Whisky, Kilts, and the Loch Ness Monster

by William W. Starr

  The real Macbeth, something less than the villainous character depicted by Shakespeare, became king in 1040, when he killed Duncan, the sort of thing that royal Scots did quite a bit of in those times. Boswell and Johnson went to the heath where Macbeth is said to have met with the witches, and Johnson began quoting from the play (don’t you just hate show-offs?). Boswell, of course, was dazzled and delighted. “He [Johnson] then parodied the ‘all-Hail’ of the witches to Macbeth, addressing himself to me. I had purchased some land called Dalblair; and, as in Scotland, it is customary to distinguished landed men by the name of their estates, I had thus two titles, Dalblair and Young Auchinleck. So my friend, in imitation of ‘All hail Macbeth! hail to three, Thane of Cawdor!’ condescended to amuse himself with uttering: ‘All hail Dalblair! hail to thee, Laird of Auchinleck’!” Boswell, as we’ve seen, could be quite easily amused by Johnson.

  Later that same day Boswell encountered a grisly sight, though one he never grew tired of: a dead body. This one was hanging from a tree just off the road. The body was that of Kenneth Leal—who surely would never have anticipated such literary notoriety—found guilty of mail robbery and hanged on July 7. “As he had not hung but about two months, the body was quite entire. It was still a man hanging. The sight impressed me with a degree of gloom.” Johnson was quiet about this incident. He had no liking for scenes of death, indeed, they provoked fears of his own passing.

  About eight miles from Cawdor Castle the two men visited Fort George, constructed over a twenty-year period beginning in 1747 as a bastion for the Hanoverian troops stationed in the Highlands in the wake of the battle at Culloden. Once again it was puzzling that Boswell and Johnson would have inspected the fort so thoroughly with the help of several officers, being fully aware of why it was built and garrisoned, and yet made no mention of Culloden and what transpired there. They were wined and dined, treated to a concert, and toured all areas of the fortress.

  Fort George sits on a spit of land that juts out into Moray Firth a few miles to the east of Inverness. It makes an imposing sight, and it must have been so when it was built to keep the Highlanders at bay. But, of course, the rebellion was thoroughly crushed at Culloden, and by the time the fort was completed around 1769, there was virtually no reason for its existence. The Highlanders had been subdued and their only threat to the magnificent fort would have been to hurl stale haggis at it. The army converted it into a barracks and a training facility for recruits, which appeared to be what it is used for these days. So if any twenty-first-century Jacobites decided to reorganize, their biggest obstacle in retaking the fort would probably be what to do with all of those tourists now crawling over the place. Johnson, by the way, chose not to leave us any details abut his visit, writing, “Of Fort George, I shall not attempt to give any account. I cannot delineate it scientifically, and a loose and popular description of it is of use only when the imagination is to be amused.” For most of us latter-day writers a modest stirring of the imagination is about the best to be hoped for.

  The travelers spent a night in Elgin, a market town that grew up in the thirteenth century around the River Lossie. The inn they found disappointing and the meal inedible, according to Johnson. It was one of only two times on their long journey—the other was during a stop in Glenelg as they approached Skye—that Johnson complained about the quality of the food: “Such disappointments, I suppose, must be expected in every country, where there is no great frequency of travellers,” he declared.

  It seems there may have been a little more to this story than either man knew of at the time. One of the great Johnson scholars, G. B. Hill, relates the anecdote, possibly apocryphal, but now widely known. It seems that Johnson dined at the Red Lion Inn, where a penurious commercial traveler by the name of Thomas Paufer was accustomed to dining and drinking with regularity. Really he preferred drinking to eating, and he tended to order a sparse dinner so that he would have more money to spend on drink. Unfortunately for Dr. Johnson, he bore an uncanny resemblance to Paufer, and when Johnson arrived at the inn the waiter mistook him for Paufer “and such a dinner was prepared as Paufer as wont to receive.” In other words the tavern owner figured he could get away with serving a second-class meal to Paufer, who would be too plastered to know the difference. Johnson, of course, was criticized for many things he said about Scotland when his book was published, and it may be that the proud denizens of Elgin, stung by his complaint about the food, searched diligently for an exculpatory story. Offering another perspective, the Irish-born writer Frank Delaney, who followed Boswell and Johnson’s trail in the early 1990s, engaged a local man in conversation about Johnson’s remark:

  “Dr. Johnson had a meal here that was so bad he couldn’t eat it,” Delaney said.

