Boswell's Bus Pass (16 page)
Read Boswell's Bus Pass Online
Authors: Stuart Campbell
When Birkbeck Hill recreated the journey in the late1880’s he describes ‘Far up the valley to the West a flock of sheep was coming white from the shearing, bleating as they spread out along the
hillside
. Another flock the dogs were gathering into what had been the yard of the old house.’ One hundred and twenty odd years later this is exactly what we saw. An obliging shepherd listened to our story and pointed us in the direction of a blue-coated figure rounding up the last of the strays.
Donald John McKinnon must have been in his nineties. Twinkling and urbane and speaking with a Lewis accent he revealed an astonishing knowledge of the original travellers and was gently adamant that the Yale edition of the
Journey
is the most authoritative. He had been presented with a copy by the great, great, grandchild of the original McKinnon’s older daughter but had lent it to someone who had failed to return it. If you are that person please make an old man happy and put it in the post. Ditto the American visitor from Arkansaw who promised to send a very early photograph of
Coriatachan
. Dig out the photo, send it now!
He ended the conversation by saying, ‘Well lads, I had best get back to work, I don’t want to be getting the sack’ and said we were welcome to clamber over the ruins. A tree grows out of the original wall, its branches filling the space that would have been occupied by the upper story. Was it the same space in which Johnson wrote his Latin ode to Mrs Thrale? Was it the same space where Boswell woke with a hangover when they visited Skye for the second time?
‘I awaked at noon with a severe head-ach. I was much vexed that I should have been guilty of such a riot, and afraid of a reproof from Dr. Johnson. I thought it very inconsistent with that conduct I ought to maintain, while the companion of the
Rambler
. About one he came into my room and accosted me, ‘What drunk yet?’ His tone of voice
was not that of severe upbraiding: so I was relieved a little. “Sir,’’ said I, ‘they kept me up.’ He answered, ‘No, you kept them up, you drunken dog.’
This he said with good-humoured
English
pleasantry. Soon
afterwards
Coirechatachan, Coll and other friends assembled round my bed. Corry had a brandy-bottle and glass with him, and insisted I should take a dram. ‘Ay,’ said Dr. Johnson, ‘fill him drunk again. Do it in the morning, that we may laugh at him all day. It is a poor thing for a fellow to get drunk at night, and skulk to bed, and let his friends have no sport.’
Finding him thus jocular, I became quite easy; and when I offered to get up, he very good-naturedly said, “You need be in no such hurry now’’’.
I took my host’s advice, and drank some brandy, which I found an effectual cure for my head-ach. When I rose, I went into Dr. Johnson’s room and taking up Mrs McKinnon’s prayer-book, I opened it at the Twentieth Sunday after Trinity, in the epistle for which I read, “And be not drunk with wine, wherein there is excess.’’ Some would have taken this as a divine interposition.’
Boswell’s debauchery extended into a second night that finished at five in the morning but not before he had drunk innumerable kettles of brandy and bottles of punch. He also discovered that he was fluent in Erse and sang enthusiastically in his new tongue. When he eventually got to bed he was consumed with anxiety, foreboding ‘and all the gloomy chances that imagination can figure disturbed me. I felt the utmost impatience to get home, and was tormented for some time.’ Relief from this self inflicted torment was administered by Coll who burst into his bedroom with an overlooked bottle of punch.
Sadly the youth hostel at Broadford offered no such pleasures. SYHA could not provide in every room ‘a smart lad lying on a table in the corner of the room, ready to spring up and bring the kettle whenever it was wanted’. Still, David did his best by springing up at intervals with his hip-flask. Despite his efforts there was not the merest echo of the Coriatachin conviviality. Small knots of hostellers kept themselves to themselves keen to preserve the illusion that they alone were staying for the night and that no one else existed. I began to feel paranoid and half expected some hairy hippy to grab me by the throat and ask, ‘and which part of YOUTH hostel don’t you understand, you old bastard?’
Sharing a room with arguably the most bad tempered Frenchman outside of the Franco-Prussian war at least provided us with the incentive to make an early start.
