From Cawdor Johnson and Boswell drove to Fort George, “the most
regular fortification in the island,” according to Johnson; “where,”
he continues, “they were entertained by Sir Eyre Coote, the Governor,
with such elegance of conversation, as left us no attention to the
delicacies of his table.” Wolfe, who saw it in 1751, when it was partly
made, writes: “I believe there is still work for six or seven years to
do. When it is finished one may venture to say (without saying much)
that it will be the most considerable fortress, and the best situated
in Great Britain.”[562] In the evening our travellers continued
their journey to Inverness—a distance of twelve miles. [Sidenote:
CULLODEN.] The reviewer of Johnson’s narrative in the _Scots Magazine_
expresses his wonder that as “he must have passed near the Field of
Culloden he studiously avoided to mention that battle.”[563] Boswell is
equally reticent. The explanation is perhaps merely due to the dusk of
evening, in which they passed by the spot. It is not unlikely, on the
other hand, that the silence was intentional. Johnson shows a curious
reticence in a passage in which he refers to the Rebellion of 1745.
In his description of Rasay he writes: “Not many years ago the late
laird led out one hundred men upon a military expedition.” [Sidenote:
THE BUTCHER DUKE.] Had he visited Culloden or described the campaign,
his indignation must have flamed forth at the cruelties of the butcher
duke. Boswell, Lowlander though he was, said “that they would never be
forgotten.” With Smollett, in his _Tears of Scotland_, they might well
have exclaimed:—
“Yet when the rage of battle ceased,
The victor’s soul was not appeased:
The naked and forlorn must feel
Devouring flames and murd’ring steel.”
Johnson does indeed speak of “the heavy hand of a vindictive
conqueror.”[564] It was about this time, or only a little later, that
Scott was learning “to detest the name of Cumberland with more than
infant hatred.”[565] That an Englishman could travel in safety, unarmed
and unguarded, through a country which only seven and twenty years
before had been so mercilessly treated seems not a little surprising.
For the next day or two he was to follow a course where fire and sword
had swept along. Wolfe, whose “great name,” we boast, was “compatriot
with our own,” who had so little of the savage spirit of war that
he would rather have written Gray’s _Elegy_ than take Quebec, even
he exulted that “as few prisoners were taken of the Highlanders as
possible. We had an opportunity of avenging ourselves. The rebels left
near 1,500 dead.” Yet he did not think that enough had been done.
The carnage-pile was not lofty enough. Surveying the battle-field
five years later, he writes in a letter to his father, a general in
the army, “I find room for a military criticism. You would not have
left those ruffians the only possible means of conquest, nor suffered
multitudes to go off unhurt with the power to destroy.”[566] Ruffians
indeed they had shown themselves in their raid into England, but enough
surely had been done in the way of slaughter to satisfy the most
exacting military critic. How merciless our soldiers had been is proved
by the letters that were written from the camp. A despatch sent off
from Inverness on April 25, nine days after the battle, says that “the
misery and distress of the fugitive rebels was inexpressible, hundreds
being found dead of their wounds and through hunger at the distance of
twelve, fourteen, and even twenty miles from the field.”[567] On June
5 an officer wrote from Fort Augustus: “His Royal Highness has carried
fire and sword through their country, and driven off their cattle,
which we bring to our camp in great quantities, sometimes 2,000 in a
drove. The people are deservedly in a most deplorable way, and must
perish either by sword or famine, a just reward for traitors.”[568]
[Illustration: THE FIDDLER’S WALK IN THE DRAWING ROOM, CAWDOR CASTLE.]
[Sidenote: THE HIGHLANDS LAID WASTE.]
On July 26 another officer wrote from the same fort to a friend at
Newcastle: “We hang or shoot everyone that is known to conceal the
Pretender, burn their houses and take their cattle, of which we have
got some 8,000 head within these few days past, so that if some
of your Northumberland graziers were here they might make their
fortunes.”[569] The author of a _Plain Narrative of the Rebellion_,
tells with exultation how “they marched to Loch Yell, the stately seat
of old Esquire Cameron,” the Lochiel of Campbell’s spirited lines.
“His fine chairs, tables, and all his cabinet goods were set on fire
and burnt with his house. His fine fruit garden, above a mile long,
was pulled to pieces and laid waste. A beautiful summer-house that
stood in the pleasure garden was also set on fire. From hence the
party marched along the sea-coast through Moidart, burning of houses,
driving away the cattle, and shooting those vagrants who were found
about the mountains. For fifty miles round there was no man or beast
to be seen.”[570] Andrew Henderson, in his _History of the Rebellion_,
after admitting that in the rout several of the wounded were stabbed,
and some who were lurking in houses were taken out and shot, urges by
way of excuse that “the rebels had enraged the troops; their habit was
strange, their language still stranger, and their way of fighting was
shocking to the utmost degree.”[571] Besides the massacre after the
battle and the executions by courts-martial, there were the hangings,
drawings and quarterings, and beheadings by judge and jury. Seventy-six
had been sent to the scaffold by September, 1747,[572] and above one
thousand were transported.[573] Even George II. “said that he believed
William had been rough with them.”[574] When it was proposed to confer
on the duke the freedom of the City of London, an alderman was heard to
say that it ought to be the freedom of the Butchers’ Company. So late
as the summer of 1753 seven rebels were seized in a hut on the side
of Loch Hourn, at no great distance from the way along which Johnson
was to pass only twenty years later.[575] Nevertheless he everywhere
travelled in safety. Among the chieftains, no doubt, “his tenderness
for the unfortunate House of Stuart” was known, but to the common
people he would only be an Englishman—a man of the race that had
slaughtered their fathers and wasted their country. That both he and
Boswell were not free from uneasiness they avowed when at Auchnasheal
they were surrounded by the wild McCraas. In the memory of men not much
past the middle age, tales of the cruel duke used to be told in the
winter evenings in the glens of these Western Highlands. They have at
last died away, and “infant hatred” is no longer nourished.[576]
[Sidenote: INVERNESS.]
Our travellers, whatever may have been their motive, leaving the
Field of Culloden unvisited and unnoticed, arrived at Inverness,
the capital of the Highlands. They put up at Mackenzie’s Inn. Of
their accommodation they say nothing; but it can scarcely have been
good, if we may trust an English traveller who two years earlier had
found, he said, the Horns Inn, kept by Mrs. Mackenzie, dirty and
ill-managed.[577] Perhaps they felt as Wolfe did when he was stationed
in the town with his regiment. “It would be unmanly,” he wrote, “and
very unbecoming a soldier to complain of little evils, such as bad
food, bad lodging, bad fire.... With these reflections I reconcile
myself to Inverness, and to other melancholy spots that we are thrown
upon.” He adds that the post goes but once a week, and that as there
are rapid rivers on the road that have neither bridge nor boat, it
is often delayed by the floods.[578] Wesley describes Inverness as
the largest town he had seen in Scotland after Edinburgh, Glasgow,
and Aberdeen. “It stands in a pleasant and fruitful country, and has
all things needful for life and godliness. The people in general
speak remarkably good English, and are of a friendly, courteous
behaviour.”[579] Their good English they were said to derive from the
garrison which Cromwell had settled among them. It had been noticed
by Defoe. “They speak,” he said, “perfect English, even much better
than in the most southerly provinces of Scotland; nay, some will say
that they speak it as well as at London, though I do not grant that
neither.”[580] Their behaviour had greatly improved in the thirteen
years which had elapsed between Wolfe’s second and Wesley’s first
visit, unless the soldier had viewed them with the stern eye of the
conqueror, or they had displayed the sullenness of the conquered. “A
little while,” he wrote, “serves to discover the villainous nature of
the inhabitants and brutality of the people in the neighbourhood.”[581]
Yet the brutality was quite as much on the side of the army, for a
year later, five full years after the battle, we find the people still
treated with harshness and insolence. The magistrates had invited
Lord Bury, the general in command, to an entertainment on the Duke
of Cumberland’s birthday. “He said he did not doubt but it would be
more agreeable to the duke if they postponed it to the day following,
the anniversary of Culloden. They stared, said they could not promise
on their own authority, but would go and consult their body. They
returned, told him it was unprecedented and could not be complied
with. Lord Bury replied he was sorry they had not given a negative at
once, for he had mentioned it to his soldiers, who would not bear a
disappointment, and was afraid it would provoke them to some outrage
upon the town. This did; they celebrated Culloden.”[582]
The old town had witnessed a strange sight in the first days after
the battle. The soldiers had held a fair for the sale of the plunder
which they had made. “The traffic on the Rialto Bridge was nothing
in comparison to the business done by our military merchants; here
being great sortments of all manner of plaids, broad-swords, dirks
and pistols, and plaid-waistcoats, officers’ laced waistcoats, hats,
bonnets, blankets, and oatmeal bags.”[583] The severity that was so
long exercised by government at length sank into neglect. Only five
years before the arrival of our travellers all the prisoners, just
before the opening of the Assize, made their escape from the town jail;
“so the Lord Pitfour,” a writer to the Signet wrote, “will have the
trouble only of fugitation and reprimanding the magistrates.”[584] How
miserable the jail was is shown in a memorial from the Town Council,
dated March 17, 1786, stating that “it consists only of two small
cells for criminals, and one miserable room for civil debtors. Their
situation is truly deplorable, as there are at present and generally
about thirty persons confined in these holes, none of which is above
thirteen feet square.”[585] While the poor prisoners were so cruelly
treated, the lawyers had a merry time of it every time that so
hospitable a judge as Boswell’s father came the circuit:—
“Lord Auchinleck made a most respectable figure at the head of
his circuit table. It was his rule to spend every shilling of
his allowance for the circuit—a thing less to be expected that
in everything else he was supposed to be abundantly economical.
He had a plentiful table. He laughed much at the rule laid down
by some of his brethren of asking gentlemen but once to dinner.
‘It is,’ said he, ‘treating them like beggars at a burial, who
get their alms in rotation.’”[586]
We are not surprised that Boswell found that “everybody at Inverness
spoke of Lord Auchinleck with uncommon regard.”
The English chapel, which Johnson describes as “meanly built, but with
a very decent congregation,” was pulled down many years ago. On its
site, in the midst of the same old graveyard, another building has
been raised in what may be perhaps called the church-warden style.
Of Macbeth’s castle—“what is called the castle of Macbeth,” writes
Johnson with his usual caution—nothing remains. If we may trust
Boswell, “it perfectly corresponded with Shakespeare’s description.”
It has been replaced by “a modern building of chaste castellated
design,” to borrow the language of the guide-book. I was told, however,
that our travellers had been misinformed, and that “the old original
Macbeth’s castle” stood on a height a little distance from the town.
This “pleasant seat” has been treated, I found, even worse than its
rival; for a builder, thinking that the air “might nimbly and sweetly
recommend itself” to the public as well as to a king, began the
erection of a crescent. Owing to a difficulty about a right of way,
the speculation hitherto has not been so successful as might have been
feared.
[Sidenote: THE ENTRANCE TO THE HIGHLANDS.]
At Inverness the Lowland life came to an end. To the west of that
town no road had ever been made till some years after the rising of
1715. All beyond was the work of General Wade and the other military
engineers. “Here,” writes Johnson, “the appearance of life began to
alter. I had seen a few women with plaids at Aberdeen, but at Inverness
the Highland manners are common. There is, I think, a kirk in which
only the Erse language is used.” The plaid, which was not peculiar
to the Highlands, had been rapidly going out of fashion. Ramsay of
Ochtertyre says that in 1747, when he first knew Edinburgh, nine-tenths
of the ladies still wore them. Five years later “one could hardly see a
lady in that piece of dress. In the course of seven or eight years the
very servant girls were ashamed of being seen in that ugly antiquated
garb.”[587] The Gaelic language does not seem to have lost much ground
in Inverness, for I was told that there are five churches in which it
is used every Sunday at one of the services.
[Illustration: DUNGARDIE, A VITRIFIED FORT NEAR FOYERS.]