Footsteps of Dr. Johnson (Scotland)/Chapter 24
Dundonald Castle, Auchans (October 30—November 2).
On Saturday, October 30, our travellers set out on their way to Boswell's home at Auchinleck, in Ayrshire. Part of the way must have been over a wild country, for a few years earlier, in his "Instructions" for his friend Temple on his tour to Auchinleck, he writes: "Set out [from Glasgow] for Kingswell, to which you have a good road; arrived there, get a guide to put you through the muir to Loudoun."[1] He and Johnson did not go the whole distance in one day, though they had but thirty-four miles to travel. They broke their journey at the house of Mr. Campbell, of Treesbank, who had married Mrs. Boswell's sister. Here they rested till Tuesday. At a few miles distance Robert Burns, a lad of thirteen, "a dexterous ploughman for his age," was spending his boyhood "in unceasing moil" and hardship, not having as yet "committed the sin of rhyme." Boswell, I believe, much as he admired Allan Ramsay's poem in the Scottish dialect, The Gentle
DUNDONALD CASTLE.
Shepherd, never makes mention of Burns, and Burns only once mentions him. In the Author's Earnest Cry and Prayer, written before the year 1786, he says:
Dundonald Castle, in which Robert II. lived and died, our travellers visited on Monday morning. "It has long been unroofed," writes Boswell, "and though of considerable size we could not by any power of imagination, figure it as having been a suitable habitation for majesty. Dr. Johnson, to irritate my old Scottish enthusiasm, was very jocular on the homely accommodation of "King Bob," and roared and laughed till the ruins echoed."
The castle belongs to two periods. The original keep was eighty-one feet long, forty broad, and seventy high. It was afterwards lengthened at the southern end by seventeen feet. "The great hall has been a very noble apartment."[4] Boswell justly praises the view. "It stands," he says, "on a beautiful rising ground, which is seen at a great distance on several quarters, and from whence there is an extensive prospect of the rich district of Cuninghame, the western sea, the isle of Arran, and a part of the northern coast of Ireland." Camden quaintly says that "the name Cunninghams, if one interpret it, is as much as the King's Habitation, by which a man may guess how commodious and pleasant it is."[5] As I sat on the Castle hill, and looked over the fine country to the north-west, I could have wished that the tall chimneys of Irvine, pouring forth clouds of smoke, had been out of sight. In the plain, at the distance of about a mile, a thin line of steam showed where a heavy train was creeping along the railway. Just beneath us the low spire of the church rose among the trees, while in the gardens of the cottages that clustered around it there was an abundance of fruit trees and of vegetables which would have delighted Johnson's heart, such as "King Bob" never saw or even dreamt of. Beyond the village were undulating fields of well-cultivated land. To the west, almost within bow-shot, stands a steep rocky hill—a counterpart of that on which the castle is placed—all covered with wood. High over the old ruins the swifts were flying and screaming. The sole tenants of the great hall were some black cattle whom my entrance disturbed. Where kings once kept their court, and frowned and were flattered,
"There but houseless cattle go
To shield them from the storm."
High up on the wall of the keep there are two stone shields, on which still can be traced the royal and the Stewart arms. Little did they who carved them think that the day was to come when they would have sunk into the ornaments of a cow-house.
From Dundonald our travellers rode on a short distance to Auchans, the house of the Dowager Countess of Eglintoune. Johnson, in a letter to Mrs. Thrale, describes her as "a lady who for many years gave the laws of elegance to Scotland. She is in full vigour of mind, and not much impaired in form. She is only eighty-three. She was remarking that her marriage was in the year eight; and I told her my birth was in nine. 'Then,' says she, 'I am just old enough to be your mother, and I will take you for my son.' She called Boswell the boy. 'Yes, Madam,' said I, 'we will send him to school.' 'He is already,' said she, 'in a good
OLD AUCHANS.
school;' and expressed her hope of his improvement. At last night came, and I was sorry to leave her." "She had been," writes Boswell, "the admiration of the gay circles of life, and the patroness of poets." To her Allan Ramsay had dedicated his Gentle Shepherd, and Hamilton of Bangour had addressed verses. With his reception Johnson was delighted, so congenial were their principles in church and state. "In her bed-rooms," says Dr. Robert Chambers, "was hung a portrait of her sovereign de jure, the ill-starred Charles Edward, so situated as to be the first object which met her sight on awaking in the morning."[6] She who had patronised poets and worshipped princes in her last years amused herself by taming rats. "She had a panel in the oak wainscot of her dining-room, which she tapped upon and opened at meal-times, when ten or twelve jolly rats came tripping forth and joined her at table." She died in 1780, at the age of ninety-one.[7]
Auchans—Old Auchans as it is now called—since the countess's death has been chiefly inhabited by caretakers. It was built in 1644, at a time when in the houses of the great comfort was more studied than means of defence. Nevertheless "we find some shot-holes near the entrance doorway."[8] It is finely placed among the trees, with views of Dundonald Castle on one side and of the sea in the distance on the other. The interior has been greatly altered by the division of rooms and blocking up of windows and passages. 
OLD AUCHANS. We were only shown a small part of it, and looked with sadness on the broken ceiling in what by tradition is known as the dining-room. It is a pity that so interesting and so fine a building should have suffered under the neglect of a whole century. It is so strongly built that it looks as if it could, at no excessive expense, be once more made habitable. Johnson had not been easily persuaded to visit it, but "he was so much pleased with his entertainment, that he owned," says Boswell, "that I had done well to force him out." No less pleased was the old countess, "who, when they were going away, embraced him, saying, 'My dear son, farewell.'" Neither of this visit nor of one which he had paid two days earlier to the Earl of Loudoun, who "jumped for joy" at the thought of seeing him, does he make any mention in his book. He was the last man to indulge "in that vain ostentatious importance," which he censured in many people, "of quoting the authority of dukes and lords." He merely says that, "on our way from Glasgow to Auchinleck we found several places remarkable enough in themselves, but already described by those who viewed them at more leisure, or with much more skill."
- ↑ Boswell's Letters to Temple, p. 98.
- ↑ To prate.
- ↑ Shirt-collars.
- ↑ Macgibbon and Ross's Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland, i. 167, 171.
- ↑ Description of Scotland, 2nd ed. p. 68.
- ↑ R. Chambers's Traditions of Edinburgh, ed. 1869, p. 217.
- ↑ R. Chambers's Traditions of Edinburgh, ed. 1869, p. 217.
- ↑ Macgibbon and Ross's Castellated Architectecture of Scotland, ii. 174.