BALLENCRIEFF.
As I wandered about the ruins, and listened to the jackdaws chattering overhead “with nothing conclusive in their talk,” how much I regretted that Boswell’s indolence had kept him from recording the conversation which passed here in those three November days between the old Jacobite lord and his famous guest.
Johnson’s tour was rapidly drawing to a close. Brundusium is at hand.
“Brundusium longæ finis chartæque viæque.”[852]
SIR JOHN DALRYMPLE.
He wrote from Edinburgh to Mrs. Thrale on Thursday, November 18: “I long to be at home, and have taken a place in the coach for Monday; I hope, therefore, to be in London on Friday, the 26th, in the evening. Please to let Mrs. Williams know.” On Saturday he accepted the invitation of Sir John Dalrymple, a cousin of Lord Hailes, and author of Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland, to visit him at his house at Cranston, twelve miles from Edinburgh on the middle road to Newcastle. There he was to be taken up by the London coach. Three years earlier Boswell had described Dalrymple as “a very knowing, lively companion;”[853] but his feelings towards him were changed. He had not worshipped the image which he had set up. Nevertheless, “he was ambitious,” Boswell writes, “of having such a guest; but as I was well assured, that at this very time he had joined with some of his prejudiced countrymen in railing at Dr. Johnson, and had said, he wondered how any gentleman of Scotland could keep company with him, I thought he did not deserve the honour; yet, as it might be a convenience to Dr. Johnson, I contrived that he should accept the invitation, and engaged to conduct him.” The convenience consisted in the fact that, as his house was on the London road, Johnson would not have to rise so early by two hours to catch the coach. Dalrymple had lately made a good deal of stir both in the world of literature and politics by the publication of his Memoirs. From these it had been learnt for the first time that Algernon Sidney had been a pensioner of the King of France. Horace Walpole had been roused to anger by the exposure of a man whose memory he revered. “Need I tell you,” he wrote to Mason, “that Sir John Dalrymple, the accuser of bribery, was turned out of his place of Solicitor of the Customs for taking bribes from brewers?”[854] Hume was astonished at “the rage against him, on account of the most commendable action in his life,” but he despised “his ranting, bouncing style.”[855] Johnson had an equal contempt for it, calling it “his foppery.” Boswell records in the spring of the year:
“I mentioned Sir John Dalrymple’s Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland, and his discoveries to the prejudice of Lord Russell and Algernon Sidney. Johnson. ‘Why, Sir, every body who had just notions of government thought them rascals before. It is well that all mankind now see them to be rascals.... This Dalrymple seems to be an honest fellow; for he tells equally what makes against both sides. But nothing can be poorer than his mode of writing, it is the mere bouncing of a schoolboy: Great He! but greater She! and such stuff.’”
In describing the last scene between Lord and Lady Russell he had said, “they parted for ever—he great in this last act of his life, but she greater.”[856]
His portrait, which I saw in the Loan Exhibition of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, shows a cold conceited face. Dr. Carlyle gives an unpleasing account of him. After recounting how at a dinner he had once had “to divide a haunch of venison among fifteen without getting any portion of fat for himself,” he continues, “But what signifies that, when you have an opportunity of obliging your friends? as Sir J. Dalrymple said to me one day when we had a haunch at the Poker, flattering me for a good piece, for he was a gourmand.”[857] How must the indignation of this flattering glutton have been excited at the careless and even rude treatment which he received from our travellers, who had engaged to dine with him on the day they left Edinburgh! They were very late in starting, for Johnson in his good-nature had let himself be detained “by young Mr. Tytler who came to show some essays which he had written.” They did not leave till one o’clock, and then Boswell insisted on their going to see Rosslyn Castle and the Chapel. They dined and drank tea at the inn. As if this were not enough, and as if no baronet were waiting dinner, they next went to Hawthornden, and “had Rare Ben in mind” who one hundred and forty-three years earlier had there visited the poet Drummond. “It was very late,” writes Boswell, “before we reached the seat of Sir John Dalrymple, who, certainly with some reason, was not in very good humour. Our conversation was not brilliant. We supped, and went to bed in ancient rooms, which would have better suited the climate of Italy in summer, than that of Scotland in the month of November.” Dalrymple was alive when this account was published. Not finding their quarters to their mind they went on next evening two miles further to the inn at Blackshields. Pennant, who had passed a night there in September of the previous year, describes “the country as good, full of corn, and decked with numbers of small woods. The inn is good.”[858] A RUNAWAY COUPLE. Just one year and two days before our travellers arrived there, on November 19, 1772, one Mr. John Scott of Newcastle had married, in this same village and most probably in the inn, pretty Miss Elizabeth Surtees. She had escaped by a ladder from her father’s house and had run with him across the Border. He was twenty-one and she eighteen. “Jack Scott,” said a friend on hearing of it, “has run off with Bessy Surtees, and the poor lad is undone.” In the end he became Lord Chancellor and Earl of Eldon. The certificate of marriage shows that the ceremony was performed in the presence of James and Thomas Fairbairn. From a paper in the Gentleman’s Magazine I know that Fairbairn was the innkeeper’s name.[859]
THE END OF THE TOUR.