Boswell's Bus Pass

by Campbell, Stuart

  The sole occupant was not Mrs Kite whose husband would perform tricks tonight but a small elderly woman who exuded Christian comfort and good advice. We would have to retrace our wet steps for at least two miles. After one of those miles a 4x4 slowed down to let the redneck driver get a good look at us in case he returned to discover that his little old mum had been trussed up and gagged by pension stealing visitors.

  After a few more sodden sodding miles we are blown into a clutch of dilapidated farm buildings, broken machinery and weeds. Despite the prevalence of KEEP OUT DANGEROUS BUILDING and related signs that must have used up a year’s supply of exclamation marks we caught sight of someone moving at a window and knocked at the door which was eventually opened by a giant. The massively tall man with cap stared down at us, quickly decided we are harmless and pointed out that we had completed a circular tour of the River Lugar and had unknowingly passed within 100 metres of Auchinleck House.

  It is undeniably an imposing structure, now fully restored to its 18th century grandeur and is rented out as holiday accommodation. There were few signs of life and no one we could ask for a peek inside. Through which window did Boswell gaze miserably in the aftermath of the blazing row between his two fathers?

  Johnson had been instructed to keep clear of raising any contentious subject but the armed truce was unsustainable. ‘In the course of their altercation’, writes Boswell, ‘Whiggism and Presbyterianism, Toryism and Episcopacy, were terribly buffeted.’ In his cartoon version of events Rowlandson shows Johnson about to wallop Old Auchinleck over the head with a tome at least as big as volume 1 (A – K) of his own dictionary. Boswell simpers in the background with his fingers rammed into his mouth while several coins roll about the floor. The coins were part of the old judge’s coin collection. He had already shown Johnson his Brooke Bond tea card album (Fresh-water Fish) and Star Wars collections without incident. It was the head of Oliver Cromwell on the new 50p that provoked Johnson to apoplexy.

  As part of the negotiated truce they walked down to look at the castle in the grounds. Johnson declared himself, ‘less delighted with the elegance of the modern mansion, than with the sullen dignity of the old castle. I clambered with Mr Boswell among the ruins, which afford striking images of ancient life.’ I clambered among the ruins with David and we were struck by images of modern life in the form of empty lager cans and fag packets. The ruins are now precarious and must soon topple. Fully grown trees sprout from the remaining walls. Only their roots hold the frail edifice together as if the stones are being wrenched upwards by a huge bird holding them in its overstretched talons; Angkor Wat has relocated to Ayrshire.

  Boswell might well have told the still-seething Johnson how in earlier times the castle’s owner had received a parcel containing a decaying sheep’s head delivered at the end of a rope strung from a neighbouring property. The upshot was general revenge, carnage and bloody murder. As he glanced at Old Auchinleck Johnson may have found this an attractive option.

  *

  We had hoped to embark on a mini grand tour of the other noble Ayrshire piles that the tourists visited but as the day was cold and getting darker we cut our losses and decided to restrict ourselves to Loudoun Castle where Boswell and Johnson were wonderfully entertained by John, Earl of Loudoun and his mother ‘who, in her ninety-fifth year, had all her faculties quite unimpaired. This was a very cheering sight to Dr Johnson who had an extraordinary desire for long life.’

  Long life seemed a less than attractive thought as we squelched our way back down the interminable drive way, the end of which would have disappeared into a perfect vanishing point had the watery mist not claimed it first.

  The bus to Kilmarnock dragged itself up the hill towards Auchinleck Academy its situation symbolic of a past era when education was both an aspiration and a way out. The gradual ascent took us up past a co-operative store the roof of which was coiled with barbed wire recycled from a grey grainy World War 1 battle field. The end wall of a boarded up house had been repainted to hide the foot high graffiti. What words of hate had been hidden from view? Were they sectarian, racial, personal? GRASS, NONCE, SCUM?

  I instantly regretted wiping the condensation from the window through which I saw a cow lying dead in the corner of a field. It was dead. It was not resting or sleeping, it was dead. It had fallen by a fence, its legs splayed at an unnatural angle. To complete the tableau a crow pecked its hide in a pastiche of a safari documentary.

