[Sidenote: THE FERRY FROM MULL TO OBAN.]
On the morning of Friday, October 22, our travellers set out for the
ferry by which they were to cross to Oban—a distance of about twelve
miles. According to Dr. Garnett, travellers were conveyed first to
Kerrera, an island lying off the mainland. Crossing this on foot or
horseback they found awaiting them another boat to take them to Oban.
At Auchnacraig in Mull there was an inn about half a mile from the
ferry. Here he and his companion could procure, he says, neither oats
for their horses nor straw for their litter. They wanted to give them
a mess of oatmeal and water, but the woman, who acted as hostler, at
first refused, “asking whether it was proper to give the food of
Christians to horses.” After a long dispute she yielded. “In these
islands,” he adds, “horses seldom taste oats.”[713] “The bottom of
the ferry-boat,” says Boswell, “was strewed with branches of trees
or bushes upon which we sat. We had a good day and a fine passage,
and in the evening landed at Oban, where we found a tolerable inn.”
This place, which I have seen recommended to cockney tourists in huge
advertisements as The Charing Cross of the North, was then a little
hamlet. In 1786 Knox found “about twenty families collected together
with a view to the fisheries.”[714] It boasted of a custom-house and
a post-office. In the islands no customs were paid, for there was no
officer to demand them.[715] Faujas Saint-Fond gives a curious account
of his stay in the inn, a few years after Johnson’s visit. He would
have got on very well, for the food though simple was good, and his
bed though hard was clean, had it not been for a performer on the
bag-pipes—“un maudit joueur de cornemuse” who played “une musique
d’un genre nouveau, mais bien terrible pour mon oreille.” The day of
their arrival this man had strutted up and down before the inn with
haughty and warlike looks, and had stunned them with his airs. “Nous
crûmes d’abord que ce personnage était une espèce d’insensé qui gagnait
sa vie à ce métier.” They were informed that he was an accomplished
musician, “de l’école _highlandoise_,” and that in this display of his
talents he was shewing the joy which he felt on seeing strangers in a
place where they came so rarely. Touched by his friendly sentiments
Saint-Fond had not only applauded him, but had even pressed on him
“quelques shelings,” which he accepted, it almost seemed, merely out of
complaisance. Taking pity on the stranger’s solitude he came and played
under his bed-room window in the silence of the night. It was all in
vain that Saint-Fond rose, went out of doors, took him by the hand and
led him away. “Il revint au même moment, me donnant à entendre qu’il
n’était point fatigué, et qu’il jouerait toute la nuit pour me plaire,
et il tint parole.”[716]
[Illustration: DUNOLLY CASTLE, OBAN.]
[Sidenote: OBAN ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO.]
The bagpiper was surely the direct ancestor of those bands of musicians
who at Oban distress the peaceful tourist. But there are things worse
even than musicians. How melancholy is the change which has come over
the whole scene in the last quarter of a century! A beautiful bay
ruined by man! That it should become thronged was inevitable; it need
not have been made vulgar. It was on no scene of overgrown hotels that
Johnson looked, as, with the tear starting in his eye, he repeated
those fine lines in which Goldsmith describes the character of the
British nation:
“Stern o’er each bosom reason holds her state,
With daring aims irregularly great,
Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,
I see the lords of humankind pass by,
Intent on high designs, a thoughtful band,
By forms unfashion’d, fresh from Nature’s hand;
Fierce in their native hardiness of soul,
True to imagin’d right, above control,
While e’en the peasant boasts these rights to scan,
And learns to venerate himself as man.”
[Illustration: BEN CRUACHAN
FROM THE HILLS ABOVE OBAN
SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE & RIVINGTON, LTD, PUBLISHERS, LONDON.
IMP. & HÉLIOG. LEMERCIER & C^{IE.} PARIS.]
[Sidenote: THE RIDE TO INVERARY.]
The _Traveller_ had formed the subject of their talk at breakfast,
and it was while Boswell helped Johnson on with his great-coat
that he recited these lines. They had a long ride before them
through heavy rain to Inverary. Loch Awe they crossed by the ferry
at Portsonachan—“a pretty wide lake,” as Boswell describes it, not
knowing its name. Towards evening they came to a good road made by
the soldiers, the first which they had seen since they left Fort
Augustus more than seven weeks before. Unwearied by his long journey,
Johnson that same night wrote a letter to Mrs. Thrale in which he thus
describes both what he saw and what he felt.
