“KING BOB’S” CASTLE.
Dundonald Castle, in which Robert II. lived and died, our travellers visited on Monday morning. “It has long been unroofed,” writes Boswell, “and though of considerable size we could not by any power of imagination, figure it as having been a suitable habitation for majesty. Dr. Johnson, to irritate my old Scottish enthusiasm, was very jocular on the homely accommodation of “King Bob,” and roared and laughed till the ruins echoed.”
The castle belongs to two periods. The original keep was eighty-one feet long, forty broad, and seventy high. It was afterwards lengthened at the southern end by seventeen feet. “The great hall has been a very noble apartment.”[763] Boswell justly praises the view. “It stands,” he says, “on a beautiful rising ground, which is seen at a great distance on several quarters, and from whence there is an extensive prospect of the rich district of Cunninghame, the western sea, the isle of Arran, and a part of the northern coast of Ireland.” Camden quaintly says that “the name Cunninghame, if one interpret it, is as much as the Kings Habitation, by which a man may guess how commodious and pleasant it is.”[764] As I sat on the Castle hill, and looked over the fine country to the north-west, I could have wished that the tall chimneys of Irvine, pouring forth clouds of smoke, had been out of sight. In the plain, at the distance of about a mile, a thin line of steam showed where a heavy train was creeping along the railway. Just beneath us the low spire of the church rose among the trees, while in the gardens of the cottages that clustered around it there was an abundance of fruit trees and of vegetables which would have delighted Johnson’s heart, such as “King Bob” never saw or even dreamt of. Beyond the village were undulating fields of well-cultivated land. To the west, almost within bow-shot, stands a steep rocky hill—a counterpart of that on which the castle is placed—all covered with wood. High over the old ruins the swifts were flying and screaming. The sole tenants of the great hall were some black cattle whom my entrance disturbed. Where kings once kept their court, and frowned and were flattered,
“There but houseless cattle go
To shield them from the storm.”
High up on the wall of the keep there are two stone shields, on which still can be traced the royal and the Stewart arms. Little did they who carved them think that the day was to come when they would have sunk into the ornaments of a cow-house.
OLD AUCHANS.
THE COUNTESS OF EGLINTOUNE.
From Dundonald our travellers rode on a short distance to Auchans, the house of the Dowager Countess of Eglintoune. Johnson, in a letter to Mrs. Thrale, describes her as “a lady who for many years gave the laws of elegance to Scotland. She is in full vigour of mind, and not much impaired in form. She is only eighty-three. She was remarking that her marriage was in the year eight; and I told her my birth was in nine. ‘Then,’ says she, ‘I am just old enough to be your mother, and I will take you for my son.’ She called Boswell the boy. ‘Yes, Madam,’ said I, ‘we will send him to school.’ ‘He is already,’ said she, ‘in a good school;’ and expressed her hope of his improvement. At last night came, and I was sorry to leave her.” “She had been,” writes Boswell, “the admiration of the gay circles of life, and the patroness of poets.” To her Allan Ramsay had dedicated his Gentle Shepherd, and Hamilton of Bangour had addressed verses. With his reception Johnson was delighted, so congenial were their principles in church and state. “In her bed-rooms,” says Dr. Robert Chambers, “was hung a portrait of her sovereign de jure, the ill-starred Charles Edward, so situated as to be the first object which met her sight on awaking in the morning.”[765] She who had patronised poets and worshipped princes in her last years amused herself by taming rats. “She had a panel in the oak wainscot of her dining-room, which she tapped upon and opened at meal-times, when ten or twelve jolly rats came tripping forth and joined her at table.” She died in 1780, at the age of ninety-one.[766]