FROM THE HIGHLANDS TO NEW YORK
Summer on the Borders of Caithness--A Two Months' Yachting
Cruise--The Orkneys and the Outer Hebrides--An Unexpected
Political Summons.
During the five years occupied in elaborating these philosophical works
I enjoyed two intervals of relaxation, which in the landscape of memory
detach themselves from other kindred experiences, and one of which--the
second--had a quite unexpected ending.
The first was indirectly connected with the Coronation of King Edward.
On a certain evening, while the event was impending, I found myself
sitting at dinner by a friend, Lady Amherst (of Montreal), who told me
that she and Lord Amherst were shortly going to a shooting lodge which
was close to the borders of Caithness, and which they rented from the
Duke of Sutherland. For some months past Lady Amherst had been unwell,
and her doctor had urged her to avoid the crowds of London, for which
reason she and her husband had determined to find quiet in the north. I
told her I thought she was a very enviable woman, all unusual crowds
being to myself detestable. "If you think that," she said, "why don't
you come with us? A few others will be there, so we shall not be quite
alone." I accepted the invitation with delight. I said good-by to London
on the earliest day possible. In a train which was almost empty I
traveled much at my ease from King's Cross Station to Brora. Not a
tourist was to be seen anywhere. Except for a few farmers, all the
Highland platforms were empty. I felt like a disembodied spirit when I
found myself at last in a land of short, transparent nights which hardly
divided one day from another. Uppat, Lord Amherst's lodge, was one of
the roomiest on the whole Sutherland property. Parts of it were old. It
had once been a small laird's castle. Round it were woods from which
came the noise of a salmon river. Among the woods were walled plots of
pasture, and beyond the woods were the loneliest of all lonely
mountains. In the kitchen was a French _chef_, and when on my arrival I
found Lady Amherst in the porch, her homespun toilet showed that France
produced artists other than French cooks. To elude the world without
eluding its ornaments--what more could be prayed for by a mind desiring
rest? Uppat, indeed, in June and July was like a land
Where all trouble seems
Dead winds, and spent waves riot
In doubtful dreams of dreams.
Lord Amherst, as a rule, spent most of the day fishing. Lady Amherst, I,
and two other visitors very often bicycled. On other occasions we all
made our way to purple fastnesses, and lunched where birches lifted
their gleaming stems. The only movements discoverable between earth and
sky were the sailing wings of eagles, and our own activities below, as
we applied mayonnaise sauce, yellower than any primrose, to a sea trout
or a lobster. We dined at nearly nine o'clock by a strange, white
daylight; and in the outer quiet there was very often discernible a
movement of stags' antlers above the wall of a near orchard. We read the
newspapers till very nearly midnight without lamps or candles. We
watched the blush of sunset, visible, like a dying bonfire, through a
gap in the Caithness mountains, and this had not faded completely till
it seemed as though someone had lighted beyond a neighboring ridge a
bonfire of saffron--the faint beginning of sunrise. No retreat could
have been a retreat more complete than this.
Another retreat in the north was vouchsafed to me some years later. I
was lunching with my friends, Mr. and Mrs. Saxton Noble, in London, and
they told me that, instead of taking, as had been their custom, a
country house for the autumn, they had taken a yacht of about five
hundred tons, and were going to spend their time in a leisurely cruise
round the western coasts of Scotland. I mentioned to them that I had
just been reading a very interesting description of Noltland, a curious
castle in the remotest island of the Orkneys. We talked of this, which
apparently was a very remarkable structure, containing the most
magnificent newel staircase in Scotland. Suddenly Mrs. Noble said, "Why
won't you join us?" My own plans for the autumn had been mapped out
already, and I did not at first take her suggestion seriously. I laughed
and said, "Yes, I'll come if you will go as far as Noltland." Both she
and her husband at once answered: "Yes. We promise to go to Noltland.
Let us take your coming as settled."
