Footsteps of Dr. Johnson (Scotland)/Chapter 22
Oban and Inverary (October 22-26).
On the morning of Friday, October 22, our travellers set out for the ferry by which they were to cross to Oban a distance of about twelve miles. According to Dr. Garnett, travellers were conveyed first to Kerrera, an island lying off the mainland. Crossing this on foot or horseback they found awaiting them another boat to take them to Oban. At Auchnacraig in Mull there was an inn about half a mile from the ferry. Here he and his companion could procure, he says, neither oats for their horses nor straw for their litter. They wanted to give them a mess of oatmeal and water, but the woman, who acted as hostler, at first refused, "asking whether it was proper to give the food of Christians to horses." After a long dispute she yielded. "In these islands," he adds, "horses seldom taste oats."[1] "The bottom of the ferry-boat," says Boswell, "was strewed with branches of trees or bushes upon which we sat. We had a good day and a fine passage, and in the evening landed at Oban, where we found a tolerable inn." This place, which I have seen recommended to cockney tourists in huge advertisements as The Charing Cross of the North, was then a little hamlet. In 1786 Knox found "about twenty families collected together with a view to the fisheries."[2] It boasted of a custom-house and a
KERRERA ISLAND.
post-office. In the islands no customs were paid, for there was no officer to demand them.[3] Faujas Saint-Fond gives a curious account of his stay in the inn, a few years after Johnson's visit. He would have got on very well, for the food though simple was good, and his bed though hard was clean, had it not been for a performer on the bag-pipes—"un maudit joueur de cornemuse" who played "une musique d'un genre nouveau, mais bien terrible pour mon oreille." The day of their arrival this man had strutted up and down before the inn with haughty and warlike looks, and had stunned them with his airs. "Nous crûmes d'abord que ce personnage était une espèce d'insensé qui gagnait sa vie à ce métier." They were informed that he was an accomplished musician, "de l'école highlandoise," and that in this display of his talents he was shewing the joy which he felt on seeing strangers in a place where they came so rarely. Touched by his friendly sentiments Saint-Fond had not only applauded him, but had even pressed on him "quelques shelings," which he accepted, it almost seemed, merely out of complaisance. Taking pity on the stranger's solitude he came and played under his bed-room window in the silence of the night. It was all in vain that Saint-Fond rose, went out of doors, took him by the hand and led him away. "Il revint au même moment, me donnant à entendre qu'il n'était point fatigué, et qu'il jouerait toute la nuit pour me plaire, et il tint parole."[4]
DUNOLLY CASTLE, OBAN.
The bagpiper was surely the direct ancestor of those bands of musicians who at Oban distress the peaceful tourist. But there are things worse even than musicians. How melancholy is the change which has come over the whole scene in the last quarter of a century! A beautiful bay ruined by man! That it should become thronged was inevitable; it need not have been made vulgar. It was on no scene of overgrown hotels that Johnson looked, as, with the tear starting in his eye, he repeated those fine lines in which Goldsmith describes the character of the British nation:
"Stern o'er each bosom reason holds her state,
With daring aims irregularly great,
Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,
I see the lords of humankind pass by,
Intent on high designs, a thoughtful band,
By forms unfashion'd, fresh from Nature's hand;
Fierce in their native hardiness of soul,
True to imagin'd right, above control,
While e'en the peasant boasts these rights to scan,
And learns to venerate himself as man."
he recited these lines. They had a long ride before them through heavy rain to Inverary. Loch Awe they crossed by the ferry at Portsonachan—"a pretty wide lake," as Boswell describes it, not knowing its name. Towards evening they came to a good road made by the soldiers, the first which they had seen since they left Fort Augustus more than seven weeks before. Unwearied by his long journey, Johnson that same night wrote a letter to Mrs. Thrale in which he thus describes both what he saw and what he felt.
"About ten miles of this day's journey were uncommonly amusing. We travelled with very little light in a storm of wind and rain; we passed about fifty-five streams that crossed our way, and fell into a river that, for a very great part of our road foamed and roared beside us. All the rougher powers of nature, except thunder, were in motion, but there was no danger. I should have been sorry to have missed any of the inconveniences, to have had more light or less rain, for their co-operation crowded the scene and filled the mind."