“About ten miles of this day’s journey were uncommonly amusing.
We travelled with very little light in a storm of wind and
rain; we passed about fifty-five streams that crossed our
way, and fell into a river that, for a very great part of
our road foamed and roared beside us. All the rougher powers
of nature, except thunder, were in motion, but there was no
danger. I should have been sorry to have missed any of the
inconveniences, to have had more light or less rain, for their
co-operation crowded the scene and filled the mind.”
When an old man describes such a journey as “uncommonly amusing” it
is clear that he uses the term in a sense which it does not bear at
present. In his _Dictionary_ he defines _amuse_, “to entertain with
tranquillity; to fill with thoughts that engage the mind without
distracting it.” The thoughts which this stormy evening in late autumn
engaged his mind amidst the wilds of Argyleshire he put forth in a
fine passage when, in the quietness of his study, he came to write the
account of his journey.
“The night came on while we had yet a great part of the way to
go, though not so dark but that we could discern the cataracts
which poured down the hills on one side, and fell into one
general channel, that ran with great violence on the other.
The wind was loud, the rain was heavy, and the whistling of
the blast, the fall of the shower, the rush of the cataracts,
and the roar of the torrent, made a nobler chorus of the rough
musick of nature than it had ever been my chance to hear
before.”
[Sidenote: THE INN AT INVERARY.]
The man who wrote this noble passage had not surely that insensibility
to nature which is so often laid to his charge. He was sixty-four years
old; mounted on a pony scarcely strong enough to bear his weight, he
had had a long and hard day’s ride through wind and rain; he had dined
in his wet clothes in a hut warmed by a smoky turf fire, and yet at
the end of the day he could say with the enthusiasm of a young poet
that neither darkness nor storm would he willingly have had lessened.
He was supported, no doubt, in his recollections by the comforts of
the inn at Inverary which was, he said, “not only commodious, but
magnificent.” Perhaps he was inspired also by the gill of whisky which
he called for—“the first fermented liquor,” says Boswell, “that he
tasted during his travels.” He forgets, however, the brandy which he
was prevailed on to drink at Dunvegan when he was suffering from cold.
“Come, (said Johnson) let me know what it is that makes a Scotchman
happy.” He thought it preferable to any English malt brandy. “What was
the process,” he writes, “I had no opportunity of enquiring, nor do I
wish to improve the art of making poison pleasant.” To the excellence
of the inn at Inverary, Pennant also bears testimony. Far otherwise
does Burns speak of it, in his indignation at the incivility of the
landlord, whose whole attention was occupied by the visitors of the
Duke of Argyle.
“Whoe’er he be that sojourns here,
I pity much his case,
Unless he comes to wait upon
The Lord their God his Grace.
“There’s naething here but Highland pride,
And Highland scab and hunger;
If Providence has sent me here,
’Twas surely in an anger.”
[Illustration: INVERARY CASTLE.]
At Inverary our travellers rested from Saturday evening till Tuesday
morning. This pleasant little town had a very different, look from
that which it now bears. “This place,” wrote Pennant, “will in time
be very magnificent; but at present the space between the front of
the castle and the water is disgraced with the old town, composed of
the most wretched hovels that can be imagined.”[717] These have long
been cleared away, so that there is now an unbroken view over a finely
wooded lawn of the loch and the hills beyond. It was in the beginning
of September, 1769, that he visited the place. [Sidenote: SUNDAY ON
LOCH FYNE.] “Every evening,” he says, “some hundreds of boats cover
the surface of Loch Fyne. On the week-days the cheerful noise of the
bag-pipe and dance echoes from on board; on the Sabbath each boat
approaches the land, and psalmody and devotion divide the day.” Our
travellers were perhaps too late in the year to witness this curious
scene; at all events they make no mention of it. Had they heard the
psalm-singing on the Sunday they would not have left it unnoticed. The
forenoon of that day they “passed calmly and placidly.” Of all the
Sundays which I passed in Scotland, nowhere did I find such an unbroken
stillness as here. It was far quieter than the towns, for the people
were as still as mice, and it was quieter than the country, for there
was an absence of country noises. We were alone in our hotel. It was
the last day of June, but there were scarcely any other strangers in
the place to enjoy the beautiful scenery and the long summer days.
