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Letters, a non-fiction book by Samuel Johnson |
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Letter 23. To Mrs. Thrale |
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_ LETTER XXIII. To MRS. THRALE Skie, Sept. 24, 1773. DEAR MADAM,--I am still in Skie. Do you remember the song,
We were received at Raarsa on the seaside, and after clambering, with some difficulty, over the rocks, a labour which the traveller, wherever he reposes himself on land, must, in these islands, be contented to endure; we were introduced into the house, which one of the company called the court of Raarsa, with politeness, which not the court of Versailles could have thought defective. The house is not large, though we were told, in our passage, that it had eleven fine rooms, nor magnificently furnished; but our utensils were, most commonly, silver. We went up into a dining-room, about as large as your blue room, where we had something given us to eat, and tea and coffee. Raarsa himself is a man of no inelegant appearance, and of manners uncommonly refined. Lady Raarsa makes no very sublime appearance for a sovereign, but is a good housewife, and a very prudent and diligent conductress of her family. Miss Flora Macleod is a celebrated beauty; has been admired at Edinburgh; dresses her head very high; and has manners so lady-like, that I wish her head-dress was lower. The rest of the nine girls are all pretty; the youngest is between Queeney and Lucy. The youngest boy, of four years old, runs barefoot, and wandered with us over the rocks to see a mill: I believe he would walk on that rough ground, without shoes, ten miles in a day. The laird of Raarsa has sometimes disputed the chieftainry of the clan with Macleod of Skie, but, being much inferiour in extent of possessions, has, I suppose, been forced to desist. Raarsa, and its provinces, have descended to its present possessour, through a succession of four hundred years, without any increase or diminution. It was, indeed, lately in danger of forfeiture, but the old laird joined some prudence with his zeal, and when prince Charles landed in Scotland, made over his estate to this son, the present laird, and led one hundred men of Raarsa into the field, with officers of his own family. Eighty-six only came back after the last battle. The prince was hidden, in his distress, two nights at Raarsa, and the king's troops burnt the whole country, and killed some of the cattle. You may guess at the opinions that prevail in this country; they are, however, content with fighting for their king; they do not drink for him. We had no foolish healths. At night, unexpectedly to us, who were strangers, the carpet was taken up; the fiddler of the family came up, and a very vigorous and general dance was begun. As I told you, we were two and thirty at supper; there were full as many dancers; for, though all who supped did not dance, some danced of the young people who did not sup. Raarsa himself danced with his children, and old Malcolm, in his fillibeg, was as nimble, as when he led the prince over the mountains. When they had danced themselves weary, two tables were spread, and, I suppose, at least twenty dishes were upon them. In this country, some preparations of milk are always served up at supper, and sometimes, in the place of tarts, at dinner. The table was not coarsely heaped, but, at once, plentiful and elegant. They do not pretend to make a loaf; there are only cakes, commonly of oats or barley, but they made me very nice cakes of wheat flour. I always sat at the left hand of lady Raarsa; and young Macleod of Skie, the chieftain of the clan, sat on the right. After supper, a young lady, who was visiting, sung Erse songs, in which lady Raarsa joined, prettily enough, but not gracefully; the young ladies sustained the chorus better. They are very little used to be asked questions, and not well prepared with answers. When one of the songs was over, I asked the princess, that sat next to me, "What is that about?" I question if she conceived that I did not understand it. "For the entertainment of the company," said she. "But, madam, what is the meaning of it?" "It is a love song." This was all the intelligence that I could obtain; nor have I been able to procure the translation of a single line of Erse. At twelve it was bed-time. I had a chamber to myself, which, in eleven rooms to forty people, was more than my share. How the company and the family were distributed, is not easy to tell. Macleod, the chieftain, and Boswell, and I, had all single chambers, on the first floor. There remained eight rooms only, for, at least, seven and thirty lodgers. I suppose they put up temporary beds in the dining-room, where they stowed all the young ladies. There was a room above stairs with six beds, in which they put ten men. The rest in my next.
