square stone, which might serve as a table. The cave goes onward to an unknown extent, but we were now one hundred and sixty yards under ground; we had but one candle, and had never heard of any that went further and came back; we therefore thought it prudent to return."

"Tradition," according to Boswell, "says that a piper and twelve men once advanced into this cave, nobody can tell how far; and never returned." It is indeed a wonderful place. As we sat on the rocks near the entrance, with the huge cliffs rising sheer above us, and the waves breaking at our feet, we could see in the distance Iona, with its beach of white sand, Staffa with its lofty masses of dark rock, Little Colonsay with the waves dashing in foam upon it, and on the horizon a coast which we took to be the island of Col. Vast masses of rock lay along the beach in huge and wild disorder. Beyond the cavern they came to an end; for there the cliff rose from the sea steep as the wall of a house. The cascade near the cave, which Boswell mentions, was falling in a very slender stream. Hard by a huge crag was covered almost to the top by the fresh young leaves of a great ivy-tree. It called up to my memory the ivy-mantled ruins of Kenilworth Castle.

Our travellers, taking boat again, continued their voyage along the shore of Mull. "The island of Staffa," writes Boswell, "we saw at no very great distance, but could not land upon it, the surge was so high on its rocky coast." It is strange that Sir James Mackintosh, with this passage before him, should have accused Johnson of having visited Iona, "without looking at Staffa, which lay in sight, with that indifference to natural objects, either of taste or scientific curiosity, which characterised him."^[3] As they sailed along, "Sir Allan, anxious for the honour of Mull, was still talking of its woods, and pointing them out to Dr. Johnson, as appearing at a distance on the skirts of that island. 'Sir,' he answered, 'I saw at Tobermory what they called a wood, which I unluckily took for heath. If you show me what I shall take for furze, it will be something.'"

They dined at "a cluster of rocks, black and horrid," near to which was a public-house where they had hoped to procure some rum or brandy for the boatmen; "but unfortunately a funeral a few days before had exhausted all their store."
MULL. Smollett in his Humphry Clinker, tells how a Highland gentleman, at his grandmother's funeral, "seemed to think it a disparagement to his family that not above a hundred gallons of whisky had been drunk upon such a solemn occasion."^[4] The rest of this day's voyage Johnson thus finely described in one of his letters: "We then entered the boat again; the night came upon us: the wind rose; the sea swelled. We passed by several little islands in the silent solemnity of faint moonshine, seeing little, and hearing only the wind and the water. At last we reached the island; the venerable seat of ancient sanctity, where secret piety reposed, and where fallen greatness was reposited." Boswell adds that as they "sailed along by moonlight in a sea somewhat rough, and often between black and gloomy rocks, Dr. Johnson said, 'If this be not roving among the Hebrides nothing is.'"

Iona, which of old belonged to the Macleanes, in their recent embarassments had been sold to the Duke of Argyle. Though the tie of property was broken yet the feeling of clanship remained entire. "Whatever was in the island," writes Johnson, "Sir Allan could demand, for the inhabitants were Macleanes; but having little they could not give us much." A curious scene described by Boswell bears witness to the strength of the devotion of these poor people.

"Sir Allan had been told that a man had refused to send him some rum, at which the knight was in great indignation. 'You rascal! (said he,) don't you know that I can hang you, if I please?' Not adverting to the Chieftain's power over his clan, I imagined that Sir Allan had known of some capital crime that the fellow had committed, which he could discover, and so get him condemned; and said, 'How so?' 'Why, (said Sir Allan,) are they not all my people?' Sensible of my inadvertency, and most willing to contribute what I could towards the continuation of feudal authority, 'Very true,' said I. Sir Allan went on: 'Refuse to send rum to me, you rascal! Don't you know that, if I order you to go and cut a man's throat, you are to do it?' 'Yes, an't please your honour! and my own too, and hang myself too.' The poor fellow denied that he had refused to send the rum. His making these professions was not merely a pretence in presence of his Chief; for after he and I were out of Sir Allan's hearing, he told me, 'Had he sent his dog for the rum, I would have given it: I would cut my bones for him.' It was very remarkable to find such an attachment to a Chief, though he had then no connection with the island, and had not been there for fourteen years. Sir Allan, by way of upbraiding the fellow, said, 'I believe you are a Campbell.'"

The memory of the power so lately exercised throughout the Highlands by the chiefs was not soon forgotten. It was noticed so late as 1793, that in Scotland master was still, for the most part, the term used for landlord. As an instance of this it was mentioned that in a sermon preached in the High Church of Edinburgh in 1788, the minister thus described the late Earl of Kinnoul in relation to his tenants.^[5] Even after the abolition of the jurisdictions of the chiefs the powers left in the hands of the justices were very great. "An inferior judge in Scotland," wrote the historian of Edinburgh in the year 1779, "makes nothing of sentencing a man to whipping, pillory, banishment from the limits of his jurisdiction, and such other trifling punishments, without the idle formality of a jury."^[6]

