Bonnie Scotland and what we owe her

by William Elliot Griffis

May sigh to think he still has found

The warmest welcome at an inn.”

The American traveller can also agree in part with Dr. Johnson that “there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn,” yet who, except Leighton, that sunny soul, the principal of Edinburgh University,—who was “not militant enough to please his fierce co-presbyters,”—could say “that if he were to choose a place to die in, it should be an inn”?

Our experiences of Scottish hotels, “temperance,” “hydro,” ordinary, fashionable, rural, rustic, and what not, were almost invariably pleasant, and our hosts were honest in their dealings; yet in the many British homes in which we were guests the welcome was so warm and the care taken of us so thorough, thoughtful, and minute, that Shenstone’s verse seems to have in it more verbal music than experimental reality. Leighton’s wish seems strange, indeed, especially in the light of memory, when sickness, apparently nigh unto the bourne of life, proved the depth of Scottish hospitality and friendship.

Yet of all the pictures of either the stately or the modest homes of Scotland, which now hang in the gallery of memory, none exceeds in beauty and charm those of the home at Invergowrie, where we were several times guests. Here was a typical Scottish family of character and culture. Father and mother were in the prime of life, health, and manifold activities. Around them had grown up a family of sons and daughters, from the youngest, a blooming maiden of eighteen, educated in Germany and at Brussels, to the eldest son, who, besides being active in business, was an officer in the local volunteer artillery corps. At night he loved to put on his Highland suit for comfort and enjoyment, as we chatted with his friends on British and American politics. One of these talks, in the billiard-room, was soon after President Cleveland had issued his strenuous proclamation concerning Venezuela, when British feelings were hurt and when a combination of tact, some knowledge of history, and of the political and personal motives of American Presidents was necessary to the guest and peacemaker.

The Invergowrie family honored the American in Scotland more than once by inviting, to the dinners given in his honor, the professional gentlemen of the neighborhood and from Dundee.

While in Scotland one must beware of what toes he is likely to tread upon, should he nurse opinions differing from those welcomed by people holding any of the various shades of Presbyterianism, whom he will probably meet anywhere and everywhere. It was in Scotland, above every other country, that we learned what it meant to “mind your p’s,” yet our hope is that we succeeded measurably. The garden parties, in which the young people had their fun and amusement, the five o’clock teas, at which the ladies of the neighborhood dropped in for chat and friendly calls, were as delightful to enjoy as they are now pleasant to recall. Yet, as in the United States the county fair excels all other inventions and facilities for seeing the real, average American, so I valued most, for intimate knowledge of the Scottish populace of all grades and ages, the local exhibitions, “bazaars,” and gatherings.

To be present, as we often were, to see the modern version of “The Cotter’s Saturday Night,”—though in this version we mean a luxurious home, with all the appointments of comfort, culture, and of service,—crowned all delights. This social situation in Scotland is necessarily different from that in America, where, in the cities at least, native-born maidens so rarely take domestic service in families. With our composite people, also, there is usually such a disagreement as to the theories of the universe, as taught by priest, parson, and rabbi, that worship of the same God by all, at one time, in the same way, and in one household, seems impossible. The head of the house or the mistress holds usually to one form of dogma or ritual, while the servants have been reared in an atmosphere so very different that family worship, with the “help” joining in or present, is, to say the least, not customary in “the land of the free.” Occasionally British visitors, who imagine that the very mixed people called Americans are descended chiefly from insular instead of continental stock, like the late James Anthony Froude when in New York city, for instance, make disagreeable discoveries. At times, in our democracy the kitchen rules the parlor.

At Invergowrie, as in a score or more of homes on the island in which I have been so often a guest, the two or three maids and perhaps a man-servant came in with their Bibles and read, with the children of the household, the Word which is above every other word—the Father’s message to his children. Where there was but one servant, the same rule usually held. At Invergowrie, besides a chapter of Scripture and a prayer by the father, the high priest of the family, the older son read one of the Psalms in Rous’s metrical version.

The breakfast in Scotland, as in the British Isles generally, is one that suits admirably the free-born Briton. It is certainly a festival of freedom for the servants, who are usually apt to be upstairs or attending to other domestic duties, though in a large family, the members of which sit down at the same time, there is usually one maid present to wait upon the table. At several places where I was entertained, even in well-to-do families, the grown sons and daughters or members of the household came and went at their convenience, helping themselves at will from dishes on a sideboard. After the table has been laid by one of the maids, who may or may not remain present, it may be that the elder daughter serves. At Invergowrie there was a large, normal family, consisting of parents and children, with sufficient uniformity of dispositions and habits to make both the breakfast and the dinner time a delightful gathering, with merriment and leisure. The news of the day, the happenings of the neighborhood, the things alike and different as between Scotland and America, the annals of the village fair, or the social chat, or those pleasant nothings that lubricate life, made the moments pass all too rapidly.