Touring Scotland with Boswell and Johnson
In 1773 Samuel Johnson and James Boswell embarked on a journey which took them from the tenements and colleges of Edinburgh to the caves, cottages and castles across the highlands and islands of Scotland. In this talk we'll be following Johnson and Boswell using material from the archives of Historic Environment Scotland. These archive collections cover the whole of Scotland so they offer a good illustration for travel narratives such as this. The image shown here is from a 19th century book of golf anecdotes held by the National Library of Scotland, it's accessible on the Scran website, and it shows an imagined scene of Johnson and Boswell playing golf in St Andrews, Johnson is the one with the club, they did visit St Andrews on the tour. In Boswell's introduction to his journal of the tour he gave her the following 'warts and all' description of Johnson at the time of the trip, he said: "he was now in his 64th year and was become a little dull of hearing his sight had always been somewhat weak yet so much does mind govern and even supply the efficiency of organs those perceptions were uncommonly quick and accurate. His head and sometimes also his body shook with a kind of motion like the effects of a palsy, they appear to be frequently disturbed by cramps or convulsive contractions, he had a constitutional melancholy, the clouds of which darkened the brightness of his fancy and gave a gloomy cast to his whole course of thinking." Of course Dr Johnson is also remembered for
his 1755 dictionary, also he edited Shakespeare as well. He's also remembered for his low opinion of Scots. And that brings us to his friend, James Boswell, he was the Scottish lawyer who is now most famous for being the biographer of Johnson. He was the the son of the austere jurist Lord Auchinleck, Boswell's early life saw him attend the University of Edinburgh at the height of the Scottish Enlightenment, although his father moved him to the University of Glasgow because he was having too much fun.
Young Boswell then fled to London to experience the best and the worst of society and after various adventures and scandals he was pulled into the orbit of Johnson's literary circle. Johnson and Boswell were not the only people to write accounts of tours of the highlands and islands in the 18th century. One early account which influenced the two was Martin Martin's, which was published in 1703, you can see an image of the frontispiece to that book, a facsimile copy of it on screen, and Johnson had actually been given a copy of Martin by his father - who was a bookseller - when he was young and Boswell wrote that "Martin's accounts of those islands had impressed us with a notion that we might there contemplate a system of life almost totally different from what we had been accustomed to see". The other well-known travel narrative from the
1770s is that of Thomas Pennant, the Welsh-born naturalist, antiquarian, and all around enthusiast. He was often accompanied on his journeys around the British Isles by an artist employed by him, Moses Griffiths, who produced the drawings of what we would call brochs on the screen there, but which at the time would have been called 'Danish Forts' by the antiquarians studying them. Another famous visitor to Scotland during this period - in fact just before Boswell and Johnson - was Sir Joseph Banks, he's the botanist who accompanied Captain Cook aboard the 'Endeavour' to Australia and New Zealand. The word 'kangaroo' first appeared in one of Banks's journals.
Upon returning from the first voyage of the 'Endeavour', Banks was prevented from accompanying Cook on his second voyage, so instead, in 1772 Banks embarks on his own scientific expedition to the Hebrides, the Orkneys, and Iceland, and during this journey he also visited Staffa and Jura. So Johnson and Boswell both wrote and published their own accounts of their experiences on this journey, Johnson's was titled 'A Journey to the Western islands of Scotland', it was published in 1775, so not long after the journey was finished. Boswell's account was titled 'The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson', but it wasn't published until 1785, after Johnson's death. In fact, pleasingly, the words 'journal' and 'journey' appear together on the same page of Johnson's dictionary, and the titles of the publications speak to each author's intent. The definition of 'journey' in Johnson's dictionary is "travel by land, a voyage or travel by sea" and "passage from place to place" Dr Johnson's account is the description of the expedition, and is in line with the botanists and the antiquarians who had previously visited the Hebrides, and it's within that context, and includes thoughts on the effects of geography and climate upon history, the economy, and society. 'Journal', on the other hand, that's Boswell's account, is defined as "a diary, an account kept of daily transactions" Boswell's account is more interested in describing the peculiarities of Johnson than the particularities of Scotland, and it follows the flow of spirited conversation more closely than the contours of the land. We can
see as modern readers that Boswell's account, which came after Johnson's account and after Johnson's death, is sort of like a mini 'Life of Johnson', before 'Life of Johnson' was written. The journey itself for us begins at Boyd's Inn in Edinburgh, on the 14th of August 1773. This is where Boswell came to meet the newly arrived Johnson, the ink sketch on the screen shows Boyd's Inn looking rather run down in 1868, so that's about 100 years after the journey. The site now has a commemorative inscription which you can also see. It was here at the inn that Johnson had one of his lemonade accidents on the trip, Boswell recorded that "before I came in, the doctor had unluckily had a bad specimen of Scottish cleanliness. He then drank no fermented liquor, he asked to have
his lemonade made sweeter, upon which the waiter with his greasy fingers lifted a lump of sugar and put it into it. The doctor, indignation, threw it out of the window." While they were in Edinburgh, Johnson was staying with Boswell and his wife and child in their tenement on James's Court, you can see in the photograph. Boswell was proud to be showing Johnson the sights of Edinburgh, but he did have to admit that the city was not known as - not now known as - 'Auld Reekie' for nothing. He wrote "Mr Johnson and I walked arm in arm up the High Street to my house in James's Court. It was a dusky night, and I could not prevent him being assailed by the evening effluvia of Edinburgh" They spent the next few days in Edinburgh meeting members of polite and literary society, and seeing sites such as the old parliament building, which you can see on the screen, and the archives which were being kept under Parliament House while the now iconic Register House was was being built. They also visited Saint Giles Cathedral, and later the old Royal infirmary in Edinburgh.