[Illustration: ELIZABETH GUNNING.]
[Illustration: JOHNSON’S HOST.]
[Sidenote: THE DUKE AND DUCHESS OF ARGYLE.]
Boswell hesitated, or affected to hesitate, about calling on the Duke
of Argyle. “I had reason to think,” he writes, “that the duchess
disliked me on account of my zeal in the Douglas cause; but the duke
had always been pleased to treat me with great civility.” The duchess
was that famous beauty, Elizabeth Gunning, the wife of two dukes
and the mother of four. Her sister had married the Earl of Coventry.
“The two beautiful sisters,” says Horace Walpole, “were going on the
stage, when they are at once exalted almost as high as they could be,
were countessed and double-duchessed.”[718] The duchess, by her first
husband, the Duke of Hamilton, was the mother of the unsuccessful
competitor for the Douglas estates, and was therefore “prejudiced
against Boswell, who had shown all the bustling importance of his
character in the Douglas cause.”[719] Johnson, on hearing the state
of the case, “was clear that Boswell ought to pay his respects at the
castle. I mentioned,” continues Boswell, “that I was afraid my company
might be disagreeable to the duchess. He treated the objection with a
manly disdain, ‘_That_, Sir, he must settle with his wife.’ He insisted
that I should not go to the castle this day before dinner, as it would
look like seeking an invitation. ‘But,’ said I, ‘if the duke invites us
to dine with him to-morrow, shall we accept?’ ‘Yes, Sir,’ I think he
said, ‘to be sure.’ But he added, ‘He won’t ask us.’” By the duke, who
was sitting over his wine, Boswell was most politely received; but when
he was taken into the drawing-room and introduced, neither the duchess
nor the ladies with her took the least notice of him. The following day
he and Johnson were shown through the castle. “It is a stately place,”
said Johnson. “What I admire here is the total defiance of expense.”
In a low one-horse chair our two travellers were driven through “the
duke’s spacious park and rising forests.” [Sidenote: FINE OLD TREES
AT INVERARY.] “I had,” writes Boswell, “a particular pride in showing
Dr. Johnson a great number of fine old trees, to compensate for the
nakedness which had made such an impression on him on the eastern coast
of Scotland.” Pennant noticed pines nine feet, and beeches from nine to
twelve feet in girth, planted, it was said, by the Earl of Argyle who
was beheaded in 1685. They have grown to a noble size, and in one part
form a long avenue, which would grace that English county which takes
its name from its beech woods. Even in the Black Forest I do not know
that I have seen larger pines. The planting still goes on. A fine young
Spanish chestnut boasts in the inscription which it bears that in the
year 1858 it was planted by Lord Tennyson. “Would,” I exclaimed as I
read the words, “that twin chestnuts of stately growth in like manner
commemorated the visit of Johnson and Boswell.” But Johnson’s trees are
scattered broadcast over Scotland. _Si monumentum quæris, circumspice._
[Illustration: THE AVENUE OF BEECHES.]
[Sidenote: TWO BEAUTIFUL SISTERS.]
The fine collection of arms of which he took much notice still
adorns the hall. Of the pictures no mention is made by either of the
travellers, though in more than one they might have recognized the work
of their friend Sir Joshua. Here is his full-length portrait of the
beautiful duchess, “about whom the world had gone mad” one-and-twenty
years before. When she was presented at Court, “the crowd was so
great,” writes Horace Walpole, “that even the noble mob in the
drawing-room clambered upon chairs and tables to look at her.” As she
passed down to Scotland, “seven hundred people,” it was reported, “sat
up all night in and about an inn in Yorkshire to see her get into
her post-chaise next morning.”[720] Here, too, is a small but lovely
picture of her sister, the Countess of Coventry. On her going down to
her husband’s country seat near Worcester, “a shoemaker in that town
got two guineas and a half by showing a shoe that he was making for her
at a penny a-piece.”[721] In striking contrast with the two sisters are
many of the portraits which hang on the walls. It is a strange company
which is brought together: Mary, Queen of Scots, and her half-sister,
a Countess of Argyle; Oliver Cromwell; the Marquis of Argyle, and just
below him Charles II., who sent him to the scaffold; the earl, his son,
who was beheaded by James II.; and John, the great duke, who broke
the neck of the rebellion in 1715, and rendered desperate the cause of
James II.’s son.
