Whisky, Kilts, and the Loch Ness Monster

by William W. Starr

  I knew I had put things off long enough. Leaving Kirriemuir and the celebration of Barrie’s achievements, I headed to Blair Castle in spite of the “horrible grandeur” that I knew awaited me there. Blair Castle at Blair Atholl, some five miles from Pitlochry, was the scene, I hated to recall, of my great embarrassment years ago during my first visit to Scotland. It was there that I met the gracious Iain, tenth duke of Atholl, and greeted him with—my teeth are starting to itch as I write this—“Good morning, Duke.” I’ve already described the scene, but arriving on the spot I could not delete the memories. I wondered as I approached Blair if the duke would still be there, a much older man to be sure, but still able to recognize the bald American who offered such a laughable insult many years before. I hoped to see him again and apologize.

  Blair is a fascinating, eye-catching castle. It has the requisite turrets and high walls, but it also has lovely landscaped grounds with herds of cattle grazing peacefully and strutting peacocks picking their way through the car park. Bagpipers usually play at the front of the castle as visitors arrive; they are members of the Atholl Highlanders, a select group of men retained by the duke as his private army. It’s the only private army in Scotland, and the privilege was granted to the Atholls by Queen Victoria in 1844.

  The castle goes back to 1269 and has seen its share of winners and losers, Jacobites and royalists, adventurers and politicians. The family was badly split during the Jacobite Rising when the duke and his second son supported the government and the eldest and youngest sons were Jacobite enthusiasts. And yes, Bonnie Prince Charlie stayed here for a while on his march southward to capture Edinburgh. The effects of war and the economic depression forced the family to open the castle to the public for the first time in 1936; it has since become one of Scotland’s most visited castles, thanks in large part to the efforts of the tenth duke, my friend Iain.

  I took the tour of some thirty rooms, and they were as magnificent as I remembered from years before. But I saw no sign of the duke’s presence. Back outside later I stood listening to the bagpiper, and when he took a break, I invited myself into conversation. I first told him an abbreviated version of my embarrassing story on meeting the duke, and he smiled. “He was indeed a very fine man, the duke was,” he said, “but he died in 1996, I’m afraid.” I knew the duke would have had to have been old, but I was surprised and deeply saddened when I heard that. “He passed away quietly. I miss him. I think we all do. A lot has changed here since his passing, and not for the better. The castle is now in the hands of a family charitable trust. It’s not the same, my friend. I’m glad you met him when you did. You met a great man.”

  I discovered later that the tenth duke, who was childless, had placed the castle, its contents, and the surrounding estate into a trust in 1995, the year before his death. His action ensured that Blair would remain open to the public and be cared for by a private corporation. That was good. But I couldn’t get over my regret that I never had the opportunity to apologize to the duke for my faux pas. I was sure he had forgotten it; he had far more important matters to deal with. But I really would have given a lot for the opportunity to thank him for his kindness. I drove back to my lodging in Pitlochry and drank a toast in his honor. I told Jim my little story the next morning. He was sympathetic: “If you’d called me, I’d have shared that drink with you,” he said. I wish I had.

  20

  To Edinburgh

  Now that my anticipated worst moments were over, I was eager to meet up again with Boswell and Johnson at the place where all this started: Edinburgh. I picked up their trail again along the east coast at St. Andrews and Dundee before driving into the Scottish capital. Actually Dundee got pretty short shrift from both men. Johnson wrote tersely, “We stopped at Dundee, where I remember nothing remarkable.” He was being kind. To Mrs. Thrale he was blunter: “We came to Dundee, a dirty despicable town.” Boswell was, by comparison, verbose and almost full of civic boosterism: “Came to Dundee about three. Good busy town, P. Murray the landlord. Fresh chaise there.”

  I fared better, though I was disappointed if hardly surprised to read that the building that housed Peter Murray’s inn where the travelers stopped no longer exists. I got lost and wound up making several loops of the city including a crossing of the Tay River Bridge, which at two miles in length was the world’s longest when it opened in 1878. The year after that, the wooden structure collapsed, killing seventy-five poor souls.

  The scale of the disaster shocked all of Scotland, indeed all who heard of it. There were civic endeavors all over the country to honor the victims, none more wretchedly carried out than the commemorative poem written for the occasion by the Scottish poet William McGonagall called “The Tay Bridge Disaster.” It has become famous among bad poems as arguably the worst because it was so seriously intended.

  McGonagall was a curious fellow who has become more famous for being a bad poet than most writers are for being good. Born in Edinburgh in 1830 to an Irish immigrant family, he worked in Dundee’s mills until he had an epiphany in 1877 and “discovered myself to be a poet.” There was no stopping him; ignorance of technique and style were no bar to his evergrowing desire to compose verse for special occasions. Tragedies proved wonderfully fertile for his muse, and the collapse of the Tay Bridge just two years after his discovery of his poetic gifts gave him the opportunity to compose his masterpiece of pedestrian ineptitude. The poem is too long and too witless to quote in its entirety, but three stanzas should give you the idea, and if anyone wishes, it’s easy to read the entire thing—and everything else he wrote—because it’s all still in print and online. With apologies, here’s the poem:

  Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay!