The old Royal Infirmary is shown here in the 1730s engraving from Vitruvius Scotticus, the 18th century publication from the Adams, it also included pictures of country houses in this style. You'll notice so far that I've only quoted from Boswell's account of the tour, all that Johnson wrote at this point was "on the 18th of August we left Edinburgh, a city too well known to admit description". They then took a boat out to Inchkeith, interestingly beginning their tour of the Western Isles with a tour of an eastern isle.
Johnson wrote "Inchkeith is nothing more than a rock covered with a thin layer of earth, not wholly bare of grass and very fertile of thistles. A small herd of cows grazes annually upon it in the summer. Boswell and Johnson both described the fort then on Inchkeith you can still see the remains on the survey photograph on the screen although a lighthouse was added in the intervening time, Boswell went on to describe the fort on the islands, including an inscription from the same period as the crest on screen, so 16th century. Boswell wrote "Dr Johnson examined it with much attention, he stalked like a giant among the luxurious thistles and nettles" They then traveled onto St Andrews and dined at the inn there. Johnson found St Andrews to be in a depressed state, writing "one of its streets is now entirely lost; and in those that remain, there is silence and solitude of inactive indigence and gloomy depopulation" The engraving on screen shows the castle in St Andrews in the 1770s, at the time of the tour. Of the castle ruins Johnson wrote "not far from the cathedral, on the margin of the water, stands a fragment of the castle in which the Archbishop anciently resided. It was never very large, and was built with more attention to security than pleasure" They tried to visit the library of St Salvator's College, but were unable to do so, as the professor who had the key was out of town.
They also visited St Andrew's Cathedral on the 19th of August, the two walked through the ruins of the cathedral for a closer look. Boswell wrote that Johnson "kept his hat off while he was on any part of the ground where the cathedral had once stood" The image on the screen, the sketch, is of St Andrew's Cathedral, and St Leonards, and that's from the early 19th century, that's part of the Reverend John Sime drawings collection in our archives. The other image, the engraving, shows the cathedral in 1718, so before our journey. The prevailing image of St Andrews, the town, from Johnson's account, of the University, is of a university sliding into decline amidst the ruins of a city destroyed by extremism and poverty. Johnson wrote that in St Andrews he had seen "a city which only history shows that once flourished" and "surveyed the ruins of ancient magnificence, of which even the ruins cannot long be visible, unless some care be taken to preserve them. But where is the pleasure of preserving such mournful memorials?" So a slightly different approach to heritage than we might have now today. On that happy note, on the 20th of August, they departed from St Andrews, and traveled through Dundee, although they found nothing to say about Dundee, and they visited Arbroath Abbey. Johnson wrote "two corner towers particularly attracted our attention. Mr
Boswell, whose inquisitiveness is seconded by great activity, scrambled in at a high window, but found the stairs within broken, and could not reach the top" You can see from the 18th century engraving on screen what a precarious climb that would have been. Having explored the visible parts of the abbey, Johnson then conjectured about the parts not standing, he wrote "men skilled in architecture might do what we did not attempt, they might probably form an exact ground plot of this venerable edifice, they may from some parts yet standing conjecture its general form" and this is what you can see, the other image on screen is one recreation of what the abbey might have looked like. They then went on to Montrose, shown in the 18th century engraving, where they were to stay the night at the inn. Unfortunately it was at
this inn that Johnson had another lemonade incident, he wrote "at our inn we did not find a reception such as we thought proportionate to the commercial opulence of the place, but Mr Boswell desired me to observe that the Innkeeper was an Englishman, and I then defended him as well as I could" or as Boswell put it "we found but a sorry inn, where I myself saw another waiter put a lump of sugar with his fingers in to Dr Johnson's lemonade, for which he called him a rascal. It put me in great glee that our landlord was an Englishman, I rallied the doctor upon this and he grew quiet" At a different part of his journal Boswell recorded that they had an argument about whether Johnson should travel with his own lemons so that he could continue drinking lemonade on places like Skye. Johnson objected "I do not wish to be thought that feeble man who cannot do without anything. Sir, it is very bad manners to carry provisions to any man's house as if he could not entertain you. To an inferior it is oppressive, to a superior it is insolent" They left Montrose on the 21st, and traveled to Aberdeen via Laurencekirk. They stopped along the way at Monboddo, to visit Lord Monboddo there. They met James Burnett, Lord Monboddo,
on arrival, he's shown here in this 1780s caricature on Scran, the original of which is held by Edinburgh City libraries. Monboddo was a jurist and an intellectual, he was also of an age with Johnson, and he also loved to engage in debate and conversation. Like Johnson he was regarded as an eccentric, this was partly due to his 'outlandish' notion that humans might be related to apes in some way. While Johnson had directed his interest in language and etymology towards his dictionary, Monboddo had researched and written about the evolution of language. In spite, or perhaps because of these similarities the two men had disagreed in the
