LETTER VIII.
ENGLISH BREAKFASTS—SALMON FISHERY—LORD ABERDEEN—MR. McLANE—SPORTING ESTABLISHMENT OF GORDON CASTLE.
I arose late on the first morning after my arrival at Gordon Castle, and found the large party already assembled about the breakfast table. I was struck on entering with the different air of the room. The deep windows, opening out upon the park, had the effect of sombre landscapes in oaken frames; the troops of liveried servants, the glitter of plate, the music, that had contributed to the splendor of the night before, were gone; the Duke sat laughing at the head of the table, with a newspaper in his hand, dressed in a coarse shooting-jacket and colored cravat; the Dutchess was in a plain morning-dress and cap of the simplest character; and the high-born women about the table, whom I had left glittering with jewels, and dressed in all the attractions of fashion, appeared with the simplest coiffure and a toilet of studied plainness. The ten or twelve noblemen present were engrossed with their letters or newspapers over tea and toast; and in them, perhaps, the transformation was still greater. Thesoignéman of fashion of the night before, faultless in costume and distinguished in his appearance, in the full force of the term, was enveloped now in a coat of fustian, with a coarse waistcoat of plaid, a gingham cravat, and hob-nailed shoes, (for shooting,) and in place of the gay hilarity of the supper-table, wore a face of calm indifference, and ate his breakfast and read the paper in a rarely broken silence. I wondered, as I looked about me, what would be the impression of many people in my own country, could they look in upon that plain party, aware that it was composed of the proudest nobility and the highest fashion of England.
Breakfast in England is a confidential and unceremonious hour, and servants are generally dispensed with. This is to me, I confess, an advantage over every other meal. I detest eating with twenty tall fellows standing opposite, whose business it is to watch me. The coffee and tea were on the table, with toast, muffins, oat-cakes, marmalade, jellies, fish, and all the paraphernalia of a Scotch breakfast; and on the sideboard stood cold meats for those who liked them, and they were expected to go to it and help themselves. Nothing could be more easy, unceremonious, and affable, than the whole tone of the meal. One after another rose and fell into groups in the windows, or walked up and down the long room—and, with one or two others, I joined the Duke at the head of the table, who gave us some interesting particulars of the salmon fisheries of the Spey. The privilege of fishing the river within his lands, is bought of him at the pretty sum of eight thousand pounds a year! A salmon was brought in for me to see, as of remarkable size, which was not more than half the weight of our common American salmon.
The ladies went off unaccompanied to their walks in the park and other avocations, those bound for the covers joined the gamekeepers, who were waiting with their dogs in the leash at the stables; some paired off to the billiard-room, and I was left with Lord Aberdeen in the breakfast room alone. The tory ex-minister made many inquiries, with great apparent interest, about America. When secretary for foreign affairs, in the Wellington cabinet, he had known Mr. McLane intimately. He said he seldom had been so impressed with a man’s honesty and straight-forwardness, and never did public business with any one with more pleasure. He admired Mr. McLane, and hoped he enjoyed his friendship. He wished he might return as our minister to England. One such honorable, uncompromising man, he said, was worth a score of practised diplomatists. He spoke of Gallatin and Rush in the same flattering manner, but recurred continually to Mr. McLane, of whom he could scarcely say enough. His politics would naturally lead him to approve of the administration of General Jackson, but he seemed to admire the President very much as a man.
Lord Aberdeen has the name of being the proudest and coldest aristocrat of England. It is amusing to see the person who bears such a character. He is of the middle height, rather clumsily made, with an address more of sober dignity than of pride or reserve. With a black coat much worn, and always too large for him, a pair of coarse check trousers very ill made, a waistcoat buttoned up to his throat, and a cravat of the most primitivenégligé, his aristocracy is certainly not in his dress. His manners are of absolute simplicity, amounting almost to want of style. He crosses his hands behind him, and balances on his heels; in conversation his voice is low and cold, and he seldom smiles. Yet there is a certain benignity in his countenance, and an indefinable superiority and high breeding in his simple address, that would betray his rank after a few minutes’ conversation to any shrewd observer. It is only in his manner toward the ladies of the party that he would be immediately distinguishable from men of lower rank in society.