Accordingly, toward the end of July we left London by the night mail for
Greenock, where the yacht would be found waiting for us. Next morning,
in the freshness of a salt breeze, we were transferring ourselves from
Greenock pier to a trim-looking motor boat, which was rising and falling
on the swish of unquiet waters, while the yacht--a small streak of
whiteness--was pointed out to us lying half a mile away. Besides Mr. and
Mrs. Noble, our party consisted of their two children, Miss Helen
Marhall, and myself. I had with me a Swiss servant; Mrs. Noble had a
French maid, together with her London butler, transformed for the time
into a mariner by gilt buttons and a nautical serge suit, and the cook
was an accomplished _chef_ who had once been in the service of the
fastidious Madame de Falbe. We were all of us good sailors, so for our
prospective comfort everything augured well. Our first few days were
spent on the calm waters of Loch Fyne. We then went southward, and,
doubling the Mull of Cantyre, had some taste of the turbulence of the
open sea. We then turned north, and, protected by the outer islands,
followed the mainland placidly until we approached Cape Wrath.
A large part of our time was spent in a succession of lochs. On our way
to Oban, and in its harbor, we saw several large yachts; but, except for
occasional fishing smacks, after Oban the sea became more and more
deserted. Entering one loch after another in the summer evenings, and
seeing no human habitations but crofters' cottages, which, except for
their wreaths of smoke, were hardly distinguishable from the heather,
and hearing no sound at nightfall, when our own engines were still,
except the distant dipping of some solitary pair of oars, we felt as
though we had reached the beginnings of civilization, or the ends of it.
This was specially true of Loch Laxford--the last of such inland
shelters lying south of Cape Wrath--Cape Wrath, the lightning of whose
lanterns and the boom of whose great foghorns send out warnings to those
on "seas full of wonder and peril," which Swinburne's verse
commemorates.
Of the peril of these seas our captain had often spoken, and when,
leaving the stillness of Loch Laxford, we renewed our northward journey,
we soon perceived that his language was not exaggerated. From the mouth
of Loch Laxford to Cape Wrath the whole coast might have represented to
Dante the scowling ramparts of hell. Of anything in the nature of a
beach no trace was discernible. The huge cliffs, rising sheer from the
sea, leaned not inward, but outward, and ceaseless waves were breaking
in spouts of foam against them. The yacht began to roll and pitch, so
that though none of us were sick except Mrs. Noble's maid, we could very
few of us stand. We managed, however, to identify the lighthouse and
megaphone of Cape Wrath just peeping out of the cliffs, as though they
were themselves afraid to meet the full violence of a storm. The skill
of the cook, however, and the intrepidity of hunger enabled us to eat
our luncheon. We then lay down in our several cabins and slept, till
steps on deck and a number of voices woke us. We were soon rolling more
disagreeably than ever. But this added annoyance did not last for long.
Something or other happened. The motion of the vessel became easier, and
at last, peeping into my cabin, Saxton Noble announced that we were back
again in Loch Laxford. The megaphones of Cape Wrath had announced that a
fog was coming. The captain had fled before it, and we dined that night
at a table as stationary and steady as any in any hotel in Glasgow. Next
day the weather was clear. We rounded the terrible headland, and were
floating at ease that evening on the glassy surface of Loch Erribol. In
this half-sylvan seclusion we rested for several days. Thence some eight
hours of steaming brought us to the roadstead of Thurso. For several
days we lay there while the yacht rocked uneasily, and most of our time
was spent in expeditions on dry land. In some ways Thurso was curious.
On the one hand, the shops were excellent. They might have been those
of a country town near London. On the other hand, the older houses were,
as a protection against storms, roofed with ponderous slabs hardly
smaller than gravestones. At one end of the town was Thurso Castle, the
seat of Sir Tollemache Sinclair, its walls rising out of the water. At
the back of it was a small wood--the only wood in Caithness. I knew Sir
Tollemache Sinclair well, but unfortunately he was not at home. He was
what is called "a character." He had strong literary tastes, and firmly
believed that he understood the art of French versification better than
Victor Hugo. The last time I had seen him was at a hotel in Paris. He
was on that occasion in a mood of great complacency, having just been
spending an hour with Victor Hugo at luncheon. I asked him if, with
regard to French versification, Victor Hugo agreed with him. "No," he
replied, honestly, "I can't say that he did; but he asked me to lunch
again with him whenever I should be next in Paris."