past, including when they had met in London. Boswell wrote that he was he was worried about whether the two should meet at all, but you can imagine that he was excited to see the fireworks, and that he had his pen ready. The meeting as reported by Boswell however, was a cordial meeting of minds, even if Boswell could not resist poking fun at Monboddo greeting them dressed in a "rustic suit and little round hat" and introducing himself as "plain old farmer Burnett" He also wrote that "Monboddo is a wretched place, wild and naked, with a poor old house; though, if I recollect right, there are two turrets which mark an old baron's residence" and you can see some turrets on the screen there in the photograph. They declined the offer to stay the night, perhaps in part due to Johnson complaining about the portion sizes, and continued on their way to Aberdeen. On their arrival in Aberdeen the two were told that there was no room at the inn, Boswell wrote "this was comfortless finding who I was, we were told they would contrive to lodge us by putting us for a night into a room with two beds. I was to sleep in a little press
bed in Dr Johnson's room. I had it wheeled out in to the dining room, and there I lay very well" The next day Johnson was presented with the freedom of the town at the town hall. During their stay in Aberdeen Johnson and Boswell visited King's College in the old town, shown in this lovely 1920s drawing from the Sir Basil Spence collection, and Marischal College in the new town. This photograph here is from the 1880s, after it had been rebuilt after Johnson and Boswell's tour, but before it was extended in the 1900s. Johnson described old Aberdeen as "an ancient episcopal city in which are still
to be seen the remains of the cathedral. It has the appearance of a town in decay" he contrasted this with the new town where "the houses are large and lofty, and the streets are spacious and clean they build almost wholly with the granite used in the new pavements of the streets of London. It is beautiful and must be very lasting" Well we know it is. While in Aberdeen they received an invitation to visit Lord and Lady Errol at Slain's Castle, so they departed for Slains on the 24th of August.
Slain's Castle was situated on the cliffs overlooking the sea as you can see on the screen there in this lithograph from 1810, it was a very romantic location in the old sense. It's not surprising that Bram Stoker often took his holidays in nearby Cruden Bay. Johnson writes: "I would not for my amusement wish for a storm, but as storms whether wished for or not will sometimes happen, I may say, without violation of humanity, that I should willingly look out upon them from Slain's Castle" While at Slains they took a trip in a boat to see the Bullers of Buchan, also known as the pot, a rock formation and a cave in the sea, as you can see on screen here. Boswell wrote "in some places the path is very narrow and on each side there is a sea deep enough for a man of war to ride in, so that it is somewhat horrid to move along, however there is earth and grass upon the rock, and a kind of road marked out by the prints of feet so that one makes it out pretty safely, yet it alarmed me to see Dr Johnson striding regularly along. He insisted on taking a boat and sailing into the pot. We did so" Having survived the Pot, the two were conveyed back to Slains Castle for tea and coffee before bed. Boswell had a night marred by smelly pillows and nightmares, he was kept awake with visions of Lord Erroll's father who had been beheaded. The next day, the 25th, the two departed for Banff.
While on the road to Banff they took a detour to see a stone circle, this is shown in the photograph. Boswell wrote "Dr Johnson was curious to see one of those structures which northern antiquarians call a Druid's temple. I had a recollection of one which I had seen 15 years ago, but I had augmented it in my mind, for all that remains is two stones set up on end, with a long one laid upon them as was usual and one stone a little at little distance from them, that stone was the capital one of the circle which surrounded what now remains" They arrived in Banff to stay at the inn for the night, the painting on screen shows Banff from the early 1800s, so not lon after the journey, it was in his account of Banff that Johnson found another Scottish thing to complain about, as if the lemonade wasn't bad enough: windows. He wrote "he that would have his window open must hold it open with his hand, the necessity of ventilating human habitations has not yet been found by our northern neighbours" In his own account, published after Johnson's, Boswell explained these dodgy windows had only been encountered at the 'indifferent inn' they stayed at in Banff, and that Johnson had for some reason assumed this was a Scottish-wide problem. They left the next morning in a very good carriage to travel to Forres via Cullen and Elgin.
They stopped at Cullen for breakfast, where Johnson was disgusted by the site of some dried haddock. This episode may have been related to Johnson's general aversion to strong smells at breakfast. At another point along the journey he complained about ripe cheese being a feature of Scottish breakfasts, stating that "they pollute the tea table by plates piled with large slices of cheshire cheese, which mingles its less grateful odours with the fragrance of the tea" On the way to Elgin they were offered the opportunity to visit a particular country estate, Johnson declined, claiming that "he was not come to Scotland to see fine places, of which there were enough in England; but wild objects - mountains, waterfalls, peculiar manners; in short, things which he had not seen before" At Elgin they stopped to view the remains of the cathedral, the photograph here is from the early 1900s, from a photograph album in our collections. Johnson wrote of the cathedral "there is enough yet remaining to show that it was once magnificent" After a meal at the inn described by Johnson as 'inedible', they continued onto Forres, but had nothing to say about the town as it was too dark to see it when they arrived, they continued along the coast to Nairn the next day, and this is where Johnson first heard Gaelic on the trip. Neither of the two had anything positive to say about Nairn, Boswell described it as a miserable place.
