Whisky, Kilts, and the Loch Ness Monster

by William W. Starr

  When Johnson awoke the next morning, he met Veronica, the Boswell’s four-month-old daughter who charmed him completely. “She had the appearance of listening to him. His motions seemed to her to be intended for her amusement, and when he stopped, she fluttered and made a little infantine noise and a kind of signal for him to begin again. She would be held close to him, which was a proof from simple nature that his figure was not horrid.” This is indeed a beguiling scene, and one that flatters Johnson, perhaps the greatest man in England, captivated by a baby, the two of them cooing and clucking and moving in response to one another. Though neither Boswell knew it at the time, Margaret—who had already miscarried twice—was or would very soon be pregnant with their second child, a girl named Euphemia.

  Johnson met several of Boswell’s acquaintances, had conversations about the law and emigration, and went to church services, though his hearing impairment prevented him from listening to what Boswell thought a fine sermon. Boswell dragged a number of important guests to his home to meet Johnson; all found fine hospitality and seemed to come away with the positive impressions of his guest that Boswell sought. And Johnson fulfilled the role Boswell sought for him no less: that of the mentor, sharing his beliefs and his words in increasingly intimate situations. Boswell’s adulation, so obvious and so welcomed by Johnson.

  Johnson spoke freely, certainly so in a lengthy conversation about Hume, whom Johnson detested for his atheism and his dislike for the English. Hume, for his part, was a likable, placid man until the subject got around to the English. A couple of sample comments: “Nothing but rebellion and bloodshed will open the eyes of that deluded people.” And “An Englishman is a man (a bad animal too) corrupted by above a century of licentiousness.” Hume made it clear he would have been delighted with the dissolution of England by whatever means and at whatever cost.

  Johnson could match his ill humor, however, and the mention of his name provoked one of Johnson’s most vitriolic attacks, in which he described Hume as “a man who has so much conceit as to tell all mankind that they have been bubbled for ages and he is the wise man who sees better than they, a man who has so little scrupulosity as to venture or oppose those principles which have been thought necessary to human happiness.” Johnson then added something even stronger than anything Boswell wished to include in his published Journal. We learned later what that was; the remark was prompted by a comment from Boswell to Johnson, wondering why the doctor would be so serious as to attack Hume’s heart. “Why sir, because his head has corrupted it. Or perhaps it has perverted his head. I know not indeed whether he has first been a blockhead and that has made him a rogue, or first been a rogue and that has made him a blockhead.” Johnson rarely got blunter than that—unless he was talking about John Knox. Boswell discreetly held off telling Johnson that he was acquainted with Hume and that the philosopher had lived only a short distance away. Obviously it would be impossible for Boswell to bring these two combatants together. Edinburgh has one monument to Hume that I managed to locate; it is a statue of that noble native son in front of the High Court of Judiciary on High Street. He’s wearing a toga, which I suspect would have sent Johnson into another rage.

  Another well-known figure, Edmund Burke, the English statesman and writer who had strong political differences with Johnson, came up in discussion, and, according to Boswell’s account, Johnson was a little easier in response. “Dr. Johnson said he had a variety of knowledge, store of imagery, copiousness of language,” but when it was suggested that Burke also possessed wit, Johnson demurred. “No sir, he never succeeds there. ’Tis low; ’tis conceit. I used to say Burke never once made a good joke. What I most envy Burke for is his being constantly the same. He is never what we call humdrum; never unwilling to begin to talk, nor in haste to leave off…. So desirous is he to talk that if one is speaking at this end of the table, he’ll speak to somebody at the other end.”

  A little later, Boswell remembered, Johnson offered a story about himself:

  I remember I was once on a visit at the house of a lady for whom I had a high respect. There was a good deal of company in the room. When they were gone, I said to this lady, “What foolish talking have we had!” “Yes,” said she, “but while they talked, you said nothing.” I was struck with the reproof. How much better is the man who does anything that is innocent than he who does nothing. Besides, I love anecdotes. I fancy mankind may come in time to write all aphoristically, except in narrative; grow weary of preparation and connexion and illustration and all those arts by which a big book is made. If a man is to wait till he weaves anecdotes into a system, we may be long in getting them, and get but few in comparison of what we might get.