As soon as the weather was inviting enough we turned our bows toward the
Orkneys, dimly visible on the horizon some forty miles away, and found
ourselves, on a windless evening, entering Scapa Flow. We little thought
that those then little visited waters would one day witness the making
of British and German history. Scapa Flow is a miniature Mediterranean,
with the mainland of the Orkneys on one side and the island of Hoy on
the other. At the northeastern end of it, some ten miles away, a high,
red building--a lonely tower--was visible. This was the tower of the
great cathedral of Kirkwall. Approaching the Orkneys from Thurso the
first things that struck us were certain great structures crowning the
mounded hills. These, we discovered afterward were so many great
farmsteadings, protected from the wind by cinctures of high walls, many
of the Orcadian holdings being at once rich and extensive, and
commanding very high rentals.
Kirkwall, in respect of its shops, surprised us even more than Thurso.
There were chemists, grocers, booksellers, whose windows would hardly
have been out of place at Brighton; but haunting suggestions of the old,
the remote, the wild, were tingling in the air everywhere. The huge
tentacles of the kraken might have lifted themselves beyond Kirkwall
harbor. The beautiful palace of the old Earls of Orkney would have been
still habitable if only some local body early in the nineteenth century
had not stolen its slates for the purpose of roofing some schoolhouse.
Tankerness House, entered by a fortified gate, and built round a small
court, can have hardly changed since the days of Brenda and Minna
Troyle. In the nave of the great cathedral, which took four centuries in
building, one would not have been surprised at meeting Magnus Troyle or
Norna. The nave is full of the records of old Orcadian notables. These
are not, however, for the most part, attached to the walls as tablets.
They are attached to the pillars by extended iron rods, from which they
hang like the swaying signs of inns. A country without railways and
without coal--how peaceful England might be if only it were not for
these!
But our peace in a physical sense was very abruptly broken when we
quitted Kirkwall en route for the Holy Grail of our pilgrimage, Noltland
Castle, which secludes itself on the far-off island of Westray, and,
leaving the quiet of Scapa Flow behind us, encountered once more the
tumults of the Pentland Firth. But these were nothing in comparison with
those that met us as soon as we had rounded the southwest corner of Hoy.
The hills of Hoy, so far as we had yet seen them, were of no very great
magnitude; but now, as we went northward, they showed themselves as a
line of tremendous precipices, which rose from the booming waves to an
altitude of twelve hundred feet. This monstrous wall ended where a
narrow and mysterious fiord separates Hoy from a low-hilled island north
of it. This island gave place to another, and at last, late in the day,
our captain told us that we were passing the outer shore of Westray.
Consulting our maps, and pointing to the mouth of some new fiord, we
asked him if it would not afford us a short cut to our destination. He
told us that it was full of hidden rocks and sandbanks, and called our
attention to some enigmatic object which rose in midchannel like a
deer's horns from the sea. "There," he said, "are the masts of an
Icelandic steamer which attempted two years ago to make that passage,
and was lost. To reach Westray in safety we must double its farthest
promontory." An hour or two later this feat was accomplished. We were
once more in smooth water, and found ourselves quietly floating toward
something like a dwarf pier and one or two small white houses. By now it
was time for dinner, and having dined in a saloon that was hung with
jade-green silk, we leaned over the bulwarks and contemplated the remote
scene before us. We could just discern by the pier some small tramp
steamer reposing. In the little white houses one or two lights twinkled,
and presently, not far off, we distinguished a mouse-colored something,
the upper outlines of which resolved themselves into high gables. Like
Childe Roland when he came to the dark tower, we realized that these
were the gables of Noltland Castle. Next morning we explored this
building. The main block consisted of a tower unusually large, in the
middle of which was a great red-sandstone staircase winding round a
newel which culminated in a heraldic monster. This staircase led to a
great hall, roofless, but otherwise perfect. Above it had once been
bedrooms. On the ground floor were vaulted offices, including a hearth
as large as the kitchen of a well-built cottage. Attached to the tower
was a court. Ruined chambers surrounded it, in which guests, their
retinues, and the servants of the house once slept. Island chieftains
once met and reveled here. Here also for a time the most beautiful woman
in Europe--Mary Stuart, as a captive--looked out at the sea.