While in this area both Boswell and Johnson were excited to be in Macbeth country, and recited lines from the play as they traveled, eventually arriving at that other Macbeth site, Cawdor. They plan to stay overnight at the manse shown in the photograph in the corner of the screen, they went on to see the castle shown in the the larger image on screen, Johnson wrote "the drawbridge is still to be seen, but the moat is now dry, the tower is very ancient, its walls are of great thickness, arched on the top with stone, and surrounded with battlements, the rest of the house is later, though far from modern" In his journal Boswell mentioned all these features but also mentioned the hawthorn tree within the castle shown in the photograph. They then spent the night at the manse, planning the next legs of their journey. On the 28th of August the two travelled to Inverness, and stopped for dinner at Fort George. Boswell, who seem to like being around military regularity and pomp, "enjoyed this day very much" which may have had something to do with the "dinner of two complete courses, variety of wine" and "the regimental band of music" Boswell was enchanted at "finding upon this barren sandy point, such buildings, such a dinner, such company" Johnson, characteristically, was less overcome, because he knew "here was a large sum of money expended in building a fort, here was a regiment, if there had been less than what we found it would have surprised them" In his own account Johnson declined to spend much time describing Fort George, he wrote "I can't delineate it scientifically, and a loose and popular description is of use only when the imagination is to be amused. There was everywhere an appearance of the utmost neatness and regularity, but my suffrage is of little value because this and Fort Augustus are the only garrisons that I ever saw" Johnson of course has earlier stated that he did not come to Scotland to see things he could see in England, and from this statement we can see that he was chiefly interested in describing ancient or romantic scenes, even if he preferred staying and eating at inns and grand houses that could offer the comforts of his London home. The two now travelled on to Inverness, where they would stay at the inn.
At Inverness they stayed for two nights, and during their visit they saw Macbeth's Castle so-called, meaning the predecessor to the current Inverness Castle, you can see this in the engraving on the screen, and also it's shown in the town view of Inverness, and I've provided a larger version of that as well. Johnson wrote "here is a castle, called the castle of Macbeth, the walls of which are yet standing. It was no very capacious edifice, but stands upon a rock so high and steep that I think it was once inaccessible but by the help of ladders or a bridge" In his journal Boswell included a letter he had written to their mutual friend David Garrick, the famous actor, about his excitement about travelling through the setting of Macbeth with Johnson "this day" he wrote "we visited the ruins of Macbeth's castle at Inverness, I have had great romantic satisfaction in seeing Johnson upon the classical scenes of Shakespeare in Scotland, which I really looked upon as almost as improbable as that Birnam Wood should come to Dunsinane" They left Inverness on the 30th of August, heading along the side of Loch Ness to Fort Augustus, a few miles down the road from Inverness the two encountered a double ring stone circle, and probably the stone circle and cairn at Ballindarroch. This circle can be seen through the long grass in this composite and panoramic photograph from 1943. This photograph was taken by the famous archaeologist Vere Gordon Childe when he was working as commissioner of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, the photo was taken as part of the emergency survey of historic sites carried out during the second world war in order to preserve a record of historic sites in case of their destruction.
Clearly Childe thought this stone circle worthy of record, however Johnson felt differently, he wrote that "to go and see one druidical temple is only to see that it is nothing, there is neither art nor power in it, and seeing one is quite enough" They continued on the road along Loch Ness to Fort Augustus, they arrived on the 30th of August, the drawing here is from a 1795 illustration, Boswell wrote "it was comfortable to find ourselves in a well-built little square, and a neatly furnished house, in good company, and with a good supper before us. The governor has a very good garden we looked at it and the rest of the fort, which is but small" The next day they headed back onto the military road and continued on their journey. On the night of the 31st they stopped in Glen Moriston at an inn, near the inn they'd passed a group of soldiers working on the road, and they gave them some money to drink with. Boswell wrote that "later that night the soldiers came to our inn and made merry in the barn, we went and paid them a visit, Dr Johnson saying come let's go and give 'em another shilling a-piece, we did so, and he was saluted 'my lord' by all of them. The poor soldiers got too much liquor, some of them fought and left blood upon the spot, and cursed whisky next morning" Boswell and Johnson themselves also had a broken night, Boswell wrote: "there were two beds in the room and a woman's gown was hung on a rope to make a curtain of separation between them. I awaked very early, I began to imagine that the landlord, being
about to emigrate, might murder us to get our money, and lay it upon the soldiers in the barn" These fears however were unfounded, and they safely continued on their way towards Glenelg. On their way they travelled past Bernera Barracks, the remains of which are shown in the photograph here, the barracks are located at the point of the yellow arrow in the aerial photograph. These barracks were constructed in the 1720s after the 1715 Jacobite rising, and they were subsequently set set fire to by Jacobite forces in the '45, but were back in use when Boswell and Johnson passed by, but only with a small detachment of soldiers. They had received positive reviews of the inn at Glenelg, however Johnson wrote "at last we came to our inn, weary and peevish, and began to inquire of meat and beds. Of the provisions the negative catalogue was very copious, here was no meat, no milk, no bread, no eggs, no wine. We did not express much
