Our Journey to the Hebrides

by Joseph Pennell; Elizabeth Robins Pennell

I wonder why Americans, as soon as they borrow the Englishman's clothes, must add his worst traits to their own faults. "That kind of American," a Londoner on board said to us, "has all the arrogance and insolence of a lord combined with the ignorance and snobbishness of a cad." He was right. Of all the men who rent the great deer forests of Scotland, none are such tyrants as the American millionaires who come over, as Mr. Macdonell probably will next summer, for the shooting. More than one Scotchman we met told us so plainly. There is a famous case where the cruelty of an American sportsman, who plays the laird in the Highlands, so far outdid that of the real laird that the latter came forward to defend his people against it! Now that the war of emancipation is being fought from one end of Great Britain to the other, it is to our shame that there are Americans who uphold the oppressors. One might think we struggled for freedom at home only to strive against it abroad. Mrs. Stowe could write "Uncle Tom's Cabin" on behalf of slaves in the United States; in Great Britain she saw only the nobility and benevolence of the slave-driver. From the plantations of the South there never rose such a cry of sorrow and despair as that which rang through the glens and straths of Sutherland when men were driven to the sea to make room for sheep. And yet to Mrs. Stowe this inhuman chase was but a sublime instance of the benevolent employment of superior wealth and power in shortening the struggle of advancing civilization, and elevating in a few years a whole community to a point of education and material prosperity which, unassisted, they might never have attained. You might as well call the slavery of negroes a sublime instance of the power of traders to shorten the natural course of human development, since if left to themselves the blacks could not have advanced beyond the savage state in which they were found. I fear the American love for a lord is not exaggerated, if even Mrs. Stowe could be blinded by it.

There was little to break the monotony of the journey except the Macdonells. "If the sun only shone," Mrs. Macdonell explained, "there would be the lights and shadows." As it was, however, water and sky and shores were of uniform grayness. Now and then we passed the ruins of an old castle. At a place whose name I have forgotten the boat stopped that everybody might walk a mile or more to see a water-fall. It may have been our loss that we did not go with the rest; certainly a party of Frenchmen on their return declared it une cascade vraiment charmante. At Fort Augustus the boat was three-quarters of an hour getting through the locks, and in the mean time enterprising tourists climbed the tower of the new Benedictine monastery, which stands where was once the old fort. We went instead to the telegraph office, and secured a room in Inverness, and gave the landlord an order for the letters we hoped were waiting for us at the bank. Young Benedictines in black gowns, like students of the Propaganda on the Pincian, were walking out two by two.

These were the day's excitements.

As we neared Inverness, Mr. Macdonell was again on deck. "I always go to the Caledonian Hotel in Inverness," he told us. "What I like is to stay at the best hotels, where I meet the society of England and Scotland—the real society. There's the Royal Hotel in Edinburgh; it suits me because you are sure to find it full of good English and Scotch society. I must always have the best society. Besides, they're very good hotels, both of them. In our country we boast of the products of the Chesapeake; but we have nothing so delicious, nothing so delicate, as the fresh herring they will serve you for breakfast at the Caledonian."

As we drove from the boat to

INVERNESS,

we passed the stage of the Caledonian Hotel. In it sat the Macdonell with a family of Jews, and an Englishman and his daughter who, throughout the journey, had shown themselves so superior, we should not wonder some day to find them behind the counter of an Oxford Street store. They were all on their way to mingle with the real society of England and Scotland.

It probably was a pleasure to Mr. Macdonell to find that the tobacconist next to the hotel, and the dry goods merchant but a few doors off, were his fellow-clansmen. In fact, every other banner—I mean sign—flung out on the outward walls of Inverness bore his name.

Our social pretensions were more modest. We went to the Station Hotel for comfort, and trusted to luck for society. In the great hall of the hotel we first realized the full extent of our shabbiness. Our knapsacks shrank out of sight of porters and maids. The proprietor was too busy distributing rooms to decently dressed travellers—the most gorgeous of whom gloried in his allegiance to the Police Gazette of New York—to notice us. But as he paused for a moment, J—— asked if there were any letters for Mr. Pennell. "Where is Mr. Pennell?" asked the proprietor, with interest. When he heard where he was, then came the transformation scene. Two gentlemen in dress-coats, each carrying a diminutive knapsack preceded us up the stairs; two gentlemen in dress-coats, each carrying a huge bundle of letters, the accumulation of weeks, followed us. We felt like a lord mayor's procession, but we did not look it. We were led into the best bedroom, but before the door was closed we thought we saw disappointment in the eyes of the proprietor. We at once consulted the tariff on the wall to learn what it cost to send a telegram in Scotland. We can only say that it did not prove very expensive, that the hotel was very good, that everybody was very attentive, and that the society may have been the best for all we knew.

The next morning we started on foot, all our baggage on our backs, to the disgust of the gentlemen in dress-coats. We walked at a good pace out of the town, and on the broad, smooth road that leads to Culloden. The country was quiet and pastoral, and the way, in places, pleasant and shady. It was a striking contrast to the western wilderness from which we had just come.