Still suffering from lameness, I declined all invitations to the shooting parties, who started across the park, with the dogs leaping about them in a phrensy of delight, and accepted the Dutchess’s kind offer of a pony phæton to drive down to the kennels. The Duke’s breed, both of setters and hounds, is celebrated throughout the kingdom. They occupy a spacious building in the centre of a wood, a quadrangle enclosing a court, and large enough for a respectable poor-house. The chief huntsman and his family, and perhaps a gamekeeper or two, lodge on the premises, and the dogs are divided by palings across the court. I was rather startled to be introduced into the small enclosure with a dozen gigantic blood-hounds, as high as my breast, the keeper’s whip in my hand the only defence. I was not easier for the man’s assertion that, without it, they would “hae the life oot o’ me in a crack.” They came around me very quietly, and one immense fellow, with a chest like a horse, and a head of the finest expression, stood up and laid his paws on my shoulders, with the deliberation of a friend about to favor me with some grave advice. One can scarce believe these noble creatures have not reason like ourselves. Those slender, thorough-bred heads, large, speaking eyes, and beautiful limbs and graceful action, should be gifted with more than mere animal instinct. The greyhounds were the beauties of the kennel, however. I never had seen such perfect creatures. “Dinna tak’ pains to caress ’em, sir,” said the huntsman, “they’ll only be hangit for it!” I asked for an explanation, and the man, with an air as if I was uncommonly ignorant, told me that a hound was hung the moment he betrayed attachment to any one, or in any way showed signs of superior sagacity. In coursing the hare, for instance, if the dog abandoned the scent to cut across and intercept the poor animal, he was considered as spoiling the sport. Greyhounds are valuable only as they obey their mere natural instinct, and if they leave the track of the hare, either in their own sagacity, or to follow their master, in intercepting it, they spoil the pack, and are hung without mercy. It is an object, of course, to preserve them what they usually are, the greatest fools as well as the handsomest of the canine species—and on the first sign of attachment to their master, their death warrant is signed. They are too sensible to live. The Dutchess told me afterward that she had the greatest difficulty in saving the life of the finest hound in the pack, who had committed the sin of showing pleasure once or twice when she appeared.
The setters were in the next division, and really they were quite lovely. The rare tan and black dog of this race, with his silky, floss hair, intelligent muzzle, good-humored face and caressing fondness (lucky dog! that affection is permitted inhisfamily!) quite excited my admiration. There were thirty or forty of these, old and young; and a friend of the Duke’s would as soon ask him for a church living as for the present of one of them. The former would be by much the smaller favor. Then there were terriers of four or five breeds, of one family of which (long-haired, long-bodied, short-legged, and perfectly white little wretches) the keeper seemed particularly proud. I evidently sunk in his opinion for not admiring them.
I passed the remainder of the morning in threading the lovely alleys and avenues of the park, miles after miles of gravel walk, extending away in every direction, with every variety of turn and shade, now a deep wood, now a sunny opening upon a glade, here along the bank of a stream, and there around the borders of a small lagoon, the little ponies flying on over the smoothly-rolled paths, and tossing their mimicking heads, as if they too enjoyed the beauty of the princely domain. This, I thought to myself, as I sped on through light and shadow, is very like what is called happiness; and this (if to be a duke were to enjoy it as I do with this fresh feeling of novelty and delight) is a condition of life it is not quite irrational to envy. And giving my little steeds the rein, I repeated to myself Scott’s graphic description, which seems written for the park of Gordon castle, and thanked Heaven for one more day of unalloyed happiness.
“And there soft swept in velvet green,The plain with many a glade betweenWhose tangled alleys far invadeThe depths of the brown forest shade;And the tall fern obscured the lawn,Fair shelter for the sportive fawn.There, tufted close with copse-wood green,Was many a swelling hillock seen,And all around was verdure meetFor pressure of the fairies’ feet.The glossy valley loved the park,The yew tree lent its shadows dark,And many an old oak worn and bare,With all its shivered boughs was there.”
“And there soft swept in velvet green,The plain with many a glade betweenWhose tangled alleys far invadeThe depths of the brown forest shade;And the tall fern obscured the lawn,Fair shelter for the sportive fawn.There, tufted close with copse-wood green,Was many a swelling hillock seen,And all around was verdure meetFor pressure of the fairies’ feet.The glossy valley loved the park,The yew tree lent its shadows dark,And many an old oak worn and bare,With all its shivered boughs was there.”
“And there soft swept in velvet green,The plain with many a glade betweenWhose tangled alleys far invadeThe depths of the brown forest shade;And the tall fern obscured the lawn,Fair shelter for the sportive fawn.There, tufted close with copse-wood green,Was many a swelling hillock seen,And all around was verdure meetFor pressure of the fairies’ feet.The glossy valley loved the park,The yew tree lent its shadows dark,And many an old oak worn and bare,With all its shivered boughs was there.”
“And there soft swept in velvet green,
The plain with many a glade between
Whose tangled alleys far invade
The depths of the brown forest shade;
And the tall fern obscured the lawn,
Fair shelter for the sportive fawn.
There, tufted close with copse-wood green,
Was many a swelling hillock seen,
And all around was verdure meet
For pressure of the fairies’ feet.
The glossy valley loved the park,
The yew tree lent its shadows dark,
And many an old oak worn and bare,
With all its shivered boughs was there.”
LETTER IX.
SCOTCH HOSPITALITY—IMMENSE POSSESSIONS OF THE NOBILITY—DUTCHESS’ INFANT SCHOOL—MANNERS OF HIGH LIFE—THE TONE OF CONVERSATION IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA CONTRASTED.
