Footsteps of Dr. Johnson (Scotland)

by George Birkbeck Norman Hill

Johnson paid a visit also to Patrick, Lord Elibank, and stayed two nights “at his seat in the country.” I at first thought that this was Darnhall, near Peebles, and accordingly visited that most delightful spot. But I have little doubt that it was at Ballencrieff, in the neighbourhood of Haddington, where he stayed.[838] Smollett, when he takes Matthew Bramble through this part of the country, makes him say: “I intended to pay my respects to Lord Elibank, whom I had the honour to know at London many years ago. He lives in this part of Lothian, but was gone to the North on a visit. I have long revered him for his humanity and universal intelligence, over and above the entertainment arising from the originality of his character.”[839] He was a Jacobite, and a member of that famous Cocoa Tree Club, which, according to Boswell, “was sacred of old to loyalty.” The loyalty, by the way, was rather towards the third James than the second George. Horace Walpole tells how, after Culloden, “the Duke of Cumberland gave Brigadier Mordaunt the Pretender’s coach, on condition he rode up to London in it. ‘That I will, Sir,’ said he, ‘and drive till it stops of its own accord at the Cocoa Tree.’”[840] Lord Elibank had been deeper in the cause than was known at the time. According to Sir Walter Scott, the Stuart Papers show that “he carried on a correspondence with the Chevalier after 1745, which was not suspected by his most intimate friends.”[841] He probably was made to pay dearly for his attachment to the exiled family. Lord Cromartie, one of the rebel lords, “had been,” says Walpole, “receiver of the rents of the king’s second son in Scotland, which it was understood he should not account for, and by that means had six hundred pounds a year from the Government. Lord Elibank, a very prating, impertinent Jacobite, was bound for him in nine thousand pounds, for which the duke is determined to sue him.”[842] If the money was exacted, the loss must have been severely felt, for Elibank was somewhat parsimonious. “When he heard of John Home’s pension, he said, ‘It is a very laudable grant, and I rejoice at it; but it is no more in the power of the king to make John Home rich than to make me poor.’”[843] Perhaps when he said this he was thinking how the king had done his best to impoverish him by exacting “the penalty and forfeit of his bond,” and had failed.

One day he and Dr. Robertson called on Johnson at Boswell’s house, and the talk turned on the Rebellion. Lord Elibank, addressing the historian, said: “Mr. Robertson, the first thing that gave me a high opinion of you was your saying in the Select Society, while parties ran high, soon after the year 1745, that you did not think worse of a man’s moral character for his having been in rebellion. This was venturing to utter a liberal sentiment, while both sides had a detestation of each other.” Such a sentiment must have been particularly comforting to a man who perhaps was still plotting treason. The Select Society had been founded in 1754 by Allan Ramsay the painter, aided by Robertson, Hume, and Adam Smith. “It rubbed off all corners by collision,” says Dr. Carlyle, “and made the literati of Edinburgh less captious and pedantic than they were elsewhere.”[844] If collision always rubbed off corners, there was enough between Elibank and Hume to have produced the greatest smoothness and even polish. The historian, in the fifth volume of his History of England, speaks of him as “a person that has writ an Enquiry historical and critical into the evidence against Mary Queen of Scots.” He goes on to accuse him with having “almost directly called him a liar,” and charges him in his turn with being guilty of “scandalous artifices.” He concludes with that well-known passage, in which he maintains that “there are indeed three events in our history which may be regarded as touchstones of party-men. An English Whig, who asserts the reality of the Popish Plot, an Irish Catholic, who denies the massacre in 1641, and a Scotch Jacobite, who maintains the innocence of Queen Mary, must be considered as men beyond the reach of argument or reason, and must be left to their prejudices.”[845] In a letter to Robertson, written some years earlier than this note, Hume says: “I desire my compliments to Lord Elibank. I hope his lordship has forgot his vow of answering us, and of washing Queen Mary white. I am afraid that is impossible; but his lordship is very well qualified to gild her.”[846] Hume, with all his good nature, was not a little touchy, and perhaps took offence where no offence was meant. Lord Elibank had been “the early patron of Robertson and Home, the tragick poet, who when they were ministers of country parishes, lived near his seat. He told me,” continues Boswell, “‘I saw these lads had talents, and they were much with me.’ I hope they will pay a grateful tribute to his memory.” According to Dr. Carlyle, they found a far better way of showing their gratitude, for “they cured him of his contempt for the Presbyterian clergy, made him change or soften down many of his original opinions, and prepared him for becoming a most agreeable member of the Literary Society of Edinburgh, among whom he lived during the remainder of his life, admiring and admired.”[847] Besides his Enquiry, he published several other “small pieces of distinguished merit,” according to Boswell. National Debts and the Currency were among the subjects of which he treated.[848] Dr. Carlyle describes him as “rather a humourist than a man of humour; one who defended paradoxes and uncommon opinions with a copiousness and ingenuity that was surprising.” This part of his character would have endeared him to Johnson, who liked a tavern because, as he said, “wine there prompts me to free conversation, and an interchange of discourse with those whom I most love; I dogmatise and am contradicted, and in this conflict of opinions and sentiments I find delight.”[849] Though Johnson was fond of his society, and once said “that he was never in his company without learning something,” yet speaking of him on another occasion he said, “Sir, there is nothing conclusive in his talk.” Lord Elibank’s admiration of Johnson was very high. Yet he need not have gone so far as to flatter him at the expense of his own country. Having missed seeing him on his first visit to Edinburgh, he wrote to Boswell: “I could not persuade myself there was anything in Scotland worthy to have a summer of Samuel Johnson bestowed on it; but since he has done us that compliment, for heaven’s sake inform me of your motions. I will attend them most religiously, and though I should regret to let Mr. Johnson go a mile out of his way on my account, old as I am, I shall be glad to go five hundred miles to enjoy a day of his company.” Johnson, in his plain truthfulness, on the very day on which Lord Elibank wrote this extravagant letter, said that “he would go two miles out of his way to see Lord Monboddo.” As five hundred to two, so perhaps was Johnson’s accuracy of talk to Lord Elibank’s. To the mean way in which his lordship spoke of Scotland, as if it were beneath the great Englishman’s notice, I much prefer the spirit of his countryman, who, according to Boswell, “would say of Dr. Johnson, ‘Damned rascal! to talk as he does of the Scotch!’” However, he had none of that smallness of mind common enough among the high-born, which would not let him enjoy Johnson’s strong talk. He was “one of the great who sought his society. He well observed that if a great man procured an interview with him, and did not wish to see him more, it showed a mere idle curiosity, and a wretched want of relish for extraordinary powers of mind.” Such an idle curiosity and such a wretched want of relish were shown by George III.