When an old man describes such a journey as "uncommonly amusing" it is clear that he uses the term in a sense which it does not bear at present. In his Dictionary he defines amuse, "to entertain with tranquillity; to fill with thoughts that engage the mind without distracting it." The thoughts which this stormy evening in late autumn engaged his mind amidst the wilds of Argyleshire he put forth in a fine passage when, in the quietness of his study, he came to write the account of his journey.
"The night came on while we had yet a great part of the way to go, though not so dark but that we could discern the cataracts which poured down the hills on one side, and fell into one general channel, that ran with great violence on the other. The wind was loud, the rain was heavy, and the whistling of the blast, the fall of the shower, the rush of the cataracts, and the roar of the torrent, made a nobler chorus of the rough musick of nature than it had ever been my chance to hear before."
The man who wrote this noble passage had not surely that insensibility to nature which is so often laid to his charge. He was sixty-four years old; mounted on a pony scarcely strong enough to bear his weight, he had had a long and hard day's ride through wind and rain; he had dined in his wet clothes in a hut warmed by a smoky turf fire, and yet at the end of the day he could say with the enthusiasm of a young poet that neither darkness nor storm would he willingly have had lessened. He was supported, no doubt, in his recollections by the comforts of the inn at Inverary which was, he said, "not only commodious, but magnificent." Perhaps he was inspired also by the gill of whisky which he called for—"the first fermented liquor," says Boswell, "that he tasted during his travels." He forgets, however, the brandy which he was prevailed on to drink at Dunvegan when he was suffering from cold. "Come, (said Johnson) let me know what it is that makes a Scotchman happy." He thought it preferable to any English malt brandy. "What was the process," he writes, "I had no opportunity of enquiring, nor do I wish to improve the art of making poison pleasant." To the excellence of the inn at Inverary, Pennant also bears testimony. Far otherwise does Burns speak of it, in his indignation
INVERARY CASTLE.
at the incivility of the landlord, whose whole attention was occupied by the visitors of the Duke of Argyle.
"Whoe'er he be that sojourns here,
I pity much his case,
Unless he comes to wait upon
The Lord their God his Grace.
"There's naething here but Highland pride,
And Highland scab and hunger;
If Providence has sent me here,
'Twas surely in an anger."
At Inverary our travellers rested from Saturday evening till Tuesday morning. This pleasant little town had a very different, look from that which it now bears. "This place," wrote Pennant, "will in time be very magnificent; but at present the space between the front of the castle and the water is disgraced with the old town, composed of the most wretched hovels that can be imagined."[5] These have long been cleared away, so that there is now an unbroken view over a finely wooded lawn of the loch and the hills beyond. It was in the beginning of September, 1769, that he visited the place. "Every evening," he says, "some hundreds of boats cover the surface of Loch Fyne. 
ELIZABETH GUNNING. On the week-days the cheerful noise of the bag-pipe and dance echoes from on board; on the Sabbath each boat approaches the land, and psalmody and devotion divide the day." Our travellers were perhaps too late in the year to witness this curious scene; at all events they make no mention of it. Had they heard the psalm-singing on the Sunday they would not have left it unnoticed. The forenoon of that day they "passed calmly and placidly." Of all the Sundays which I passed in Scotland, nowhere did I find such an unbroken stillness as here. It was far quieter than the towns, for the people were as still as mice, and it was quieter than the country, for there was an absence of country noises. We were alone in our hotel. It was the last day of June, but there were scarcely any other strangers in the place to enjoy the beautiful scenery and the long summer days.