  “When was that?” he asked.

  “In August 1773.”

  “Ach,” he said. “He could have had the same yesterday.”

  My experience was much better, perhaps because Elgin is no longer infrequently visited. It seemed a rather lively, busy town of twenty-four thousand that was buzzing with delight at the uncommon appearance of the sun at this time of year. The temperatures reached into the mid-seventies this afternoon, and when I drove to the pond green, there were literally hundreds of people sunbathing, walking their children and dogs, or lining up at the ice cream stand, all in various stages of undress. (I hasten to add that undress in this case means shedding sweaters, not removing all clothing; Scotland is not a clothing-optional country, at least not in the Highlands.) The sight seemed a tad incongruous after hours spent reading Boswell and Johnson. Then Elgin was an outpost, as Johnson observed, a place few visited. Now it appeared more of a sun-washed resort. No rain, no wind; could this really be the Scotland I had been journeying through?

  At breakfast I encountered a pair of singers on tour with the Scottish National Opera giving performances of Johann Strauss’s Der Fledermaus in the city. We were intrigued with our differing missions. They knew of Boswell and Johnson and were eager to inquire into my adventures following their journey. “Boswell was such a tell-all, I laughed at a lot of what I read about him,” said the tenor. “And Johnson seemed rather a stick-in-themud by comparison. I know he was very intelligent and very respected, but he seemed to distant to me.” I reminded them of the story of Johnson imitating a kangaroo in Inverness, and they both laughed loudly, the baritone choking just a bit on his cereal. The tenor added, “I’ve never read of their journey to the Highlands, but I imagine they were probably just right for each other because of being such different personalities. People like that can travel well together.” He looked at his opera companion, and they both smiled. We enjoyed a little more conversation over tea, and they discussed their careers. Both were from Birmingham (England) and had been singing for nearly ten years; they expected to have long careers in Europe, though both would like to experience the stage at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. I suggested that they undertake a Boswell-and-Johnson-type journey to New York and the States, maybe even keep a journal, and we all toasted the possibility with our cups before heading out to our respective duties.

  My duties, of course, weren’t quite so strenuous as their rehearsing. I walked to the site that had most interested Boswell and Johnson when they arrived in Elgin: the fourteenth-century ruins of the famous cathedral, once regarded as the most beautiful in Scotland. Boswell called them “noble ruins” And Johnson observed that “there was enough yet remaining to shew, that it was once magnificent.” The cathedral suffered a dreadful history, which both men commented upon. Built in the early thirteenth century, it survived a major fire in 1270, but it would face far worse dangers, namely Alexander Stewart, the earl of Buchan and better known as the Wolf of Badenoch (and that’s not a complimentary nickname). He was powerful and imperious, the illegitimate son of King Robert II, and when the bishop at Elgin excommunicated him for leaving his wife, he sought revenge. In 1390 he and a group of thugs burned the cathedral to the ground along with the homes of all of the bis
hops and chaplains. Some rebuilding was accomplished. In the post-Reformation period (the second half of the sixteenth century), the cathedral was stripped of its lead roofing and bells, and without a roof overhead usage declined. Vandals and storms destroyed more of the structure over the next two centuries, and the central tower collapsed on Easter Day in 1711, not exactly a good omen.

