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Immediately after Adriana’s funeral in the early morning of 11 October, Bruce left his mother-in-law in Paris and headed for the coast in a fit of sorrow:

From thence, almost frantic, against the advice of everybody, I got on horseback, having ordered the servant to have post horses ready, and set out in the most tempestuous night I ever saw, for Boulogne, where I arrived next day without stopping. There the riding, without a great coat, in the night time, in the rain, want of food, which, for a long time, I had not tasted, want of rest, fatigue and excessive concern, threw me into a fever.

He eventually arrived back in London a few days later, sick and miserable. ‘Thus ended my unfortunate journey, and with it my present prospect of happiness in this life.’

He had just cause for lapsing into depression. Almost everyone to whom he was close – his mother, uncle, brother and wife – had died and left him with a permanent sense of impending loss. In spite of or perhaps because of this he became profoundly self-sufficient and was genuinely content when on his own. As more of his close friends and relatives died in his twenties, he developed a kingly arrogance that would win him few friends but went a long way towards keeping him alive when he was travelling in parts of the world where unbounded self-confidence was a prerequisite for survival. Bruce developed a bravado in the face of danger which would often tip the balance in his favour at hostile foreign courts. Mungo Park, who was sent to discover the course of the Niger, directly as a result of Bruce’s journeys in search of the Nile’s source, suffered many dangers but combated them with a contrasting subservience:

Though this trough was none of the largest, and three cows were already drinking in it, I resolved to come in for my share [wrote Park in his first book] and kneeling down, thrust my head between two of the cows, and drank with great pleasure, until the water was nearly exhausted, and the cows began to contend with each other for the last mouthful.

This may have been acceptable and successful behaviour (until his untimely death in 1806) in Mungo Park’s West Africa but in more sophisticated Abyssinia and Sudan, Park’s method would have labelled Bruce an expendable slave. Hard though Bruce’s youth was, rather than weaken him it helped him to develop an emotional carapace that little could crack.

In London, he at once dedicated himself to learning, leaving most of the running of the wine business to his brother-in-law. In the next two years he became fluent in Spanish and Portuguese, brushed up his Greek and Latin and learned how to draw. At Harrow, he had been taught basic drawing skills but he wanted to be able to paint the sights he was planning to visit. His interest in the wine business would give him the opportunity to do a Grand Tour like so many of his contemporaries but he wanted to make his journey worthwhile. His constant friend, the artist and engraver Robert Strange, found him a teacher, Maître Jacob Bonneau, whose duty it was not only to teach Bruce how to draw but also to instil in him what the editor of the second edition of Bruce’s Travels described as ‘a correct taste in painting’. The midnight ride after Adriana’s death had done nothing but worsen Bruce’s health and had caused a recurrence of his childhood bronchial problems. For two years he kept himself one part removed from society, coughing and spitting blood whilst studying astronomy, art and architecture and dealing as little as possible with the wine business. It was not until 1757 that he believed himself sufficiently recovered and well enough prepared for informed tourism.

In July of that year, Bruce set sail from Falmouth to embark on a tour of Spain and Portugal, justified by doing some business with the British port families in Oporto. It was an eventful journey. Britain was again fighting with France – indeed, they were set upon by two French ships during the voyage. Bruce was not one to panic. ‘My fellow travellers Messrs Stevenson [sic] and Pawson went down and put each of them on two shirts in case we were taken. I made no preparation,’ he told his commonplace book. He would maintain his courage in the face of danger for the rest of his life but he would change his mind about preparation. By the time he set off on his real travels he would be almost obsessive in his planning.

