Traveller’s Tales

It is easy to see why they chose to visit Scotland as travelling in the continent at the start of the 19th century had become fraught with dangers as Britain had recently resumed hostilities with the French. Despite her brothers' support for the French nation's 'struggle for freedom' as her brother saw it, English travellers abroad would have been running quite a risk. Dorothy expresses the nation's nervousness during her travels when she writes of Scottish troops massing in Dumbarton, a possible starting point for an anticipated French invasion. Scotland itself though was not without its dangers at the time, suffering from incredible poverty. Poorly maintained tracks replaced the well kept roads of England and maps were sketchy and often inaccurate, forcing the three to often have to resort to local guides. The coaching inns and other hostelries in Scotland were vastly inferior to the ones they would have been used to in England and France with little in the way of comfort or hygiene of facilities for the traveller. All this though Dorothy took in her stride and she took to the Scottish experience with a gusto that would have shamed most gentlemen of the period, savouring simple local food such as "a boiled sheep's head with the hair singed off and the barley broth in which it had been boiled".

After leaving Carlisle and crossing the border the companions entered south west Scotland via Gretna Green which she regarded as a "dreary place" and the "stone houses dirty and miserable". At Annan they "peeped into a clay 'biggin'" which she described using a Scots word as "canny", and added that she thought that it would have been as "warm as a swallow's nest in winter". She described the town of Annan as reminding her of France or Germany as the houses were "large and gloomy, the size of them outrunning the comforts." One thing which reminded her of Germany which she enjoyed was that "the shopkeepers express their calling by some device or painting; bread-bakers have biscuits, loaves, cakes painted on their window-shutters; blacksmiths horses' shoes, iron tools, etc. etc., and so on through all trades." Indeed it struck them later on in their journey that women in the south west of Scotland reminded them of French women, "partly from the extremely white caps of the elder women, and still more perhaps from a certain gaiety and partly-coloured appearance from their dress in general".

In Dumfries the three friends were shown the house where Burns (all three were great admirers of his work) had died, "It has a mean appearance, and is in a bye situation, whitewashed; dirty about the doors, as almost all Scotch houses are; flowering plants in the windows". Afterwards they visited St. Michael's Kirkyard where he had been buried. Dorothy described how a Scottish lowland churchyard looked at the time, "The church is like a huge house; indeed, so are all the churches, with a steeple, not a tower or spire, - a sort of thing more like a glass-house chimney than a Church of England steeple; grave-stones in abundance, few verses, yet there were some - no texts. Over the graves of married women the maiden name instead of that of the husband, 'spouse' instead of wife, and the place of abode preceded by 'in' instead of 'of'.

When shown the grave of Burns next to that of his second son, Francis Wallace, they were startled to find that there was no stone to mark it but were assured that a hundred guineas had been collected to spend on a monument. Shortly after their visit Mrs. Burns erected a simple stone to mark his grave, then in 1813 the money raised was used to build a mausoleum where his bones were moved two years later. Dorothy and her brother were disappointed not to have been able to meet Mrs. Burns who was visiting the seaside on the day of their visit to Dumfries but were shown round the poet's house by a servant girl.

They were glad to leave Dumfries which Dorothy found "no agreeable place to them who do not love the bustle of a town that seems to be rising up to wealth". They depressed themselves discussing what Burns's daily life would have been like living on such "unpoetic ground" which Dorothy described as "heart-depressing", and how their father's fame would affect Burns' children in the coming years which some years later prompted William Wordsworth to pen his 'Address to the Sons of the Ill-fated Poet' :

Ye now are panting up life's hill,
'Tis twilight time of good and ill,
And more than common strength and skill
Must ye display,
If ye would give the better will
Its lawful sway.

Strong-bodied if ye be to bear
Intemperance with less harm, beware,
but if your Father's wit ye share,
Then, then indeed,
Ye Sons of Burns, for watchful care
There will be need.

For honest men delight will take
To shew you favour for his sake,
Will flatter you, and Fool and Rake
Your steps pursue,
And of your Father's name will make
A snare for you.

Let no mean hope your souls enslave,
Be independent, generous, brave;
Your Father such example gave,
And such revere,
But be admonished by his grave,
And think and fear.
After leaving Dumfries their next stop was in the Leadhills and the mining settlement of Wanlockhead, highest village in Scotland. Owned by the Duke of Queensferry, they were amazed to find the children of the village - the sons and daughters of poor mining folk - attending school and learning Latin, Virgil and Homer. The area also enjoyed the reputation of having one of the finest libraries in the country and went on to produce some of the keenest professional minds in Scotland, no mean feat for such a bleak place - "Nothing grew on the ground, or the hills above or below, but heather yet around the village - which consisted of a great number of huts, all alike, and all thatched, with a few larger slated houses among them, and a single modern-built one of considerable size - were a hundred patches of cultivate ground, potatoes, oats, hay, and grass".

They marvelled at the sight of the massive Watt steam engine incarcerated in its engine house, its massive lever pumping water from the mine: "There would have been something in this object very striking in any place, as it was impossible not to invest the machine with some faculty of intellect; it seemed to have made the first step from brute matter to life and purpose". Coleridge described it as being like "a giant with one idea".

After waking the next morning they enjoyed a breakfast of toasted oat bannocks and honey before continuing their journey northwards, leaving the south west and on into Lanarkshire and the Highlands beyond.