Ostich in Skie, Sept. 30, 1773. DEAREST MADAM,--I am still confined in Skie. We were unskilful travellers, and imagined that the sea was an open road, which we could pass at pleasure; but we have now learned, with some pain, that we may still wait, for a long time, the caprices of the equinoctial winds, and sit reading or writing, as I now do, while the tempest is rolling the sea, or roaring in the mountains. I am now no longer pleased with the delay; you can hear from me but seldom, and I cannot at all hear from you. It comes into my mind, that some evil may happen, or that I might be of use while I am away. But these thoughts are vain; the wind is violent and adverse, and our boat cannot yet come. I must content myself with writing to you, and hoping that you will sometime receive my letter. Now to my narrative. Sept. 9th. Having passed the night as is usual, I rose, and found the dining-room full of company; we feasted and talked, and when the evening came it brought musick and dancing. Young Macleod, the great proprietor of Skie, and head of his clan, was very distinguishable; a young man of nineteen, bred awhile at St. Andrew's, and afterwards at Oxford, a pupil of G. Strahan. He is a young man of a mind, as much advanced as I have ever known; very elegant of manners, and very graceful in his person. He has the full spirit of a feudal chief; and I was very ready to accept his invitation to Dunvegan. All Raarsa's children are beautiful. The ladies, all, except the eldest, are in the morning dressed in their hair. The true highlander never wears more than a riband on her head, till she is married. On the third day Boswell went out, with old Malcolm, to see a ruined castle, which he found less entire than was promised, but he saw the country. I did not go, for the castle was, perhaps, ten miles off, and there is no riding at Raarsa, the whole island being rock or mountain, from which the cattle often fall, and are destroyed. It is very barren, and maintains, as near as I could collect, about seven hundred inhabitants, perhaps ten to a square mile. In these countries you are not to suppose that you shall find villages or inclosures. The traveller wanders through a naked desert, gratified sometimes, but rarely, with the sight of cows, and now and then finds a heap of loose stones and turf, in a cavity between rocks, where a being, born with all those powers which education expands, and all those sensations which culture refines, is condemned to shelter itself from the wind and rain. Philosophers there are, who try to make themselves believe, that this life is happy; but they believe it only while they are saying it, and never yet produced conviction in a single mind; he whom want of words or images sunk into silence still thought, as he thought before, that privation of pleasure can never please, and that content is not to be much envied, when it has no other principle than ignorance of good. This gloomy tranquillity, which some may call fortitude, and others, wisdom, was, I believe, for a long time, to be very frequently found in these dens of poverty; every man was content to live like his neighbours, and, never wandering from home, saw no mode of life preferable to his own, except at the house of the laird, or the laird's nearest relations, whom he considered as a superiour order of beings, to whose luxuries or honours he had no pretensions. But the end of this reverence and submission seems now approaching; the highlanders have learned, that there are countries less bleak and barren than their own, where, instead of working for the laird, every man will till his own ground, and eat the produce of his own labour. Great numbers have been induced, by this discovery, to go, every year, for some time past, to America. Macdonald and Macleod, of Skie, have lost many tenants and many labourers; but Raarsa has not yet been forsaken by a single inhabitant. Rona is yet more rocky and barren than Raarsa, and, though it contains, perhaps, four thousand acres, is possessed only by a herd of cattle and the keepers. I find myself not very able to walk upon the mountains, but one day I went out to see the walls, yet standing, of an ancient chapel. In almost every island the superstitious votaries of the Romish church erected places of worship, in which the drones of convents, or cathedrals, performed the holy offices; but, by the active zeal of protestant devotion, almost all of them have sunk into ruin. The chapel at Raarsa is now only considered as the burying-place of the family, and, I suppose, of the whole island. We would now have gone away, and left room for others to enjoy the pleasures of this little court; but the wind detained us till the 12th, when, though it was Sunday, we thought it proper to snatch the opportunity of a calm day. Raarsa accompanied us in his six-oared boat, which, he said, was his coach