The aim of Scotch hospitality seems to be, to convince you that the house and all that is in it is your own, and you are at liberty to enjoy it as if you were, in the French sense of the French phrase,chez vous. The routine of Gordon castle was what each one chose to make it. Between breakfast and lunch the ladies were generally invisible, and the gentlemen rode or shot, or played billiards, or kept their rooms. At two o’clock, a dish or two of hot game and a profusion of cold meats were set on the small tables in the dining room, and every body came in for a kind of lounging half-meal, which occupied perhaps an hour. Thence all adjourned to the drawing-room, under the windows of which were drawn up carriages of all descriptions, with grooms, outriders, footmen, and saddle horses for gentlemen and ladies. Parties were then made up for driving or riding, and from a pony-chaise to a phæton and four, there was no class of vehicle which was not at your disposal. In ten minutes the carriages were usually all filled, and away they flew, some to the banks of the Spey or the sea-side, some to the drives in the park, and with the delightful consciousness that, speed where you would, the horizon scarce limited the possession of your host, and you were everywhere at home. The ornamental gates flying open at your approach, miles distant from the castle; the herds of red deer trooping away from the sound of wheels in the silent park; the stately pheasants feeding tamely in the immense preserves; the hares scarce troubling themselves to get out of the length of the whip; the stalking gamekeepers lifting their hats in the dark recesses of the forest—there was something in this perpetual reminding of your privileges, which, as a novelty, was far from disagreeable. I could not at the time bring myself to feel, what perhaps would be more poetical and republican, that a ride in the wild and unfenced forest of my own country would have been more to my taste.
The second afternoon of my arrival, I took a seat in the carriage with Lord Aberdeen and his daughter, and we followed the Dutchess, who drove herself in a pony-chaise, to visit a school on the estate. Attached to a small gothic chapel, a few minutes’ drive from the castle, stood a building in the same style, appropriated to the instruction of the children of the Duke’s tenantry. There were a hundred and thirty little creatures, from two years to five or six, and, like all infant schools in these days of improved education, it was an interesting and affecting sight. The last one I had been in was at Athens, and though I missed here the dark eyes and Grecian faces of the Ægean, I saw health and beauty of a kind which stirred up more images of home, and promised, perhaps, more for the future. They went through their evolutions, and answered their questions, with an intelligence and cheerfulness that were quite delightful, and I was sorry to leave them even for a drive in the loveliest sun-set of a lingering day of summer.
People in Europe are more curious about the comparison of the natural productions of America with those of England than about our social and political differences. A man who does not care to know whether the president has destroyed the bank, or the bank the president, or whether Mrs. Trollope has flattered the Americans or not, will be very much interested to know if the pine tree in his park is comparable to the same tree in America, if the same cattle are found there, or the woods stocked with the same game as his own. I would recommend a little study of trees particularly, and of vegetation generally, as valuable knowledge for an American coming abroad. I think there is nothing on which I have been so often questioned. The Dutchess led the way to a plantation of American trees, at some distance from the castle, and stopping beneath some really noble firs, asked if our forest trees were often larger, with an air as if she believed they were not. They were shrubs, however, compared to the gigantic productions of the West. Whatever else we may see abroad, we must return home to find the magnificence of nature.
The number at the dinner-table of Gordon castle was seldom less than thirty, but the company was continually varied by departures and arrivals. No sensation was made by either one or the other. A travelling carriage dashed up to the door, was disburdened of its load, and drove round to the stables, and the question was seldom asked, “Who is arrived?” You were sure to see at dinner—and an addition of half a dozen to the party made no perceptible difference in anything. Leave-takings were managed in the same quiet way. Adieus were made to the Duke and Dutchess, and to no one else, except he happened to encounter the parting guest upon the staircase, or were more than a common acquaintance. In short, in every way thegêneof life seemed weeded out, and if unhappiness or ennui found its way into the castle, it was introduced in the sufferer’s own bosom. For me, I gave myself up to enjoyment with anabandonI could not resist. With kindness and courtesy in every look, the luxuries and comforts of a regal establishment at my freest disposal; solitude when I pleased, company when I pleased, the whole visible horizon fenced in for the enjoyment of a household, of which I was a temporary portion, and no enemy except time and the gout, I felt as if I had been spirited into some castle of felicity, and had not come by the royal mail-coach at all.
The great spell of high life in this country seems to berepose. All violent sensations are avoided as out of taste. In conversation, nothing is so “odd” (a word, by the way, that in England means everything disagreeable) as emphasis or startling epithet, or gesture, and in common intercourse nothing so vulgar as any approach to “a scene.” The high-bred Englishman studies to express himself in the plainest words that will convey his meaning, and is just as simple and calm in describing the death of his friend, and just as technical, so to speak, as in discussing the weather. For all extraordinary admiration the word “capital” suffices; for all ordinary praise the word “nice!” for all condemnation in morals, manners, or religion, the word “odd!” To express yourself out of this simple vocabulary is to raise the eyebrows of the whole company at once, and stamp yourself under-bred, or a foreigner.