satisfaction" The next day, the 2nd of September, they sailed from Glenelg to Armadale on Skye. On Skye they were to stay at Armadale Castle, the picture shown here is from the 1820s and shows the castle after it been rebuilt after the journey. The castle that Boswell and Johnson visited was itself built on the site of a previous castle. Johnson wrote "Armadale is a neat house built where the Macdonalds had once a seat, which was burnt in the commotion that followed the revolution ... the walled orchard, which belonged to the former house, still remains" Their host at Armadale was Alexander MacDonald. During their stay Boswell and Johnson returned to their theme of what they would do if they were Highland nobility, or at least their idea of highland nobility Boswell recorded Johnson as saying "were I in your place sir, in seven years I would make this an independent island. I would
roast oxen whole, and hang out a flag as a signal to the Macdonalds to come and get beef and whisky" On the 6th of September they departed Armadale and set out for the island of Raassay. During their stay here the two were entertained with music and dancing. Johnson, though he didn't dance wrote approvingly that "nor did ever fairies trip with greater alacrity" During their stay Boswell came across a 'Danish Fort' while out hunting, but what we would call a broch, this might be the rock of Don Voradale, pictured in the drawing on screen. Johnson also mentioned some archaeological curiosities, writing about some stone arrowheads found on Raassay he wrote "the people call them elf bolts, and believe that the fairies shoot them at the cattle, they nearly resemble those which Mr Banks has lately bought brought from the savage countries in the Pacific Ocean and must have been made by a nation to which the use of metals was unknown" While they were staying here they saw the local ruined chapel as well as some cross- inscribed stones, and after some bad weather they set sail and headed for Kingsborough, they landed at Portree, and dined at the tolerable inn there, they then traveled north to Kingsburgh in order to meet Flora MacDonald, who is of course shown on screen there in that portrait. In fact Johnson slept in the same bed that Bonnie Prince Charlie had stayed when they stayed. The
next day, the 13th of September Flora MacDonald's husband took them by boat to a place near and Greshornish or Grishnish in Boswell's account. Boswell and Johnson then rode on to Dunvegan, They arrived at Dunvegan Castle after riding through a boggy moor, Johnson described it thus "the house is partly old and partly modern, it is built upon the rock and looks upon the water, it forms two sides of a small square, on the third side is the skeleton of a castle of unknown antiquity, supposed to have been a Norwegian fortress when the Danes were masters of these islands, it is so nearly entire that it might have been easily made habitable were there not an ominous tradition in the family that the owner shall not long outlive the reparation" While they were at Dunvegan it was Johnson's birthday, on Saturday the 18th of September Boswell wrote "before breakfast Dr Johnson came up to my room to forbid me to mention that this was his birthday, but I told him I had done it already, at which he was displeased, I suppose from wishing to have nothing in particular done on his account" Johnson and Boswell were forced to stay longer than intended at Dunvegan due to poor weather, and they left on the 21st of September Before leaving Dunvegan the two visited the walled church of St Mary's, there they saw the obelisk to Thomas Fraser the 10th Lord Lovat, this obelisk would have been erected by Thomas Fraser's son the 11th Lord Lovat, Simon Fraser, shown on the screen here. Lord Simon had attempted to offer support both to the Jacobites and to the government, but was eventually captured by government forces and executed for treason, both Boswell and Johnson were less than complimentary about the inscription on the obelisk that presumably Simon would have approved. Boswell recorded the text of the inscription in his account and wrote that "I preserved this inscription, though of no great value, thinking it characteristical of a man who has made some noise in the world ... Dr Johnson said, it was poor stuff, such as Lord Lovat's butler might have written" While at times both Boswell and Johnson romanticized the Jacobite cause now that it was safely in the past, perhaps for Johnson the only crime worse than treason, was to not make up your mind. They travelled south to Ullinish on the 21st of September,
Boswell described it as "a very good farmhouse of two stories" Their host took them to view some archaeological sites nearby, perhaps including a souterrain. Johnson said that they declined to explore this and the nearby caves because "the day was raining and the ground was damp, we had with us neither spades nor pickaxes, and if love of ease surmounted our desire of knowledge, the offence has not the invidiousness of singularity" I think we can all relate to that. While here the host also took them to view a Danish fort, perhaps the Broch Dunbeag pictured in another Moses Griffiths engraving on the screen. Johnson wrote "the entrance is covered with flat stones and is narrow because it was necessary that the stones which lie over it should reach from one wall to the other, yet straight as the passage is, they seem heavier than could have been placed where they now lie by the naked strength of as many men as might stand about them. They were probably raised by putting long pieces of wood
under them, to which the action of a long line of lifters might be applied. Savages" wrote Johnson "in all countries have patience proportionate to their unskillfulness and are content to attain their end by very tedious methods" On the 23rd they sailed to Talisker. Boswell was impressed by Talisker's situation, he wrote "Talisker is a better place than one commonly finds in Skye ... it is situated in a rich bottom, before it is a wide expanse of sea on each hand of which are immense rocks" While at Talisker they decided to travel on to Coll and some of the nearby islands with young Coll, the son of the present Laird MacLean of Coll, or the then Laird MacLean of Coll, he said they would be able to travel comfortably, as his father had property on Coll and on the surrounding islands. On the 25th of September they left Talisker to go across Skye, they dined at Sconser, shown in the aerial photograph, in the aerial photograph without the arrow, and then travelled south by boat to Strollamus, and finally rode to - I'm going to mispronounce this - Coire-chat-achan - arriving that same night to stay there for the second time.