Of the little houses by the pier the largest was a combination of a
public house and a store, where we bought a supply of soda water. The
storekeeper was a man of slightly sinister aspect. He might have been a
character in one of Stevenson's novels. His aspect suggested distant and
enigmatic, and perhaps criminal, adventure. He had evidently some
education, and spoke of the natives with a sort of detached
condescension. I asked him if they were Catholics. He shrugged his
shoulders and said: "Some are. In this little island there are four
hundred inhabitants, and no fewer than five religions." With the
exception of this man's store, the only shop in Westray was locomotive.
We met it on a lonely road. It was a kind of glazed cart, the
transparent sides of which showed visions of the goods within.
Before leaving Westray we paid a visit to a much smaller island
opposite, Papa Westray, with an area of two thousand acres. It was
occupied by two farmers, whose average rent was more than ten shillings
an acre. On one of these farmers, thus separated from their kind, we
called. His farmstead was like a fortified town. His house was larger
than many a substantial manse. The sideboard in his spacious dining room
was occupied by two expensive Bibles and a finely cut decanter of
whisky, but his only neighbors from one year's end to another were
apparently his rival, by whom the rest of the island was tenanted, and a
female doctor lately imported from Edinburgh, whose business was more
closely related to the births of the population than to their maladies.
We had hoped, on leaving the Orkneys, to have gone as far north as the
Shetlands, but while we were lying off Westray the weather turned wet
and chilly, so we settled on going south again, visiting on our way the
islands of the outer Hebrides. The first stage of our journey was
rougher and more disagreeable than anything we had yet experienced. Once
again we were foiled in our efforts to get round Cape Wrath; and, having
spent an afternoon lying down in our cabins, we woke up to find
ourselves back again in the quiet of Scapa Flow. Next day we made a
successful crossing over sixty miles of sea to Tarbet, a little town
crouching on the neck of land which connects the Lewes with Harris. From
every cottage door there issued a sound of hand looms. The town or
village of Tarbet is in itself neat enough. One of its features is an
inn which would, with its trim garden, do honor to the banks of the
Thames; but a five minutes' stroll into the country brought us face to
face with a world of colossal desolations, compared with which the
scenery of Scapa Flow is suburban. The little houses of Westray were, at
all events, unmistakably houses. The crofters' huts, almost within a
stone's throw of Tarbet, many of them oval in shape, are like
exhalations of rounded stones and heather. We felt, as we gravely looked
at them, that we were back again in the Stone Age. In the island of
North Ouist we were visited by the same illusion. The landing stage was,
indeed, a scene of crowded life; but the life was the life of sea birds,
which were hardly disturbed by our approach. Leaving North Ouist, we
passed the mounded shores of Benbecula, the island where Prince Charlie
once lived as a fugitive, and where the islanders, all of them Catholics
(as they still are to-day), sang songs in his honor which, without
betraying his name, called him "the fair-haired herdsman." Far off on an
eminence we could just distinguish the glimmerings of a Catholic church,
in which, with strange ceremonies, St. Michael is still worshiped. South
Ouist, dominated by the great mountain of Hecla, likewise holds a
population whose Catholicism has never been broken. Facing the landing
stage is an inn obtrusively modern in aspect, and a little colony of
slate-roofed villas to match; but here, as at Tarbet, a few steps
brought us into realms of mystery. Having strayed along an inland road
which wavered among heaths and peat hags and gray boulders, we saw at a
distance some building of hewn sandstone, and presently there emerged
from its interior a solitary human being. For a moment he scrutinized
our approach, and then, like a timid animal, before we could make him
out, he was gone. When we reached the building we found that it was a
little Catholic schoolhouse, and that the door was hermetically closed.
