[Sidenote: INCHKENNETH.]
Our travellers having stayed but one night at Ulva, on the morning of
Sunday, October 17, took boat and rowed to Inchkenneth, “an island
about a mile long, and perhaps half a mile broad, remarkable for
pleasantness and fertility. It is verdant and grassy, and fit both
for pasture and tillage; but it has no trees.” The only inhabitants
were “the chief of the ancient and numerous clan of Macleane, his
daughter and their servants.” [Sidenote: SIR ALLAN MACLEANE.] In
a letter to Mrs. Thrale Johnson says: “Sir Allan, a chieftain, a
baronet, and a soldier, inhabits in this insulated desert a thatched
hut with no chambers. He received us with the soldier’s frankness and
the gentleman’s elegance, and introduced us to his daughters, two
young ladies who have not wanted education suitable to their birth,
and who in their cottage neither forgot their dignity nor affected to
remember it. His affairs are in disorder by the fault of his ancestors,
and while he forms some scheme for retrieving them, he has retreated
hither.” By _chambers_, Johnson seems to mean rooms on an upper floor.
Boswell describes the habitation as commodious, “though it consisted
but of a few small buildings only one story high.” In two of these huts
were the servants’ rooms and the kitchen. “The dinner was plentiful and
delicate. Neither the comforts nor the elegancies of life were wanting.
There were several dishes and variety of liquors.” Sir Walter Scott
many years later visited the island in company with a Gloucestershire
baronet, Sir George Onesiphorus Paul:
“He seemed to me,” writes Sir Walter, “to suspect many of the
Highland tales which he heard, but he showed most incredulity
on the subject of Johnson’s having been entertained in the
wretched huts of which we saw the ruins. He took me aside,
and conjured me to tell him the truth of the matter. ‘This Sir
Allan,’ said he, ‘was he a _regular baronet_, or was his title
such a traditional one as you find in Ireland?’ I assured my
excellent acquaintance that, ‘for my own part, I would have
paid more respect to a knight of Kerry, or knight of Glynn; yet
Sir Allan Macleane was a _regular baronet_ by patent;’ and,
having given him this information, I took the liberty of asking
him, in return, whether he would not in conscience prefer the
worst cell in the jail at Gloucester (which he had been very
active in overlooking while the building was going on) to those
exposed hovels where Johnson had been entertained by rank and
beauty. He looked round the little islet, and allowed Sir Allan
had some advantage in exercising ground; but in other respects
he thought the compulsory tenants of Gloucester had greatly the
advantage. Such was his opinion of a place, concerning which
Johnson has recorded that ‘it wanted little which palaces could
afford.’”
Johnson, by the way, did not write “_it_ wanted,” but “_we_ wanted
little that palaces afford.” We have from Sir Walter also an amusing
story which shows how the chief of the Macleanes in the embarrassment
of his affairs had learnt to hate the sight of an attorney—_writers_,
as they are called in Scotland:
“Upon one occasion he made a visit to a friend residing at
Carron lodge, on the banks of the Carron, where the banks of
that river are studded with pretty villas: Sir Allan, admiring
the landscape, asked his friend whom that handsome seat
belonged to. ‘M——, the writer to the signet,’ was the reply.
‘Umph!’ said Sir Allan, but not with an accent of assent, ‘I
mean that other house.’ ‘Oh! that belongs to a very honest
fellow, Jamie ——, also a writer to the signet.’ ‘Umph!’
said the Highland chief of Macleane, with more emphasis than
before, ‘And yon smaller house?’ ‘That belongs to a Stirling
man; I forget his name, but I am sure he is a writer too;
for ——.’ Sir Allan, who had recoiled a quarter of a circle
backward at every response, now wheeled the circle entire, and
turned his back on the landscape, saying, ‘My good friend,
I must own you have a pretty situation here; but d—n your
neighbourhood.’”[676]
In his dislike of lawyers he would have found a common feeling in
Johnson, who one day, “when inquiry was made concerning a person who
had quitted a company where he was, observed that he did not care to
speak ill of any man behind his back, but he believed the gentleman was
an attorney.” Happily there was nothing to disturb the tranquillity
of the scene during the visit of our travellers. [Sidenote: A SUNDAY
ON INCHKENNETH.] The Sunday which Johnson spent on Inchkenneth was,
as he told Boswell, “the most agreeable he had ever passed.” He thus
describes it to Mrs. Thrale: “Towards evening Sir Allan told us that
Sunday never passed over him like another day. One of the ladies read,
and read very well, the evening service, ‘and Paradise was opened
in the wild.’”[677] Such was the impression produced on him that he
commemorated the day in some pretty Latin lines entitled, _Insula
Sancti Kennethi_. Though he would not attend a Scotch church and hear
Robertson preach, yet a woman’s reading the English service did not
shock him.
