Whisky, Kilts, and the Loch Ness Monster

by William W. Starr

  Here they met the remarkable Flora Macdonald, whose history was so amazingly intertwined with Bonnie Prince Charlie, and, curiously, America. As a young woman she had taken the prince, fleeing for his life after the disaster at Culloden, from Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, disguised him as her maid, a certain “Betty Burk,” and escorted him away from pursuing soldiers across the treacherous waters of the Minch to Skye. Once back on land she saw him to safety and turned him over to other Jacobite sympathizers (Malcolm, Boswell’s companion, was foremost among them) who conveyed him across the island to Raasay in search of a safe haven. For her courageous actions she was seized by government troops and imprisoned in the Tower of London, eventually winning a pardon.

  On the way to the tower she left a vivid and amusing portrait of the prince donning his disguise:

  When the Prince put on women’s cloathes, he proposed carrying a pistol under one of his petticoats for making a small defence in case of attack. But [Miss Flora] declared against it, alleging that if any person should happen to search them, the pistol would only serve to make a discovery. To which the Prince merrily replied, “Indeed, Miss, if we shall happen to meet with any that will go so narrowly to work in searching as what you mean will certainly discover me at any rate.” But Miss would not hear of any arms at all, and therefore the Prince was obliged to content himself with only a short heavy cudgel, with which he design’d to do his best to knock down any single person that should attack him.

  Flora’s story hardly ended there, however. She returned to Skye in 1747, married Allan Macdonald, and remained there until 1774, a year after Boswell and Johnson visited her. She and her family then joined so many other Scots in the immigration to America and settled in North Carolina, where they became entangled in the revolution. Now supporters of the English crown she once disdained, they joined the loyalists, and her husband and son were captured and imprisoned. Flora returned to Skye by herself. Her son died in America, but she was later reunited with her husband, and she died on the island in 1790. An astonishing personal story, to be sure; she is unquestionably among Scotland’s most famous and bravest women.

  Many readers have wished that Boswell had provided a fuller description of her; even so, he devoted page after page to Flora (“A little woman … of mild and genteel appearance” is pretty much all we get), detailing the colorful stories of the prince on Skye. They are entertaining and show how absorbed he was with the prince (these pages are the longest devoted to any one person to be found in the entire Journal), but they are a bit out of place in this narrative. Suffice to say the Young Pretender made it off Skye on his retreat to France, barely keeping ahead of his would-be captors. When Boswell prepared to publish this section of his book he requested permission from King George III to use the name Prince Charles, fearing some hard feelings about the Jacobites might persist in the current English monarch. The king couldn’t seem to care less, but Boswell pestered him by mail and in person until he got approval.

  Neither Johnson nor Boswell was an overt Jacobite sympathizer; their feelings were much more complex. Johnson had a curiosity about the uprising, and Boswell—more of an admirer certainly—admitted to a “liking” of the Jacobites. Boswell was excited, he wrote, at the sight of Johnson lying in the very bed where the prince had lain twenty-eight years before. And Johnson seemed genuinely pleased to hear Flora Macdonald tell of her exploits. He left a note in Latin which read, “With virtue weigh’d, what worthless trash is gold?” Boswell later took that to be an appreciative reference to the loyalty of Highlanders who shunned government gold—up to thirty thousand pounds—as reward for the capture of the prince. Ironically Johnson referred to Flora Macdonald in only two sentences, ending with the note that hers is “a name that will be mentioned in history, and if courage and fidelity be virtues, mentioned with honor.”

  They arrived at Dunvegan, a dark, imposing castle on a rocky promontory, in the late afternoon and immediately found welcoming hospitality. After their arduous journey, to find warmth, large rooms, family portraits, and a graceful welcoming must have been bracing. The MacLeods were most agreeable, and the two men settled in for a delightful visit. The conversational topics, so splendid to Johnson’s mind, were an embracing blend of history, politics, and … well, everything else, including the fidelity of women, prompting this outburst from Johnson: “Where single women are licentious, you rarely find faithful married women.” Consideration of a book about gout with conclusions Johnson disputed led him to observe that “No man practices so well as he writes.” The good doctor was even persuaded to take a little brandy before bedtime to help a cold, something he almost always refused. The castle may have been remote and the weather dreary, but sitting by the fire reading and talking provided long moments of happiness and inspiration for Boswell and Johnson, who observed his sixty-fourth birthday on the morning of September 18 there.

