[Illustration: MILESTONES ON THE TARBET ROAD.]
At Tarbet our travellers dined at the little inn on the bank of Loch Lomond. Here, a few years later, Saint-Fond and his party arrived very late on a rainy night in September. They were on their way from Glasgow to Inverary, and had meant to rest at Luss. Unfortunately for them it was the time of the autumn circuit. The inn looked like a fisherman’s hut. The landlady coming out made them a sign that they must not utter a sound. They were thrust into a stable, where she said:—“Le lord juge me fait l’honorable faveur dans sa tournée de loger chez moi; il est là; chacun doit respecter ce qu’il fait; il dort.” She added that she could take in neither them nor their horses. They remonstrated, “Point de bruit, ne troublez pas le sommeil du juge, respect à la loi; soyez heureux et partez.” They had no help for it, but drove on with their weary horses through the night and the heavy rain to Tarbet, where they arrived between three and four next morning. There they found all the beds occupied by jurymen, who were on their way to Inverary. The landlady did what she could to make them comfortable, and gave them some good tea in a set of China cups which had been given her by the Duchess of Argyle.[728]
At Stuckgown, close to Tarbet, Lord Jeffrey for many years passed a few weeks of every summer, in a quietness and solitude which have for ever fled the place. Writing from Tarbet on August 5, 1818, he says: “Here we are in a little inn on the banks of Loch Lomond, in the midst of the mists of the mountains, the lakes, heaths, rocks, and cascades which have been my passion since I was a boy, and to which, like a boy, I have run away the instant I could get my hands clear of law, and review, and Edinburgh. They have no post-horses in the Highlands, and we sent away those that brought us here, with orders to come back for us to morrow, and so we are left without a servant, entirely at the mercy of the natives.” He goes on to mention a steam-boat “which circumnavigates the whole lake every day in about ten hours. It was certainly very strange and striking to hear and see it hissing and roaring past the headlands of our little bay, foaming and spouting like an angry whale; but on the whole it rather vulgarises the scene too much, and I am glad that it is found not to answer, and is to be dropped next year.”[729] At Tarbet the tourist who is oppressed with the size of the hotel and the army of waiters, and who sees the pier as I saw it crowned with an automatic sweetmeat machine, may well wish that the steam-boat had never been found to answer. The scene is hopelessly vulgarised. It is fast sinking into the paradise of cockneys. I asked for that variety of bread which I remember to have seen served up there thirty-seven years ago. I was scornfully told that in those days the Scotch had not known how to bake, but that now they could make a large loaf as well as anyone. At Inverary I had in vain asked for oat-cakes at my hotel. If Johnson were to make his journey in these present times, and were confined to the big tourists’ hotels, he would certainly no longer say that an epicure, wherever he had supped, would wish to breakfast in Scotland.