and six. It is, indeed, the vehicle in which the ladies take the air, and pay their visits, but they have taken very little care for accommodations. There is no way, in or out of the boat, for a woman, but by being carried; and in the boat thus dignified with a pompous name, there is no seat, but an occasional bundle of straw. Thus we left Raarsa; the seat of plenty, civility, and cheerfulness. We dined at a publick house at Port Re; so called, because one of the Scottish kings landed there, in a progress through the western isles. Raarsa paid the reckoning privately. We then got on horseback, and, by a short, but very tedious journey, came to Kingsburgh, at which the same king lodged, after he landed. Here 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 Lewes; and, when she came to Skie, 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. "If thou likest her opinions, thou wilt praise her virtue." She was carried to London, but dismissed without a trial, and came down with Malcolm Macleod, against whom sufficient evidence could not be procured. She and her husband are poor, and are going to try their fortune in America: "Sic rerum volvitur orbis." At Kingsburgh we were very liberally feasted, and I slept in the bed in which the prince reposed in his distress; the sheets which he 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. These are not whigs. On the 13th, travelling partly on horseback, where we could not row, and partly on foot, where we could not ride, we came to Dunvegan, which I have described already. Here, though poor Macleod had been left by his grandfather overwhelmed with debts, we had another exhibition of feudal hospitality. There were two stags in the house, and venison came to the table every day in its various forms. Macleod, besides his estate in Skie, larger, I suppose, than some English counties, is proprietor of nine inhabited isles; and, of his islands uninhabited, I doubt if he very exactly knows the number. I told him that he was a mighty monarch. Such dominions fill an Englishman with envious wonder; but, when he surveys the naked mountains, and treads the quaking moor, and wanders over the wild regions of gloomy barrenness, his wonder may continue, but his envy ceases. The unprofitableness of these vast domains can be conceived only by the means of positive instances. The heir of Col, an island not far distant, has lately told me, how wealthy he should be, if he could let Rum, another of his islands, for twopence halfpenny an acre; and Macleod has an estate, which the surveyor reports to contain eighty thousand acres, rented at six hundred pounds a year. While we were at Dunvegan, the wind was high, and the rain violent, so that we were not able to put forth a boat to fish in the sea, or to visit the adjacent islands, which may be seen from the house; but we filled up the time, as we could, sometimes by talk, sometimes by reading. I have never wanted books in the isle of Skie. We were invited one day by the laird and lady of Muck, one of the western islands, two miles long, and three quarters of a mile high. He has half his island in his own culture, and upon the other half live one hundred and fifty dependants, who not only live upon the product, but export corn sufficient for the payment of their rent. Lady Macleod has a son and four daughters; they have lived long in England, and have the language and manners of English ladies. We lived with them very easily. The hospitality of this remote region is like that of the golden age. We have found ourselves treated, at every house, as if we came to confer a benefit. We were eight days at Dunvegan, but we took the first opportunity which the weather afforded, after the first days, of going away, and, on the 21st, went to Ulinish, where we were well entertained, and wandered a little after curiosities. In the afternoon, an interval of calm sunshine courted us out, to see a cave on the shore, famous for its echo. When we went into the boat, one of our companions was asked, in Erse, by the boatmen, who they were, that came with him. He gave us characters, I suppose, to our advantage, and was asked, in the spirit of the highlands, whether I could recite a long series of ancestors. The boatmen said, as I perceived afterwards, that they heard the cry of an English ghost. This, Boswell says, disturbed him. We came to the cave, and, clambering up the rocks, came to an arch, open at one end, one hundred and eighty feet long, thirty broad, in the broadest part, and about thirty high. There was no echo: such is the fidelity of report; but I saw, what I had never seen before, muscles and whilks, in their natural state. There was another arch in the rock, open at both ends. September 23rd. We removed to Talisker, a house occupied by Mr. Macleod, a lieutenant colonel in the Dutch service. Talisker has been long in the possession