  Part of the conversation led to the unlikely subject of cloth with some unexpected conclusions. “We talked of the highlanders’ not having sheets; and so on we went to the advantage of wearing linen,” Boswell wrote in his Journal. Johnson got into the topic, explaining, “All animal substances are less cleanly than vegetable. Wool, of which flannel is made, is an animal substance; flannel therefore is not so cleanly as linen. I remember I used to think tar dirty. But when I knew it to be only a preparation of the juice of the pine, I thought so no longer. It is not disagreeable to have the gum that oozes from a plum-tree upon your fingers, because it is vegetable; but if you have any candle-grease, any tallow upon your fingers, you are uneasy till you rub it off.”

  After this edifying commentary Johnson launched a thought that almost blew Boswell away. He said, “I have often thought that if I kept a seraglio, the ladies should all wear linen gowns, or cotton; I mean stuffs made of vegetable substances. I would have no silk; you cannot tell when it is clean. It will be very nasty before it is perceived to be so. Linen detects its own dirtiness.”

  At this point Boswell couldn’t believe his ears: the noble, elevated Johnson talking about owning a seraglio? “To hear the grave Dr. Samuel Johnson, ‘that majestic teacher of moral and religious wisdom,’ while sitting solemn in an arm-chair in the Isle of Skye, talk ex cathedra of his keeping a seraglio and acknowledge that the supposition had often been in his thoughts, struck me so forcibly with ludicrous contrast that I could not but laugh immoderately.” Johnson was upset by Boswell’s reaction and apparently responded with some sharp words, which caused Boswell pain.

  The pain was such that Boswell agonized over how to tell the story in his published Journal. There are several versions. To give one example: Johnson retaliated “with such keen sarcastic wit and such a variety of degrading images, of which I was the object, that though I can bear such attacks as well as most men, I yet found myself so much the sport of all the company that I would gladly expunge from my mind every trace of this severe retort.” Boswell neither wanted himself reflected in that way nor Johnson made an object of ridicule for his comments.

  For all the raillery, and the serious talk, their nine-day stay at Dunvegan was a thoroughly enjoyable one. Their host seemed equally pleased, writing of his “good fortune” in welcoming Boswell and Johnson. Less than three years after the visit he raised an army of Highlanders to fight against the colonists in America, was captured and imprisoned, and came to know well General George Washington before his release.

  Historian G. B. Hill visited Dunvegan and wrote in his 1890 book In the Footsteps of Johnson that the doctor slept in the Fairy Bedroom in the castle’s Fairy Tower. “The legend runs that this part of the castle was built 450 years ago by that very uncommon being, a fairy grandmother…. Had Puck peeped in and seen Johnson wearing his wig turned inside out and the wrong end in front as a substitute for a night-cap, he might well have exclaimed that his mistress kept a monster, not only near but in ‘her close and consecrated bower.’”

  My own trip to Dunvegan stopped first in the small port of Portree, where I dodged
on-and-off showers while getting my laundry done. The city was attractively laid out on a hill overlooking a bay filled with small boats. The picturesque scene, with brightly colored sails on bobbing boats, glistened brightly when the sun made a brief appearance in the late afternoon and required my dark glasses. My Raasay host had warned me that Portree merchants enjoyed separating tourists from their money, and sure enough, the Royal Bank of Scotland wanted to charge me a hefty fee to cash some pound sterling travelers checks, the first bank to insist on imposing additional charges. I asked for the manager and complained that other branches of the same bank did not ask for extra money. “Sorry, that’s our policy,” was the best I could get. I went next door to another bank and got my checks exchanged, without fee, from a very attractive young teller who smiled warmly, almost as if I were a lot younger and handsomer.

  I dined at McNabs Inn, where Boswell and Johnson were said to have supped. I don’t think any of us would have remembered the mediocre meal. Next door was the Royal Hotel, where Flora Macdonald is said to have bade Prince Charlie goodbye. It had nothing of the look of an eighteenth-century establishment; it looked whitewashed and tired, and I stared at it for a moment and wondered if there could possibly be two Royal Hotels.