This sounds ridiculous, but it is the exponent not only of good breeding, but of the true philosophy of social life. The general happiness of a party consists in giving every individual an equal chance, and in wounding no one’s self-love. What is called an “overpowering person,” is immediately shunned, for he talks too much, and excites too much attention. In any other country he would be called “amusing.” He is considered here as a mere monopolizer of the general interest—and his laurels, talk he never so well, shadow the rest of the company. You meet your most intimate friend in society after a long separation, and he gives you his hand as if you had parted at breakfast. If he had expressed all he felt, it would have been “a scene,” and the repose of the company would have been disturbed. You invite a clever man to dine with you, and he enriches his descriptions with new epithets and original words. He is offensive. He eclipses the language of your other guests, and is out of keeping with the received and subdued tone to which the most common intellect rises with ease. Society on this footing is delightful to all, and the diffident man, or the dull man, or the quiet man, enjoys it as much as another. For violent sensations you must go elsewhere. Your escape-valve is not at your neighbor’s ear.
There is a great advantage in this in another respect. Your tongue never gets you into mischief. The “unsafeness of Americans” in society (I quote a phrase I have heard used a thousand times) arises wholly from the American habit of applying high-wrought language to trifles. I can tell one of my countrymen abroad by his first remark. Ten to one his first sentence contains a superlative that would make an Englishman imagine he had lost his senses. The natural consequence is continual misapprehension, offence is given where none was intended, words that have no meaning are the ground of quarrel, and gentlemen are shy of us. A good-natured young nobleman, whom I sat next to at dinner on my first arrival at Gordon castle, told me he was hunting with Lord Abercorn when two very gentleman-like young men rode up and requested leave to follow the hounds, but in such extraordinary language that they were not at first understood. The hunt continued for some days, and at last the strangers, who rode well, and were seen continually, were invited to dine with the principal nobleman of the neighborhood. They turned out to be Americans, and were every way well-bred and agreeable, but their extraordinary mode of expressing themselves kept the company in continual astonishment. They were treated with politeness, of course, while they remained, but no little fun was made of their phraseology after their departure, and the impression on the mind of my informant was very much against the purity of the English language, as spoken by the Americans. I mention it for the benefit of those whom it may concern.
LETTER X.
DEPARTURE FROM GORDON CASTLE—THE PRETENDER—SCOTCH CHARACTER MISAPPREHENDED—OBSERVANCE OF SUNDAY—HIGHLAND CHIEFTAINS.
The days had gone by like the “Days of Thalaba,” and I took my leave of Gordon castle. It seemed to me, as I looked back upon it, as if I had passed a separate life there—so beautiful had been every object on which I had looked in that time, and so free from every mixture of ennui had been the hours from the first to the last, I have set them apart in my memory, those days, as a bright ellipse in the usual procession of joys and sorrows. It is a little world, walled in from rudeness and vexation, in which I have lived a life.
I took the coach from Elgin, and visited the fine old ruins of the cathedral, and then kept on to Inverness, passing over the “Blasted Heath,” the tryst of Macbeth and the witches. We passed within sight of Culloden Moor, at sunset, and the driver pointed out to me a lonely castle where the Pretender slept the night before the battle. The interest with which I had read the romantic history of Prince Charlie, in my boyhood, was fully awakened, for his name is still a watch-word of aristocracy in Scotland; and the jacobite songs, with their half-warlike, half-melancholy music, were favorites of the Dutchess of Gordon, who sung them in their original Scotch, with an enthusiasm and sweetness that stirred my blood like the sound of a trumpet. There certainly never was a cause so indebted to music and poetry as that which was lost at Culloden.
The hotel at Inverness was crowded with livery-servants, and the door inaccessible for carriages. I had arrived on the last day of a county meeting, and all the chieftains and lairds of the north and west of Scotland were together. The last ball was to be given that evening, and I was strongly tempted to go, by four or five acquaintances whom I found in the hotel—but the gout was peremptory. My shoe would not go on, and I went to bed.
I was limping about in the morning with a kind old baronet whom I had met at Gordon Castle, when I was warmly accosted by a gentleman whom I did not immediately remember. On his reminding me that we had parted last on Lake Leman, however, I recollected a gentlemanlike Scotchman, who had offered me his glass opposite Copet to look at the house of Madame de Stael, and whom I had left afterward at Lausanne, without even knowing his name. He invited me immediately to dine, and in about an hour or two after, called in his carriage, and drove me to a charming country house, a few miles down the shore of Loch Ness, where he presented me to his family, and treated me in every respect as if I had been the oldest of his friends. I mention the circumstance for the sake of a comment on what seems to me a universal error with regard to the Scotch character. Instead of a calculating and cold people, as they are always described by the English, they seem to me more a nation of impulse and warm feeling than any other I have seen. Their history certainly goes to prove a most chivalrous character in days gone by, and as far as I know Scotchmen, they preserve it still with even less of the modification of the times than any other nations. The instance I have mentioned above, is one of many that have come under my own observation, and in many inquiries since, I have never found an Englishman,who had been in Scotland, who did not confirm my impression. I have not traded with them, it is true, and I have seen only the wealthier class, but still I think my judgment a fair one. The Scotch in England are, in a manner, what the Yankees are in the Southern States, and their advantages of superior quickness and education have given them a success which is ascribed to meaner causes. I think (common prejudicecontradicente) that neither the Scotch nor the English are a cold or an unfriendly people, but the Scotch certainly the farther remove from coldness of the two.