Boswell hesitated, or affected to hesitate, about calling on the Duke of Argyle. "I had reason to think," he writes, "that the duchess disliked me on account of my zeal in the Douglas cause; but the duke had always been pleased to treat me with great civility." The duchess was that famous beauty, Elizabeth Gunning, the wife of two dukes and the mother of four. Her sister had married the Earl of Coventry. "The two beautiful sisters," says Horace Walpole, "were going on the stage, when they are at once exalted almost as high as they could be, were countessed and double-duchessed."[6] The duchess, by her first husband, the Duke of Hamilton, was the mother of the unsuccessful competitor for the Douglas estates, and was therefore "prejudiced against Boswell, 
JOHNSON'S HOST. who had shown all the bustling importance of his character in the Douglas cause."[7] Johnson, on hearing the state of the case, "was clear that Boswell ought to pay his respects at the castle. I mentioned," continues Boswell, "that I was afraid my company might be disagreeable to the duchess. He treated the objection with a manly disdain, 'That, Sir, he must settle with his wife.' He insisted that I should not go to the castle this day before dinner, as it would look like seeking an invitation. 'But,' said I, 'if the duke invites us to dine with him to-morrow, shall we accept?' 'Yes, Sir,' I think he said, 'to be sure.' But he added, 'He won't ask us.'" By the duke, who was sitting over his wine, Boswell was most politely received; but when he was taken into the drawing-room and introduced, neither the duchess nor the ladies with her took the least notice of him. The following day he and Johnson were shown through the castle. "It is a stately place," said Johnson. "What I admire here is the total defiance of expense." In a low one-horse chair our two travellers were driven through "the duke's spacious park and rising forests." "I had," writes Boswell, "a particular pride in showing Dr. Johnson a great number of fine old trees, to compensate for the nakedness which had made such an impression on him on the eastern coast of Scotland." Pennant noticed pines nine feet, and beeches from nine to twelve feet in girth, planted, it was said, by the Earl of Argyle who was beheaded in 1685. They have grown to a noble size, and in one part form a long avenue, which would grace that English county which takes its name from its beech woods. Even in the Black Forest I do not
THE AVENUE OF BEECHES.
know that I have seen larger pines. The planting still goes on. A fine young Spanish chestnut boasts in the inscription which it bears that in the year 1858 it was planted by Lord Tennyson. "Would," I exclaimed as I read the words, "that twin chestnuts of stately growth in like manner commemorated the visit of Johnson and Boswell." But Johnson's trees are scattered broadcast over Scotland. Si monumentum quæris, circumspice.
The fine collection of arms of which he took much notice still adorns the hall. Of the pictures no mention is made by either of the travellers, though in more than one they might have recognized the work of their friend Sir Joshua. Here is his full-length portrait of the beautiful duchess, "about whom the world had gone mad" one-and-twenty years before. When she was presented at Court, "the crowd was so great," writes Horace Walpole, "that even the noble mob in the drawing-room clambered upon chairs and tables to look at her." As she passed down to Scotland, "seven hundred people," it was reported, "sat up all night in and about an inn in Yorkshire to see her get into her post-chaise next morning."[8] Here, too, is a small but lovely picture of her sister, the Countess of Coventry. On her going down to her husband's
THE HALL, INVERARY CASTLE.
country seat near Worcester, "a shoemaker in that town got two guineas and a half by showing a shoe that he was making for her at a penny a-piece."[9] In striking contrast with the two sisters are many of the portraits which hang on the walls. It is a strange company which is brought together: Mary, Queen of Scots, and her half-sister, a Countess of Argyle; Oliver Cromwell; the Marquis of Argyle, and just below him Charles II., who sent him to the scaffold; the earl, his son, who was beheaded by James II.; and John, the great duke, who broke the neck of the rebellion in 1715, and rendered desperate the cause of James II.'s son.
The room in which our travellers dined is much in the state in which they saw it; the walls panelled with the same festoons, and the chairs adorned with the same gilding and the same tapestry. But it is turned to other uses. No "splendid dinner" is served up in it such as Johnson enjoyed and praised; no "luxuries" such as
THE OLD DINING ROOM.
he defended. No Lady Betty Hamilton can quietly take her chair after dinner, and lean upon the back of it, as she listens eagerly to the great talker, who is unaware that she is just behind him. No Boswell can with a steady countenance have the satisfaction for once to look a duchess in the face, as with a respectful air he drinks to her good health. The tables are covered with books and magazines, and pamphlets, and correspondence. It is the duke's business-room where he sees his chamberlain,[10] and where his librarian receives and sorts the new publications which are ever coming in, before he transfers them to the shelves of the library.