of gentlemen, and, therefore, has a garden well cultivated, and, what is here very rare, is shaded by trees; a place where the imagination is more amused cannot easily be found. The mountains about it are of great height, with waterfalls succeeding one another so fast, that as one ceases to be heard, another begins. Between the mountains there is a small valley, extending to the sea, which is not far off, beating upon a coast, very difficult of access. Two nights before our arrival, two boats were driven upon this coast by the tempest; one of them had a pilot that knew the passage; the second followed, but a third missed the true course, and was driven forward, with great danger of being forced into the vast ocean, but, however, gained, at last, some other island. The crews crept to Talisker, almost lifeless with wet, cold, fatigue, and terrour, but the lady took care of them. She is a woman of more than common qualifications; having travelled with her husband, she speaks four languages. You find, that all the islanders, even in these recesses of life, are not barbarous. One of the ministers, who has adhered to us almost all the time, is an excellent scholar. We have now with us the young laird of Col, who is heir, perhaps, to two hundred square miles of land. He has first studied at Aberdeen, and afterwards gone to Hertfordshire, to learn agriculture, being much impressed with desire of improvement; he, likewise, has the notions of a chief, and keeps a piper. At Macleod's the bagpipe always played, while we were dining. Col has undertaken, by permission of the waves and wind, to carry us about several of the islands, with which he is acquainted enough to show us whatever curious is given by nature, or left by antiquity; but we grew afraid of deviating from our way home, lest we should be shut up for months upon some little protuberance of rock, that just appears above the sea, and, perhaps, is scarcely marked upon a map. You remember the doge of Genoa, who being asked, what struck him most at the French court, answered, "myself." I cannot think many things here more likely to affect the fancy, than to see Johnson ending his sixty-fourth year in the wilderness of the Hebrides. But now I am here, it will gratify me very little to return without seeing, or doing my best to see, what those places afford. I have a desire to instruct myself in the whole system of pastoral life, but I know not whether I shall be able to perfect the idea. However, I have many pictures in my mind, which I could not have had without this journey, and should have passed it with great pleasure, had you, and master, and Queeney, been in the party. We should have excited the attention, and enlarged the observation of each other, and obtained many pleasing topicks of future conversation. As it is, I travel with my mind too much at home, and, perhaps, miss many things worthy of observation, or pass them with transient notice; so that the images, for want of that reimpression which discussion and comparison produce, easily fade away; but I keep a book of remarks, and Boswell writes a regular journal of our travels, which, I think, contains as much of what I say and do, as of all other occurrences together; "for such a faithful chronicler as Griffith." I hope, dearest madam, you are equally careful to reposit proper memorials of all that happens to you and your family, and then, when we meet, we shall tell our stories. I wish you had gone this summer, in your usual splendour, to Brighthelmstone. Mr. Thrale probably wonders, how I live all this time without sending to him for money. Travelling in Scotland is dear enough, dearer, in proportion to what the country affords, than in England, but residence in the isles is unexpensive. Company is, I think, considered as a supply of pleasure, and a relief of that tediousness of life which is felt in every place, elegant or rude. Of wine and punch they are very liberal, for they get them cheap; but as there is no custom-house on the island, they can hardly be considered as smugglers. Their punch is made without lemons, or any substitute. Their tables are very plentiful; but a very nice man would not be pampered. As they have no meat but as they kill it, they are obliged to live, while it lasts, upon the same flesh. They kill a sheep, and set mutton boiled and roast on the table together. They have fish, both of the sea and of the brooks; but they can hardly conceive that it requires any sauce. To sauce, in general, they are strangers: now and then butter is melted, but I dare not always take, lest I should offend by disliking it. Barley broth is a constant dish, and is made well in every house. A stranger, if he is prudent, will secure his share, for it is not certain that he will be able to eat any thing else. Their meat, being often newly killed, is very tough, and, as nothing is sufficiently