Travellers' Tales of Scotland

The following is from Travellers' Tales of Scotland by R. H. Coats:

XV - Dorothy Wordsworth

(1803)

BURNS was seven years dead, and Scott was a young lawyer of thirty-one, when the two most distinguished poets then living in England set forth from the town of Keswick to cross the Scottish border. Scotland in 1803 was well worth visiting. The glamour of Fingal and of Ossian still clung to the dim mists and mountains of the north, and there were eyes that still glistened at the remembrance of Rob Roy. On the other hand, The Lady of the Lake was not yet published, so that the throng of English tourists was still to come. To the southerner, Scotland was a country of mystery and wonder. Its glories of scenery and romance were beginning to be guessed, but hitherto it could not be said that they were fully known. Wordsworth and Coleridge were eager to explore them. They had recently produced a small volume of Lyrical Ballads, in which the startlingly new doctrine of a return to nature and simplicity in poetry had been boldly advocated. They had retired to the mountains and lakes of Cumberland, in order to work out these principles in scenes most fitted to advance them. And now it was their ambition to visit Scotland. Amid its far glens and solitary grandeurs some fresh inspiration for their muse was almost certain to be found.

Animated by this hope, they set out together on the 14th of August, having provided themselves with an "outlandish Hibernian vehicle," led by a sorry horse which so frequently took fright and backed into the ditch that it had itself to be led through many a weary mile. The third occupant of the jaunting-car was Wordsworth's sister, than whom, surely, no woman ever carried a sharper pair of eyes, or a more watchful and tender and sympathetic heart. Dorothy Wordsworth was essentially a poet. She wrote no verse, but she was frequently the first to detect things of beauty and delight, which William had the genius afterwards to describe, and she was certainly not the least soulful of the three remarkable persons who were packed into that Irish gig. In addition, Dorothy possessed what her two fellow-travellers lamentably lacked, a practical eye to the affairs of ordinary life. Samuel Rogers tells us that while Wordsworth and Coleridge were absorbed in talking about poetry during the tour, "the whole care of looking out for cottages where they might get refreshment and pass the night, as well as of seeing that their poor horse was fed and littered, devolved upon Miss Wordsworth." Dorothy saw to all those things as a matter of course. At the same time she found leisure to jot down her impressions of the country through which they were passing, in a journal which has come to be one of the treasures of our literature.

The route they were to follow led them up Nithsdale and down the valley of the Clyde to Lanark, Glasgow, Dumbarton, and Loch Lomond, thence by Inveraray to Loch Awe, Loch Etive, and Ballachulish, and then home by Glencoe, Tyndrum, Stirling, Edinburgh, and Melrose. It was an adventurous journey for poets to make in those days, and rough fare and rougher entertainment were the best that could be expected. The food might be "verra halesome," as they were told it was, but it was not always appetizing to English palates. At Inveroran the travellers sat down famishing to breakfast, only to find that "the butter was not eatable, the barley cakes were fusty, the oatcake was so hard that they could not chew it, and there were only four eggs in the house, which had been boiled as hard as hard stones." Even worse than some of the meals were the rooms in which they had to eat them. Miss Wordsworth, who had all a woman's fastidiousness about seeing things clean, and who came from the neatest and daintiest cottage in all Westmoreland, would be obliged to sit down to tea in an inn parlour where "the tables were un wiped, the chairs were disordered, the floor was dirty, and the smell of liquor was most offensive;" or she would have to put up with the accommodation of some hut where the smoke got out through the window and the rain came in through the door, so that "the lasses with bare feet got wet as if they had been walking through street puddles." It is true they were occasionally cheered with better fare. Red and white wines were put before the travellers in Glencoe, and once they had a really good dinner of 11 fresh salmon, a fowl, gooseberries and cream, and potatoes." But, in the main, travelling in Scotland was no luxury. The Scottish country inns and houses of the time were cheerless and unattractive places. Over all there were the marks of dinginess and neglect, and a dirt which William could only describe as "Hottentotish."

Even more surprising than the filthiness of the inns was the sulkiness of some owners of those places of refreshment. At Luss the Wordsworths had to shout both loud and long before any attention would be paid to them by the hotel-keeper. At Blair Athol they were unceremoniously refused admission on a wet night, although they knew that within there were beds enough and to spare. Clearly, the Scottish people could be "thrawn" at times, especially where English tourists were concerned. The boatmen on Loch Etive, she wrote, "moved with a surly tardiness, as if glad to make us know they were our masters," and at Luss she found that "the mistress was na verra willing to gie fire."

