Expedition to the Highlands in 1857.—Kindness of the Marquis of Breadalbane and others.—Camp life, its strong and peculiar attraction.—My servant.—Young Helliwell.—Scant supplies in the camp.—Nature of the camp.—Necessity for wooden floors in a bad climate.—Double-hulled boats.—Practice of landscape-painting.—Changes of effect.—Influences that governed my way of study in those days.—Attractive character of the Scottish Highlands.—Their scenery not well adapted for beginners.—My intense love of it.
In the year 1857 I made the expedition to the Highlands which afterwards became well known in consequence of my book about it.
The Marquis of Breadalbane (the first Marquis) granted me in the kindest way permission to pitch my camp wherever I liked on his extensive estate, and at the same time gave me an invitation to Taymouth Castle. The Duke of Argyll gave me leave to encamp on an island in Loch Awe that belonged to him, and Mr. Campbell of Monzie granted leave to encamp on his property on the Cladich side of the lake. I ought to have gone to Taymouth to thank Lord Breadalbane and accept the hospitality he had offered, but it happened that he had not fixed a date, so I avoided Taymouth. This was wrong, but young men are generally either forward or backward. The Marquis afterwards expressed himself, to a third person, as rather hurt that I had not been to see him.
My advice to any young man who reads this book is always to show that he appreciates kindness when it is offered. There is not very much of it in the world, but there is some, and it is not enough merely to feel grateful; we ought to accept kindness with visible satisfaction. One of my regrets now is to have sometimes failed in this, usually out of mere shyness, particularly where great people were concerned. Here is another instance. When going to Inverary on the steamer, I made the acquaintance of a very pleasant Scotchman, who turned out to be the Laird of Lamont, on Loch Fyne side. He took an interest in my artistic projects, and very kindly invited me to go and see him. Nothing would have been easier,—I was as free as a fish, and might have sailed down Loch Fyne any day on my own boat,—yet I never went.
The book called "A Painter's Camp" gave a sufficient account of my first summer in the Highlands, which was not distinguished by much variety, as I remained almost exclusively at Loch Awe; but the novelty of camp life by choice seems to have interested many readers, though they must have been already perfectly familiar with camp life by necessity in the practice of armies and the experience of African travellers. The true explanation of my proceedings is the intense and peculiar charm that there is about encamping in a wild and picturesque country. I had tasted this on the Lancashire moors, and I wanted to taste it again. Just now, whilst writing, I have on my table a letter from an English official in Africa, who tells me of his camp life. He says: "The wagon was generally my sleeping quarter. I had two tents and a riding horse, and very seldom slept in a house or put the horse in a stable. Such a life was ever, and is now, to me the acme of bliss. No man can be said to have really lived who has not camped out in some such way, and I know well that you especially will say Amen! to this sentiment. Since 1848, I have lived altogether for about six years in the open, and have never caught a cold. Only, through imprudent uncovering of the head, once in 1855, whilst drawing the topography of a mountain, I was struck down by sunstroke."
The reasons for this intense attraction in camp life are probably complex. One certainly is that it brings us nearer to nature, but a still deeper reason may be that it revives obscure associations that belong to the memory of the race, and not to that of the individual. Camping is in the same category with yachting, fishing, and the chase,—a thing practised by civilized man for his amusement, because it permits him to resume the habits of less civilized generations. The delight of encamping, for a young man in vigorous health, is the enforced activity in the open air that is inseparably connected with it.
I had only one servant, a young man from the moorland country on the borders of Lancashire and Yorkshire, perfectly well adapted to life in the Highlands. He had excellent health, and was physically a good specimen of our north-English race. It was a pleasure to see his tall straight figure going over the roughest ground with no appearance of hurry, but in fact with such unostentatious swiftness that few sportsmen could follow him. I was myself active enough then, and accustomed to wild places, but he always restrained himself when we did any mountain work together. He afterwards became well known as the "Thursday" of the "Painter's Camp," but I may give his real name here, which was Young Helliwell. Temperate, hardy, and extremely prudent, not to be caught by any allurements of vulgar pleasure, he lived wisely in youth, and will probably have fewer regrets than most people in his old age.
Young had studied the art of simple cookery at Hollins, so he was able to keep me tolerably well when we happened to have anything to eat, which was not always. There were no provision shops on Lochaweside; Inverary was at some distance in one direction and Oban in the other, and as I had never given a thought to feeding before, I was an utterly incompetent provider. The consequence was that we fasted like monks, except that our abstinence was not on any regular principle; in fact, sometimes we had so little to eat for days together that we began to feel quite weak. This gave us no anxiety, and we only laughed at it, undereating being always more conducive to good spirits than its opposite, provided that it is not carried too far.
The camp consisted of three structures,—my hut, which was made of wooden panels with plate-glass windows; a tent for Young, with a wooden floor, and wooden sides to the height of three feet; lastly, a military bell-tent that served for storing things. My hut was both painting-room and habitation, but it would have been better to have had a separate painting-room on rather a larger scale. Mr. Herkomer afterwards imitated the hut for painting from nature in Wales, and he introduced a clever improvement by erecting his hut on a circular platform with a ring-rail, so that it could be turned at will to any point of the compass. Young's tent was, in fact, also a kind of hut with a square tent for a roof.
In a climate like that of the West Highlands, wooden floors at least are almost indispensable; but a camp so arranged ceases to be a travelling camp unless you have men and horses in your daily service like a Shah of Persia. It may be moved two or three times in a summer.