This was one of the places that Boswell and Johnson visited twice on their tour. Boswell saw it as part of his job to be polite to hosts by doing the things that Johnson wouldn't do: drinking and dancing mainly, he danced at Raassay, and here he indulged in three too many bowls of punch and didn't get to bed till 5am. In his entry for the morning after - or rather just later in the morning of - Boswell wrote "I awaked at noon with a severe headach. I was much vexed that I should have been guilty of such a riot, and
afraid of reproof from Dr Johnson" Johnson laughed the incident off, and Boswell later predictably wrote "I felt myself comfortable enough in the afternoon, I then thought that my last night's riot was no more than such a social excess as may happen without much moral blame, and recollected that some physicians maintained that a fever produced by it was, on the whole, good for health" Despite the good cheer, the two were getting annoyed by being housebound due to poor weather. To make matters worse, the house didn't have room for all the guests and the servants, Boswell wrote "the good people had no notion that a man could have any occasion but for a mere sleeping place, so during the day the bed chambers were common to all the house. Servants eat in Dr Johnson's, and mine was a kind of general rendezvous of all under the roof, children and dogs not accepted" Much to their relief they finally left on the 28th of September, they traveled south to Ostaig. Boswell wrote "we had a fine evening and arrived in good time, it is a pretty good house built by the father of the current owner upon a farm near the church. Unable to sail to Coll due to more bad weather, Boswell and Johnson accepted an invitation to wait out the rain in comfort back at Armadale Castle. They arrived there on the 1st of October, and on the 3rd they finally set sail from Armadale to the islands as there seemed to be a break in the weather, Johnson wrote "having awaited some days at Armadale we were flattered at last for the wind that promised to convey us to Mull" But they didn't make it to Mull this time, the break in the weather didn't last, and Johnson wrote "we were doomed to experience like others, the danger of trusting to the wind, which blew against us in a short time with such violence that we, being no seasoned sailors, were willing to call it a tempest.
I was seasick and lay down" Young Coll and the rest of the crew eventually guided the ship towards Coll into safety, however, the danger of sailing between the islands was real, young Coll himself later drowned in an accident visiting Lochbuie on Mull in 1774. The three of them landed on Coll on the 4th of October, they stayed the night with a Captain MacLean and wife, at a house described by Boswell as 'a temporary hut'. After rising they mounted Shetland ponies for the first time on their journey, Johnson wrote "Here I first mounted a little highland steed, and if there had been many spectators, should have been somewhat ashamed of my figure in the march" They then travelled to the north parts of the island, and saw the ruins of a church, perhaps the ruins of Killunaig Church shown in the aerial photograph. They then continued on to Grishipoll, the house pictured on screen, they had tea here, and on the beach nearby Boswell found a stone that looked like a cucumber. On the same day they travelled on to Breachacha House. They arrived at Breachacha House owned by the Laird of Coll, Young Coll's father, the new house is shown on screen, and is situated close to the beach and close to the old castle.
Boswell wrote "we found here a new-built gentleman's house better than any we have been in since we were at Lord Erroll's. Dr Johnson relished it much at first, but soon remarked to me that there was nothing becoming a chief about it, it was a mere tradesman's box" They were confined to Coll through bad weather, and on the 8th of October Boswell records Johnson as saying melodramatically "I want to be on the mainland and go on with the existence, this is a waste of life" On the 13th of October they finally got onto a boat for Mull, although they needed to spend the night on it 'not very elegantly, nor pleasantly' in harbour due to poor weather. On the 14th of October they finally sailed for Mull, and landed at Tobermory. More poor weather kept them on Mull, but eventually they rode across the island with the intention of crossing to Iona, although poor weather prevented this as well, so they settled on going to Ulva on the 16th of October. At Ulva they stayed with a Mr MacQuarrie, in a house described by Boswell as 'mean'. While on Ulva, Johnson made some inquiries about the Isle of Staffa, he wrote: MacQuarrie is proprietor of both Ulva and some adjacent islands, among which is Staffa, so lately rose to renown of course by Mr Banks. When the Islanders were reproached
with their ignorance or insensibility of the wonders of Staffa, they had not much to reply, they had indeed considered it little, because they had always seen it" That's what Johnson writes anyway. Boswell and Johnson were not able to visit Staffa on their journey, Thomas Pennant was also not able to get close enough to land on Staffa. As mentioned by Johnson, Sir Joseph Banks had, visited and the engraving on screen is based on a drawing from his expedition. They left Ulva on the 17th of October and sailed for Inchkenneth. As well as living in the in the big house on the island, Sir Allan MacLean and his family also occupied cottages, Johnson wrote the following "we all walked together to the mansion where we found one cottage for Sir Allan and I think two more for the domestics in the offices, we entered, and wanted little that palaces afford" While at Inchkenneth they visited a nearby ruined chapel and burial place, Johnson described it as "a venerable chapel, which stands yet entire, except that the roof is gone, the ground around the chapel is covered with gravestones of Chiefs and Ladies" The drawing on screen is an 1877 sketch of one of the grave slabs in the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland collection. The two left Inchkenneth on the 19th of October, and said goodbye to young Coll for the last time, and starting the long sail along Mull for Iona, stopping for a picnic along the way. They landed on Iona at the village on the 19th of October and 'cordially embraced' to
have finally reached the island. Johnson was taken with the history of the place and wrote memorably "whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses, whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings" They stayed the night in a large barn. Of the nunnery shown on screen, in a late 19th century drawing in our collections, Johnson wrote the following "the chapel of the nunnery is now used by the inhabitants as a kind of general cowhouse, and the bottom is consequently to miry for examination" Johnson wrote that the abbey "of the chambers or cells belonging to the monks there are some walls remaining, but nothing approaching to a complete compartment. The bottom of the church is so encumbered with mud and rubbish, that we could make no discoveries of curious inscriptions" They sailed back to Mull on the 20th October, and on the 21st, after a boring ride they ended up at Lochbuie. On screen here you can see the three residences of the Lochbuie MacLeans: Moy Castle is the is the medieval tower-house built in the 15th century; the middle image is the stable block of the current house, but would have been the old Lochbuie House where Johnson and Boswell would have stayed; and then the current house is shown in the final photograph.