subdued by the fire, is not easily to be eaten. Carving is here a very laborious employment, for the knives are never whetted. Table knives are not of long subsistence in the highlands: every man, while arms were a regular part of dress, had his knife and fork appendant to his dirk. Knives they now lay upon the table, but the handles are apt to show that they have been in other hands, and the blades have neither brightness nor edge. Of silver, there is no want, and it will last long, for it is never cleaned. They are a nation just rising from barbarity: long contented with necessaries, now somewhat studious of convenience, but not yet arrived at delicate discriminations. Their linen is, however, both clean and fine. Bread, such as we mean by that name, I have never seen in the isle of Skie. They have ovens, for they bake their pies; but they never ferment their meal, nor mould a loaf. Cakes of oats and barley are brought to the table, but I believe wheat is reserved for strangers. They are commonly too hard for me, and, therefore, I take potatoes to my meat, and am sure to find them on almost every table. They retain so much of the pastoral life, that some preparation of milk is commonly one of the dishes, both at dinner and supper. Tea is always drunk at the usual times; but, in the morning, the table is polluted with a plate of slices of strong cheese. This is peculiar to the highlands; at Edinburgh there are always honey and sweetmeats on the morning tea-table. Strong liquors they seem to love. Every man, perhaps, woman, begins the day with a dram; and the punch is made both at dinner and supper. They have neither wood nor coal for fuel, but burn peat or turf in their chimneys. It is dug out of the moors or mosses, and makes a strong and lasting fire, not always very sweet, and somewhat apt to smoke the pot. The houses of inferiour gentlemen are very small, and every room serves many purposes. In the bed-rooms, perhaps, are laid up stores of different kinds; and the parlour of the day is a bed-room at night. In the room which I inhabited last, about fourteen feet square, there were three chests of drawers, a long chest for larger clothes, two closet-cupboards, and the bed. Their rooms are commonly dirty, of which they seem to have little sensibility, and if they had more, clean floors would be difficultly kept, where the first step from the door is into the dirt. They are very much inclined to carpets, and seldom fail to lay down something under their feet, better or worse, as they happen to be furnished. The highland dress, being forbidden by law, is very little used; sometimes it may be seen, but the English traveller is struck with nothing so much as the _nudite des pieds_ of the common people. Skie is the greatest island, or the greatest but one, among the Hebrides. Of the soil, I have already given some account: it is generally barren, but some spots are not wholly unfruitful. The gardens have apples and pears, cherries, strawberries, raspberries, currants, and gooseberries, but all the fruit, that I have seen, is small. They attempt to sow nothing but oats and barley. Oats constitute the bread-corn of the place. Their harvest is about the beginning of October; and, being so late, is very much subject to disappointments from the rains that follow the equinox. This year has been particularly disastrous. Their rainy season lasts from autumn to spring. They have seldom very hard frosts; nor was it ever known that a lake was covered with ice strong enough to bear a skater. The sea round them is always open. The snow falls, but soon melts; only in 1771, they had a cold spring, in which the island was so long covered with it, that many beasts, both wild and domestick, perished, and the whole country was reduced to distress, from which I know not if it is even yet recovered. The animals here are not remarkably small; perhaps they recruit their breed from the mainland. The cows are sometimes without horns. The horned and unhorned cattle are not accidental variations, but different species: they will, however, breed together. October 3rd. The wind is now changed, and if we snatch the moment of opportunity, an escape from this island is become practicable; I have no reason to complain of my reception, yet I long to be again at home. You and my master may, perhaps, expect, after this description of Skie, some account of myself. My eye is, I am afraid, not fully recovered; my ears are not mended; my nerves seem to grow weaker, and I have been otherwise not as well as I sometimes am, but think myself, lately, better. This climate, perhaps, is not within my degree of healthy latitude. Thus I have given my most honoured mistress the story of me and my little ramble. We are now going to some other isle, to what we know not; the wind will tell us. I am, &c. _ |
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