  In all things Boswell faithfully recorded the words—the anecdotes—and social encounters with a sharp ear and quick pen. He was affectionate and indebted to Johnson, but he was no toady, as some of his detractors have charged. In his voluminous entries for Edinburgh he affirmed the merit of Johnson’s words and assured latter-day readers of precious, living insights into his character.

  And so the visit continued, Boswell offering us a delicious share of Johnson as they toured some of the city’s sights including the Kirk of St. Giles, Parliament, and Holyroodhouse Palace (more on that later). Some of the highlights of Johnson’s opinions during these visits:

  — On Boswell’s plaint that the Treaty of 1707 had forever ruined Scottish independence: “Sir, never talk of your independency, who could let your queen [Mary, queen of Scots] remain twenty years in captivity and then be put to death without even a pretence of justice, without your ever attempting to rescue her; and such a Queen, too! As every man of any gallantry of spirit would have sacrificed his life for.”

  — At Edinburgh University, Boswell pointing out a wall in perilous condition, reminding Johnson that it was like those at Oxford that might fall upon some learned man: “Dr. Johnson, glad of an opportunity to have a pleasant hit at Scottish learning, said, ‘They have been afraid it would never fall.’”

  — On Jonathan Swift, of whom Johnson thought little and even suggested that Swift had plagiarized some of his work: “Swift is clear, but he is shallow.”

  — On witchcraft, which others found blasphemous in supposing evil spirits opposing the Deity: “If moral evil be consistent with the government of the Deity, why may not physical evil be also consistent with it? It is no more strange that there should be evil spirits than evil men; evil unembodied spirits than evil embodied spirits.”

  And then it was time to begin their journey. On Wednesday, August 18, Boswell and Johnson set off across the Firth of Forth north of Edinburgh and were soon on the road to Dundee, Arbroath, Montrose, and beyond. Johnson was persuaded to relieve himself of the load of weaponry he had brought along with him from London; we don’t know whether he anticipated highway bandits along the way or perhaps some crazy bands of unreconstructed Jacobites. Boswell said they were brought “in erroneous apprehension of violence.” Johnson left behind a pair of pistols, some gunpowder, and a quantity of bullets, which were stored at Boswell’s home along with one of the most important literary treasures ever lost: Johnson’s diary, which was later destroyed by some unknown means. Boswell wished his wife had used the three months they were gone to copy that document, and now many of us wish she had done so, too.

  The trip that began in Edinburgh would end on November 9 when they returned to Edinburgh; Johnson would remain until November 22 when he began his final journey back home to London. My account will end when I rejoin them on what was their last stop on the trip as they made their way back to Edinburgh: at the Ayrshire village of Auchinleck. The village was the home of Boswell’s father, a stern, dour Scottish judge, where Boswell nervously anticipated the outcome of a meeting between Johnson, a Church of England Tory, and the judge, a Presbyterian Whig. In the meantime, for the sake of togetherness and convenience I’m going to place the activities of the two men when they returned to Edinburgh at this point in my narrative. It fits more comfortably wit
h my contemporary experiences in the capital, so my apologies to readers who would prefer a stricter chronology—even a backwards one.

  “I cannot express how happy I was on finding myself at home,” Boswell wrote when he arrived at his dwelling on the evening of November 9, and he unapologetically slept late the next morning. Visitors immediately showed up, desirous to learn all of the details and gossip about the tour, and both Boswell and Johnson were happy to oblige. (Who doesn’t relish opportunities to talk about a just-completed travel experience? The problem has always been finding people who will listen and not want to tell you about their trip.) It must have been hard on poor Margaret Boswell, who served cup after cup of tea while nursing her grudges against Dr. Johnson. Boswell also got Johnson out to walk a few blocks uphill to Edinburgh Castle, which Johnson called “a great place” but then later added, “it would make a good prison in England.” It was also at this point that Boswell corrected the location at which Johnson made one of his best-known sarcastic observations about Scotland. It had been alleged that from the castle Johnson said, “the noblest prospect that a Scotchman ever sees is the high road that leads him to London.” Not so, according to Boswell; those words were tossed out at a tavern in London back in 1763.