  Alas! I am very sorry to say

  That ninety lives have been taken away

  On the Sabbath day of 1879,

  Which would be remember’d for a very long time.

  The train sped on with all its might,

  And Bonnie Dundee soon hove into sight,

  And the passengers’ hearts felt light,

  Thinking they would enjoy themselves on the New Year,

  With their friends at home they lov’d most dear,

  And wish them all a happy New Year.

  So the train mov’d slowly along the Bridge of Tay,

  Until it was about midway,

  Then the central girders with a crash gave way,

  And down went the train and passengers into the Tay!

  McGonagall concluded his poem with a nice touch of advice for anyone concerned that this sort of thing might happen in the future: “For the stronger we our houses do build / the less chance we have of being killed.” McGonagall died in 1902, and like a bad piece of pizza he just doesn’t seem to go away.

  I remembered seeing Dundee some thirty years earlier and finding it a rather dirty and dull city. Nothing remarkable, to echo Johnson. My guide at the time thought little better of it, and he was a native. In fact he had advised me not to stop there: “Nothing worth seeing for anyone who’s got an education.” But when I finally located a parking spot downtown in the City Center I saw a city that seemed to have changed, and for the better. It had a sense of dynamism about it. The streets were clean, the sidewalks were filled with professional-looking men, women, and lots of students, and the stores were busy. There was a good bookstore—always an indicator of quality in a city—and a sense of pride about the place. I asked directions from one neatly dressed middle-age man, and when I spoke to him of the city’s attractiveness, he was obviously pleased. “It’s a fine good place to live. And a very different place from what you saw before,” he said when we conversed a bit.

  I walked a few blocks over to Verdant Works, a series of impressive interactive exhibits housed in a converted jute mill that chronicle Dundee’s grim, dingy history. In the nineteenth century Dundee was the busy, dirty processing heart of Great Britain’s jute industry, jute being the world’s most important vegetable fiber after cotton. Dundee wa
s “Juteopolis,” and for some fifty thousand people who labored there it meant long hours, poor health, and the lowest pay in Scotland (and that’s really saying something in a nation that ranked among the poorest in the nineteenth century). The jute barons who ran the industry like fiefdoms wouldn’t hire men to work because they could get women for half the wages, and there was never a lack of workers trying to find employment. It made for a system of terrible abuse, and the men of Dundee stayed home and drank, often to death. When World War I came along there was no need for conscription into the army: Dundee’s male population volunteered in staggering numbers, no doubt partly for the pay, partly to escape. For many it was the first paycheck they had ever drawn. Such was Dundee’s low reputation well into the first half of the twentieth century. Verdant Works offered a compelling educational look at this disturbing social history. Now there are few evidences of this history remaining outside the museum, and even fewer who would mourn for that past.

  I returned to my car, or what I assumed was my car. It was parked in the same place, but it was buried beneath an avalanche of gull poop. My once-red automobile was now a more patriotic if messy red and white. And that wasn’t all. Around back was a meter maid—an Amazonlike woman whose glowering face would unquestionably have scared the kilts off William Wallace. She was writing me a ticket for letting my meter expire. I considered several possibilities: telling her I was a writer and I could put her in my book or asking if she thought she could really track me down in the States. I settled on telling her I was really sorry, that I was an American, and could she please tell me how I would have to pay the fine? To my surprise the Amazon suddenly changed into Flora Macdonald and said she’d be happy to tear up the ticket. She wished me a good time in Scotland and walked across the street to nail the driver of some other gull-pooped car. Johnson was wrong; Dundee is a great city.

  Before arriving in Dundee the two men had set out from Edinburgh and stopped in St. Andrews. On the way Johnson—who would soon find the Highland roads, or lack of roads, to be rough and challenging—was pleased with their passage. “The roads are neither rough nor dirty; and it affords a southern stranger a new kind of pleasure to travel so commodiously without the interruption of toll-gates. Where the bottom is rocky, as it seems commonly to be in Scotland, a smooth way is made indeed with great labour, but it never wants repairs.” He also took note of something that would continue to appear in his notes: the absence of trees. “A tree might be a show in Scotland as a horse in Venice,” he wrote. Boswell spotted one and pointed it out to Johnson; a nearby gentleman told the men that it was one of just two trees in the entire county. Boswell was chagrined by the falsehood, although amused by it; Johnson enjoyed it, but his entries about the subject of trees drew criticism from Scots when his book was published.

  They arrived weary at St. Andrews, in the ancient kingdom of Fife, renowned then more for its fine university than for its very special golf course. Boswell was understandably upset by a daydream he had had on the trip in which he saw his child dead, her face eaten by worms, and then the image of a child’s skull. He had been distracted by the images and failed to hear and join in Johnson’s conversation. They both revived over a dinner of mutton and haddock and spent their first night out of Edinburgh at the home of a university professor, Robert Watson. The next morning they visited the ruins of St. Andrews Cathedral and its castle, had lunch with some academics (lunch included salmon, herrings, ham, chicken, mackerel, roast beef, and apple pie), did a little more sight-seeing and returned to their host for dinner.