On the other hand, none could be more cordial and generous than the Scots when they were so minded. "Hoot, yes! ye'll get that," was the cheery, comforting remark which gladdened poor Dorothy's heart in many a wayside hut, a remark which seemed to her to be particularly amusing, inasmuch as it suggested a perpetual consciousness of the difficulty with which things in general were to be procured. Sometimes, when the genuine Highland spirit of hospitality failed to manifest itself, a friendly curiosity sufficed to secure for them a passing welcome. The natives were confounded at so strange a car. They were puzzled still more when they beheld its occupants. And the unheard of object of their journey perplexed them most of all. Wordsworth sought to ingratiate a group of harvesters in the Trossachs by telling them that he had come all the way from England to admire their beautiful country. But the remark was only greeted by shouts of derisive laughter. At Peebles, when the poet was walking calmly and decorously to church, he was waylaid and examined lest he should be some spy in the pay of the French government. At Loch Linnhe he was pestered with questions as to the size and value of his estate in England. As for the lady of the party, the all-absorbing problem was, "Is she married?" On the enquiry being answered in the negative, "To be sure," said one, kindly, but in a tone of some surprise, "there is great promise for virgins in heaven."

Such, then, were the impressions which some Scotsmen formed of the poets who had come among them. What were the impressions which the poets formed of Scotland? It would take too long to go into these matters in detail, or to indicate with what feelings they visited the homes and haunts of Burns, or looked at the good sword of William Wallace in Dumbarton Castle, or listened to Walter Scott reciting his new poem, The Lay of the Last Minstrel, after having been personally conducted by him over the ruins of Melrose Abbey. Of the country as a whole, they seem to have had the feeling that it wore a "foreign" aspect. Lanark, save for its pall of truly British smoke, showed to Miss Wordsworth "a sort of French face." Inveraray Castle made her think of Venice, as she imagined it from pictures seen in raree-shows. Edinburgh's rocky outline, obscured by mist and rain, was "like her childhood's conception of Bagdad or Balsora," as she had often read of them in the Arabian Nights' Entertainments. "In almost every part of Scotland," she wrote, "we were reminded ten times of France or Germany for once of England." Even when England was recalled, and compared with Scotland, it was generally in some way to the disadvantage of the latter. The cottages at Luss seemed poor beside those of Somerset, which she knew to be overgrown with roses and with myrtles. Dumbarton made her think of the Thames in Kent which was "much superior in richness and softness to the Clyde," though inferior in grandeur. The country round Loch Dochart had a "meagre, nipped up, and shrivelled" appearance, in comparison with the North of England; and Strathearn, while it recalled Wensleydale, yet lacked altogether a certain softness and unity and way of "melting together," which the latter alone conspicuously possessed.

It is possible that Miss Wordsworth, in making these comparisons, was influenced a little by sentimental predilections, predilections which she was always willing that Scotsmen should entertain, from a different point of view. There is an amusing passage in the Journal, in which she notes the opinion of a smoke-dried old crone that the sights to be seen in and around Dryburgh were such as could not be paralleled anywhere in England, or in Scotland either. Another old woman fiercely resented the idea that any other town was comparable to Leadhills. The ferryman at Loch Achray assured his lady visitor that the lake by which he himself lived and worked was "far bonnier than Loch Lomond," and he was convinced "she would be often talking of that night when she got back to England." With those local attachments and patriotic ardours, Dorothy was too generous-hearted not to sympathize. She noted with entire approval in her Journal the remark of a minister of Callander, who concluded a six-paged pamphlet on his district with the remark, "In a word, the Trossachs beggars all description." "A Scotsman," she wrote, "is always pleased with his own abode; be it what it may, it is a verra bonny spot.'"

But Dorothy Wordsworth had not only a poet's eye for the beautiful in nature. She possessed that other and far more uncommon faculty, the power to analyse the hidden secret of its charm. Here, for example, is her description of the view to be seen from the little island of Inch-ta-vannach on Loch Lomond:

"We had not climbed far before we were stopped by a sudden burst of prospect, so singular and beautiful that it was like a flash of images from another world... It was an outlandish scene we might have believed ourselves in North America ... a new world in its great permanent outline and composition, and changing at every moment in every part of it by the effect of the sun and wind, and mist and shower and cloud, and the blending lights and deep shades which took the place of each other, traversing the lake in every direction. The whole was indeed a strange mixture of soothing and restless images, of images inviting to rest, and others hurrying the fancy away into an activity still more pleasing than repose. Yet, intricate and homeless, that is, without lasting abiding-place for the mind, as the prospect was, there was no perplexity; we had still a guide to lead us forward. Wherever we looked, it was a delightful feeling that there was something beyond. Meanwhile, the sense of quiet was never lost sight of; the little peaceful lakes among the islands might make you forget the great water, Loch Lomond, was so near; and yet are more beautiful because you know that it is so; they have their own bays and creeks sheltered within a shelter."