They landed at La Corunna on 15 July. Bruce and Matthew Stephenson immediately set off to inspect the harbour at Ferrol. Pawson was worried that they might be arrested for what today would be the equivalent of taking photographs of a strategic airport. Bruce, though, had been horrified by a Spanish captain they had met in the port who seemed to know far too much about the state of the British fleet. Imbued with a new talent for military engineering, he wanted to carry out some freelance intelligence work. They mapped the harbour, inspected the fortifications and took copious notes before setting off to do some more traditional sightseeing. Bruce and Stephenson were to spend much of the next few months together, touring through Spain and Portugal, where Bruce’s interest in martial architecture and Masonry would both have been satisfied, for the area they travelled through was rich in Templar history. The castles of the Ordem de Christo, Santiago and Calatrava, built by warrior monks whom Bruce believed to have been the forefathers of Freemasonry, were scattered about the countryside. There was much too of artistic interest, although Bruce did not hold orthodox views on everything he saw:

In the evening we went to see the famous church of Santiago di Compostella the outside is elegant enough … the inside has nothing in it worth notice … The paintings are executed with about as much judgement as they were plann’d. Considerably worse than the worst daubing I ever saw on a country signpost or with a burnt stick upon a wall.

His studies in art history at least qualified Bruce to criticize the church’s otherwise admired portico della glori by Mateo and its renowned carvings. It was not the only thing he disliked; the entire region offended him: ‘We now took our leaves of Galicia one of the most disagreeable countries ever I saw, upon all accounts the whole face of the country is hideous.’ So did Portuguese inns: ‘We were lodged in one of the worst inns in Portugal which is saying one of the worst inns in the world.’ And indeed the Portuguese themselves: ‘There are many particular customs in Portugal, all of which may be known by this rule, that whatever is done in the rest of the world in one way, is in Portugal done by the contrary.’

Though Bruce loathed Portugal and the Portuguese he was forced to spend some time there inspecting the vines and sampling the vintage for his wine business. His irritation was relieved only by the English people he met. In fact he was being overly harsh on the Portuguese who had just suffered a devastating earthquake that had left the country in ruins. The effects of that great earthquake can still be seen in Lisbon today where the few buildings to survive from before 1750 are those that were built on marshy ground which absorbed the tremors. Unfair or not, Bruce’s was to remain an abiding hatred. Thirty-five years later he would devote a substantial part of his book on the Nile to criticizing and discrediting the Portuguese and Spanish missionaries who had visited the country before him. Throughout his life, he bore grudges with a long-lasting and peculiar malevolence, long after the time when most people would have forgotten the original slight. In later life, he took three separate court cases, involving property disputes, through the entire judicial system to the House of Lords; his extended introduction to the Travels contained a sustained and virulent attack on critics who had offended him fifteen years previously, which he was well aware was likely to work against him. Weakness offended Bruce and he would be blind to the enfeebled Portugal’s merits for the rest of his life.

By November he had shaken the dust of Portugal from his feet and arrived in Madrid. On his way he had learnt how to deal with customs men, a lesson that was to serve him well. He wrote at the border: ‘Here you are asked for your passport by the governor and your baggage undergoes a strict search. If you have no letters to the administrator you must be particularly careful of having no snuff either French or Portuguese not even in your snuff box.’

His writing style was becoming increasingly eccentric. He sounds as though he was writing either a guide book or a letter to a friend. He was in fact merely taking notes in his commonplace book. ‘At the Caldas the Inn is very bad. I would advize all English travellers to go from Aleobaca to St Martinho which is very little out of their way.’

Bruce later formed a policy of never writing for publication unless it was on a subject not previously noted and never, as far as we can tell, showed any inclination to publish a book of his European travels. One wonders, therefore, for whom he was writing these handy travellers’ tips.

Spain, despite being full of Catholics, was fascinating territory for Bruce. He was intrigued by the Moorish and Templar castles of Andalusia and resolved to learn more about them. He started to learn Arabic in the markets of the region and contrived to gain entry to the renowned library of the Escorial (the sixteenth-century monastery built by Philip II for his warrior monks). He made friends with and was even offered a job at court by Don Ricardo Wall, an Irish courtier of the king, but was still not allowed into the Escorial. He thus continued his tour of Europe with his interest in the world beyond it aroused but unsatisfied.