  Johnson was overwhelmingly negative about what he found in St. Andrews. He thought it “a city which only history shows to have 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.” Johnson had little use for the ideals and practices of post-Reformation Scotland and John Knox. Johnson was a devout member of the Church of England, who composed hundreds of solemn prayers for himself and others. He seldom passed up an opportunity to offer his opinion about religion in Scotland.

  Inspecting the castle—“built with more attention to security than pleasure”—he wrote that “Cardinal Beatoun is said to have had workmen employed in improving its fortifications at the time when he was murdered by the ruffians of reformation, in the manner of which Knox has given what he himself calls a merry narrative,” which had nasty details about hanging the dead cardinal’s body out the second floor window. Knox’s actions followed in the wake of the death of Knox’s close Protestant mentor, George Wishart, who was burned at the stake in 1546 outside the castle while the cardinal looked on approvingly. The cathedral at St. Andrews, Johnson wrote, “was demolished, as is well known, in the tumult and violence of Knox’s reformation.” If a cathedral wall required demolishing for safety’s sake, Johnson would argue that it be left standing in the hope that “it may fall on some posterity of John Knox,” When Boswell asked him where Knox was buried, Johnson replied, “I hope in the highway.” You get the idea.

  Johnson believed that after the Reformation the town had gradually decayed. In its streets he observed “the silence and solitude of inactive intelligence and gloomy depopulation.” He thought St. Andrews to be a natural center for education, however, because it was removed “from the levity and dissoluteness of a capital city” (the kind of thinking that would have twenty-first-century educators get busy transplanting places like the University of Texas, the University of Wisconsin, and Georgia Tech from their respective capital cities). And then he added, “Seeing it [the university] pining in decay and struggling for life, fills the mind with mournful images and ineffectual wishes.” It was a difficult period for the university, with only one hundred students enrolled, and some latter-day commentators have questioned Johnson’s judgments. Johnson departed with yet another gloomy shot: “The kindness of professors did not contribute to abate the uneasy remembrance of a university declining, a college alienated, and a church profaned and hastening to the ground.”

  Boswell recorded snippets of Johnson’s conversation on many topics, all a great deal more upbeat than Johnson’s entries in his Journey (although Boswell himself was unhappy to see an overweight priest who was “strutting about … like a well-fed monk”). The doctor railed against writers accepting patronage, which then required them to honor their patrons at the expense of truth (never mind that Johnson got a small pension from King George), and explained that a national shift from ale to wine was causing a decline in drinking: “I remember when all the decent people in Litchfield got drunk every night, and were not the worse thought of. Ale was cheap, so you pressed strongly. When a man must bring a bottle of wine, he is not in such haste.” Johnson added some more interesting observations about social habits in England at the time:

  Smoking has gone out. To be sure, it is a shocking thing—blowing smoke out of our mouths into other people’s mouths, eyes and noses, and having the same thing done to us. Yet I cannot account why a thing which requires so little exertion and yet preserves the mind from total vacuity, should have gone out [was Johnson punning?]. Every man has something by which he calms himself; beating with his feet or so. [Boswell’s note: “Dr. Johnson used to practice this himself very much.”] I remember when people in England changed a short only once a week; a pandour, when he gets a shirt, greases it to make it last. Formerly a good tradesman had no fire but in the kitchen; never in the parlour except on Sunday. My father, who was a magistrate of Litchfield, lived thus. They never began to have a fire in the parlour but on leaving off business or some great revolution of their life.

  Boswell also recorded Johnson’s words on the subject of writing, one of his favorite topics and one on which Johnson could get rather dull. “I would advise every young man beginning to compose, to do it as fast as he can, to get a habit of having his mind to start promptly. It is so much more difficult to improve in speed than accuracy.” His host disagreed, saying one could get into “bad habits of doing
it slovenly,” which provoked Johnson further: “Why, sir, you are confounding doing inaccurately with the necessity of doing inaccurately.” On the matter of producing sermons, which Johnson said he could do with much haste, the doctor added, “I would say to a young divine, ‘Here is your text; let me see how soon you can make it a sermon.’ Then I’d say, ‘Let me see how much better you can make it.’ Thus I should see both his powers and his judgment.”

  The ruins of the great cathedral and the castle fragments are still worthwhile stops for visitors to St. Andrews, and the university has become one of the great educational institutions in Great Britain, ranking with Oxford and Cambridge. England’s Prince William, heir to the throne, attended college there. But what lures many visitors to St. Andrews is, of course, the famous Royal and Ancient Golf Club, which was founded in 1754, though the game was not new at that time. There is evidence that it was played as early as the fifteenth century; I was only slightly astonished to learn that no one has yet traced it back to William Wallace or Robert the Bruce. It is, at least officially, the home of golf and the international golfing authority, and the mecca for everyone who takes the game seriously. I am not a golfer, at least not that I’d admit, so I didn’t play the course (and I belatedly discovered that you don’t have to play it to enjoy it; you are allowed to take guided walks over the famous “Old Course”). But if you are so inclined and have a reservation and the money—the green fees are around two hundred dollars these days—you can play in the wake of golf’s legends, from Bobby Jones to Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods.