Much as Johnson had delighted in the patriarchal life at Raasay, yet
after four days’ stay he became impatient to move. “There was,” writes
Boswell, “so numerous a company, mostly young people, there was such a
flow of familiar talk, so much noise, and so much singing and dancing,
that little opportunity was left for his energetic conversation. He
seemed sensible of this; for when I told him how happy they were at
having him there, he said, ‘Yet we have not been able to entertain them
much.’” The weather, which had been very wet and stormy, cleared up on
the morning of September 12. “Though it was Sunday,” says Johnson, “we
thought it proper to snatch the opportunity of a calm day.” [Sidenote:
THE ROW TO PORTREE.] A row of some five or six miles brought them to
Portree in Skye, a harbour whose name commemorated the visit of King
James V. The busy little town on the top of the cliff, with its Court
House, hotels, banks, and shops, which has grown up at the end of the
land-locked harbour, did not then exist. Sir James Macdonald, “the
Marcellus of Scotland,” as Boswell called him, had intended to build
a village there, but by his untimely death the design had come to
nothing. There seems to have been little more than the public-house at
which the travellers dined. “It was,” Johnson believed, “the only one
of the island.” He forgot, however, as Boswell pointed out to him when
he read his narrative, another at Sconser, and a third at Dunvegan.
“These,” Boswell adds, “are the only inns properly so called. There are
many huts where whisky is sold.”[636] [Sidenote: HIGHLAND VOLUNTEERS.]
On the evening which I spent at Portree, a company of Highland
volunteers were going through their yearly inspection, in tartan plaids
and kilts, with the bagpipes playing as only bagpipes can. Had it been
as it was in the days of their forefathers, when twelve Highlanders and
a bagpipe made a rebellion, there was ample provision made here for
at least five or six. Each volunteer, in addition to his guilt as a
rebel, both for the arms which he carried, and the garb which he wore,
would have been liable to be sent off by summary process to serve as
a common soldier. But happily we live in loyal days, and under milder
laws. These bold citizen-soldiers ran but one risk, which no doubt was
averted by a good-natured and sympathetic magistracy. To a fine of
five shillings for being drunk and disorderly some of them certainly
became exposed as the evening wore away. Let us hope that their excess
was little more than an excess of loyalty in drinking the health of a
Hanoverian queen.
[Illustration: KINGSBURGH.]
[Sidenote: FLORA MACDONALD.]
At Portree our travellers took horse for Kingsburgh, a farmhouse on
Loch Snizort, whither they went, though a little off their road, in
order to see Flora Macdonald. She had married a gentleman of the same
clan, and so had not changed her name. “Here,” writes Johnson, “I
had the honour of saluting the far-famed Miss Flora Macdonald, who
conducted the Prince, dressed as her maid, through the English forces,
from the island of Lewis; and when she came to Skye, dined with the
English officers, and left her maid below. She must then have been a
very young lady—she is now not old—of a pleasing person and elegant
behaviour. She told me that she thought herself honoured by my visit;
and I am sure that whatever regard she bestowed on me was liberally
repaid.” Boswell describes her as “a little woman of a genteel
appearance, and uncommonly mild and well-bred. To see Dr. Samuel
Johnson, the great champion of the English Tories, salute Miss Flora
Macdonald in the Isle of Skye was a striking sight.” By _salute_ I have
little doubt that both Boswell and Johnson meant _kiss_. Johnson in his
_Dictionary_ gives it as the third meaning of the word, though he cites
no authority for the usage. “The Scotch,” wrote Topham in 1774, “have
still the custom of salutation on introduction to strangers. It very
seldom happens that the salute is a voluntary one, and it frequently is
the cause of disgust and embarrassment to the fair sex.”[637] By the
uncouth appearance of the man who thus saluted her, Flora Macdonald
might with good reason have been astonished, for “the news had reached
her that Mr. Boswell was coming to Skye, and one Mr. Johnson, a young
English buck, with him.” Her husband, “a large stately man, with a
steady, sensible countenance,” who was going to try his fortune in
America, was perhaps for that reason the more careless of obeying the
laws of the country he was leaving. This evening he wore the Highland
costume. “He had his tartan plaid thrown about him, a large blue
bonnet with a knot of black riband like a cockade, a brown short coat
of a kind of duffil, a tartan waistcoat with gold buttons and gold
button-holes, a bluish philibeg, and tartan hose.” The bed-curtains of
the room in which our travellers slept were also of tartan. Johnson’s
bed had whatever fame could attach to it through its having been
occupied for one night “by the grandson of the unfortunate King James
the Second,” to borrow Boswell’s description of him. The grandson,
before many years passed over his head, proved not unworthy of the
grandfather—equally mean and equally selfish. The happy failure of the
rebels hindered him from displaying his vices, with a kingdom for his
stage. His worthlessness, which though it might have been suspected
from his stock, could not have been known in his youth, takes away
nothing, however, from the just fame of Flora Macdonald, “whose name
will be mentioned in history, and, if courage and fidelity be virtues,
mentioned with honour.” Johnson, after recounting how “the sheets which
the Prince used were never put to any meaner offices, but were wrapped
up by the lady of the house, and at last, according to her desire, were
laid round her in her grave,” ends the passage with much satisfaction,
by observing: “These are not Whigs.” Upon the table in the room he left
a piece of paper “on which he had written with his pencil these words:
_Quantum cedat virtutibus aurum_.”[638] He was thinking, no doubt,
of the reward of £30,000 set upon Charles Edward’s head, and of the
fidelity of the poor Highlanders who one and all refused to betray him.
To more than fifty people he was forced in his wanderings to trust his
life, many of them “in the lowest paths of fortune,” and not one of
them proved faithless. It was well for him that he had not had to trust
to fifty hangers-on of a Court.
[Illustration: THE FERRY TO KINGSBURGH.]
[Sidenote: KINGSBURGH.]
The old house in which he had taken shelter for one night, and where
Boswell and Johnson were so hospitably received, where they heard from
their hostess the strange story of her adventures—this interesting old
house no longer exists. Some of the trees which surround the modern
residence must be old enough to have seen not only our two travellers,
but also the fugitive Prince. As we looked upon it from the opposite
shore of the narrow loch it seemed a pleasant spot, nearly facing the
west, sheltered from the east by hills, and embosomed in trees, with
meadows in front sloping down to the sea. In the rear rose barren
dreary hills, but all their lower slopes were green with grass and with
the young crops of oats. Far down the loch the green slopes ended in a
steep rocky coast. In the distance the mountains of Lewis fringed the
northern sky. The steep headland on which we sat was beautiful with
grasses and flowers and ferns and heather. Of wild flowers we gathered
no less than thirty-six varieties on this one small spot. We found even
a lingering primrose, though June was rapidly drawing to its close.
How different were our thoughts as we watched this peaceful scene from
those which, one hundred and forty-three years earlier, had troubled
the watchers as the young Wanderer slept! As the morning wore on, and
he did not awake, one of them, in her alarm lest the soldiers should
surprise him, roused her father, who was also in hiding, and begged
that “they should not remain here too long. He said, ‘Let the poor man
repose himself after his fatigues! and as for me, I care not, though
they take off this old grey head ten or eleven years sooner than I
should die in the course of nature.’ He then wrapped himself in the
bed-clothes, and again fell fast asleep.” That same afternoon the two
fugitives set off for Portree, where the Prince took boat for Raasay.
[Illustration: DUNVEGAN CASTLE
SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE & RIVINGTON, LTD, PUBLISHERS, LONDON.
IMP. & HÉLIOG. LEMERCIER & C^{IE.} PARIS.]