  A crumpled mother and four weans got on at the stop nearest to Kilmarnock Prison. While she looked desolate, her children were excited at having seen dad in his new surroundings. Perhaps she knew that most prison violence happens in the hour after visiting time when the pain of separation meets the frustration in those who have not had a visit.

  By intentionally blurring my vision I tried to inure myself from reliving the horror that was the bus station. To an extent I succeeded until David pointed out the verbal inanity of the sign reminding us that THE PUBLIC MUST REFRAIN FROM WALKING ON THE VEHICLE RUNNING SURFACE. I blame the teachers.

  It was late when we got off and walked the mile or so to Loudoun Castle. Fabulously floodlit it was impossible to miss. The gates were also fabulously shut. We managed to avoid them altogether by hugging the ditch but were twice stopped by security staff who emerged from the gloom to ask us where we thought we were going. On realising that our bizarre mission posed little threat to national security we were allowed to continue.

  The castle had recently abandoned its theme park, the Dutch owner claiming that increases in VAT, coupled with the bad weather made financial viability impossible. He may not have been able to anticipate the first obstacle but the second should not have come as a great surprise. Most of the rides, slides, flumes, carousels and whirligigs had been dismantled and taken away. A few cranes remained and the silhouette of something large, perhaps the Looping Twist N Shout or the Vertical Launch Double Shot Barnstorm. The air above the fairground site was turbulent with the ghosts of grand days out and the sticky energized excitement of countless children. Loudoun Castle was brazenly lit with a cavalier disregard for global warning, the early evening crows diving in and out of the black window gaps.

  Boswell, in gushing unctuous mode, praised his host to the hilt of his regimental sword, ‘I cannot figure a more honest politician … While I live, I shall honour the memory of this amiable man’. This despite the fact that Lord John’s Hanovarian army had been scared witless by a few members of the Clan Chatton, banging old kettles and generally making a lot of noise, at the ignominious Rout of Moy. He had an equally undistinguished military record in both America and Portugal. Nevertheless, ‘His kind and dutiful attention to his mother was unremitted. At his house was true hospitality; a plain but a plentiful table.’ In other words, a rubbish sodger but aye guid to his mammy and he put on a fine spread.

  *

  The Kilmarnock to Glasgow bus was a revelation, warm, comfortable, clean, spanking new and no one sitting in the front upstairs seats. David gripped the hand rail and made revving noises. My fantasy was quite different; any sane person could see that we were cocooned in a simulator set for low flying, and surrounded by winking lights. We glided silently across the surface of our new found planet, easily dodging the incoming flack from ill prepared aliens. It was bonfire night and Glasgow seen from the perspective of the moors was catching fire.

  The sky was crowded with falling angels with lit sparkly wings. A whole carousel appeared on the horizon over Rutherglen and then morphed into a darting sand-dancer of light while a strange blazing mushroom quickly extinguished itself with a crenellated popping sound. On tenement back greens across the city kids were experiencing a type of joy never to be replicated in adulthood and a thousand cats arched beneath spiky fur. Some wanton profligate hurled her pearl necklace into the night; the clown retaliated by tossing his chrysanthemums which disintegrated into a million vermillion spores.

  As we entered St Vincent Street the crew prepared to land. A man s
tood proudly at a traffic light as if he owned the city; the Great Controller, all in all, a job well done. ‘That’s all folks,’ he said, throwing the switch and turning the sky dark.

  *

  Another double decker for the trip back to Edinburgh but this time all front seats had been commandeered by six or seven young lads who had skillfully improvised their own cocktail cabinet on the front ledge; all that was missing was a single optic for the vodka bottle. One of their number destined for a career in catering or the caring professions solicitously administered the mixers while the others decibelled ever louder. Their party progressed well and even prompted envious comments from the less fortunate travellers until we hit the outskirts of Baillieston. The bus stopped. The driver, a huge man, came up the stairs and told the lads to get off. ‘Ave seen yous on the CCTV, get aff?’ ‘A bit harsh’ muttered one of the observers until fixed with a viperous stare by the driver who was starting to resemble everyone’s least favourite teacher, probably the techi teacher, a fat man with his Lochgelly Special neatly resting beneath the shoulder of his jacket. The peacemaker shrugged and returned to the soft porn of Men’s Health, his lips moving as he looked at the pictures. Unexpectedly the driver relented, ‘Get aff … or ditch the booze.’ The compromise was instantly accepted and the lads tottered their way down the stairs and tipped the now minimal vodka dregs into the gutter. What a nice man.

