The Dongle of Donald Trefusis - The Start of the Solution

Like many of you I am listening to Stephen Fry's "The Dongle of Donald Trefusis". After spending a while trawling the murky depths of Google I've decided to write this blog which will hopefully help others who, using the various clues Fry sprinkles through the episode, are trying to solve the damn thing.

Firstly, you should probably stop reading here if you prefer to figure this stuff out for yourself. If, however, you're happy to skip a few steps then you can simply continue moving your eyes across the remainder of the words that I type.

So, a very quick dissection of the salient points in episode 2, what's mentioned and why it might be important.

1. Trefusis mentions that Alexander the great died in a house called BALMUTO
2. Two paintings are mentioned as being connected somehow.
3. A place in Scotland apparently might play a part in this connection.

So, starting at painting one the clues given are that it is admired by Sir Walter Scott in 1829. Google to the rescue here, we do a search for Walter Scott and it turns out that somehow, over a hundred and fifty years ago, he kept an online journal which is accessible to this day. 1829 is a pretty long year though, there are about 12 months in it and each month has multiple diary entries so to save you having to read it all I can narrow the relevant passage down to an entry in February.

At twelve I went to Stuart of Dunearn's sale of pictures. This poor man fell, like myself, a victim to speculation. And though I had no knowledge of him personally, and disliked him as the cause of poor Sir Alexander Boswell's death, yet "had he been slaughterman to all my kin,"[250] I could but pity the miserable sight of his splendid establishment broken up, and his treasures of art exposed to public and unsparing sale. I wanted a picture of the Earl of Rothes for the Duke of Buccleuch, a fine Sir Joshua, but Balfour of Balbirnie fancied it also, and followed it to 160 guineas.

That bolding is mine, Walter Scott hadn't figured out how to emphasize anything until 1830 when he wrote an entire diary in bold. So now, what have we?

Who was Stuart of Dunearn? - He was a man who was very gravely linked to the second man mentioned - Alexander Boswell. Dunearn killed Boswell in a duel, apparently one of the last ones ever to happen in Scotland.

Who was Sir Joshua and did he paint the picture? Sir Joshua was short for Sir Joshua Reynolds who was indeed a painter and a friend of Samuel Johnson, more of which anon.

But who painted the picture and is there a clue in the Walter Scott diary? Short answer is that no, there doesn't appear to be any clue in the diary entry and if you, like me, hit Google with descriptive phrases outlining the look of the picture you'll probably get nowhere.

However, try the National Gallery site and you will eventually find this little beauty:


It's called The Avenue at Middelharnis and it was painted in 1689 by Meindert Hobbema.
Middelharnis is located in the western Netherlands which in turn would correspond to the country that Tefusis mentioned as having visited during the war, the one where he comments on how similar the scene was.

Excellent we're making progress. So Trefusis asks us - "To whom had the painting belonged?"

Well we know the answer was most likely Stuart of Dunearn, as Walter Scott mentioned him as being the unfortunate owner. Maybe there are other owners, maybe Dunearn is the wrong owner. We can come back to this one...

Next painting - This one looked a lot more familiar and doing a search for "fat white guy in a wig sitting by the window holding a quill" looked like it might work. It didn't though and I was forced into another deep search until I encountered the National Portrait Gallery, where I found this:



It's by Josh Reynolds, remember that name? It's from the Walter Scott entry earlier and is short for Joshua Reynolds. Now I'm starting to think I was looking in the wrong place to begin with when I first searched through Scott's diary. Why? Because the diary entry for February 1829 seems to refer to THIS painting and not the landscape. But then, is that the connection? That Walter Scott physically saw both paintings? Maybe, although I've drunk quite a bit of wine so it's probably not.

So anyway, Joshua Reynolds paints this picture of Dr Samuel Johnson and Trefusis asks us:

"How is the life of this man (Johnson) connected to the provenance of that landscape? "

So, does he mean literally the landscape as in Middelharnis or does he mean landscape in the painterly sense in which case the painting itself. Is Samuel Johnson connected to Middleharnis or is he connected to the Meindert Hobbema or in fact to some owner of the painting at some stage? And why is Blogger so shit? Why can I not stop typing in bold?

So where now? Well if you remember the earliest clue Trefusis gave us was the death of Alexander in a house called Balmuto, let's Google that and see what comes up...

Apparently Balmuto is a barony in Scotland which the family Boswell aquired during the Scottish war of independence. Boswell turns up a bunch of times in connection with Balmuto.

This is important, why?

Well because the name Boswell is also linked to Dr Samuel Johnson through the simple fact that he (Boswell) was his (Johnson's) biographer! This has got to be the link, my certainty is compounded by the fact that I'm too tired to look any further into it.

It all becomes even more obvious when we continue listening to the episode and Trefusis mentions that the connection between man and painting is an antiquary (someone who deals in or collects antiques) and who was a famous antiquary? Alexander Boswell!

So there we have it, Balmuto gave us Boswell which in turn echoed Alexander and the pieces begin to fall into place.

Next up..

"The heights above the torrent.." apparently these are located some miles west of Kircaldy. Back to the internet and Google hits a home run this time, a search for "heights above the torrent kirkcaldy" gives us this wikipedia page:

Auchtertool

Trefusis tells us that a tragic scene was acted out here. Perhaps the death of Alexander Boswell qualifies for a tragic scene? Again it fits perfectly and I think it pretty much ends how far we can get with this episode, unless someone wants to point out something I've missed...

One final point worth making is that the Boswell ancestral home is...Castle Balmuto

And so the circle of life is complete and all the children came back to the garden and fell asleep in the arms of the lion cubs.

Until the next episode...