  I spent the night at the classiest (and most expensive) hotel so far on my journey and savored some fine Finnan Haddie (smoked haddock) at dinner. It felt wonderful to have a really comfy bed, room-controlled temperature (warm at least!), and a delicious breakfast. In chats with others at the hotel I learned that I’m a rare American visitor for spending much time on Skye. “Most Americans come in here and ask for a three-hour tour of Skye,” said one hotel employee. “And that’s pretty much what they get.” I inquired about Boswell and Johnson; he pointed me to McNabs and suggested I be sure to go to Raasay and Dunvegan. “You’ll get a really good picture of what they did on Skye. It’s pretty amazing when you think of it. There was nothing but a few farmhouses and villages on Skye back then, and no roads. It was very isolated. They were brave and took a lot of risks to come here and then spend so much time.” Turns out he used to be a schoolteacher, and he knew whereof he spoke.

  Off to Dunvegan, twenty-five miles away, and into a dark, low cloud mass that let go of high winds and a horizontal rain. The road was two lanes but quite narrow, and not knowing the way, I drove with extra caution. There was, however, only one way to go, so little chance of getting lost. When I got to the car park for Dunvegan, the rain was still coming down in torrents, and I feared the castle would not be open. When I completed my rain-soaked five-minute walk to the entrance, I was greeted with warmth that seemed to echo the reception given B & J and also belied my appearance and my pedigree. Back when Johnson and Boswell visited the castle was entered upward through a series of stone steps and could be accessed only when the tide was low; now the entrance is level with the footpath from the car park.

  I discovered that I was by myself in a sumptuously furnished castle, open to the public since 1933 and overrun by visitors in the summer. Dunvegan, I learned, is the oldest ancient house in Scotland to have retained its family and its roof and has been the seat of the chiefs of MacLeod for more than eight hundred years (with one short exception during the mid-nineteenth-century potato famine). These chiefs, while good lairds in the main, have warred with other clans and had some rather unsavory moments in their past, including reports that at least one of them sold his tenants into slavery in America in the early eighteenth century before Britain halted the slave trade.

  The castle boasts a fascinating and lengthy history with occasional interruptions of bloodshed, and the tour of its interior proved highly entertaining. I headed, of course, to the Business Room where Lady MacLeod entertained Boswell and Johnson (above it is the Fairy Room where Johnson slept, and Sir Walter Scott, too, when he came here in 1814). It still exuded conviviality, and it was easy to imagine my Bozzy and Dr. J seated in the room enjoying good drink and lively conversation. Johnson’s portrait hangs over the fireplace flanked by the charming, gracious letter he wrote to his hostess thanking her for her hospitality: “I hope you believe me thankful, and willing, at whatever distance we may be placed, to show my sense of your kindness by any offices of friendship that may fall within my power,” Johnson wrote a week after his departure. “Lady Macleod and the young Ladies have by their hospitality and politeness made an impression on my mind which will not easily be effaced. Be pleased to tell them that I remember them with great tenderness and great respect.” Boswell also noted that “I cannot enough praise the genteel hospitality with which we were treated.”

  The earliest parts of the castle date from the 1300s; regrettably some of the oldest areas were shut down because of the bad weather, and some others because they were the living quarters of the twenty-ninth Clan MacLeod chieftain. But there was plenty to see including a gorgeous dining room surrounded by ancestral portraits on the walls, a pit dungeon in which enemies were hopelessly encased and placed adjacent to the food preparation, presumably so they could smell the food and be assured of not getting any. Another room held some Jacobite relics including a lock of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s hair. I spent more time here than I had anticipated, but it was well worth it. Even so, it was getting late and I had to walk back through the heavy rain, strong winds, and bone-chilling cold for my return to Portree. Any hope of following Boswell and Johnson on the rest of their visit to Skye had disappeared in the storm forecast and my too-extended visit to Dunvegan, It was getting too close to my scheduled departure to the Outer Hebrides.

