LORD JEFFREY AT TARBET.
At Stuckgown, close to Tarbet, Lord Jeffrey for many years passed a few weeks of every summer, in a quietness and solitude which have for ever fled the place. Writing from Tarbet on August 5, 1818, he says: “Here we are in a little inn on the banks of Loch Lomond, in the midst of the mists of the mountains, the lakes, heaths, rocks, and cascades which have been my passion since I was a boy, and to which, like a boy, I have run away the instant I could get my hands clear of law, and review, and Edinburgh. They have no post-horses in the Highlands, and we sent away those that brought us here, with orders to come back for us to morrow, and so we are left without a servant, entirely at the mercy of the natives.” He goes on to mention a steam-boat “which circumnavigates the whole lake every day in about ten hours. It was certainly very strange and striking to hear and see it hissing and roaring past the headlands of our little bay, foaming and spouting like an angry whale; but on the whole it rather vulgarises the scene too much, and I am glad that it is found not to answer, and is to be dropped next year.”[729] At Tarbet the tourist who is oppressed with the size of the hotel and the army of waiters, and who sees the pier as I saw it crowned with an automatic sweetmeat machine, may well wish that the steam-boat had never been found to answer. The scene is hopelessly vulgarised. It is fast sinking into the paradise of cockneys. I asked for that variety of bread which I remember to have seen served up there thirty-seven years ago. I was scornfully told that in those days the Scotch had not known how to bake, but that now they could make a large loaf as well as anyone. At Inverary I had in vain asked for oat-cakes at my hotel. If Johnson were to make his journey in these present times, and were confined to the big tourists’ hotels, he would certainly no longer say that an epicure, wherever he had supped, would wish to breakfast in Scotland.
INCH GALBRAITH.
THE COLQUHOUNS OF ROSEDEW.
From Tarbet he rode along the shores of Loch Lomond to Rosedew,[730] the house of Sir James Colquhoun. “It was a place,” says the historian of Dumbartonshire, “rich in historic associations, but about 1770 it was superseded by a new mansion, to which large additions have since been made.”[731] Here Boswell passed in review Johnson’s courteous behaviour at Inverary, and said, “‘You were quite a fine gentleman when with the duchess.’ He answered in good humour, ‘Sir, I look upon myself as a very polite man.’” Next morning “we took,” writes Johnson, “a boat to rove upon the lake. It has about thirty islands, of which twenty belong to Sir James. Young Colquhoun[732] went into the boat with us, but a little agitation of the water frighted him to shore. We passed up and down and landed upon one small island,[733] on which are the ruins of a castle; and upon another much larger, which serves Sir James for a park, and is remarkable for a large wood of yew trees.” Just one hundred years later, on December 18, 1873, that very fate befell one of his descendants which the young Colquhoun dreaded for himself. In the darkness of a winter’s evening his boat was upset as he was coming home from the Yew Island, and he was drowned with three of his gamekeepers and a boy. It was never known how the accident happened, for no one escaped; but the boat was heavily laden with the dead bodies of some stags, which they had shot in the island, and the unhappy men were weighed down with their accoutrements and the ammunition which they carried. The yew trees were planted, it was said, on the advice of King Robert Bruce, in order to furnish the Lennox men with trusty bows.[734] The old castle, “on which the osprey built her annual nest,” is so much buried in ivy that it is not easily distinguished from the surrounding woods. ROVING ON LOCH LOMOND. We hired a boat at Luss and in our turn roved upon the lake. We landed on one of the islands and lunched on the top of a rock by the ruins of a second castle. Loch Lomond, studded with islands, lay like a mirror beneath us, with the huge Ben Lomond for a noble background. From time to time a boat broke the smoothness of the water, and the cry of a gull, or the bark of a far-away dog, the stillness of the air. We spoke of the heat and bustle of the world, but imagination almost refused to picture them in so peaceful a spot. Our boatman was a man of a strong mind, which had not been suffered to lie barren. He bore his part well in a talk on books. I had chanced to mention the serfs who worked in the coal-mines and salt-pans in Scotland; he at once struck into the conversation. “Sir Walter Scott,” he said, “makes one of his characters say, ‘he would not take him back like a collier on a salter.’ This made me look the matter up for I did not understand what he meant.” He praised the old Scotch common schools. “We Scotchmen,” he proudly said, “have had education for three hundred years. A Scotch working-man would starve to death to give his son a good education.” OLD AND NEW DOMINIES. The present race of schoolmasters who are “paid by results,” he contrasted unfavourably with those whom he had known in his boyhood. “The old Dominies would willingly teach all that they knew, and grudged no time to a boy who was eager for knowledge; but now they are like other people, and when they have done their day’s work they will do no more.” In the village club to which he belonged, they had in the last two or three winters engaged for a few weeks a young Glasgow student to teach them elocution, “for how could they enjoy Shakespeare if they did not know how to read him properly?” He praised the Colquhouns. “They would never send any of their tenants to prison for poaching. They might fine them, but the money they would give away in charity.” He spoke of the old clan feeling, and of the protection given by the laird. His grandfather, who was a farmer, a Macpherson by name, had married a Macqueen.[735] On a rapid fall in the price of Highland cattle he fell into money difficulties, and was harshly threatened with a forced sale by one of his creditors. The Laird of the Macqueens said significantly to this man: “You may do whatever you like against Macpherson, but remember that his wife is a Macqueen.” The hint was enough, and the proceedings were at once dropped. Our boatman had read Johnson’s Journey to the Western Islands, but said that Scotchmen feel too sore about him to like reading him. I opened the book, for I had it with me, and read the concluding words in which he says: “Novelty and ignorance must always be reciprocal, and I cannot but be conscious that my thoughts on national manners are the thoughts of one who has seen but little.” My boatman was much struck with his modesty, and seemed to think that he had formed too severe a judgment.
YEW TREE ISLAND.
Boswell was not so careful in recording Johnson’s talk on the Lake as I was with our boatman’s. “I recollect,” he writes, “none of his conversation, except that, when talking of dress, he said, ‘Sir, were I to have any thing fine, it should be very fine. Were I to wear a ring, it should not be a bauble, but a stone of great value. Were I to wear a laced or embroidered waistcoat, it should be very rich. I had once a very rich laced waistcoat, which I wore the first night of my tragedy.’” Johnson, nearly five and twenty years before, sat in one of the side-boxes of Drury Lane Theatre, in a scarlet waistcoat, with rich gold lace, and a gold-laced hat, listening to the catcalls whistling before the curtain rose; how little could he have thought that one day he would boast of his costume as he was roving in a boat upon Loch Lomond!