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BALLENCRIEFF.

The old house at Ballencrieff, in which Johnson “passed two nights and dined thrice,” as Boswell accurately records, is now a melancholy ruin. It was burnt down about twenty years ago. For many years previously, deserted by its owners, it had been left in the care of a woman who lived in an outbuilding, which in the old days had formed the kitchen. It was here, I believe, that were prepared those “performances of a nobleman’s French cook which so much displeased Johnson, that he exclaimed with vehemence, ‘I’d throw such a rascal into the river.’”[850] Though the flames no longer roared up the chimney as they had done for many a long year, still a fire was kept up and soot accumulated. One day the old woman tried to get rid of it by setting it alight, a primitive mode of chimney-sweeping not uncommon in that part of the country. A spark, it is conjectured, was carried into the main building through a broken pane, and falling on some straw brought in by the birds who nested there, set an upper room on fire. The summer had been unusually dry. The flames spread rapidly from one end of the house to the other; so fierce was the blaze that a large beech-tree which stood at some little distance was burnt also. Part of the house is evidently of considerable antiquity, being very solidly built, with vaulted chambers and walls many feet in thickness. In the year 1625, as I judge from an inscription on the wall, great additions were made. It is pleasantly placed, with meadow-land on three sides, and at a little distance from a fine range of hills, which boasts of a Roman camp and of a lofty column to one of Wellington’s generals. So strangely do the ages mingle here. From the upper windows on a clear day a delightful view must have been enjoyed of the Forth, with the little island of Inch Keith and the hills of Fife beyond. Near the house there is a row of yew-trees which could not have looked young in Johnson’s time, and holly hedges leading up to it, between which, perhaps, he walked, for they too look old. The land is in the occupation of a market-gardener, who cultivates it with a success which would have won his praise, and made him allow that something beside the sloe is brought to perfection in Scotland. The whole district abounds in fruitful gardens and orchards, and fine plantations of trees. As I looked at the luxuriance of growth, and meditated on the change that had been wrought in a century and a quarter, I thought that to Johnson, who had shown the nakedness of the land, a grateful and penitent people, who had profited by his exhortations, should raise a memorial as the god of gardens. According to a tradition which has come down to our time, a group of ash-trees was planted by Lord Elibank on his suggestion.[851] Planting had begun earlier than he thought. “It may be doubted,” he said, “whether before the Union any man between Edinburgh and England had ever set a tree.” The market-gardener told me that he had counted one hundred and ninety rings on some tall trees near the house, which had been cut down fourteen years before. This would show that they were planted not only before the Union, but also before the Revolution, for though a ring marks the growth of a year, yet in an old tree many of the rings cannot be distinguished.