OLD AUCHANS.
OLD AUCHANS.
Auchans—Old Auchans as it is now called—since the countess’s death has been chiefly inhabited by caretakers. It was built in 1644, at a time when in the houses of the great comfort was more studied than means of defence. Nevertheless “we find some shot-holes near the entrance doorway.”[767] It is finely placed among the trees, with views of Dundonald Castle on one side and of the sea in the distance on the other. The interior has been greatly altered by the division of rooms and blocking up of windows and passages. We were only shown a small part of it, and looked with sadness on the broken ceiling in what by tradition is known as the dining-room. It is a pity that so interesting and so fine a building should have suffered under the neglect of a whole century. It is so strongly built that it looks as if it could, at no excessive expense, be once more made habitable. Johnson had not been easily persuaded to visit it, but “he was so much pleased with his entertainment, that he owned,” says Boswell, “that I had done well to force him out.” No less pleased was the old countess, “who, when they were going away, embraced him, saying, ‘My dear son, farewell.’” Neither of this visit nor of one which he had paid two days earlier to the Earl of Loudoun, who “jumped for joy” at the thought of seeing him, does he make any mention in his book. He was the last man to indulge “in that vain ostentatious importance,” which he censured in many people, “of quoting the authority of dukes and lords.” He merely says that, “on our way from Glasgow to Auchinleck we found several places remarkable enough in themselves, but already described by those who viewed them at more leisure, or with much more skill.”
[Auchinleck (November 2-8).]
LORD AUCHINLECK.
On Tuesday, November 2, our travellers having ordered a chaise from Kilmarnock, drove to Auchinleck, where they arrived in time for dinner. “We purpose,” wrote Johnson that same evening, “to stay here some days, more or fewer, as we are used.” He said “we” advisedly, for he knew that not only between Lord Auchinleck and himself there was little in common, but that also between the father and son there was no freedom of intercourse. “My father,” Boswell once complained, “cannot bear that his son should talk with him as a man.”[768] How uncomfortable was his position at home is shown by a letter which he wrote to his friend the Rev. Mr. Temple in September, 1775:
“I came to Auchinleck on Monday last, and I have patiently lived at it till Saturday evening.... It is hardly credible how difficult it is for a man of my sensibility to support existence in the family where I now am. My father, whom I really both respect and affectionate (if that is a word, for it is a different feeling from that which is expressed by love, which I can say of you from my soul), is so different from me. We divaricate so much, as Dr. Johnson said, that I am often hurt when, I dare say, he means no harm: and he has a method of treating me which makes me feel myself like a timid boy, which to Boswell (comprehending all that my character does in my own imagination and in that of a wonderful number of mankind) is intolerable. His wife too, whom in my conscience I cannot condemn for any capital bad quality, is so narrow-minded, and, I don’t know how, so set upon keeping him under her own management, and so suspicious and so sourishly tempered that it requires the utmost exertion of practical philosophy to keep myself quiet. I however have done so all this week to admiration: nay, I have appeared good-humoured; but it has cost me drinking a considerable quantity of strong beer to dull my faculties.”[769]
It can scarcely be doubted that he is describing the position which he himself held at home, in an essay which he published in the London Magazine in 1781 (p. 253):
“I knew a father who was a violent Whig, and used to attack his son for being a Tory, upbraiding him with being deficient in ‘noble sentiments of liberty,’ while at the same time he made this son live under his roof in such bondage, that he was not only afraid to stir from home without leave, like a child, but durst scarcely open his mouth in his father’s presence. This was sad living. Yet I would rather see such an excess of awe than a degree of familiarity between father and son by which all reverence is destroyed.”