  After a brief interval act two started. There was only one actor on stage. He stood up pacing the aisle and roared into his phone. ‘Julie, dinnae embarrass me, yer steamin’, totally steamin’. Ah cannae walk tae Musselburgh. Ah havnae got one twenty. It’s ten miles!’ He put the phone down and waited patiently for his audience to react. In addition to spontaneous applause most of those present wanted to give a more tangible sign of their appreciation. He graciously accepted the coins offered from all sides before returning to his seat to discreetly unwrap his vacuum sealed packet of Marks and Spencers sandwiches.

  *

  I left David in town and took the 31 bus back to Gorgie. The night was dark and wet. A tiny splash of colour on the pavement turned out to be a dead pheasant looking for all the world as if it had flown blind into the tenement building and brained itself. What was the bird doing in an urban street? It couldn’t have flown there. I could understand the odd errant cock if the French had been playing at Murrayfield but not a pheasant. Had it been dropped by a returning poacher? Had it been stolen and dropped when the butcher gave chase in his pheasant blood stained apron? It had been a strange day.

  Saturday 6th November Auchinleck,

  My Dearest Margaret,

  I am mixed up jealous man.

  No I start letter again, this not letter of friend. Soon I see you, this is good news. My heart soar like eagle bird above sea where fishies swim (my writing get better and better) but I know you send letters to master and not me. I know you his good wife and must write him, and not me. But I want to seize letters and rub in my face and smell pages for perfume from you. I tell you master say he very pleased when he get letter from Margaret but soon he in gloomy mood again.

  Joseph is wet man. My ears run with rain, my breeches look like I have bad accident. It fall from sky like God is angry with me for write letters to married woman. Perhaps God is right. He want me to drown. I see too many inns, they all the same, I want my small and damping bed in James Court close to Margaret. We leave sea but still we go to islands, at least no caves, no bones.(1) Master still point out trees to Johnson, I want hit him hard and shout, ‘It only bloody tree!’ We stay in Glasgow inn where everyone wear green and talk football. What is this football? Then big man come in and he pick fight with Doctor. Lady at bar get ready to throw man in street. The mad man called Adam from bible. The doctor shake like plague and make bull noises, he stare at mad man and call him son of a *****. I not want Margaret to read this word. It is time for journey to end. It all go bad now.(2)

  We stay then with master’s old father in country. Things still bad as the master not notice father’s new wife. He not say word to her. Very rude, like small boy. (3)Then more fight happen. This time the doctor throw old father’s money on floor and say he spit on Cromwell man.(4) I hold doctor and stop him hit master’s old father.

  This nightmare now. Oh Margaret, I want to be in your bosoms but that not happen ever, because you love master and not his servant. Perhaps I go back to Bohemia.

  See, dear Margaret, Joseph is sad jealous man who just love you with no hope.

  Your Jo

  (1) Presumably this is a reference to the island in Loch Lomond.

  (2) Here then is confirmation that Adam Smith visited Johnson in Glasgow. John Wilson Croker in his 1844 edition of The Life was the first to repeat the rumour that Johnson used the occasion to call Smith a son of a bitch.

  (3) That Boswell makes not the merest mention of his father’s new bride is indeed strange.

  (4) This is obviously the famous falling-out over the coin collection.

  STAGE ELEVEN

  EDINBURGH AND THE LOTHIANS

  A Visit to a Museum of Curiosities and a Short Inventory of Several Specimens-Entertaining Anecdotes from a Bookseller – An Enterprising Beggar – A Brush with the Sport of Kings

  The ten days Boswell and Johnson spent in Edinburgh at the end of the tour were limbo times; they had had enough of each other’s company. Johnson was desperate for the salons of London, and titillated by the prospect of rekindling his coded conversations with Hester Thrale. Boswell too must have looked forward to seeing Margaret after one hundred days apart but he makes no mention of their reunion. His infidelities squatted in the space between them. His less than witty tee-shirt WHAT GOES ON TOUR STAYS ON TOUR cut no ice with her, she had a drawer of them, and why was he still dragging that opinionated bear of a man after him? The maid had only just picked the last of the candle wax from their best carpet.