Inverness is the only place I have ever been in where no medicine could be procured on a Sunday. I did not want indeed for other mementoes of the sacredness of the day. In the crowd of the public room of the hotel, half the persons at least, had either bible or prayer-book, and there was a hush through the house, and a gravity in the faces of the people passing in the street, that reminded me more of New England than anything I have seen. I had wanted some linen washed on Saturday. “Impossible!” said the waiter, “no one does up linen on Sunday.” Toward evening I wished for a carriage to drive over to my hospitable friend. Mine host stared, and I found it was indecorous to drive out on Sunday. I must add, however, that the apothecary’s shop was opened after the second service, and that I was allowed a carriage on pleading my lameness.
Inverness is a romantic looking town, charmingly situated between Loch Ness and the Murray Firth, with the bright river Ness running through it, parallel to its principal street, and the most picturesque eminences in its neighborhood. There is a very singular elevation on the other side of the Ness, shaped like a ship, keel up, and rising from the centre of the plain, covered with beautiful trees. It is called, in Gaelic, Tonnaheuric, or the Hill of the Fairies.
It has been in one respect like getting abroad again, to come to Scotland. Nothing seemed more odd to me on my first arrival in England, than having suddenly ceased to be a “foreigner.” I was as little at home myself, as in France or Turkey, (much less than in Italy,) yet there was that in the manner of every person who approached me which conveyed the presumption that I was as familiar with every thing about me as himself. In Scotland, however, the Englishman is the “Sassenach,” and a stranger; and, as I was always taken for one, I found myself once more invested with that agreeable consequence which accompanies it, my supposed prejudices consulted, my opinion about another country asked, and comparisons referred to me as anex partejudge. I found here, as abroad, too, that the Englishman was expected to pay more for trifling services than a native, and that he would be much more difficult about his accommodations, and more particular in his chance company. I was amused at the hotel with an instance of the want of honor shown “the prophet in his own country.” I went down to the coffee room for my breakfast about noon, and found a remarkably fashionable, pale, “Werter-like man,” excessively dressed, but with all the air of a gentleman, sitting with a newspaper on one side of the fire. He offered me the newspaper after a few minutes, but with the cold, half-supercilious politeness which marks the dandy tribe, and strolled off to the window. The landlord entered presently, and asked me if I had any objection to breakfasting with that gentleman, as it would be a convenience in serving it up. “None in the world,” I said, “but you had better ask the other gentleman first.” “Hoot!” said Boniface, throwing up his chin with an incredulous expression,—“it’s honor for the like o’ him. He’s joost a laddie born and brought up i’ the toon. I kenn’d him weel.” And so enter breakfast for two. I found my companion a well-bred man; rather surprised, however, if not vexed, to discover that I knew he was of Inverness. He had been in the civil services of the East India Company for some years (hence his paleness,) and had returned to Scotland for his health. He was not the least aware that he was known, apparently and he certainly had not the slightest trace of his Scotch birth. The landlord told me afterward that his parents were poor, and he had raised himself by his own cleverness alone, and yet it was “honor for the like o’ him” to sit at table with a common stranger! The world is really very much the same all over.
In the three days I passed at Inverness, I made the acquaintance of several of the warm-hearted Highland chiefs, and found great difficulty in refusing to go home with them. One of the “Lords of the Isles” was among the number—a handsome, high-spirited youth, who would have been the chivalrous Lord Ronald of a century ago, but was now only the best shot, the best rider, the most elegant man, and the most “capital fellow” in the west of Scotland. He had lost every thing but his “Isle” in his London campaigns, and was beginning to look out for a wife to mend his fortune and his morals. There was a peculiar style about all these young men, something very like the manner of our high bred Virginians—a free, gallant, self-possessed bearing, fiery and prompt, yet full of courtesy. I was pleased with them altogether.
I had formed an agreeable acquaintance, on my passage from London to Edinburgh in the steamer, with a gentleman bound to the Highlands for the shooting season. He was engaged to pay a visit to Lord Lumley, with whom I had myself promised to pass a week, and we parted at Edinboro’ in the hope of meeting at Kinrara. On my return from Dalhousie, a fortnight after, we met by chance at the hotel in Edinboro’, he having arrived the same day, and having taken a passage like myself for Aberdeen. We made another agreeable passage together, and he left me at the gate of Gordon castle, proceeding north on another visit. I was sitting in the coffee room at Inverness, pondering how I should reach Kinrara, when, enter again my friend, to my great surprise, who informed me that Lord Lumley had returned to England. Disappointed alike in our visit, we took a passage together once more in the steamer from Inverness to Fort William for the following morning. It was a singular train of coincidences, but I was indebted to it for one of the most agreeable chance acquaintances I have yet made.
LETTER XI.
CALEDONIAN CANAL—DOGS—ENGLISH EXCLUSIVENESS—ENGLISH INSENSIBILITY OF FINE SCENERY—FLORA MACDONALD AND THE PRETENDER—HIGHLAND TRAVELLING.