  Johnson raged at the mistreatment of the once majestic building:

  The church of Elgin had, in the intestine tumults of the barbarous ages, been laid waste by the irruption of a Highland chief, whom the bishop had offended; but it was gradually restored to the state, of which the traces may be now discerned, and was at least not destroyed by the tumultuous violence of Knox, but more shamefully suffered to dilapidate by deliberate robbery and frigid indifference. There is still extant … an order … directing that the lead, which covers the two cathedrals of Elgin and Aberdeen, shall be taken away, and converted into money for the support of the army. A Scotch army in those times was very cheaply kept; yet the lead of two churches must have born so small a proportion to any military expence, that it is hard not to believe the reason alleged to be merely popular, and the money intended for some private purse. The order however was obeyed; the two churches were stripped, and the lead was shipped to be sold in Holland. I hope every reader will rejoice that this cargo of sacrilege was lost at sea.

  He was correct. The ship carrying the lead was so overweighted that it sank, its cargo lost. Johnson went on to add a note about historic preservation: “Let us not however make too much haste to despise our neighbours. Our own cathedrals are mouldering by unregarded dilapidation. It seems to be part of the despicable philosophy of the time to despise monuments of sacred magnificence, and we are in danger of doing that deliberately, which the Scots did not do but in the unsettled state of an imperfect constitution.”

  Efforts to stabilize the Elgin ruins began in the nineteenth century and have permitted visitors today to see much of what Boswell and Johnson saw then. The sandstone ruins do indeed evoke a grand structure. And the site is still in use. In fact a wedding was in progress when I arrived, some of the male guests attired in Highland kilts. I watched the bride and groom ascend several stories on the steps inside one of the remaining towers and smile down at the guests for a series of photographs. It was quite picturesque and frankly rather bracing to find this old edifice hosting a contemporary service. There were cracked gravestones scattered around the site; the oldest I found dated back to 1644, but there were others that looked older whose inscriptions I could not read. The finest intact tomb is that of Bishop John of Winchester, who died in 1460. Little remains of the original nave, but the west front tower, through which ceremonial processions entered the cathedral, is largely intact and majestic, affording even to the unimaginative a vision of how magnificent this structure was before its destruction began. The choir and the presbytery are the most complete parts of the cathedral to survive, though they date from the rebuilding after the damage caused by the Wolfman. History is hardly dead here; it is raw and etched into the surrounding ruins, and after all these centuries it still weighs heavily.

  Elgin was near to a number of castles of some historic distinction, and my addiction was beginning to act up for the first time since I passed through Dunrobin. I gave way to that irresistible tug of drawbridges, moats, turrets, dungeons, and an assortment of peculiar lords, dukes, and earls, and I set off for the closest. It turned out to be Spynie Palace, technically not a castle at all, I discovered, but important—and close.

  Spynie—the name reeks of intrigue, doesn’t it?—was the residence of the powerful bishops of Moray for five centuries. Those bishops included Bishop Bur, whose excommunication so infuriated the bastard Wolf of Badenoch. The palace was abandoned and fell into disrepair in 1689. The medieval ruins now include a six-story tower built in the late fifteenth century. Visitors are encouraged to walk over the site without restriction, even though some areas pose dangers for the careless. There’s not even an “at your own risk” sign. I liked the absence of overprotectiveness here, so opposite to what is found at most American sites. For instance access to one of my favorite waterfalls in North Carolina has become more and more restricted over the years because several people have jumped from waterfalls and died. My belief is that dumb, careless people deserve what they get and shouldn’t be permitted to prevent the rest of us from being able to move around such wonderful sites. Yes, caution is assumed, but so is no lawyer showing up waving a suit based on negligence. People need to be responsible for themselves. I will now climb down from the tower, carefully, and also abandon my soapbox.

  When I got back to the attendant’s office I was delighted to find the young man there, Harold, to be an unabashed fan of Boswell and Johnson. He regretted that the travelers didn’t get to see Spynie Palace, but he knew they felt the tragedy of the cathedral. “Boswell was always empathetic, sometimes more than he should have been, but when they got to Elgin, it was really Johnson who was outraged at the destruction that took place there over the centuries. I rather liked the old man for that. There were things he said about Scotland I didn’t like. A number of them, really. But he got that part right.” He laughed remembering their unhappiness with their lodging in Elgin, which “has gotten a lot better since then, I think.” Harold said he envied my experience following Boswell and Johnson, and smiled at my doing it backwards. “Oh I wouldn’t worry a bit about that. I think Bozzy would rather enjoy the idea, turning things on their head, as it were. Maybe you get a very different look at what they did and said, a different perspective. I’d like to read it when you’re done.” I put Harold down on my list; I’ll certainly send him a copy. Before I left he suggested I make a visit to Duffus Castle near his home, a little to the north of Elgin. “There’s a lot of history there,” he added, though he really didn’t have to. At the mention of another castle, I was ready to go.