Our departure from the hostel in the morning was marked by a slightly menacing fly past of gulls. I asked David if he ever sorted out the gull problem at his Edinburgh tenement. He smirked.
We were joined at the bus stop by a couple in their twenties joined at the tongue, erotic Siamese twins. I think I had seen them the night before in the communal lounge. Were they young lovers parting for ever after a chance encounter? Hard up honeymooners? I don’t know if it was their comfort together or their youth that I envied most.
A gaggle of ragamuffin small boys fought their way up the road, using their homework-laden satchels like weapons in a mediaeval joust. One of the schoolbags was tossed into the tree while its owner watched helplessly. There was no real malice involved and no one minded when the bag tumbled back down again. I looked into the higher branches in case the tree was heavily laden with leather satchels, sports bags, brief cases, duffle bags; the accumulated snared fruit of many years of teasing and minor bullying.
When the Sconser bus arrived to take us to the Raasay ferry the doors exuded the clashing odours of Lynx deodorant and sample perfumes peeled from glossy magazine covers.
Although the smells and the noise were the same there was a collective palpable innocence that set this bus apart from hundreds on the mainland with similar cargos negotiating the high rise schemes and queues of hacked-off commuters.
The mountains and clouds must make a difference to the young psyche. From the windows the mountains were gradually losing
consciousness
as the mist lowered, offering absolution, discretion and the calming balm of invisibility; white incense seeped from under the doors of unseen mansions. The mist also appeared in various spouts. Geysers and gouts of steam rose from phantom locomotives in innumerable gullies. Perhaps this was prefigured in the Warrington dream.
Tuesday 7
th
September
Coriatachan Skye
My Dearest Margaret,
Please pity and bless your skin wet admiring man. The rain drip from my ears and breeches. I never know rain like this, my soul is like sponge
which the gods hold fast (see Margaret, my writing get better and better, soon you sell my letters to publisher in High Street and make money for new life). I think master and doctor want home now. They argue and the doctor he sulk like spoiled boy. Sometime I think they like married couple who see too much of the other, not like Joseph and his Margaret. The master make doctor angry when he make fun of small man who come to supper. Master bend over and talk in tiny voice to make doctor laughing. But he not laugh, he threaten to hit master with knob stick if he do cruel thing again.(1) The doctor is good man who also write to his Thrale, who also married woman like Margaret. I see picture of Thrale woman in Doctor’s bag, why such pretty woman go with big bear man make me wonder.
I have much to tell Margaret, and the world too when it ready for my letters on famous journey. The doctor is clever man, he know history and has read every book in Christian kingdom but he has bit of mad man too as he like bag piper who play at breakfast and play at dinner. Even when he stop I hear noise in head. My head ache with pipe noise.
I know all things about pipes and their making. I know how in past people burn to death while they play pipes. Perhaps death is good for them.(2) The master he get worse with his drinking. He have whisky every morning when he wake, he tell me it is custom. At night he wait until doctor go to bed and he drink until he cry then fall down. Sometime he pretend he talk like natives and make up words to songs, and then Joseph must carry him to sleep. He become more sad in morning again, and drink whisky again. One night I stop at door and see him do strange thing. It is odd to write in letter but I am servant faithful to truth. I see master play with razor and talk to himself in high voice. I go in room, what you doing? I shout. He drop razor and look at me strange. Just a dream Joseph, he say, just a dream. Then I see odd thing, as he pull down sleeve I see he already make blood marks on arm. This journey not good for him.(3)
But I not want to make Margaret have alarm. I tell you thing to make you laugh. We stay in small cottage, lots of people all crowd in. The bedrooms full of people. We have many priests come to see doctor. One priest he stay night and while the maid take his clothes he make water like he on his own. He stand proud and piss with girl in room. I shake head, I see many things in long life but not priest piss like this.(4)
When doctor not talk of shoes he talk of second sight. At first Joseph think second sight is when blind man is made better by god but he mean when we see what happen in future. The master too he talk same rubbish and because he know that the master like second sighting stories he always ask about it. He hear one day of man on this island who tell the future and the master look silent. At night master wake me in parlour(5) and we leave house holding boots. We travel under big moon and find this future seeing man who live in small hut with smoke and goats. The master he pretend to be brave and give sovereign. The mad man talk in native tongue and shout devil words. He touch the master on head and make to touch him on privates but the master gets angry and leave the man with cross words. He say very little on journey back and tell me not to say word to doctor.(6)
Back in parlour I too am scared and want to hold Margaret my bosoms friend,
Your Sad Jo
(1) The victim of Boswell’s cruel mockery was the son of John Janes or Jeans, a dealer in mineral specimens and fossils. Anderson in his biography of the Jeans family records that the son, ‘a coarse and contemptible character’ succeeded him in the business but was drowned on a dark night in 1809 by falling into the basin near London’s New Pier. There is something of the hypocrite in Johnson’s reaction as he astonished Boswell a matter of days later by impersonating their hostess on Skye. Ever the sycophant Boswell congratulated Johnson on his powers of imitation: ‘To see a beauty represented by Mr Johnson was excessively high. I told him it was a masterpiece and that he must have studied it much. “Ay,’’ said he.’