So in a thousand passages of rare poetic insight. At Cartland Crags, by the Clyde, she stops to admire "the beauty of the lazy foam, for ever in motion and never moved away, covering the whole surface of the water with streaks and lines and ever varying circles." At Bothwell Castle, she notes how the flowing of the river blends gently with the warbling of the smaller birds and the chattering of the larger ones that make their nests in the ruins, and then goes on to reflect: "The greatest charm of a brook or a river is in the liberty to pursue it through its windings you can then take it in whatever mood you like, silent or noisy, sportive or quiet. The beauties of a brook or river must be sought, and the pleasure is in going in search of them. Those of a lake or of the sea come to you of themselves."

In all these passages we have the quiet, discerning eye of a true poet, marking with unerring certainty the elements of beauty in a landscape. But Dorothy Wordsworth was equally quick to detect whatever blemishes or flaws might lurk within it. She was quite pained, for instance, on seeing the smooth, shaven lawns and modern flowerbeds of Douglas Mansion come so close to the ruins of Bothwell Castle. It was an offence to the genius of the place. The waters of Loch Lomond, she noted, had a bad outlet. There was no sheltering cradle of surrounding hills, and "the bulk of the river was frittered away by small alder bushes." The valley above Dumbarton lacked something. A river glittering in the sun, and upright wreaths of smoke from a few cottages, were all that were needed to make it look cheerful. The head of Loch Long, she felt, had a dull, melancholy appearance, because of its scattered seaweed. On the whole, Scotland gave her the impression of a gloomy sternness. "We hardly ever saw a pleasing place in Scotland which had not something of wildness in its aspect." Even in the most fertile and smiling scenes, the travellers "found something which gave them a notion of barrenness, of what was not altogether congenial." On the other hand, these very qualities had an attraction of their own. "Scotland is a country above all others I have seen, in which a man of imagination may carve out his own pleasures. There are so many inhabited solitudes, and the employments of the people are so immediately connected with the places where they find them."

To the towns of Scotland, Edinburgh excepted, the Wordsworths can hardly be said to have taken kindly. Dorothy much preferred a mountain to a paved street. "I can always walk over a moor with a light foot," she wrote. "I am less eager to walk in large towns than anywhere else." Glasgow, therefore, scarcely succeeded in exhilarating her, especially as she saw it in a downpour of rain. The only thing to do there was to pay a visit to the Bleaching Ground, as Glasgow Green was then called. Here she saw two or three hundred women grouped round a large wash-house in the middle of the field, washing their linen in rows of tubs, and then spreading them out to bleach on the open ground. The travellers left the city without even seeing the cathedral, but they "had the pleasure of spreading smiles from one end of Glasgow to the other," for everybody stopped to stare at the outlandish car. The small boys of Glasgow, however, were not content with gazing. They followed the car with whoopings either of ribaldry or of delight, and four of them scampered so long a way after it that Dorothy had not the heart to retain her seat any longer. Willingly descending, she allowed the little boys to take her place inside, being amply compensated by their exultant grins.

Indeed, one of the most delightful features of the Journal is the evidence it affords of Miss Wordsworth's love of children. She introduces them to us on every possible occasion, and they are so Scottish and so very human, that we take to them immediately. The boys who surprised her at Wanlockhead, wearing honeysuckle in their hats, and who ran off, poor things, when Coleridge began to question them about Greek and Latin; the boy who cried out enthusiastically at the Falls of Clyde, "There's a fine slae bush yonder," and who afterwards looked with some suspicion on a sixpenny-piece that was given him, heartily wishing it might have been "twa bawbees"; the boy who rowed the lady across the ferry at Loch Etive, and who beamingly redoubled his energies when he saw that she was watching him; and the boys at Dalmally who so tumbled and rolled and wrestled with one another that it was impossible to tell to which owner that leg or that arm might rightfully belong all these youngsters are described in a manner that makes them our friends for life. Especially were the Wordsworths impressed with a shepherd boy whom they saw near Tarbert, wearing a grey plaid. The mists were on the hillside, the day was late, and his actions in calling the cattle home were "in the highest degree moving to the imagination." William remarked that he was a "text which contained the whole history of a Highlander's life, his melancholy, his simplicity, his poverty, his superstition, and above all that visionariness which results from the contemplation of unsullied nature." Wordsworth, in fact, was prepared to find such boys in Scotland, having been one such himself by the shores of Windermere. He was prepared also to find the sort of men into whom they would grow up, men of

A stately speech,
Such as grave livers do in Scotland use,
Religious men, who give to God and Man their dues."