  Duffus—the u is a short u, not a long one the way you’d pronounce it if you were calling someone a bit daft or slow of mind—was a fortress and residence from 1150 until 1705. Originally made of earth and timber, it was rebuilt with stone atop the original foundations sometime during the fourteenth century, and a two-story stone tower, perched high on a sloping green hill, now towers over the surrounding countryside. One wall of the rebuilt structure has stayed intact and solid, slanted outward at about a twenty-five-degree angle. Getting to the castle was arduous; I walked up the grassy hill, which was quite steep. I was out of breath and leaned against the leaning wall until I caught my breath a couple of minutes later. The view was 360-degree spectacular; the placement of the castle must have indeed been formidable to enemies when it was occupied.

  My Victorian-era inn in Elgin proved a wonderful home for several days while I hit the castle road. And the sun stayed out, keeping temperatures up and making my travel easier than I had anticipated. My first castle of the next day was Brodie, off to the west toward Inverness. The castle’s setting was lovely—175 acres of woodland and water—and the castle itself quite handsome. It has showed up in several films, including Rob Roy. For an amazing eight hundred years, until the National Trust for Scotland acquired it in 1980, it was the home of the Brodies. Originally a Celtic tribe loyal to King Malcolm IV, the Brodies were rewarded with land somewhere around 1160. One of them was an outstanding golfer about 1640 after learning the game at St. Andrews.

  After the Treaty of 1707 the Brodies threw their support behind the English king, and government troops were garrisoned at their castle in 1715. In the Jacobite Rising of 1745 Alexander, the nineteenth Brodie of Brodie, allowed the duke of Cumberland’s troops to camp on the grounds on the eve of Culloden. The family persevered in spite of crushing debts at several periods, and it was the expensive upkeep of the castle that led the family to turn it over to the National Trust. I fortunately had a wise and witty tour guide who brought the castle’s occupants and history to life. Rarely have structures as vast as this, he said, been inhabited so late into
the twentieth century. The furnishings were those of a modern family’s residence, and all the more personal and intimately rewarding to observe. Outside, a couple of miles to the east, is an area where King Duncan was said to have been killed by Macbeth in 1040; I was never able to locate it.

  Next up in this castle-rich area was Ballindalloch Castle, located in the heart of Speyside region near numerous whisky distilleries, which turned out to be among my favorites in all of my travels. That’s unquestionably because of the opportunity to meet and chat with the owners of this gorgeous lived-in and working estate. The castle is an extraordinary enterprise, and an expensive one to keep up, which perhaps explains why the occupants are so down-to-earth. Ballindalloch is no secret. Set in the beautiful Spey Valley, it has been the subject of a BBC documentary, featured on travel programs from as far away as Canada, Japan, and Germany, and CNN has called it one of the United Kingdom’s “hot spots” (whatever that might mean). From the outside it has all the things visitors want in a castle: soaring turrets and towers, gracefully landscaped grounds and a garden, a look of permanence and great history. But inside is where I was surprised.

  When I approached for an interior tour I was met not by a guide but by the smiling face and extended hand of the first female laird of Ballindalloch, Clare Macpherson-Grant Russell, a charming middle-aged woman who exuded energy and a casual elegance. She welcomed me and two other visitors, and instead of then turning away proceeded to invite us to follow her around the first-floor rooms as she talked about the family history and the furnishings. She has spent her life at Ballindalloch, and as an only child she inherited the estate. She married Oliver Russell of London and settled in to “tackle the challenge of modernizing a traditional Highland estate.”