  Boswell felt flat. ‘It was near ten before I got up. I had a certain degree of uneasiness from fearing that after my hardy and spirited tour I should sink into indolence. But I made myself easy by considering that it was allowable, natural, and happy that I should enjoy the comfort of repose when returned home.’ Nevertheless by his own admission Boswell’s narrative loses its momentum. ‘As I kept no journal of anything that passed after this morning (Thursday 11th November), I shall, from memory, group together this and the other days till that on which Dr Johnson departed for London. They were in all nine days.’

  There follows a desultory list of the minor Edinburgh literary and legal dignitaries who invite Johnson to various meals or who traipse round to James Court to hear his disparaging comments about their backward land. They visit Edinburgh castle but Johnson is unimpressed and doesn’t even mention it in his narrative. Boswell scuttles round and fills the gap, ‘Dr Johnson affected to despise it, observing that “it would make a good prison in England.’’’

  Boswell had engineered the perfect excuse not to spend any more time in Johnson’s company, ‘I could not attend him, being obliged to be in the Court of Session; but my wife was so good as to devote the greater part of the morning to the endless task of pouring out tea for my friend and his visitors.’ Sorry Doctor, but some of us have to work.

  He was not insensitive to the extent to which his guest wanted away, ‘Such was the disposition of his time at Edinburgh. He said one evening to me, in a fit of languor, Sir we have been harassed by invitations.’

  Boswell went through the motions of entertaining his guest; ‘(we) spent one forenoon at my Uncle Dr Boswell’s, who showed him his curious museum, and made him a present of a Scotch pebble. He afterwards had it cut into a pair of sleeve-buttons, which he constantly wore.’ Who was his uncle and what on earth did he display in his most curious of museums, apart from pebbles? The pebble collecting must have been a family trait recalling as it does Boswell’s search of the beach on Coll. The nearest that Edinburgh has to a curious museum is the collection of anatomy specimens in the Royal College of Surgeons. We d
o know that Boswell’s strange uncle was a physician.

  The anatomy museum exists in a parallel universe to our own. Here the surreal is king and the bizarre is worshipped, all wrapped up in the pretence that the exhibitions contribute in a meaningful way to the serious study of medicine.

  A prominent portrait depicts Lord Sandy Wood, a former president of the college who was accompanied on his professional rounds by a raven and a sheep. He was also the first man in Edinburgh to carry an umbrella with which he bullied the sick into making a contribution to the Edgar Alan Poe Appreciation Society.

  In an adjacent case is the pocket book bound with the skin peeled from the corpse of William Burke. Detailed instructions on how best to remove the flesh from a skeleton are followed by a line of skulls each with a neatly trepanned hole, reminiscent of the memorial to the victims of Pol Pot’s killing fields.

  The truly squeamish can choose between the display of pickled aneurysms and the dissected eyes, no longer smiling at grandchildren or jokes from the cracker. By way of light relief there is a gangrenous foot.

  In 1775 an alert doctor evidently discovered that chimney sweeps often developed cancer of the scrotum. He was placed on a blacklist and members of the sweeping professions were warned that the aforementioned doctor might fondle their privates the moment they put their heads up the flue.

  A line of jars contained a dubious yellow liquid and disease-carrying worms, some of them long enough to reach the moon if laid end to end.

  The saddest display of all showed three tiny toddler skeletons trustingly following each other. Just when I thought it couldn’t get much worse it did, with a child’s skeleton seemingly hanging from a noose.

  I escaped upstairs to look at war wounds and assimilate the subliminal message that our current military is full of state school weaklings. After the Battle of Waterloo, during which his arm was carried off by a cannon shot, Sergeant Anthony Twittmeyer of the King’s German Legion rode 15 miles into Brussels where he lapsed into unconsciousness, after which he recovered.