Genius Fan

Day 4 (Tuesday 22 July)

Kudos to Montrose! You helpfully added an information plaque just inside a passageway indicating a James Boswell and Samuel Johnson hotspot. Here we have the location of the accommodation used by James Boswell and Samuel Johnson on their tour of Scotland in 1773. In his book The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D, Boswell’s entry for Friday 20th August says they arrived in Montrose to a “sorry inn” at about 11pm. There’s some cute anecdotes about a waiter using his fingers to place a sugarlump into Johnson’s lemonade (yep, a repeat of the same thing in Edinburgh days earlier) and some bickering between the two travellers about appearing feeble and relying on others. The address they stayed at was 107 High Street, Montrose and the sign reads:

Boswell House (107 High Street)
“Originally owned by Mr James Gordon, Episcopal Minster of St Peter’s Church, and sometimes used as a meeting place. In latter years it coped with the overflow of customers from the Ship Inn. Its most famous guests were Dr Samuel Johnson and Mr James Boswell in 1773.”

The pair conducted a little tour of the town the next day (visiting the town hall, the English chapel and an apothecary), Saturday, before heading off to Aberdeen. Boswell sent his servant Joseph Ritter ahead of them announcing their plans to visit Lord Monboddo. I re-read these entries from my hardback Everymans Library version of Boswell and Johnson’s accounts (it’s a grerat design and really hardwearing, which one needs when travelling with one’s wife and two dogs!) before stepping out of the car and trotting across the road to the passageway (Montrosers will call it a close, Dundonians would call it a pend…it’s an alleyway) which sits on the High Street, between an opticians (Duncan and Todd) on the left and on the right, the Tanka Vape Centre and Mini Market. Lift the latch on the gate to let yourself in and then walk down the close, all 10m of it. They you come out to this cute little courtyard. There are three doors all with signs saying Boswell House. I took some pics and then realised this is someone’s personal space: I was taking pics of people’s front door, of their windows and letter boxes. That’s when I stopped and retreated back through the close, walking the same stretch of darkness that Boswell and Johnson would have walked. I put the lastch lock back on and headed to the car.

Notes
107 High Street, Historic Environment Scotland