  There was again lots of conversation as Johnson met more members of Edinburgh’s intellectual community, and the topics ranged from dealing with rebels from the Jacobite Rising to law and literature. At one point a busy Johnson confessed to Boswell, “we have been harassed by invitations,” adding quickly, “but how much worse would it have been if we had been neglected?” There were several times during this return to Edinburgh that Boswell admitted that he had not been keeping his notes as efficiently as before; I think he may be pardoned given what must have been great weariness following a long journey and an inevitable lassitude.

  In his Journey Johnson had only a few things to say upon his return to Edinburgh and raised only two topics. One was the growing use of English rather than Scots English in communication. This had become the case after the signing of the Treaty of 1707 as more Scots mingled with the English in London, and English became the language of commerce, education, and politics. “The great, the learned, and the vain, all cultivate the English phrase, and the English pronunciation, and in splendid companies Scotch is not much heard,” Johnson wrote with evident satisfaction.

  The other topic, one which he described as “of philosophical curiosity,” was a visit he paid to a school that provided learning to the deaf. The improvement of the twelve students at this Edinburgh school he found to be “wonderful,” and he added, “It was pleasing to see one of the most desperate of human calamities capable of so much help; whatever enlarges hope, will exalt courage; after having seen the deaf taught arithmetick, who would be afraid to cultivate the Hebrides?” It seems hardly necessary to add that such condescension, commonplace in the eighteenth century and many decades beyond, scarcely represents twenty-first century attitudes toward education of the handicapped. Johnson’s responses to his visit to the school, however, marked him in fact, among the more enlightened of his age.

  Johnson left Edinburgh—with Boswell unexpectedly in his company—on November 22. I’ll wrap that up a little later; for now, I return to more of my own exploring of Edinburgh. It seemed as if it had been a long time since I left Falkirk to drive into the capital in the pursuit of my companions.

  Johnson and Boswell had Boswell’s home to serve as lodging; I had a small hotel in New Town to the north of the Royal Mile. New Town, laid out in broad, symmetrical roadways, is not quite “new”—it was created more than two hundred years ago to alleviate some of the overcrowding and unsanitary conditions that made Old Town the mess that Boswell and others knew and wrote about. Edinburgh yields not much to London when it comes to pricey accommodations, and staying away from the Royal Mile and the busy thoroughfare of Princes Street helps to bring prices down for impecunious tourists (especially of the kind who have spent more than two months in Scotland). Fortunately Edinburgh has a good public transportation system, and getting around couldn’t have been easier; by city bus I could travel from my hotel to the heart of Princes Street in less than fifteen minutes and only a few minutes more brought me to the Royal Mile.

  I started my exploration on a beautifully sunny and warm day—“one of Edinburgh’s best,” a bookseller told me later that day—at the places where Boswell and Johnson visited or stayed. I’ve already discussed James’s Court, where they stayed at the beginning and end of their journey, and as I passed James’s Court again I spotted a plaque on a structure across the street identifying it as “Boswell’s Court, number 352 Royal Mile.” The building now hosts a tavern and an evening “Witching Tour.” The plaque informed me that James Boswell and Samuel Johnson “are reputed to have met and dined in this building circa 1770.” I was pleased to see Bozzy getting some notice along this street—since the Writers Museum didn’t recognize him—but the key words on the plaque are reputed and circa because Johnson didn’t get to Edinburgh until 1773, and it’s unlikely that they dined there. I once ate in a restaurant in Virginia that claimed to have hosted George Washington. It was a grand experience that evoked a poignant historical moment; I didn’t find out until years later that Washington never visited the area. The food wasn’t all that good anyway.

