Boswell's Bus Pass (19 page)

Although the original house is no longer there its replacement is on the same site, surrounded by the original farm buildings and
outhouses
that the early visitors must have seen. The replacement building is destined to go the way of its predecessor. The black empty windows stare out of the grey farmhouse lurching drunkenly against its newer neighbour. Through the open front door it was apparent that the Adams Family staircase had plummeted into a room not designed to receive it. Inside a Miss Haversham figure draped in cobwebs proudly mutters that she is Flora’s great granddaughter and that the whole thing is a disgrace. That same space once held the tartan clad bedroom that received Prince Charlie and twenty eight years later, the old buck, Johnson.

Before any passengers were permitted to board the 56A to Dunvegan they had to be vetted against an exacting standard of adherence to national stereotypes. The American woman announced her
abhorrence
for the seat at the back of the bus: ‘They (sic) make me sick (sick).’ Several Germans roared instructions into mobile phones checking co-ordinates while scanning the horizon for incoming fire. Most intriguing was the young Japanese man sitting in front,
obsessively
plaiting orange peel into an origami nosegay. It was
undoubtedly
a skill, perhaps marketable in Seville. I had to crouch in an upright position to get a better view of the finished artifact that he kept pressing to his nostrils.

The same American woman interrupted her partner: ‘When you wear a kilt, does the colour of the socks matter?’ Yes Madam, the tartan etiquette police deployed at every tea room in Scotland take particular exception to fashion
faux pas
of this nature. You can expect to be hanged from your garters until you are dead.

Meanwhile Boswell and Johnson were finding the terrain
treacherous
. We could just see them across the moor. Even at this distance it was obvious that Johnson’s horse kept sinking up to its fetlocks in the sinking bog under his colossal weight. We caught a glimpse of him stepping off his now shorter horse and walking behind the others, all
the while shaking his head. He was still sulking from having fallen ‘at his length upon the ground.’

The bus infiltrated the long line of mobile homes carrying the latest wave of patrician tourists intent on colonising the Wild Western Isles. Their passing was noted with nodding approval by the first settlers now trading in wind chimes and pottery bowls. At night these missionaries from warmer climes will circle their wagons and earnestly recreate the decent intimacies of suburban life. Smoke signals will rise from a hundred barbeques, St George’s Crosses will flutter from aerials, and
Crime Watch
will bounce round the enclosed spaces. Meanwhile the natives scratch a living on the council owned reservations.

The coach park at Dunvegan is larger than the bus station at Agra and created a sense of anticipation normally associated with the Taj Mahal. Is the noble seat of the Macleods best viewed at sunrise or sunset? Is it true that urchin boys will steal your shoes when you take them off at the hallowed threshold of the dining room? Birkbeck Hill got it right in 1890; ‘An architect was employed who must surely have acquired his mischievous art in erecting sham fortresses on the banks of the Clyde for the wealthy traders of Glasgow. It is greatly to be wished that a judicious earthquake would bring to the ground his pepper-pot turrets.’ If ‘old firm footballers’ is substituted for ‘wealthy traders’ it is still totally accurate.

The building is a pastiche of bad taste covered in Victorian excrescences, towers and turrets and crenellated walls. Prince Charles must have been organically orgasmic whenever he rested his chin on his gnarled Harry Lauder walking stick to admire the latest
architectural
travesty; a detached stucco walled toilet with flying buttresses.

Johnson was entranced by Dunvegan where he ‘tasted lotus and was in danger of forgetting that he was ever to depart’. His young host was the nineteen year old laird, still living at home with his formidable mammy but nonetheless a remarkable young man wrestling with the challenges of his role. In an autobiographical fragment he provided an accurate assessment of his attempt to reconcile duty with firmness: ‘I called the people together; I laid before them the situation of our family; I acknowledged the hardships under which they laboured; I reminded them of the manner in which their ancestors had lived with mine; I combated their passion for America; I promised to live among them.’ This fragment conjures a very depressed young man pursued
by debt and driven by his family values and a strong moral sense. It is no surprise that Johnson was fond of the young laird.

