KINGSBURGH.
FLORA MACDONALD.
At Portree our travellers took horse for Kingsburgh, a farmhouse on Loch Snizort, whither they went, though a little off their road, in order to see Flora Macdonald. She had married a gentleman of the same clan, and so had not changed her name. “Here,” writes Johnson, “I had the honour of saluting the far-famed Miss Flora Macdonald, who conducted the Prince, dressed as her maid, through the English forces, from the island of Lewis; and when she came to Skye, dined with the English officers, and left her maid below. She must then have been a very young lady—she is now not old—of a pleasing person and elegant behaviour. She told me that she thought herself honoured by my visit; and I am sure that whatever regard she bestowed on me was liberally repaid.” Boswell describes her as “a little woman of a genteel appearance, and uncommonly mild and well-bred. To see Dr. Samuel Johnson, the great champion of the English Tories, salute Miss Flora Macdonald in the Isle of Skye was a striking sight.” By salute I have little doubt that both Boswell and Johnson meant kiss. Johnson in his Dictionary gives it as the third meaning of the word, though he cites no authority for the usage. “The Scotch,” wrote Topham in 1774, “have still the custom of salutation on introduction to strangers. It very seldom happens that the salute is a voluntary one, and it frequently is the cause of disgust and embarrassment to the fair sex.”[637] By the uncouth appearance of the man who thus saluted her, Flora Macdonald might with good reason have been astonished, for “the news had reached her that Mr. Boswell was coming to Skye, and one Mr. Johnson, a young English buck, with him.” Her husband, “a large stately man, with a steady, sensible countenance,” who was going to try his fortune in America, was perhaps for that reason the more careless of obeying the laws of the country he was leaving. This evening he wore the Highland costume. “He had his tartan plaid thrown about him, a large blue bonnet with a knot of black riband like a cockade, a brown short coat of a kind of duffil, a tartan waistcoat with gold buttons and gold button-holes, a bluish philibeg, and tartan hose.” The bed-curtains of the room in which our travellers slept were also of tartan. Johnson’s bed had whatever fame could attach to it through its having been occupied for one night “by the grandson of the unfortunate King James the Second,” to borrow Boswell’s description of him. The grandson, before many years passed over his head, proved not unworthy of the grandfather—equally mean and equally selfish. The happy failure of the rebels hindered him from displaying his vices, with a kingdom for his stage. His worthlessness, which though it might have been suspected from his stock, could not have been known in his youth, takes away nothing, however, from the just fame of Flora Macdonald, “whose name will be mentioned in history, and, if courage and fidelity be virtues, mentioned with honour.” Johnson, after recounting how “the sheets which the Prince used were never put to any meaner offices, but were wrapped up by the lady of the house, and at last, according to her desire, were laid round her in her grave,” ends the passage with much satisfaction, by observing: “These are not Whigs.” Upon the table in the room he left a piece of paper “on which he had written with his pencil these words: Quantum cedat virtutibus aurum.”[638] He was thinking, no doubt, of the reward of £30,000 set upon Charles Edward’s head, and of the fidelity of the poor Highlanders who one and all refused to betray him. To more than fifty people he was forced in his wanderings to trust his life, many of them “in the lowest paths of fortune,” and not one of them proved faithless. It was well for him that he had not had to trust to fifty hangers-on of a Court.
THE FERRY TO KINGSBURGH.
KINGSBURGH.
The old house in which he had taken shelter for one night, and where Boswell and Johnson were so hospitably received, where they heard from their hostess the strange story of her adventures—this interesting old house no longer exists. Some of the trees which surround the modern residence must be old enough to have seen not only our two travellers, but also the fugitive Prince. As we looked upon it from the opposite shore of the narrow loch it seemed a pleasant spot, nearly facing the west, sheltered from the east by hills, and embosomed in trees, with meadows in front sloping down to the sea. In the rear rose barren dreary hills, but all their lower slopes were green with grass and with the young crops of oats. Far down the loch the green slopes ended in a steep rocky coast. In the distance the mountains of Lewis fringed the northern sky. The steep headland on which we sat was beautiful with grasses and flowers and ferns and heather. Of wild flowers we gathered no less than thirty-six varieties on this one small spot. We found even a lingering primrose, though June was rapidly drawing to its close. How different were our thoughts as we watched this peaceful scene from those which, one hundred and forty-three years earlier, had troubled the watchers as the young Wanderer slept! As the morning wore on, and he did not awake, one of them, in her alarm lest the soldiers should surprise him, roused her father, who was also in hiding, and begged that “they should not remain here too long. He said, ‘Let the poor man repose himself after his fatigues! and as for me, I care not, though they take off this old grey head ten or eleven years sooner than I should die in the course of nature.’ He then wrapped himself in the bed-clothes, and again fell fast asleep.” That same afternoon the two fugitives set off for Portree, where the Prince took boat for Raasay.
SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE
& RIVINGTON, LTD, PUBLISHERS, LONDON