(2) Joseph is recalling a conversation that took place at Armadale. In Johnson’s words, ‘As the bagpiper was playing, an elderly Gentleman informed us, that in some remote time, the
Macdonalds
of Glengary having been injured, or offended by the inhabitants of
Culloden
, and resolving to have justice or vengeance, came to
Culloden
on a Sunday, where finding their enemies at worship, they shut them up in the church, which they set on fire; and this, said he, is the tune that the piper played while they were burning.’
(3) If true, this is an astonishing insight into Boswell’s mental state and related behaviour. The journal offers substantial evidence that Boswell was sinking into one of his habitual states of melancholy. What Joseph apparently witnessed was his master self harming. Although the term belongs to the modern world of
psychology there is no reason to doubt that the phenomenon has always offered a temporary respite from otherwise unmanageable emotions. This insight is certainly compatible with modern theories that Boswell suffered from bipolar disorder.
(4) Boswell also saw fit to comment on this unusual departure from polite behaviour. ‘I observed tonight a remarkable instance of the simplicity of manners or want of delicacy among the people in Skye. After I was in bed, the minister came up to go to his. The maid stood by and took his clothes and laid them on a chair piece by piece, not excepting his breeches, before throwing off which he made water, while she was just at his back.’
(5) The detail is correct. We know that Joseph was obliged to sleep in the parlour at Coriatachan.
(6) There is absolutely no reference to this encounter in any of Boswell’s
subsequent
writing. There is however no doubting the travellers’ near fixation with the second sight.
Our bus arrived in Sconser seconds after the ferry had left the harbour. It was already four metres away from the jetty en route to Raasay. Resigned to waiting at least an eternity for the next boat we realised that someone on the bridge had seen us, reversed the engines, lowered the ramps and let us come aboard. This doesn’t happen in Edinburgh where bus drivers have been known to drag pensioners along Princes Street, their walking sticks jammed in the doors, hob-nailed boots unleashing arcs of sparks as they grind along the kerb.
The ferry’s return was as hospitable in its own way as the circumstances of Boswell and Johnson’s journey to Raasay. John Macleod, the laird, had sent his ‘coach and six’ as he called his six oared boat equipped with the finest bales of straw. He had also sent Donald McQueen, an ancient minister, and Donald Macleod, a relic from the ’45 to entertain Johnson on the crossing. Boswell seemed taken with the latter, ‘a fellow half naked, with a bare black head, robust and spirited, something half wild Indian, half English tar.’ Johnson seems to have ignored the learned rent-a-crew, preferring to ‘sit high on the stern of the boat like a magnificent Triton’.
David eschewed Triton impersonation for a perfunctory inspection of the three vehicles onboard, one of which was a scaffy lorry. The
driver and his mate were the Greek Gods of bin men. Their destiny was to spend part of each day island-hopping and swigging on ambrosia while their urban peers scattered improvised bowling alleys of Buckfast bottles and shovelled away the remains of tortured cats.
As they passed Scalpay Johnson suggested that Boswell should buy the island, open a school and establish an Episcopal church. At least it would have got rid of him.