[Illustration: THE HALL, INVERARY CASTLE.]
[Illustration: THE OLD DINING ROOM.]
[Sidenote: DINNER AT INVERARY.]
The room in which our travellers dined is much in the state in which
they saw it; the walls panelled with the same festoons, and the chairs
adorned with the same gilding and the same tapestry. But it is turned
to other uses. No “splendid dinner” is served up in it such as Johnson
enjoyed and praised; no “luxuries” such as he defended. No Lady Betty
Hamilton can quietly take her chair after dinner, and lean upon the
back of it, as she listens eagerly to the great talker, who is unaware
that she is just behind him. No Boswell can with a steady countenance
have the satisfaction for once to look a duchess in the face, as with
a respectful air he drinks to her good health. The tables are covered
with books and magazines, and pamphlets, and correspondence. It is the
duke’s business-room where he sees his chamberlain,[722] and where
his librarian receives and sorts the new publications which are ever
coming in, before he transfers them to the shelves of the library.
The noble drawing-room remains unchanged—the gilded ceiling, the old
French tapestry covering the walls, the gilt tapestry chairs, the oaken
floor, up and down which the duke and Boswell walked conversing, while
her grace made Dr. Johnson come and sit by her. All is the same, except
that time has dealt kindly by the tapestry and the gilding, and refined
them in their fading.
[Illustration: TAPESTRY BEDROOM.]
Faujas Saint-Fond, who spent three days in the castle a few years
later, is full of praise of everything which he saw. The duke and his
family, he says, spoke French with a purity not unworthy of the highest
society in Paris. The cookery, with the exception of a few dishes,
was French, and was excellent. There was an abundance of hot-house
fruits. There were silver forks instead of “ces petits tridens d’acier
bien aigus, en forme de dard, fixés sur un manche, dont on se sert
ordinairement en Angleterre, même dans les maisons où l’on donne de
fort bons dîners.”[723] Still more did he rejoice at seeing napkins on
the table, a rare sight in England. The hours of meals were, breakfast
at ten o’clock, dinner at half-past four, and supper at ten. At dinner,
after the ladies had withdrawn, “la cérémonie des _toasts_” lasted at
least three-quarters of an hour![724]
[Sidenote: LORD MACAULAY’S GRANDFATHER.]
At Inverary Johnson met not only the descendants of a long line of
famous statesmen, but also the ancestor of a great historian. Lord
Macaulay’s grandfather was at this time Minister of Inverary. He passed
the evening with our travellers at their inn after they had returned
from dining at the Castle, and got somewhat roughly handled in talk.
“When Dr. Johnson spoke of people whose principles were good,
but whose practice was faulty, Mr. Macaulay said, he had no
notion of people being in earnest in their good professions,
whose practice was not suitable to them. The doctor grew warm,
and said, ‘Sir, are you so grossly ignorant of human nature, as
not to know that a man may be very sincere in good principles,
without having good practice?’”
On this Sir George Trevelyan remarks in his life of his uncle:—“When
we think what well-known ground this was to Lord Macaulay it is
impossible to suppress a wish that the great talker had been at hand
to avenge his grandfather and grand-uncle.”[725] “A hundred to one on
Sam Johnson,” say we. It is a pity that it was not at the Manse that
they spent that Sunday evening; for there the little child who was
one day to make the name of Zachary Macaulay famous as the liberator
of the slaves would have gazed with eager open eyes on the great
Englishman, who had startled the grave men at Oxford by giving as
his toast:—“Here’s to the next insurrection of the negroes in the
West-Indies.”