And he did find them. Both Dorothy and William were continually impressed by the fine old shepherds whom they met, reading a book by the wayside, or striding over the moor, pensive and alone. They had a patriarchal dignity, a kind of scriptural solemnity and grace, about them, which immediately commended them to the author of Michael, The Leech Gatherer, and The Old Cumberland Beggar.

But where was Coleridge all this time? What was he doing? Alas, when one third of the journey was over, Coleridge had disappeared. He was in bad spirits at the time, Wordsworth tells us, and "too much in love with his own dejection." He could rouse himself sufficiently in Nithsdale to give an intelligent turnpikeman a copy of his pamphlet on The Crisis of the Sugar Colonies. He had energy enough to remark of the pumping machine at Leadhills that "it was like a giant with one idea." At Crawford John he entered into a scientific conversation with the parish minister on "the properties and uses of lime and other manures." But Coleridge's spirits continued to sink lower and lower as the tour progressed. He was cold. He was unwell. He was wakened out of his sleep by drunken tipplers. So, when Arrochar was reached, he elected to take his modest share of the common funds, and find his way home to England by his own road.

William himself appears in the Journal in hardly a more favourable light. We know that he was composing poetry a great deal. Indeed, some of the finest effusions of his genius were suggested by the tour. But when the afflatus left him, and he descended to the concerns of ordinary life, he generally contrived to cut some extraordinary figure. We come upon him trying to hold the shattered pieces of his vehicle together with strings and pocket-handkerchiefs, or attempting to mend a wheel or unyoke a horse, and doing it very badly. At Glenfalloch, William clambered up a huge rock in order to take its measurement by means of a rope constructed out of garters, pocket-handkerchiefs, plaids and coats; and when crossing the ferry at Loch Lomond, he had the gawkiness to drop into the water a parcel containing coffee, sugar, pepper, and a couple of fowls, the precious constituents of an expected luncheon.

No, the only person to whom our hearts go out as we read the Journal is Dorothy herself. How sweet she is, how modest, how good-natured! In all she writes there is the unmistakable feminine touch, and she tells us of many things which no man would ever notice. Details of bedgowns are given us, and of cotton stockings. We read of "blue linsey petticoats" and "gowns of sprigged cotton with long sleeves," and are admitted to a scene at Jedburgh in which an old body of seventy skips up the stairs like a girl of seventeen to open all her drawers and show her English visitor her stock of linen. We are not surprised at this mark of womanly confidence, or at the affection with which Mrs. Macfarlane of Glengyle presented her charming guest with a keepsake of eagle feathers. Dorothy radiated through all those lonely regions a spirit of pure love and unaffected tenderness. She wept for the wretched beggars she saw tramping the hills penniless. She felt sincere pity for the women and children who had to sit minding a single cow all day long, as it nibbled the strips of grass among the growing corn. When she saw a peaceful island nestling in solitude on Loch Lomond, her heart leapt out to the happy thought, What a lovely place for William to write poetry in! He could row out to it at any time in twenty strokes and be quite alone!

Most lovable of all is her unconquerable cheerfulness and sweet content. At Loch Achray she had to spend the night in a ferryman's hut. It consisted of three apartments, a spence, a cowhouse, and a kitchen. The walls of the little bigging were of plastered stone. The rooms had divisions between them which did not reach to the roof, so that the light and smoke could pass from one end of the house to the other. The bed on which she lay was made of chaff, and the rain outside kept pouring heavily all night. Surely the circumstances were such as might have made even an angel inclined to grumble. But not so Dorothy Wordsworth. "I went to bed some time before the family. The door was shut between us and they had a bright lire, which I could not see; but the light it sent up among the varnished rafters and beams, which crossed each other in almost as intricate and fantastic a manner as I have seen the under boughs of a large beech-tree withered by the depth of shade above, produced the most beautiful effect that can conceived. It was like what I should suppose an underground cave or temple to be, with a dripping or moist roof, and the moon entering in upon it by some means or other, and yet the colours were more like melted gems... I though of the Fairyland of Spenser, and of what I had read in romance at other times, and then, what a feast it would be for a London pantomime maker could it be transplanted to Drury Lane, with all its beautiful colours!"

Fortunate was the shieling that enclosed even for one night so tender and so true a heart. We can imagine how quickly that heart beat when the long and perilous journey was at last over, the dear smoke wreaths of Dove Cottage rose once more before her eyes, and with joy unbounded she "found Mary in good health, and Joanna Hutchinson with her, and little John asleep in the clothes basket by the fire."

XVI - John Keats (1818)