I tried the effect of a few very gentle knocks, and these proved so
ingratiating that the inmate at last showed himself. He was the
schoolmaster--a youngish man, perhaps rather more than thirty. Finding
us not formidable, he had no objection to talking, though he still was
oddly shy. He told us what he could, in answer to some questions which
we put to him. I cannot remember what he said, but I remember his eyes
and the gentle modulations of his voice. They were those of a man living
in a world of dreams, for whom the outer world was as remote, and the
inner world as pure, as the silver of the shining clouds that were
streaking the peaks of Hecla. His face was my last memento of the
mystery of the Outer Isles.
The rest of our journeyings lay among scenes better known to tourists.
We visited Skye and Rum, the latter of which islands was once occupied
as a deer forest by the present Lord Salisbury's grandfather. Rum is
infested by mosquitoes, which almost stung us to death. Lord Salisbury
told a friend that he protected himself from their assaults by
varnishing his person completely with castor oil. The friend asked him
if this was not very expensive. "Ah," he replied, "but I never use the
best." The present owner has built there a great, inappropriate castle.
We wondered whether its walls were proof against these winged enemies.
Pursuing our southward course, we watched the Paps of Jura as they rose
into the sky like sugar loaves. Plunging through drifts of spray we
doubled the Mall of Cantyre, and got into waters familiar to half the
population of Glasgow. We lay for a night off Arran. The following day
we had returned to our original starting point. We were hardly more than
a cable's length from Greenock, and once again we heard the whistling of
locomotive engines. At Greenock we separated.
The Nobles were bound for England. I was myself going north to stay once
more with Sir John and Lady Guendolen Ramsden. By the West Highland
railway I reached the diminutive station of Tulloch, and a drive of
twenty miles brought me to the woods, the waters, and the granite
turrets of Ardverikie. After two months' acquaintance with the narrow
quarters of a yacht there was something odd and agreeable in spacious
halls and staircases. Especially agreeable was my bedroom, equipped with
a great, hospitable writing table, on which a pile of letters and postal
packets was awaiting me. Of these I opened a few which alone promised to
be interesting, allowing the others to keep for a more convenient
season. By the following morning, which I spent with Lady Guendolen,
sketching, I had, indeed, almost forgotten them, and not till the
evening did I give them any attention. One of them I had recognized at
once as the proofs of an article which I had just finished, before I
joined the yacht, on "The Intellectual Position of the Labor Party in
Parliament." The number of this party had been doubled at the last
election, and my mind, in consequence, had again begun to busy itself
with the question of mere manual labor as a factor in life and politics.
I had, indeed, on the yacht been making a rough sketch of a second
article on this subject, which would develop the argument of the first.
That night I glanced at the proofs before going to bed, reflecting on
the best methods by which the political intelligence of the masses could
be roused, reached, and guided. The unopened letters, none of which
looked inviting, I put by my bedside, to be examined when I woke next
morning. All except one were circulars. One, bearing a business monogram
and evidently directed by a clerk, differed from the rest in having a
foreign stamp on it. I indolently tore this open, and discovered that it
was an invitation from a great political body in New York to visit the
United States next winter and deliver a series of addresses on the
fundamental fallacies of Socialism.
It was at Ardverikie, many years before, that I had first embarked on a
serious study of statistics as essential to any clear comprehension of
social principles and problems. By an odd coincidence, it was at
Ardverikie likewise that, after years of laborious thought as to
political questions which must soon, as I then foresaw, become for
politicians the most vital questions of all, I received an invitation to
address, with regard to these very questions, a public far wider than
that of all Great Britain put together.