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. 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.
ELIZABETH GUNNING.
JOHNSON’S HOST.
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.” 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.
THE AVENUE OF BEECHES.