In Iona, however, there was no need of threats. The poor people were devoted to their former chief. "He went," says Johnson, "to the headman of the island whom fame, but fame delights in amplifying, represents as worth no less than fifty pounds. He was, perhaps, proud enough of his guests, but ill prepared for our entertainment; however, he soon produced more provision than men not luxurious required." There was not a single house in which, with any comfort, they could have been lodged. Pennant, who had been there a year earlier, "had pitched a rude tent formed of oars and sails." There was but one house which had a chimney. "Nevertheless, even in this," says Johnson, "the fire was made on the floor in the middle of the room, and notwithstanding the dignity of their mansion the inmates rejoiced like their neighbours in the comforts of smoke." Though the soil was naturally fruitful, yet the poverty of the people was great. "They are," he adds, "remarkably gross and remarkably neglected; I know not if they are visited by any minister. The island, which was once the metropolis of learning and piety, has now no school for education nor temple for worship, only two inhabitants that can speak English, and not one that can write or read." The population was probably not less than four hundred souls.^[7] Sacheverell, who was there in 1688, mentions a class of "hereditary servants. They are," he adds, "miserably poor. They seem an innocent, simple people, ignorant and devout; and though they have no minister, they constantly assemble in the great church on Sundays, where they spend most part of the day in private devotions."^[8] According to Pennant they were "the most stupid and the most lazy of all the islanders." "They used," he says, "the Chapel of the Nunnery as a cow-shed; the floor was covered some feet thick with dung, for they were too lazy to remove this fine manure, the collection of a century, to enrich their grounds."^[9] Boswell, however, gives a much better report. "They are industrious," he says, "and make their own woollen and linen cloth; and they brew a good deal of beer, which we did not find in any of the other islands." In July, 1798, Dr. Garnett and his companion, Mr. Watts, the painter, passed a night in the public-house. The floor of their chamber was liquid mud; the rain fell on their beds. For fellow-lodgers they had several chickens, a tame lamb, a dog, some cats, and two or three pigs. Next morning they invited the schoolmaster to breakfast, and found that the inn could boast of only two tea-cups and one spoon, and that of wood.^[10] Sir Walter Scott, who visited Iona in 1810 mentions "the squalid and dejected poverty of the inhabitants—the most wretched people he had anywhere seen."^[11] With such houses and such people Sir Allan Macleane certainly did wisely in choosing a barn for the lodgings of himself and his two friends. "Some good hay," writes Boswell, "was strewed at one end of it, to form a bed for us, upon which we lay with our clothes on; and we were furnished with blankets from the village. Each of us had a portmanteau for a pillow. When I awaked in the morning, and looked round me, I could not help smiling at the idea of the chief of the Macleanes, the great English Moralist, and myself, lying thus extended in such a situation."

The smile might have passed into a sigh, had Boswell contrasted the splendours of Iona's past with the meanness of her present lot. They had come to

"Where, beneath the showery west,
The mighty kings of three fair realms are laid."

Like the pilgrim

"From the Blue Mountains, or Ontario's Lake,"

amidst the ruins of fallen greatness and fallen learning they had sought

"Some peasant's homely shed,
Who toils unconscious of the mighty dead."

Whether with Johnson among "those illustrious ruins," we look upon Iona as the instructress of the west, or with Gibbon as the island whence was "diffused over the northern regions a doubtful ray of science and superstition," in either case it is surely a spot where we are forced to pause, and with pensive mind "revolve the sad vicissitude of things." I must not, however, be unjust to Boswell. It was his enthusiasm which had led them hither. It was he who had longed to survey Iona. "I," said Johnson, "though less eager did not oppose him." To him then we owe that splendid passage in which the great Englishman celebrates the power exerted over the mind by the sight of places where noble deeds were done, and noble lives were lived.

"We were now treading that illustrious Island, which was once the luminary of the Caledonian regions, whence savage clans and roving barbarians derived the benefits of knowledge, and the blessings of religion. To abstract the mind from all local emotion would be impossible, if it were endeavoured, and would be foolish if it were possible. Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses, whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future, predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings. Far from me, and from my friends, be such frigid philosophy as may conduct us indifferent and unmoved over any ground which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue. That man is little to be envied, whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona!"

 

Boswell surely not without good reason maintains that "had their tour produced nothing else but this sublime passage the world must have acknowledged that it was not made in vain."

RUINS IN IONA.

 

1. Croker's Boswell, p. 384.
2. Pope. Eloisa to Abelard, l. 135.
3. Life of Sir James Mackintosh, ii. 257.
4. Humphry Clinker, iii. 27.
5. J. L. Buchanan, Travels in the Western Highlands from 1782 to 1790, p. 5.
6. History of Edinburgh, p. 445.
7. See Johnson's Works, ix. 149. Pennant, however, gives the number of inhabitants as only one hundred and fifty. Pennant's Tour, ed. 1774, p. 243.
8. An Account of the Isle of Man, p. 136.
9. Pennant's Tour, ed. 1774, pp. 243, 246.
10. T. Garnett's Observations, &c., i. 244, 265.
11. Lockhart's Life of Scott, iii. 285; iv. 324.

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