We embarked early in the morning in the steamer which goes across Scotland from sea to sea, by the half-natural, half-artificial passage of the Caledonian canal. One long glen, as the reader knows, extends quite through this mountainous country, and in its bosom lies a chain of the loveliest lakes, whose extremities so nearly meet, that it seems as if a blow of a spade should have run them together. Their different elevations, however, made it an expensive work in the locks, and the canal altogether cost ten times the original calculation.
I went on board with my London friend, who, from our meeting so frequently, had now become my constant companion. The boat was crowded, yet more with dogs than people; for every man, I think, had his brace of terriers or his pointers, and every lady her hound or poodle, and they were chained to every leg of a sofa, chair, portmanteau, and fixture in the vessel. It was like a floating kennel, and every passenger was fully occupied in keeping the peace between his own dog and his neighbor’s. The same thing would have been a much greater annoyance in any other country; but in Scotland the dogs are all of beautiful and thorough-bred races, and it is a pleasure to see them. Half as many French pugs would have been insufferable.
We opened into Loch Ness immediately, and the scenery was superb. The waters were like a mirror; and the hills draped in mist, and rising one or two thousand feet directly from the shore, and nothing to break the wildness of the crags but the ruins of the constantly occurring castles, perched like eyries upon their summits. You might have had the same natural scenery in America, but the ruins and the thousand associations would have been wanting; and it is this, much more than the mere beauty of hill and lake, which makes the pleasure of travel. We ran close in to a green cleft in the mountains on the southern shore, in which stands one of the few old castles, still inhabited by the chief of his clan—that of Fraser of Lovat, so well known in Scottish story. Our object was to visit the Fall of Foyers, in sight of which it stands, and the boat came off to the point, and gave us an hour for the excursion. It was a pretty stroll up through the woods, and we found a cascade very like the Turtmann in Switzerland, but with no remarkable feature which would make it interesting in description.
I was amused after breakfast with what has always struck me on board English steamers—the gradual division of the company into parties of congenial rank or consequence. Not for conversation—for fellow travellers of a day seldom become acquainted—but, as if it was a process of crystallization, the well-bred and the half-bred, and the vulgar, each separating to his natural neighbor, apparently from a mere fitness of propinquity. This takes place sometimes, but rarely and in a much less degree, on board an American steamer. There are, of course, in England, as with us, those who are presuming and impertinent, but an instance of it has seldom fallen under my observation. The English seem to have an instinct of each other’s position in life. A gentleman enters a crowd, looks about him, makes up his mind at once from whom an advance of civility would be agreeable or the contrary, gets near the best set without seeming to notice them, and if any chance accident brings on conversation with his neighbor, you may be certain he is sure of his man.
We had about a hundred persons on board, (Miss Inverarity, the singer, among others,) and I could see no one who seemed to notice or enjoy the lovely scenery we were passing through. I made the remark to my companion, who was an old stager in London fashion, fifty, but still a beau, and he was compelled to allow it, though piqued for the taste of his countrymen. A baronet with his wife and sister sat in the corner opposite us, and neither saw a feature of the scenery except by an accidental glance in changing her position. Yet it was more beautiful than most things I have seen that are celebrated, and the ladies, as my friend said, looked like “nice persons.”
I had taken up a book while we were passing the locks at the junction of Loch Ness and Loch Oich, and was reading aloud to my friend the interesting description of Flora Macdonald’s heroic devotion to Prince Charles Edward. A very lady-like girl, who sat next me, turned around as I laid down the book, and informed me, with a look of pleased pride, that the heroine was her grandmother. She was returning from the first visit she had ever made to the Isle (I think of Skye,) of which the Macdonalds were the hereditary lords, and in which the fugitive prince was concealed. Her brother, an officer, just returned from India, had accompanied her in her pilgrimage, and as he sat on the other side of his sister he joined in the conversation, and entered into the details of Flora’s history with great enthusiasm. The book belonged to the boat, and my friend had brought it from below, and the coincidence was certainly singular. The present chief of the Macdonalds was on board, accompanying his relatives back to their home in Sussex; and on arriving at Fort William, where the boat stopped for the night, the young lady invited us to take tea with her at the inn; and for so improvised an acquaintance, I have rarely made three friends more to my taste.
We had decided to leave the steamer at Fort William, and cross through the heart of Scotland to Loch Lomond. My companion was very fond of London hours, and slept late, knowing that the cart—the only conveyance to be had in that country—would wait our time. I was lounging about the inn, and amusing myself with listening to the Gaelic spoken by everybody who belonged to the place, when the pleasant family with whom we had passed the evening, drove out of the yard, (having brought their horses down in the boat,) intending to proceed by land to Glasgow. We renewed our adieus, on my part with the sincerest regret, and I strolled down the road and watched them till they were out of sight, feeling that (selfish world as it is,) there are some things thatlookat least like impulse and kindness—so like, that I can make out of them a very passable happiness.