“Quid quod sacrifici versavit femina libros?
Legitimas faciunt pectora pura preces.”
“A woman’s hand, ’tis true, turned o’er the sacred leaves,
But prayer from hearts so pure God’s sanction sure receives.”
He thus prettily ends his verses:
“Quo vagor ulterius? quod ubique requiritur hic est;
Hic secura quies, hic et honestus amor.”
“Why should we further roam? here what all seek we gain,
Both peace without a care, and love without a stain.”
[Illustration: INCHKENNETH CHAPEL.]
Sir Allan had chosen well his hermitage. The landing-place is on the
south-eastern side of the island, in a little bay with a sandy beach,
sheltered by a low point from the storms coming from the north-west,
while the cold blasts from the north and the north-east are kept
off by a low hill. The ground slopes up from the shore in pleasant
meadow land. At the bottom of the slope, a little above the beach,
Sir Allan, I conjecture, had his habitation. Here are the ruins of a
farmhouse which was burnt down a few years ago. It is very likely that
it occupied the same site as his cottages. [Sidenote: THE CHAPEL ON
INCHKENNETH.] The road marked with cart-wheels, as on the main land,
at the sight of which Dr. Johnson’s heart was cheered, I failed to
discover. We wandered up the little path to where on the rising ground
the ruined chapel stands within the hearing of the wave.
“We walked uncovered into the chapel,” writes Johnson, “and saw
in the reverend ruin the effects of precipitate reformation.
The floor is covered with ancient grave-stones, of which the
inscriptions are not now legible. The altar is not yet quite
demolished; beside it, on the right side, is a _bas relief_
of the Virgin with her child, and an angel hovering over her.
On the other side still stands a hand-bell, which, though it
has no clapper, neither Presbyterian bigotry nor barbarian
wantonness has yet taken away. The chapel is thirty-eight feet
long and eighteen broad. Boswell, who is very pious, went into
it at night to perform his devotions, but came back in haste
for fear of spectres. Near the chapel is a fountain, to which
the water, remarkably pure, is conveyed from a distant hill
through pipes laid by the Romish clergy, which still perform
the office of conveyance though they have never been repaired
since Popery was suppressed.”
Our boatman, whom I had in vain questioned about Johnson’s host, led me
up to the tomb of an old knight, clothed in armour, with a dog lying at
his feet, and said, “That is Sir Allan.” The little fountain, in spite
of the lapse of years and the long drought, still ran with a stream of
pure water. Besides the chapel, there had once been on the island a
seminary of priests. “Sir Allan,” writes Johnson, “had a mind to trace
the foundations of a college, but neither I nor Mr. Boswell, who bends
a keener eye on vacancy, were able to perceive them.” Where they failed
we could not hope to succeed. We next explored, as they had done, a
neighbouring islet.
[Sidenote: SANDILAND.]
“Even Inchkenneth,” says Johnson, “has a subordinate island,
named Sandiland, I suppose in contempt, where we landed, and
found a rock, with a surface of perhaps four acres, of which
one is naked stone, another spread with sand and shells, some
of which I picked up for their glossy beauty, and two covered
with a little earth and grass, on which Sir Allan has a few
sheep. I doubt not but when there was a college at Inchkenneth,
there was a hermitage upon Sandiland.”
[Illustration: SANDILAND.]
The shells, perhaps, he kept to add to the collection of Mrs. Thrale’s
eldest daughter. “I have been able,” he wrote later on, “to collect
very little for Queeney’s cabinet.” The name which our boatman gave
to the island was, so far as I could catch it, not Sandiland, but
Sameilan. At the time of our visit it had for inhabitants four sheep,
and flocks of sea-birds who made it their breeding ground. They flew
circling and screaming over our heads, while a mother bird led off a
late brood of little ones into the sea. Before each of the burrows in
which they made their nests was a litter of tiny shells thrown up
like sand before a rabbit-warren. The sun shone brightly, the little
waves beat on the shore, while all around us there were mountains,
islands, and lochs. As I picked up a few shells, I thought that on this
lonely rock, perhaps, none had been gathered since the day when they
caught Johnson’s eye by their glossy beauty. In sailing back to the
mainland of Mull we saw four seals popping up their heads in the water
near the shore.
[Illustration: MACKINNON’S CAVE.]
So pleasant did Johnson find the life in Inchkenneth that he remained
a day longer than he had intended. “We could have been easily
persuaded,” he writes, “to a longer stay, but life will not be all
passed in delight. The session at Edinburgh was approaching from
which Mr. Boswell could not be absent.” On the morning of Tuesday,
October 19, they started for Iona in a good strong boat, with four
stout rowers under the guidance of the chief of the Macleanes. On the
shore they took their last farewell of poor Col, “who,” wrote Johnson,
“had treated us with so much kindness, and concluded his favours by
consigning us to Sir Allan.” [Sidenote: MACKINNON’S CAVE.] On the way
they visited Mackinnon’s Cave, on the opposite coast of Mull, “the
greatest natural curiosity,” said Johnson, “he had ever seen.” He thus
describes it in a letter to Mrs. Thrale.