Bruce had left England on an extended business trip but from Christmas 1757 he was travelling solely for pleasure and education. In Bordeaux he became a temporary member of French society – hunting, going to parties and attending the fashionable salons. It was not unheard of for Englishmen to travel in France at times of animosity between the two countries nor vice versa, but it was generally done with the approval of both governments. Bruce was on no government mission yet was allowed to travel regardless. Given that France was at war with Britain at the time and Bordeaux was one of France’s principal ports, this indicates considerable charm on Bruce’s part in addition to his better known curmudgeonliness. He soon, however, tired of polite society.

Bruce resolved to continue his journey through much of France, Strasbourg and up the Rhine to Frankfurt and thence to Brussels, then the capital of Holland. There he bought some books which would transform his life – the works of Job Ludolf, a German, the father of Ethiopian scholarship. They had been written in the sixteenth century when Ludolf – then resident in Rome – had met Gregorius, an Ethiopian monk, and had been fascinated by his stories of his homeland. Their collaboration formed the foundation of all foreign knowledge of Ethiopia and, to this day, Ludolf is still consulted by students of Ethiopic. The books contained a précis of known Ethiopian history, a grammar of the Ethiopian liturgical language, Geez, and a description of Ethiopia’s unique Christian religion. Whilst in Brussels, Bruce also bought many Arabic books from which he managed to teach himself to read the language that he later perfected on his travels.

While nourishing his intellectual interests, Bruce also attended to his more basic instincts. In the next few months he contrived to witness a battle and to fight a duel, challenging his as yet little tested courage. Happily both conflicts were resolved with no loss of Bruce blood. They did though give the budding explorer his first taste of danger. The history of the duel is rather murky, probably due to the absurdity of the episode. In the 1750s duelling was going out of fashion in Britain, and yet more so on the Continent. Two decades later he faced ridicule for challenging someone to a duel; at this time, however, it was deemed only slightly silly. F. B. Head, who had the story from Bruce’s daughter, described the incident in his otherwise laudatory Life of Bruce:

On the second day after his arrival [in Brussels] he happened to be in the company of a young man, a perfect stranger to him, who was rudely insulted. Bruce foolishly remonstrated with the aggressor, who sent him a challenge, which he accepted. They met; Bruce wounded his antagonist twice, and in consequence left Brussels immediately.

He took advantage of this forced departure (he feared a manslaughter charge) to see an army in action.

For at least another fifty years war was to remain a spectator sport which could be watched with relative impunity, even by citizens of the warring factions. In fact, it was a popular pastime for people who wanted a taste of adventure and danger without incurring too much risk to their person. Though of course fictional, it did not seem strange to Tolstoy’s readers when Pierre in War and Peace observed the Battle of Borodino (1812) from his grassy knoll:

Pierre wished to be there with that smoke, those shining bayonets, that movement, and those sounds. He turned to look at Kutuzov and his suite, to compare his impressions with those of others. They were all looking at the field of battle as he was, as it seemed to him, with the same feelings. All their faces were now shining with that latent warmth of feeling Pierre had noticed the day before.

And thus it was nothing out of the ordinary when Bruce and several shiny-faced fellow Englishmen, then serving with the Dutch army, embarked on a short trip to northern Germany where they watched the Germans and French fight each other at the Battle of Crevelt.

Soon after the excitement of the battle, Bruce received in Brussels the worst of news from home. His father had died in May, joining the long list of Bruce’s recently dead friends and relatives. The twenty-eight-year-old was left with a much reduced inheritance and myriad responsibilities. His many half siblings had drained the family coffers and, coupled with the complications of dividing the estate, Bruce found himself unable immediately to fulfil the ambitions to travel that his Grand Tour had inspired. It was not until December 1762 that he finally resolved the issue by settling with his half-brother, David, who had joined the army. He did well out of the arrangement for it soon emerged that his land was a great deal more valuable than had previously been believed. Kinnaird – ‘a house to be lived in not looked at’ (according to Nimmo in his A General History of Stirlinghsire. The house no longer exists) – was built upon a rich seam of coal that was to make Bruce’s life a financially comfortable one. He was extremely fortunate, however. But for an extraordinary coincidence the money would not have flowed until the next generation.

If, in 1759, coal had been found almost anywhere else in the world it would have languished for another fifty years and thus have been of no use to a hard-up young adventurer. The Bruce family miners (there was an almost serf-like class of people who mined coal in Scotland and were bought and sold with land) had been digging in a desultory way for years but no one had made a decent profit out of the excavations. The Industrial Revolution was not yet under way and there was none of the insatiable demand that was so to enrich such later mine owners as the Lowthers just over the border in Westmorland. In nearby Carron, however, there was a small company part-owned by one of the most brilliant practical scientists of the age. John Roebuck was the first partner of James Watt and had set up a firm at Carron with the businessman Samuel Garbett. The Carron Company was to pioneer a method of smelting iron ore that would transform industry. It involved coke made from coal rather than charcoal and Bruce was the closest supplier of coal. The Carron Company became major cannon makers in an era with an enormous demand for arms and Bruce made a fortune supplying them with fuel. Today, one can still see iron letter boxes made by the Carron Company on the streets of Britain.

It was a heaven-sent opportunity for the young Scot and, although he behaved extraordinarily badly in all his dealings with the company, suing them and disputing their every action on his return from his travels, this association more than any other allowed him to travel the world at his own expense and to have all the adventures that make up the most interesting part of his life. Without the discovery of this new use for coal and the accident of Bruce having it on his land, he would have been compelled to retire to Scotland and live the life of a Scottish laird.

By now almost thirty, Bruce was at last in a position to do something with his life. Since leaving Harrow fifteen years earlier he had amassed a great store of knowledge which he constantly supplemented. Botany had become an interest through his work as a vintner and friendship with the dilettante and patron of naturalists, Daines Barrington; he had studied law, military architecture, astronomy, the Bible, art, Arabic and masonic lore. A great talent for languages meant that he was not confined to English reading matter and this had aroused in him a thirst for news of the world outside Europe. The death of his father and the resulting inheritance would enable him to use all his learning to a more productive end. Thus it was that Bruce embarked on his thirtieth year, prepared for informed exploration but still lacking a mission. One was about to present itself.

CHAPTER 2

THE CALAMITOUS CONSUL

One man was to be the catalyst for Bruce’s new life – the politician, civil servant and former traveller, Robert Wood. Wood had the ear of all the great men of the age. Pitt, Egremont, Halifax, Bute, Grenville and the king himself, all listened to the man who had explored the ruins of Palmyra and Baalbek before going on to forge a brilliant career in the service of the crown. As eighteenth-century political alliances were made and dissolved, as administrations rose and fell, Wood, who purposely avoided great office, was one of the few men who consistently kept close to power. Ministers came and went but he managed to outstay them all until his death in 1771. His first significant job had been as Pitt’s secretary at the Irish office where he soon became known as ‘Mr Pitt’s Wood’, but from there he had moved on to greater things, always managing to keep out of the way when governments fell and always reappearing when the new ones arose. It is not certain how the two men met but, although there are no records of either claim, Wood said that he had been to Harrow and Oxford. Although they were not contemporaries, Harrow may well have been the link between him and Bruce. Wood recognized the spark of talent in the unfulfilled Scot and ensured that it was kindled and fed. It was through Wood’s efforts that Bruce’s abilities were put to more productive use than that of enlightened land owning.

The two were already friends when British relations with Spain declined drastically once more and it occurred to Bruce that the scribblings he had made in Ferrol a few years earlier might be of some use to the country. He formulated a plan for the capture of Ferrol; from this seemingly impregnable port where he had spent a few days with Matthew Stephenson in July 1757, an invasion could be launched. The plan offered two things Bruce sought: advancement and the opportunity to wage war upon a Catholic country. He wrote to Wood and ‘offered to fix an ensign upon the landing place in the first boat that went on shore’.