We mounted our cart at eleven o’clock, and with a bright sun, a clear, vital air, a handsome and good-humored callant for a driver, and the most renowned of Scottish scenery before us, the day looked very auspicious. I could not help smiling at the appearance of my fashionable friend sitting, with his well-poised hat and nicely-adjusted curls, upon the springless cross-board of a most undisguised and unscrupulous market-cart, yet in the highest good humor with himself and the world. The boy sat on the shafts, and talked Gaelic to his horse; the mountains and the lake, spread out before us, looked as if human eye had never profaned their solitary beauty, and I enjoyed it all the more, perhaps, that our conversation was of London and its delights; and the racy scandal of the distinguished people of that great Babel amused me in the midst of that which is most unlike it—pure and lovely nature. Everything is seen so much better by contrast!
We crossed the head of Loch Linnhe, and kept down its eastern bank, skirting the water by a winding road directly under the wall of the mountains. We were to dine at Ballyhulish, and just before reaching it we passed the opening of a glen on the opposite side of the lake, in which lay, in a green paradise shut in by the loftiest rocks, one of the most enviable habitations I have ever seen. I found on inquiry that it was the house of a Highland chief, to whom Lord Dalhousie had kindly given me a letter, but my lameness and the presence of my companion induced me to abandon the visit; and, hailing a fishing-boat, I dispatched my letters, which were sealed, across the loch, and we kept on to the inn. We dined here; and I just mention, for the information of scenery-hunters, that the mountain opposite Ballyhulish sweeps down to the lake with a curve which is even more exquisitely graceful than that of Vesuvius in its far-famed descent to Portici. That same inn of Ballyhulish, by the way, stands in the midst of a scene, altogether, that does not pass easily from the memory—a lonely and serene spot that would recur to one in a moment of violent love or hate, when the heart shrinks from the intercourse and observation of men.
We found the travellers’ book, at the inn, full of records of admiration, expressed in all degrees of doggerel. People on the road write very bad poetry. I found the names of one or two Americans, whom I knew, and it was a pleasure to feel that my enjoyment would be sympathized in. Our host had been a nobleman’s travelling valet, and he amused us with his descriptions of our friends, every one of whom he perfectly remembered. He had learned to use his eyes, at least, and had made very shrewd guesses at the condition and tempers of his visiters. His life, in that lonely inn, must be in sufficient contrast with his former vocation.
We had jolted sixteen miles behind our Highland horse, but he came out fresh for the remaining twenty of our day’s journey, and with cushions of dried and fragrant fern, gathered and put in by our considerate landlord, we crossed the ferry and turned eastward into the far-famed and much boasted valley of Glencoe. The description of it must lie over till my next letter.
LETTER XII.
INVARENDEN—TARBOT—COCKNEY TOURISTS—LOCH LOMOND—INVERSNADE—ROB ROY’S CAVE—DISCOMFITURE—THE BIRTHPLACE OF HELEN M’GREGOR.
We passed the head of the valley near Tyndrum, where M’Dougal of Lorn defeated the Bruce, and were half way up the wild pass that makes its southern outlet, when our Highland driver, with a shout of delight, pointed out to us a red deer, standing on the very summit of the highest mountain above us. It was an incredible distance to see any living thing, but he stood clear against the sky, in a relief as strong as if he had been suspended in the air, and with his head up, and his chest toward us, seemed the true monarch of the wild.
At Invarenden, Donald M’Phee begged for the discharge of himself and his horse and cart from our service. He had come with us eighty miles, and was afraid to venture farther on his travels, having never before been twenty miles from the Highland village where he lived. It was amusing to see the curiosity with which he looked about him, and the caution with which he suffered the hostler at the inn to take the black mare out of his sight. The responsibility of the horse and cart weighed heavily on his mind, and he expressed his hope to “get her back safe,” with an apprehensive resolution that would have become a knight-errant guiding himself for his most perilous encounter. Poor Donald! how little he knew how wide is the world, and how very like one part of it is to another!
Our host of Invarenden supplied us with another cart to take us down to Tarbot, and having dined with a waterfall-looking inn at each of our two opposite windows, (the inn stands in a valley between two mountains,) we were committed to the care of his eldest boy, and jolted off for the head of Loch Lomond.
I have never happened to see a traveller who had seen Loch Lomond in perfectly good weather. My companion had been there every summer for several years, and believed it always rained under Ben Lomond. As we came in sight of the lake, however, the water looked like one sheet of gold leaf, trembling, as if by the motion of fish below, but unruffled by wind; and if paradise were made so fair, and had such waters in its midst, I could better conceive than before, the unhappiness of Adam when driven forth. The sun was just setting, and the road descended immediately to the shore, and kept close under precipitous rocks, and slopes of alternate cultivation and heather, to the place of our destination. And a lovely place it is! Send me to Tarbot when I would retreat from the world. It is an inn buried in a grove at the foot of the hills, and set in a bend of the lake shore, like a diamond upon an “orbed brow;” and the light in its kitchen, as we approached in the twilight, was as interesting as a ray of the “first water” from the same. We had now reached the route of the cockney tourists, and while we perceived it agreeably in the excellence of the hotel, we perceived it disagreeably in the price of the wines, and the presence of what my friend called “unmitigated vulgarisms” in the coffee room. That is the worst of England. The people are vulgar, but not vulgar enough. One dances with the lazzaroni at Naples, when he would scarce think of handing the newspaper to the “person” on a tour at Tarbot. Condescension is the only agreeable virtue, I have made up my mind.