“We had some difficulty to make our way over the vast masses
of broken rocks that lie before the entrance, and at the mouth
were embarrassed with stones, which the sea had accumulated
as at Brighthelmstone; but as we advanced we reached a floor
of soft sand, and as we left the light behind us walked along
a very spacious cavity vaulted overhead with an arch almost
regular, by which a mountain was sustained, at least, a very
lofty rock. From this magnificent cavern went a narrow passage
to the right-hand, which we entered with a candle, and though
it was obstructed with great stones, clambered over them to
a second expansion of the cave, in which there lies a great
square stone, which might serve as a table. The cave goes
onward to an unknown extent, but we were now one hundred and
sixty yards under ground; we had but one candle, and had never
heard of any that went further and came back; we therefore
thought it prudent to return.”
“Tradition,” according to Boswell, “says that a piper and twelve men
once advanced into this cave, nobody can tell how far; and never
returned.” It is indeed a wonderful place. As we sat on the rocks near
the entrance, with the huge cliffs rising sheer above us, and the waves
breaking at our feet, we could see in the distance Iona, with its
beach of white sand, Staffa with its lofty masses of dark rock, Little
Colonsay with the waves dashing in foam upon it, and on the horizon a
coast which we took to be the island of Col. Vast masses of rock lay
along the beach in huge and wild disorder. Beyond the cavern they came
to an end; for there the cliff rose from the sea steep as the wall of a
house. The cascade near the cave, which Boswell mentions, was falling
in a very slender stream. Hard by a huge crag was covered almost to the
top by the fresh young leaves of a great ivy-tree. It called up to my
memory the ivy-mantled ruins of Kenilworth Castle.
Our travellers, taking boat again, continued their voyage along the
shore of Mull. “The island of Staffa,” writes Boswell, “we saw at no
very great distance, but could not land upon it, the surge was so
high on its rocky coast.” It is strange that Sir James Mackintosh,
with this passage before him, should have accused Johnson of having
visited Iona, “without looking at Staffa, which lay in sight, with
that indifference to natural objects, either of taste or scientific
curiosity, which characterised him.”[678] As they sailed along, “Sir
Allan, anxious for the honour of Mull, was still talking of its
_woods_, and pointing them out to Dr. Johnson, as appearing at a
distance on the skirts of that island. ‘Sir,’ he answered, ‘I saw at
Tobermory what they called a wood, which I unluckily took for _heath_.
If you show me what I shall take for _furze_, it will be something.’”
[Illustration: MULL.]
[Sidenote: ROVING AMONG THE HEBRIDES.]
They dined at “a cluster of rocks, black and horrid,” near to which
was a public-house where they had hoped to procure some rum or brandy
for the boatmen; “but unfortunately a funeral a few days before had
exhausted all their store.” Smollett in his _Humphry Clinker_, tells
how a Highland gentleman, at his grandmother’s funeral, “seemed to
think it a disparagement to his family that not above a hundred gallons
of whisky had been drunk upon such a solemn occasion.”[679] The rest
of this day’s voyage Johnson thus finely described in one of his
letters: “We then entered the boat again; the night came upon us: the
wind rose; the sea swelled. We passed by several little islands in the
silent solemnity of faint moonshine, seeing little, and hearing only
the wind and the water. At last we reached the island; the venerable
seat of ancient sanctity, where secret piety reposed, and where fallen
greatness was reposited.” Boswell adds that as they “sailed along by
moonlight in a sea somewhat rough, and often between black and gloomy
rocks, Dr. Johnson said, ‘If this be not roving among the Hebrides
nothing is.’”
[Sidenote: THE MACLEANES OF IONA.]
Iona, which of old belonged to the Macleanes, in their recent
embarassments had been sold to the Duke of Argyle. Though the tie
of property was broken yet the feeling of clanship remained entire.
“Whatever was in the island,” writes Johnson, “Sir Allan could demand,
for the inhabitants were Macleanes; but having little they could not
give us much.” A curious scene described by Boswell bears witness to
the strength of the devotion of these poor people.
“Sir Allan had been told that a man had refused to send him
some rum, at which the knight was in great indignation. ‘You
rascal! (said he,) don’t you know that I can hang you, if I
please?’ Not adverting to the Chieftain’s power over his clan,
I imagined that Sir Allan had known of some capital crime that
the fellow had committed, which he could discover, and so get
him condemned; and said, ‘How so?’ ‘Why, (said Sir Allan,) are
they not all my people?’ Sensible of my inadvertency, and most
willing to contribute what I could towards the continuation
of feudal authority, ‘Very true,’ said I. Sir Allan went on:
‘Refuse to send rum to me, you rascal! Don’t you know that, if
I order you to go and cut a man’s throat, you are to do it?’