The noble drawing-room remains unchanged—the gilded ceiling, the old French tapestry covering the walls, the gilt tapestry chairs, the oaken floor, up and clown which the duke and Boswell walked conversing, while her grace made Dr. Johnson come and sit by her. All is the same, except that time has dealt kindly by the tapestry and the gilding, and refined them in their fading.
Faujas Saint-Fond, who spent three days in the castle a few years later, is full of praise of everything which he saw. The duke and his family, he says, spoke French with a purity not unworthy of the highest society in Paris. 
TAPESTRY BEDROOM. The cookery, with the exception of a few dishes, was French, and was excellent. There was an abundance of hot-house fruits. There were silver forks instead of "ces petits tridens d'acier bien aigus, en forme de dard, fixés sur un manche, dont on se sert ordinairement en Angleterre, mêmedans les maisons où l'on donne de fort bons dîners."[11] Still more did he rejoice at seeing napkins on the table, a rare sight in England. The hours of meals were, breakfast at ten o'clock, dinner at half-past four, and supper at ten. At dinner, after the ladies had withdrawn, "la cérémonie des toasts" lasted at least three-quarters of an hour![12]
At Inverary Johnson met not only the descendants of a long line of famous statesmen, but also the ancestor of a great historian. Lord Macaulay's grandfather was at this time Minister of Inverary. He passed the evening with our travellers at their inn after they had returned from dining at the Castle, and got somewhat roughly handled in talk.
"When Dr. Johnson spoke of people whose principles were good, but whose practice was faulty, Mr. Macaulay said, he had no notion of people being in earnest in their good professions, whose practice was not suitable to them. The doctor grew warm, and said, 'Sir, are you so grossly ignorant of human nature, as not to know that a man may be very sincere in good principles, without having good practice?'"
On this Sir George Trevelyan remarks in his life of his uncle:—"When we think what well-known ground this was to Lord Macaulay it is impossible to suppress a wish that the great talker had been at hand to avenge his grandfather and grand-uncle."[13] "A hundred to one on Sam Johnson," say we. It is a pity that it was not at the Manse that they spent that Sunday evening; for there the little child who was one day to make the name of Zachary Macaulay famous as the liberator of the slaves would have gazed with eager open eyes on the great Englishman, who had startled the grave men at Oxford by giving as his toast:—"Here's to the next insurrection of the negroes in the West-Indies."
- ↑ T. Garnett's Observations, &c., i. 145.
- ↑ Knox's Tour, p. 44.
- ↑ Johnson's Works, ix. 52.
- ↑ Voyage en Angleterre, &c., i. 369-373.
- ↑ Tour in Scotland, ed. 1774, i. 218.
- ↑ Walpole's Letters, ix. 358.
- ↑ Boswell's Johnson, v. 353, n. 1.
- ↑ Horace Walpole's Letters, ii. 281, 285.
- ↑ Ib. p. 293.
- ↑ "I went to renew my lease, but my Lord's Chamberlain was not at home.—Steward. The person who receives the rents and revenues of some corporations is still called chamberlain; as the chamberlain of London."—Beattie's Scotticisms, p. 24.
- ↑ Voyage en Angleterre, &c., i. 290.
- ↑ He gives the following curious account of an accommodation which we should scarcely have expected to find in the dining-room of Inverary: "Si, pendant les libations, le champagne mousseux fait ressentir son influence appéritive, le cas est prévu, et sans quitter la compagnie, on trouve dans de jolies encoignures, placés dans les angles de la salle, tout ce qui est nécessaire pour satisfaire à ce petit besoin." Voyage en Angleterre, &c., i. 294.
- ↑ Life of Lord Macaulay, ed. 1877, i. 7.