Well—it was moonlight. The wind was south and affectionate, and the road in front of the hotel “fleck’d with silver,” and my friend’s wife, and the corresponding object of interest to myself, being on the other side of Ben Lomond and the Tweed, we had nothing for it after supper but to walk up and down with one another, and talk of the past. In the course of our ramble, we walked through an open gate, and ascending a gravel walk, found a beautiful cottage, built between two mountain streams, and ornamented with every device of taste and contrivance. The mild pure torrents were led over falls, and brought to the thresholds of bowers; and seats, and bridges, and winding paths, were distributed up the steep channels, in a way that might make it a haunt for Titania. It is the property, we found afterward, of a Scotch gentleman, and a great summer retreat of the celebrated Jeffrey, his friend. It was one more place to which my heart clung in parting.
Loch Lomond sat still for its picture in the morning, and after an early breakfast, we took a row-boat, with a couple of Highlanders, for Inversnade, and pulled across the lake with a kind of drowsy delightfulness in the scene and air which I have never before found out of Italy. We overshot our destination a little to look into Rob Roy’s Cave, a dark den in the face of the rock, which has the look of his vocation; and then pulling back along the shore, we were landed, in the spray of a waterfall, at a cottage occupied by the boatmen of this Highland ferry. From this point across to Loch Katrine, is some five miles, and the scene of Scott’s novel of Rob Roy. It has been “done” so often by tourists, that I leave all particular description of the localities and scenery to the well-hammered remembrance of readers of magazines, and confine myself to my own private adventures.
The distance between the lakes is usually performed by ladies on donkeys, and by gentlemen on foot, but being myself rather tender-toed with the gout, my companion started off alone, and I lay down on the grass at Inversnade to wait the return of the long-eared troop, who were gone across with an earlier party. The waterfall and the cottage just above the edge of the lake, a sharp hill behind, closely wooded with birch and fir, and, on a greensward platform in the rear of the house, two Highland lasses and a laddie, treading down a stack of new hay, were not bad circumstances in which to be left alone with the witcheries of the great enchanter.
I must narrate here an adventure in which my own part was rather a discomfiture, but which will show somewhat the manners of the people. My companion had been gone half an hour, and I was lying at the foot of a tree, listening to the waterfall and looking off on the lake, and watching, by fits, the lad and lasses I have spoken of, who were building a haystack between them, and chattering away most unceasingly in Gaelic. The eldest of the girls was a tall, ill-favored damsel, merry as an Oread, but as ugly as Donald Bean; and, after a while, I began to suspect, by the looks of the boy below, that I had furnished her with a new theme. She addressed some remark to me presently, and a skirmish of banter ensued, which ended in a challenge to me to climb upon the stack. It was about ten feet high, and shelving outward from the bottom, and my Armida had drawn up the ladder. The stack was built, however, under a high tree, and I was soon up the trunk, and, swinging off from a long branch, dropped into the middle of the stack. In the same instant I was raised in a grasp to which I could offer no resistance, and, with a fling to which I should have believed the strength of few men equal, thrown clear of the stack to the ground. I alighted on my back, with a fall of, perhaps, twelve feet, and felt seriously hurt. The next moment, however, my gentle friend had me in her arms (I am six feet high in my stockings) and I was carried into the cottage, and laid on a flock bed, before I could well decide whether my back was broken or no. Whiskey was applied externally and internally, and the old crone, who was the only inhabitant of the hovel, commenced a lecture in Gaelic, as I stood once more sound upon my legs, which seemed to take effect upon the penitent, though her victim was no wiser for it. I took the opportunity to look at the frame which had proved itself of such vigorous power; but, except arms of extraordinary length, she was like any other equally ugly, middle-sized woman. In the remaining half hour, before the donkeys arrived, we became the best of friends, and she set me off for Loch Katrine, with a caution to the ass-driver to take care of me, which that sandy-haired Highlander took as an excellent joke. And no wonder!
The long mountain glen between these two lakes was the home of Rob Roy, and the Highlanders point out various localities, all commemorated in Scott’s incomparable story. The house where Helen M’Gregor was born lies a stone’s throw off the road to the left, and Rob Roy’s gun is shown by an old woman who lives near by. He must have been rich in arms by the same token; for, beside the well-authenticated one at Abbotsford, I have seen some dozen guns, and twice as many daggers and shot-pouches, which lay claim to the same honor. I paid my shilling to the old woman not the less. She owed it to the pleasure I had received from Sir Walter’s novel.
The view of Loch Lomond back from the highest point of the pass is incomparably fine; at least, when I saw it; for sunshine and temperature, and the effect of the light vapors on the hills, were at their loveliest and most favorable. It looks more like the haunt of a robber and his caterans, probably, in its more common garb of Scotch mist; but, to my eye, it was a scene of the most Arcadian peace and serenity. I dawdled along the five miles upon my donkey, with something of an ache in my back, but a very healthful and sunny freedom from pain and impatience at my heart. And so didnotBaillie Nicol Jarvey make the same memorable journey.