Wood took the plan from Bruce and arranged an interview with William Pitt. Secretary of State Pitt – who had yet to become either Prime Minister, Chatham, or elderly – was impressed by Bruce but was unable to accept the scheme since war with Spain, let alone invasion of one of its principal ports, was a catastrophe he was then trying to avoid. Already embroiled with Frederick the Great of Prussia against France, Russia and Austria, another front was the last thing he desired. He would, however, take note for the future, he said. France was by now the principal enemy and Spain was becoming of secondary importance.

It must have been a galling time for Bruce; his contemporaries were making names for themselves whilst he had only just managed to extract himself from the wine business in which he was no longer interested. His affairs in Scotland were still not settled to his satisfaction and until that was done he was unable to plan his future. He returned north invigorated by his flirtation with power but still having achieved little. He threw himself into re-organizing the estate, attempting to remove some tenant farmers and coal miners who were spoiling the view from Kinnaird. He had great plans for the house and park so at the same time ensured that the new collieries being planned to supply the Carron Company would not provide additional eyesores.

Months later, he heard from Wood again and was summoned to London. His Ferrol plan was being revived by Pitt but in a modified form that Bruce believed would doom the project to failure. It was intended that the attack on Ferrol should coincide with an invasion of France through Bordeaux. Swiftly, Bruce composed a memorandum in which he begged the government not to pursue such a course. It had some effect and the original plan was once more adopted and championed by Pitt. Ferrol would be invaded as Bruce recommended and an army landed. It was, however, almost immediately abandoned due to objections from the Portuguese ambassador who, as the representative of Britain’s oldest ally, could not be disregarded. Bruce could not understand why he was being consecutively ignored then fêted by the great men of the day and in high dudgeon he decided to return once more to Scotland and find himself a wife. His ego was not the most important casualty of the plan’s rejection: a furious Pitt went to Bath and resigned over the issue.

As Bruce made his preparations to leave, however, one of his conspicuously more successful friends – William Hamilton – contacted him and, acting as Lord Halifax’s secretary, asked Bruce to come and see the great statesman. Hamilton and Bruce had remained friends since Harrow but, while Bruce had battled with illness and spent rather too much time hunting and changing careers, Hamilton had only deviated once. He had trained as a lawyer and then changed course to become a politician. By this time, he even had a nickname – ‘Single Speech’ Hamilton – an epithet he had earned following his spectacular fifteen-hour maiden speech in the House of Commons in 1754. The speech was said to have been written by Samuel Johnson but, since Hamilton rarely spoke in public again, this charge was never proved. His reticence, however, earned for him a great reputation as a thinker, although perversely he also retained his standing as an orator. Hamilton was thus by this time – seven years after the speech – an important player in the corridors of power. (This would be the apex of his career. He would later be described by Lord Charlewood as ‘a man whose talents were equal to every undertaking; and yet from indolence, or from too fastidious vanity, or from what other cause I know not, he has done nothing’.) Lord Halifax sympathized with Bruce – who had wasted much time commuting between Scotland and London only to be left languishing in anterooms by busy ministers – and told the industrious laird that he had work for young men of initiative. Acting under Wood’s influence, Halifax offered Bruce the consulship at Algiers. It was just the kind of employment that he both wanted and needed.

The two men talked long about the possibilities that the posting could offer a man of Bruce’s enterprise. Halifax expected Bruce to perform his consular duties but he also hoped that he would use the post as a platform from which he could explore and record what he saw for the benefit of the new Britain. Robert Wood had discovered and recorded many of the art treasures of the ancient world but there were hundreds of other sites that required classification. Algiers would be the perfect place from which to mount expeditions and his role as consul would give Bruce the authority to travel in style and safety. The menial work, claimed Halifax, would be handled by a vice-consul, who could stamp all the forms and deal with the day-to-day running of the consulate. Then as now, embassies and consulates in Africa were rather more involved in promoting trade than extending the hand of interracial friendship. Someone more knowledgeable would engage in affairs of business whilst Bruce would appear at official functions and travel. Halifax’s plans, however, were foiled and Bruce was compelled to learn the art of diplomacy on the hoof. Algiers was an important, though unprestigious, posting where angering the ruling Dey could result in the enslavement of many British sailors and merchants who sailed in the Mediterranean under a protective treaty with the city state. The Dey was considered little more than a pirate by Britain yet he was in a position to be a serious threat to trade. Bruce would later be condemned for his diplomatic ineptitude although he had been employed for a completely different purpose.