  Edinburgh Castle, on the top end of the Royal Mile, was crowded when I arrived; now that the calendar had reached May the number of visitors was picking up everywhere. I suppose I had been too long away from crowds; now there were long, slowly shuffling lines of people to eager see the opulent Scottish crown jewels. The history of Edinburgh and its castle are inextricably intertwined; one look at the castle’s lofty, impregnable position makes clear why it was of such strategic importance. For nearly three thousand years there has been some kind of human presence recorded on the castle rock. The fortress itself probably dates back to the early seventh century and King Edwin of Northumberland, who allegedly called the structure “Edwin’s Burgh.” In the Middle Ages it became Edinburgh’s chief royal castle, “enduring siege after siege during the long wars with England. By the time of King James VI’s birth here in 1566, the castle was effectively little more than a garrison fortress,” writes author Chris Tabraham. The Jacobite siege in 1745—Prince Charlie seized control of the city but never the castle—was the last military encounter, and since that time the ancient fortress “has found new roles—as national symbol of Scotland, major visitor attraction and World Heritage Site—but still with its complement of soldiers.”

  The 360–degree views of Edinburgh and the countryside from the castle are spectacular, reinforcing the sense of dominion that unfolds here. The small chapel that dates from the twelfth century is the oldest surviving structure in the castle; other areas go back to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Although Johnson said little about his visit, I believe it likely that the good doctor was a bit more impressed than he let on. I firmly suspect that if he had seen the castle lighted up at night, and I were the one having slop tossed on me while walking the streets, our opinions might have been reversed. Johnson had seen and stayed in many castles on the journey, and I had seen a few on mine as well. Only Stirling comes close to the grandeur of Edinburgh, though the wind-swept ruins of Dunnottar linger in my mind most memorably.

  At the opposite, lower end of the Royal Mile is the Palace of Holyroodhouse, an attraction I found of more interest no doubt because of the romantic and bloody associations with the ever popular Mary, queen of Scots. For all of the beauty and history of Holyrood—and not minimizing the fact that Queen Elizabeth is in residence there at least one week each year—I’m convinced that it is the lure of Mary that packs this place with people like me.

  When King James V died in 1542, his daughter Mary was only six days old. Sent to France as a child (the king’s first wife had been French), she married the heir to the French throne who became king of France in 1559. There wasn’t much time to celebrate; he died a year later, and the
eighteen-year-old Catholic Queen returned to Holyroodhouse and a Scotland that was increasingly Protestant (think John Knox). She married Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, in what turned out to be something less than a match made in heaven. In 1566 Darnley grew jealous of Mary’s relationship with her Italian secretary (a man, not a piece of furniture), whose name was David Rizzio. One night Darnley and a group of coconspirators sneaked up a narrow spiral stairway from his apartment on the floor below the queen, burst in on a pregnant Mary and her attendants and the unfortunate Rizzio, who held tightly to the queen’s skirts to protect himself. Darnley dragged Rizzio into a tiny room off his wife’s chambers, stabbed him fifty-six times—I have no idea who was counting—and left him dying on the floor. This incredibly dramatic, unbelievably exciting, breathtaking moment in history was described by one historian this way—and I’m quoting him exactly, every word he wrote about the event—“Mary was greatly distressed by this.” Really? Do you suppose? She was a mere twenty-three years old, six-months pregnant, enjoying tea with her ladies when her husband stormed into her room, grabbed her secretary, and began stabbing him while blood spurted everywhere and people ran and screamed. Hmmm, yes, I suppose one could become distressed at that if one were easily distressed. No wonder many readers get turned off by so many historians’ bland treatment of real history.

  Anyway, here’s the cool part of this story: when you visit Holyrood and get to these rooms, there’s the bedchamber, the spiral stairway, and the tiny stabbing room. There’s even a brass plaque on the wall that points to Rizzio’s bloodstains on the floor! Is history wonderful, or what?

  Alas the scene is contrived. I hate to warn you off the tour because the palace is quite interesting in spite of this. But truth be told, the rooms have been changed and remodeled several times since Mary’s time, and while the stairway is still around, the rest of the place isn’t. Rizzio’s alleged bloodstains are, well, whatever they are. The story and the sights have made Holyroodhouse a huge favorite for tourists for many years, and guidebooks used to toss around the facts rather cavalierly, apparently. When I was finishing my tour—which was entertaining and informative and accurate, as far as I could tell—I overheard two older American ladies discussing their visit.