Starting from Slains Castle on the morning of August 25, Boswell and
Johnson drove on to Banff, where they spent the night in an indifferent
inn. In this little town a dreadful sight had been witnessed when the
Duke of Cumberland’s army arrived on an early day in April, 1746. The
savage way in which the narrative is written, testifies to the ferocity
of many of the followers of “the butcher duke.”
“At Banff” (writes Ray) “two rebel spies were taken; the one
was knotching on a stick the number of our forces, for which he
was hanged on a tree in the town; and the other a little out of
town, and for want of a tree was hanged on what they call the
ridging-tree of a house that projected out from the end, and on
his breast was fixed in writing, _A Rebel Spy_, which, with
the addition of _good entertainment_, might have been a very
famous sign.”[546]
From Banff our travellers drove on to Elgin, passing through Lord
Findlater’s domain. It is strange that neither of them mentions the
passage of the Spey, which ofttimes was a matter of great difficulty
and even danger. Wesley describes it as “the most rapid river, next the
Rhine, he had ever seen.”[547] It was no doubt very low, owing to “that
long continuance of dry weather which,” as Johnson complained a few
days later, “divested the Fall of Foyers of its dignity and terror.” At
Elgin they dined, and dined badly. “It was,” he said, “the first time
he had seen a dinner in Scotland that he could not eat.” [Sidenote:
THE RED LION AT ELGIN.] He might have reasonably expected something
better, for in the account of Scotch inns given in the _Gentleman’s
Magazine_ for 1771 (p. 544), the Red Lion at Elgin, kept by Leslie,
is described as good. It is added that “he is the only landlord in
Scotland who wears ruffles.” As this was the inn in which the civic
feasts were always held, the honour not only of the landlord, but also
of the town was wounded by the publication of Johnson’s narrative. I
am glad to be able to inform the world that a satisfactory explanation
has been given, and that Elgin and the Red Lion were not guilty of
the inhospitality with which they have so long been reproached, and
so unjustly. It seems that for some years before Johnson’s visit a
commercial traveller, Thomas Paufer by name, used in his rounds to come
to this inn.
“He cared little about eating, but liked the more exhilarating
system of drinking. His means were limited, and he was in the
habit of ordering only a very slender dinner, that he might
spend the more in the pleasures of the bottle. This traveller
bore a very striking resemblance to Dr. Johnson. When the
doctor arrived at the inn, the waiter, by a hasty glance,
mistook him for Paufer, and such a dinner was prepared as
Paufer was wont to receive. The doctor suffered by the mistake,
for he did not ask for that which was to follow. Thus the good
name of Elgin suffered, through the mistaking of the person
of the ponderous lexicographer. This fact is well known, and
is authenticated by some of the oldest and most respectable
citizens of the town.”[548]
[Illustration: FINDLATER
SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE & RIVINGTON, LTD, PUBLISHERS, LONDON.
IMP. & HÉLIOG. LEMERCIER & C^{IE.} PARIS.]
[Sidenote: AN ELGIN FUNERAL BILL.]
Mr. Paufer’s means must have been indeed limited, for unless prices
had greatly risen in the previous thirty years, a good dinner and wine
could have been provided at a most moderate charge, to judge by the
following entries in an Elgin “funeral bill,” dated Sept 26, 1742:—
“One dozen strong old claret (bottles being returned) 14_s._ 0_d._
4 lb. 12 oz. of sugar 3_s._ 4_d._
five dozen eggs 5_d._
six hens 2_s._ 0_d._”[549]
One pound of sugar, it will be noticed, cost as much as two hens, and a
little more than eight dozen eggs. With sugar at such a price it must
have given a shock to a careful Scotch housewife to see well-sweetened
lemonade flung out of the window merely because a waiter had used his
dirty fingers to drop in the lumps.
[Illustration: ELGIN.]
To Johnson Elgin seemed “a place of little trade and thinly inhabited.”
Yet Defoe, writing only fifty years earlier, had said: “As the country
is rich and pleasant, so here are a great many rich inhabitants, and
in the town of Elgin in particular, for the gentlemen, as if this was
the Edinburgh or the Court for this part of the island, leave their
Highland habitations in the winter, and come and live here for the
diversion of the place and plenty of provisions.”[550]
[Sidenote: THE PIAZZAS IN ELGIN.]