‘Yes, an’t please your honour! and my own too, and hang myself
too.’ The poor fellow denied that he had refused to send the
rum. His making these professions was not merely a pretence
in presence of his Chief; for after he and I were out of Sir
Allan’s hearing, he told me, ‘Had he sent his dog for the rum,
I would have given it: I would cut my bones for him.’ It was
very remarkable to find such an attachment to a Chief, though
he had then no connection with the island, and had not been
there for fourteen years. Sir Allan, by way of upbraiding the
fellow, said, ‘I believe you are a _Campbell_.’”
The memory of the power so lately exercised throughout the Highlands by
the chiefs was not soon forgotten. It was noticed so late as 1793, that
in Scotland _master_ was still, for the most part, the term used for
_landlord_. As an instance of this it was mentioned that in a sermon
preached in the High Church of Edinburgh in 1788, the minister thus
described the late Earl of Kinnoul in relation to his tenants.[680]
Even after the abolition of the jurisdictions of the chiefs the powers
left in the hands of the justices were very great. “An inferior judge
in Scotland,” wrote the historian of Edinburgh in the year 1779, “makes
nothing of sentencing a man to whipping, pillory, banishment from
the limits of his jurisdiction, and such other trifling punishments,
without the idle formality of a jury.”[681]
In Iona, however, there was no need of threats. The poor people were
devoted to their former chief. “He went,” says Johnson, “to the headman
of the island whom fame, but fame delights in amplifying, represents
as worth no less than fifty pounds. He was, perhaps, proud enough of
his guests, but ill prepared for our entertainment; however, he soon
produced more provision than men not luxurious required.” There was
not a single house in which, with any comfort, they could have been
lodged. Pennant, who had been there a year earlier, “had pitched a
rude tent formed of oars and sails.” There was but one house which had
a chimney. “Nevertheless, even in this,” says Johnson, “the fire was
made on the floor in the middle of the room, and notwithstanding the
dignity of their mansion the inmates rejoiced like their neighbours in
the comforts of smoke.” Though the soil was naturally fruitful, yet
the poverty of the people was great. “They are,” he adds, “remarkably
gross and remarkably neglected; I know not if they are visited by any
minister. The island, which was once the metropolis of learning and
piety, has now no school for education nor temple for worship, only
two inhabitants that can speak English, and not one that can write
or read.” The population was probably not less than four hundred
souls.[682] Sacheverell, who was there in 1688, mentions a class of
“hereditary servants. They are,” he adds, “miserably poor. They seem
an innocent, simple people, ignorant and devout; and though they have
no minister, they constantly assemble in the great church on Sundays,
where they spend most part of the day in private devotions.”[683]
According to Pennant they were “the most stupid and the most lazy of
all the islanders.” “They used,” he says, “the Chapel of the Nunnery as
a cow-shed; the floor was covered some feet thick with dung, for they
were too lazy to remove this fine manure, the collection of a century,
to enrich their grounds.”[684] Boswell, however, gives a much better
report. “They are industrious,” he says, “and make their own woollen
and linen cloth; and they brew a good deal of beer, which we did not
find in any of the other islands.” In July, 1798, Dr. Garnett and his
companion, Mr. Watts, the painter, passed a night in the public-house.
The floor of their chamber was liquid mud; the rain fell on their beds.
For fellow-lodgers they had several chickens, a tame lamb, a dog, some
cats, and two or three pigs. Next morning they invited the schoolmaster
to breakfast, and found that the inn could boast of only two tea-cups
and one spoon, and that of wood.[685] Sir Walter Scott, who visited
Iona in 1810 mentions “the squalid and dejected poverty of the
inhabitants—the most wretched people he had anywhere seen.”[686] With
such houses and such people Sir Allan Macleane certainly did wisely in
choosing a barn for the lodgings of himself and his two friends. “Some
good hay,” writes Boswell, “was strewed at one end of it, to form a bed
for us, upon which we lay with our clothes on; and we were furnished
with blankets from the village. Each of us had a portmanteau for a
pillow. When I awaked in the morning, and looked round me, I could
not help smiling at the idea of the chief of the Macleanes, the great
English Moralist, and myself, lying thus extended in such a situation.”
[Sidenote: IONA’S PAST AND PRESENT.]
The smile might have passed into a sigh, had Boswell contrasted the
splendours of Iona’s past with the meanness of her present lot. They
had come to
“Where, beneath the showery west,
The mighty kings of three fair realms are laid.”