Our Journey to the Hebrides

by Joseph Pennell; Elizabeth Robins Pennell

MONTROSE,

where, like Dr. Johnson, and for that matter, every one else who comes here, we looked to the Grampian Hills in the distance. The town itself was not picturesque. The guide-book calls it neat and Flemish, probably because it has fewer houses with high gables turned towards the street than can be seen, as a rule, in any Scotch town. But the harbor, of which the guide-book says less, was fine. We spent hours near the mouth of the river, looking over to the fishermen's houses on the opposite shore. There were constant showers as we sat there; every few minutes the sun came out from the clouds, and the wet roofs glistened and glittered through the smoke hanging above them. In the morning, women, packed like herrings in the huge ferry-boats, crossed over to the curing-houses. Now and then a fishing-boat sailed slowly in.

One sees little from the cars. Of the country through which we passed I remember only occasional glimpses of the sea and of fishing villages and of red castles, which made us wish we were still on the road. Now and then, as we sat comfortably in the railway-carriage, we determined to walk back to see them, or to get a tricycle at Edinburgh and "do" the whole east coast over again; but we always left our determinations with the carriage. Of all the places at which we stopped, I remember best

ARBROATH,

the sight of which seemed worth his whole journey to Dr. Johnson. Little is left of the abbey save the broken walls and towers. A street runs through the old gate-house. The public park and children's play-ground lie to one side of the ruined church. A few old tombs and tablets and bits of ornament have been gathered together in the sacristy, which is in better preservation than the rest of the building. We found them less interesting than the guide who explained them. He gave a poetical touch to the usual verger recitation, and indeed to all his talk, of which there was plenty. 'Twas better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all, was his manner of expressing regret for the loss of an old engraving of the abbey. There were many hard things in this world, but grass was soft; why, then, should I choose the hard things? was his way of inviting me to walk on the grass instead of the gravel. But it was not until he showed us the original copy, full of blots and corrections, of one of Burns's poems that we found he too was a poet—a successful poet, it seemed, for he had sold 14,000 copies of his volume of poems—very few, he thought. If he were a member of the London Society of Authors he would know better. He had given the last copy to William Morris, when the latter was in the town. William Morris did not wear gaudy clothes, not he. He looked like a sailor in his blue flannel shirt, and there was a slit in his hat. And when he returned to London he sent his "Jason" to his fellow-poet in Arbroath.

As we were leaving, he told us how, one day, two ladies had driven up to the abbey, looked at nothing, but at once asked him to recite his "Abbey Gate." He did so, and then, without a word, they slipped a guinea into his hand, and there were tears on their cheeks. He never knew who they were. After this, we felt our tribute to be very small; but he clasped our hands warmly at parting. There was something out of the common in our faces, he said.

We talked to no one else in Arbroath, except to a pessimistic stationer. While we bought his paper he grumbled because farmers could not sell their cattle and corn. Some people said the country needed protection; "but, sir, what have we got to protect?"

Of the rest of the journey to Edinburgh my note-book says nothing, and little remains in my memory. But I know that when we walked up from the station to Waverley Bridge, and looked to the gray precipice of houses of the Old Town, we realized that our long wanderings had not shown us anything so fine.

And now our journey was at an end. Like Dr. Johnson's, it began and finished in Edinburgh, but it resembled his in little else. From the start, we continually took liberties with his route; we often forgot that he was our guide. We went to places he had never seen; we turned our backs upon many through which he and Boswell had travelled. But at least he had helped us to form definite plans without weeks of hard map-study which they otherwise must have cost us.

We had come back wiser in many ways. In the first place, we had learned that for us walking on a tour of this kind, or indeed of any kind, is a mistake. Had we never cycled, perhaps we might not have felt this so keenly. Our powers of endurance are not, I think, below the average; but the power to endure so many miles a day on foot is very different from the capacity to enjoy them; and if on such a trip one proposes, as we did, to work, without pleasure in the exercise, how can one hope for good results? But for the two days' coaching on the west coast, the necessary steaming among the islands, our utter collapse on the east coast, I am sure we never should have worked at all. Day after day we were dispirited, disheartened, and only happy when we were not walking. We went to bed in the evening and got up in the morning wearied and exhausted. The usual walking tours of which one hears mean a day's climbing in the mountains, or a day's tramp with bag or knapsack sent before by train or stage. Under these conditions we probably would not be the first to give in. But to be as independent as if on a tricycle, to have one's sketching traps when needed, one must carry a knapsack one's self. J——'s weighed between twenty-five and thirty pounds; mine, fifteen. Never before have I appreciated so well the true significance of Christian's burden. But even worse than this constant strain on our shoulders was the monotony of our pace. Whether the road was good or bad, level or hilly, there was no change, no relief. In cycling, for one hard day's work you know you will have two of pleasure. As for short-cuts, they are, as a rule, out of the question. One does not know the country through which one is passing; it is the exception to meet a native. After cycling more thousands of miles than we have walked hundreds, we know it to be not mere theorizing when we declare that no comparison between the two methods of travelling is possible. One is just enough work to make the pleasure greater; the other is all work.