Much of its ancient prosperity has returned to it. If it cannot boast
of being a court for the north, it is at all events a pleasant little
market-town that shows no sign of decay. The covered ways which in many
places ran on each side of the street have disappeared. “Probably,”
writes Boswell, “it had piazzas all along the town, as I have seen at
Bologna. I approved much of such structures in a town, on account of
their conveniency in wet weather. Dr. Johnson disapproved of them,
‘because,’ said he, ‘it makes the under story of a house very dark,
which greatly overbalances the conveniency, when it is considered how
small a part of the year it rains; how few are usually in the street at
such times; that many who are might as well be at home; and the little
that people suffer, supposing them to be as much wet as they commonly
are in walking a street.’” “They were a grand place for the boys to
play at marbles,” said an old man to me, who well remembered the past
glories of Elgin and the delights of his youth. Even at the time of
our travellers’ visit, they were frequently broken by houses built in
the modern fashion. In many cases they have not been destroyed, but
converted into small shops. “There are,” writes a local antiquary,
“some fine old piazzas in the High Street which have been whitewashed
over and hidden.” He suggests that some of these might be restored to
the light of day.[551] It would be a worthy deed for the citizens, even
in one spot, to bring back the former appearance of their ancient town.
[Illustration: ELGIN CATHEDRAL.]
[Sidenote: CATHEDRALS IN RUINS.]
The noble ruins of the great cathedral Johnson examined with a most
patient attention, though the rain was falling fast. “They afforded
him another proof of the waste of reformation.” His indignation was
excited even more than by the ruins at St. Andrew’s; for “the cathedral
was not destroyed by the tumultuous violence of Knox, but suffered to
dilapidate by deliberate robbery and frigid indifference.” By an order
of Council the lead had been stripped off the roof and shipped to be
sold in Holland. “I hope,” adds Johnson, “every reader will rejoice
that this cargo of sacrilege was lost at sea.” On this passage Horace
Walpole remarks in a letter to Lord Hailes:—“I confess I have not
quite so heinous an idea of sacrilege as Dr. Johnson. Of all kinds
of robbery that appears to me the lightest species which injures
nobody. Dr. Johnson is so pious, that in his journey to your country
he flatters himself that all his readers will join him in enjoying
the destruction of two Dutch crews, who were swallowed up by the ocean
after they had robbed a church. I doubt that uncharitable anathema is
more in the spirit of the Old Testament than of the New.”[552] While
Johnson censured the frigid indifference of the Scotch, he did not
forget the ruin that was being slowly worked in England by the avarice
and neglect of deans and canons. “Let us not,” he wrote, “make too much
haste to despise our neighbours. Our own cathedrals are mouldering
by unregarded dilapidation. It seems to be part of the despicable
philosophy of the time to despise monuments of sacred magnificence, and
we are in danger of doing that deliberately which the Scots did not
do but in the unsettled state of an imperfect constitution.” He had
learnt, there seems good reason to believe, that the chapter of the
cathedral of his own town of Lichfield intended to strip the lead off
its roof and cover it instead with slate. As he had first printed his
narrative he had much more closely pointed the attack. It had run as
follows: “There is now, as I have heard, a body of men not less decent
or virtuous than the Scottish council, longing to melt the lead of an
English cathedral. What they shall melt, it were just that they should
swallow.” Before publication he had the leaf cancelled, from the tender
recollection that the dean had done him a kindness about forty years
before. “He is now very old, and I am not young. Reproach can do him no
good, and in myself I know not whether it is zeal or wantonness.”[553]
[Illustration: FORES.]
As I turned away from the ruins with my thoughts full of the past—of
the ancient glory of the cathedral, of the strange sights which had
been seen from its tower when the Young Pretender’s Highlanders hurried
by, closely followed by the English army, of old Johnson wandering
about in the heavy rain—I was suddenly reminded of the vastness of
“the abysm of time” by which they are separated from us, by reading in
an advertisement placarded on the walls, that for £3 16_s._ 5_d._ could
be had a ticket from Elgin to Paris and back.