One episode from their stay here is reported by Boswell, who wrote: "being told that Dr Johnson did not hear well, Lochbuy bawled at him, 'Are you of the Johnstons of Glencro, or of Ardnamurchan?' Dr Johnson gave him a significant look, but made no answer" They left Lochbuie on the 22nd of October and sailed to Oban, where they stayed at a 'tolerable inn', the image shows Oban from the 1850s. They travelled from Oban to Inveraray on the military road, and they eventually reached Loch Awe. Boswell wrote "We crossed in a ferry boat a pretty wide lake, and on the farther side of it, close by the shore, we found a hut for our inn. We were much wet, I changed my clothes in part I, was at pains to get myself well-dried. Dr Johnson resolutely kept on all his clothes, wet as they were, letting them steam before the smoky turf fire. I thought him in the wrong, but his firmness
was, perhaps, a species of heroism" After their very wet journey, it's not surprising that both Boswell and Johnson were complimentary about the inn that they came to at Inveraray. Johnson described it as 'not only commodious, but magnificent' Boswell described the inn as excellent. but also noted that "even here Dr Johnson would not change his work clothes" It was here that Johnson finally decided to celebrate with a dram, having avoided whisky so far on the journey. After some humming and hawing about the polite thing to do in the situation, Boswell eventually secured an invitation from the Duke of Argyll at Inveraray Castle. Boswell recorded that Dr Johnson was "struck by the grandeur and elegance of this princley seat, he thought however the castle too low, and wished it had been a storey higher" After dining, the two returned to their inn for the night. They departed for Rossdhu House via Tarbet on the 26th, finally leaving behind the tiny ponies they'd been riding on since Coll, and were mounted on 'stately steeds' from the Duke of Argyll's stable.
Rossdhu House was situated on Loch Lomond, the present house was constructed in 1772, so it would have been brand new when visited by Johnson and Boswell. While here Boswell and Johnson borrowed a boat to visit the islands on Loch Lomond, including the castle Inchgalbraith, which is just peeking through the aerial photograph of the island on screen. Now comfortably in the lowlands, the two travellers were conveyed by coach to their next stop, Cameron House, and arrived on the 27th of October. The white arrow on the military map on screen shows Cameron House, the yellow arrow is Rossdhu House, and the red arrow is Inchgalbraith Castle on the island. Not far from Cameron House, in nearby Renton, the interestingly named Commissary Smollett, who owned Cameron House, had erected a memorial to his recently deceased cousin, the author Tobias Smollet. He asked Johnson for some advice on the inscription. Johnson said that whatever it was should be in Latin only, and not English, as the passing drovers would not appreciate Smollet anyway. You can see the memorial in the aerial photograph on screen.
On the 28th of October they departed south towards Glasgow, and stopped at Dumbarton Rock, to go up the rock. Boswell wrote "we drove on in high spirits, we stopped at Dunbarton and though the approach to the castle there is very steep, Dr Johnson ascended it with alacrity and surveyed all that was to be seen" And you can see that this would have been quite a climb from the section drawing on the screen. On the 28th of October Boswell and Johnson arrived in Glasgow, and they there stayed at the Saracen's Head Inn, Johnson was delighted to stay at the inn, and to put his feet up on the fire, and to read letters from correspondents. In the book 'Views and Notices of Glasgow in Former Times' from 1848, one of the books in our collections. The author records the Saracen's Head as opening in 1755, the same year as the Great Inn at Inveraray, it is intended to fill the lack of accommodation for travelers to the city, and the author wrote "It immediately rose to favour with the better class of citizens, as well as with the noblemen and gentleman residing in the neighborhood. It housed a ballroom and a dining room, in which our jovial punch-loving ancestors
could luxuriate in metropolitan luxury" so you can see why Boswell and Johnson liked it. Having stated that "to describe a city so much frequented as Glasgow is unnecessary" Dr Johnson went on to describe Glasgow, he wrote "it is the only episcopal city whose cathedral was left standing in the rage of reformation, it is now divided into many separate places of worship, which, taken altogether compose a great pile" And you can see the cathedral in the engraving on screen, along with The Bishop's Palace, which would have stood at the time. They also visited the Old College of the University of Glasgow, then situated on the High Street near the Trongate, the cathedral, and the heart of the old city of Glasgow.