We dutifully traipsed from room to room past the roped off bits and the fading artifacts. The bland labels explaining the provenance of the weapons in the glass cases should be rewritten. ‘One blow of this claymore would cut a man off at the knees leading to a rapid, hobbling, bleeding death … The serrated edge on this dagger would seriously mess with the victim’s intestines.’

The display of pale newspaper cuttings offered some respite from this bellicose hubris. Given the quality of austerity newsprint most of the captured images of ancient royalty will mutate from sepia to beige to total invisibility within a few years. Close examination of the picture beneath the headline GAY CLAN OUTING suggests that the MacLeod-Out-and-Proud movement has a decent history.
Evidently
some Brylcreemed chaps in Aran sweaters had a jolly good time together at some point in the 1950s.

The eccentric displays along the walls leading to the toilets were better value for money: the brass name plate from a 1930s steam locomotive; sepia photographs of St. Kilda’s last inhabitants including a rare snap of two morose women stamping on their drawers in a washing tub and two fine lads flaunting thick belts of dead fulmars.

St. Kilda was part of the Macleod fiefdom and Johnson seriously considered visiting the island. That would have been an account worth reading. Though whether sea sickness or whimpering
cowardice
would have claimed Boswell first is a moot point.

By way of joshing compliment the young laird told Johnson he would gift him the small island of Isa on the condition that he lived there for one month of the year. Johnson enjoyed the thought and wrote to Mrs. Thrale, ‘MacLeod has offered me an island; if it was not too far off I should hardly refuse it.’ He then strangely suggests that it would be a better place to live than Brighton. It was probably better than Skegness, Accrington and many other places come to that.

Neither Johnson nor Boswell mention the barbaric proximity of the dungeon, complete with its own bijou bottle-shaped pit, to Dunvegan’s living quarters. Generations of Macleods would bang the wall: ‘Stop that dreadful solitary moaning I can’t hear the telly.’ The note of explanation on the wall ruefully notes that ‘Cooking smells from the kitchen would drift down to torment the starving prisoners.’ But smell is a two-edged sword. The ragged tithe defaulter wafts his
foul breeches towards the dimly lit aperture, ‘Get a load of that you mutton-chewing tossers!’

The experience of sitting in the supermarket sized café/restaurant/small township situated in the car park induced nostalgia for an old fashioned tea room, with perhaps just a hint of the 18
^th
century salon. It should at least be renamed Dr. Johnson’s Tea Basin in recognition of his prodigious tea drinking feat when in residence. Knox who visited Dunvegan thirteen years later records the following anecdote, ‘Lady Macleod, who had repeatedly helped Dr. Johnson to sixteen dishes or upwards of tea, asked him if a small basin would not save him trouble, and be more agreeable. “I wonder, Madam,’’ answered he roughly, “why all the ladies ask me such impertinent questions. It is to save yourselves trouble, madam, and not me.’’ The lady was silent and went on with her task.’ Why did she stop at a basin, why not a bathtub of Liptons or a trough of Tetley’s finest?

It had been good to see Reynold’s portrait of Johnson and the thank-you note written as they waited ‘for a boat and a wind, Boswell grows impatient: but the kind treatment which I find wherever I go makes me leave with some heaviness of heart an island which I not likely to see again.’

Walter Scott painted a more compelling picture of a grumpy old man trapped in the castle by the weather, too frequently in the presence of air-headed young girls who simpered in his presence. Exasperated, Johnson retired early to bed and having forgotten his nightcap would turn his stinking wig inside out and pull it over his head. Perhaps four days had been too long a stay. Both Boswell and Johnson secretly feared that this inactivity would provoke the
malevolent
twins of Melancholy and Madness who were never more than a change of horses behind them.

Mercifully neither of the twins were waiting in the bus queue for the return journey to Portree. Our own siblings were Disappointment and Frustration. Deploying his formidable mastery of bus timetables David had been able to plan a route that would include Talisker. Yet for no apparent reason an emergency and greatly truncated timetable had been implemented overnight which severely restricted our options. We sought consolation in reminding ourselves that Boswell and Johnson also changed their plans at the whim of wind and tide.