  From Dunvegan Boswell and Johnson set out on a somewhat convoluted path to the south to Ullinish and Talisker before returning through Sconser and Coriechatachan and back to Armadale for their sailing to Coll and ultimately Mull. Along the way the subject of Ossian arose, as it had earlier and would again before the journey ended. Because Ossian and James Macpherson appear several times in the texts of Boswell and Johnson, and because their mention connects to an important issue of the day, I think readers today will benefit from a little background.

  After the Treaty of 1707, and certainly after the Jacobite defeat in 1746, the Scots went looking for a way of expressing their national identity. They possessed a long, rich history apart from England, now their political master; what could they mine from that past to give their culture meaning and substance? (The American South went through this same reexamination following its defeat in the Civil War.) James Macpherson rode to the rescue. A would-be Highland clergyman, Macpherson showed up one day with the exciting news that he had stumbled across a manuscript bearing examples of ancient Gaelic poetry. Those who saw it in Edinburgh couldn’t read Gaelic and asked for a translation; Macpherson obliged with an excerpt of a poem by the legendary Scottish bard Ossian that was epic in scope, a romance, a drama, breathtaking in its story-telling artistry—in other words, nothing like what was known of Gaelic poetry at the time.

  Macpherson had clearly discovered not just another Scottish poet but the nation’s equal of Homer. With the help of impressed scholars Macpherson published a collection of translations of Ossian’s work in 1760. Voilà, Scotland had the greatness of its cultural identity confirmed and the glories of the Gaelic people assured. Macpherson probably should have stopped there, but he opted to discover, translate, and publish more volumes of Ossian. People began getting suspicious. Undeterred, Macpherson and his supporters hailed the books as the equal of The Iliad and The Odyssey. Others, including Dr. Johnson, doubted their authenticity. Johnson wanted to know where the originals were and why Macpherson kept promising to show them but never did. “Why is not the original deposited in some public library, instead of exhibiting attestations of its existence? Suppose there were a question in a court of justice whether a man be dead or alive. You aver he is alive, and you bring fifty witnesses to swear it; I answer, ‘Why do you not produce the man?’”

  Johnson also thought the works themselves to be worthless. Asked if any man of a modern age could have written such poems, Johnson
replied, “Yes, sir, many men, many women and many children.” He added later that he could write that sort of stuff if he could “abandon himself to it.” Comically, Macpherson is said to have threatened to beat up Dr. Johnson, though he never did that either. Johnson’s letter to Macpherson (not a part of his Journey) is fun reading: “I hope I shall never be deterred from detecting what I think a cheat by the menaces of a ruffian.” The argument raged on as Johnson and Boswell made their Highlands journey.

  The coda to this story is interesting. In 1805, after Macpherson’s death, the Highland Society of Edinburgh investigated his papers. It found that Macpherson was in fact Ossian; the clergyman had borrowed and stolen some lines of Gaelic poetry along with language and concepts from the Bible, Milton, and so on, to create his books. The critics were right. And yet many people—and writers such as Sir Walter Scott, who seriously doubted Ossian’s truth—had embraced him because he supplied, if fraudulently, their need for a national literature at the midpoint of the eighteenth century. The late Sir Hugh Trevor-Roper finished the story: “If the Scottish belief in the authenticity of Ossian weakened in the course of the nineteenth century, that was not because the Scots, however belatedly, yielded to reason…. Ossian’s poems lost their authenticity, not when they were disproved, but when changing circumstances made them no longer necessary…. With the rediscovery of genuine traditional Scottish poetry and the creation of genuine modern Scottish poetry, Scott had filled the void, and Ossian was no longer necessary.”

  Boswell’s lengthy account of this mostly agreeable period makes for good reading. On his second stop at Coirechatachan Boswell indulged far too many bowls of punch and got quite drunk, not getting to bed until 5 A.M. “I awaked at noon, with a severe headache. I was much vexed that I should have been guilty of such a riot, and afraid of a reproof from Dr Johnson,” he wrote. When he got to Boswell’s room, however, Johnson offered no upbraid, instead answering Boswell’s plaint that “they kept me up” by observing with good humor, “No, you kept them up, you drunken dog.” His hosts offered him some “hair of the dog,” a little brandy, which Johnson approved: “Fill him drunk again. Do it in the morning, that we may laugh at him all day. It is a poor thing for a fellow to get drunk at night, and skulk to bed, and let his friends have no sport.”