Sections of the Old College can still be seen in the main University building at Gilmorehill, notably the Pearce Lodge on University Avenue, shown in the photograph, and shown with the yellow arrow in the John Slezer drawing on screen. While admiring the university buildings Johnson was dismissive of the education that could be gained there, he wrote: "men bred in the universities of Scotland cannot be expected to be often decorated with the splendours of ornamental erudition, but they obtain a mediocrity of knowledge, between learning and ignorance" On the 30th of October they departed from Glasgow for Auchinleck, Boswell's ancestral seat, and home of his father. On the way they stopped just outside Kilmarnock at Treesbank House, to stay with Boswell's sister-in-law and her husband, they also visited the ruins of Dundonald Castle shown in the drawing here. This was where Robert II of Scotland had stayed, Boswell wrote "it has long been unroofed and though of considerable size, we could not by any power of imagination figure it as having been a suitable habitation for majesty. Dr Johnson, to irritate my old Scottish enthusiasm, was very jocular on the homely accommodation of 'King Bob', and roared and laughed till the ruins echoed" They left for Auchinleck on the 2nd of November.
They arrived at Auchinleck, and Johnson described it as "a house of hewn stone very stately and durable" Auchinleck House had been built a few years before Johnson and Boswell's visit. Much as when they visited Monboddo, Boswell claimed to have been worried about whether Johnson and his father would get on, in this case due to their differences in religion and politics. For the most part, Boswell's fear was unfounded, and Auchinleck and Johnson stuck to safe subjects like the classics. Eventually they did argue however, Boswell was tactful
enough to not record the argument itself, but not so tactful as to not mention it at all. While at Auchinleck they visited the old castle, now ruined, the drawing here. Johnson preferred this to the new house, he wrote "I was 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" They stayed at the Inn at Hamilton on the 8th of November, and Boswell was keen to show Johnson the nearby palace of Hamilton, he wrote "it is an object which, having been pointed out to me as a splendid edifice from my earliest years when traveling between Auchinleck an Edinburgh, it has still great grandeur in my imagination. My friend consented to stop and view the outside of it, but could not be persuaded to go inside. They departed for Edinburgh the next day, on the 9th of November Boswell and Johnson arrived back in Edinburgh, where they will be staying at Boswell's house meeting various academics and members of the gentry.
The last day that Boswell has detailed notes for is the 11th of November, but he does record some more things that happened in the following days before Johnson departed for England on the 22nd. On the 10th of November Boswell wrote that he accompanied Dr Johnson to Edinburgh Castle which "he owned was a great place, but I must mention as a striking instance of that spirit of contradiction to which he had a strong propensity, when Lord Ellibank was some days after talking of it with the natural elation of a Scotchman, or of any man who is proud of a stately fortress in his own country, Dr Johnson affected to despise it, observing that it would make a good PRISON in England" Characteristically, Johnson did not say much about that time in Edinburgh, although he does mention one place, and it is the last location described by Johnson in this journey, At some point during their visit to Edinburgh in November, Johnson and Boswell visited Thomas Braidwood's School for the Deaf, also known as Craigsidehouse, or Dumbie house. Although there were not many pupils, this is one of the first recorded schools for the deaf in the UK, Johnson then went on to test some of the pupils in their grasp of maths and language, and was impressed by the results. Johnson ended his account on a positive note, although as this is Samuel Johnson, it was also a little bit backhanded "after having seen the deaf taught arithmetic, who would be afraid to cultivate the Hebrides?" On the 22nd November, after having seen Rosslyn Chapel, Boswell and Johnson travelled south. Johnson then took the coach on the 24th of November, and Boswell wrote that the two discussed the tour when they were both back in London "he said to me often that the time he spent on this tour was the pleasantest part of his life, and asked me if I would lose the recollection of it for five hundred pounds. I said I would not, and he applauded me for setting such a value on an accession of new images in my mind" I'm sure that none of us would give up the images that we've seen today for a mere five hundred 18th century pounds! So that is the end, I hope you've enjoyed today's talk, if you're interested in learning more about Boswell and Johnson and their tour, the AHRC Curious Travellers project has produced an excellent website and interactive map, and of course you can always go back to the original texts which can be found in print and online. You can view a lot of the
images we've seen today on our Canmore website, but we also have images which can be viewed on our other web services, Scran, Britain From Above, and the National Collection of Aerial Photography. For anyone who's interested in viewing some of the original material we hold in our archive collections, including photographs, engravings, and drawings, you can make an appointment to view such material in our public search room in Edinburgh at John Sinclair House. You can find details on the Canmore website. And that's it, thank you very much.
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