Footsteps of Dr. Johnson (Scotland)/Chapter 15
Portree and Kingsburgh (September 12-13).
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." 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
Portree Harbour.
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."[1] 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.
Kingsburgh.
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.
At Portree our travellers took horse for Kingsburgh, a farm-house 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."[2] By the uncouth appearance ot 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 waist-coat 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 he mentioned in history, and, if courage and fidelity he 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 hy 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."[3] 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.
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 he 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.