Halifax’s principal wish, claimed Bruce, was ‘that I should be the first, in the reign just now beginning [George III had become King in 1760], to set an example of making large additions to the royal collection, and he pledged himself to be my loyal supporter and patron, and to make good to me, upon this additional merit, the promises which had been held forth to me by former ministers for other services.’ (Bruce claims to have been offered a baronetcy and a pension for his plan to attack Ferrol. There is no record of this but it would have been a perfectly natural offer.) He continued:

The discovery of the source of the Nile was also a subject of these conversations; but it was always mentioned to me with a kind of diffidence, as if to be expected only from a more experienced traveller. Whether this was but another way of exciting me to the attempt I shall not say; but my heart in that instant did me the justice to suggest, that this, too, was either to be atchieved [sic] by me, or to remain, as it had done for the last two thousand years, a defiance to all travellers, and an opprobrium to geography.

The deal struck, Bruce headed back to Scotland with a new spring in his step. He was at last a man with a purpose. But he must first settle his affairs. The estate had to be put into the hands of lawyers and factors, the bank must arrange for him to be able to draw money in Cairo and other points east and he must prepare himself for what was destined to be a long journey. On 18 February 1762, he received official notice from Robert Wood that the consulship was his, and moreover, Wood had managed to arrange matters such that Bruce would be able to spend time in Italy on the way. There he would finish his artistic education in order that he might be able better to appreciate the antiquities of the ancient world.

At the age of thirty-two Bruce’s professional life had at last come together. His love-life followed suit: he had fallen head over heels for a sixteen-year-old neighbour – Margaret Murray – who promised to wait for him whilst he was in foreign parts. (We know nothing of his relationships with women between the death of his first wife and his engagement to Margaret. He never wrote about this period, but judging by his later behaviour we can presume that he had mistresses and women friends.) Prepared and cocksure in both his private and public lives, he went to London where he was presented at court and given details of the task that awaited him.

The king had, in fact, initially objected to Bruce’s appointment. With the good sense which he would retain, for the most part, until much later in his reign, he had ventured to Halifax that it might be wiser to appoint a consul who knew something of the Barbary States. It was true that Bruce spoke Arabic, an unusual accomplishment, but since none of his predecessors had done so, and all consuls were provided with an interpreter, this was not seen as an advantage. Other than this, Bruce had no qualifications for the job. The appointment was, and was intended to be, a sinecure. Wood, though, had not only the ear of the prime minister, but also that of the king. Only two years later he would be made Groom Porter to the Royal Household, a role which had nothing to do with brushing or carrying and everything to do with influence. Already, in 1762, he was in a position to calm the king’s anxieties and ensure that his protégé was well-received. In April Bruce, by then ‘a man of Herculean physique and more than ordinary strength of mind’ (according to Nimmo in his History of Stirlingshire), left Britain for France. It would be twelve years before he returned.

In his baggage he had hundreds of books and instruments to which he would add on his travels. Ludolf’s History of Ethiopia would have been near the top of the pile with Herodotus, Cosmas Indicoplustes and his mentor Wood’s 1753 publication The Ruins of Palmyra. These would come to a sad end in Cairo:

To reduce the bulk as much as possible, after considering in my mind what were likeliest to be of service to me in the countries through which I was passing, and the several enquiries I was to make, I fell, with some remorse, upon garbling my library, tore out all the leaves which I had marked for my purpose, destroyed some editions of very rare books, rolling up the needful parts, and tying them by themselves. I thus reduced my library to a more compact form.