Lauded throughout the English-speaking world as a heroine (see 1746: Flora MacDonald helps Bonnie Prince Charlie escape) Flora MacDonald found life as the wife of a not very competent farmer to be a struggle, particularly with seven children to bring up.
In 1773, Flora and her husband were visited by the great English writer Dr Johnson, who was on his tour of the Hebrides (for a Gallic, as opposed to Gaelic, view of this trip see: 1764: Boswell gets Voltaire out of bed). Being a staunch Tory with Jacobite sympathies, Johnson was predisposed to adore Flora, and indeed it was rumoured that in 1745-1746 Johnson had taken part in the Jacobite rising in some way (it is not likely that he did). Boswell and Johnson arrived at the Kingsburgh house of Allan and Flora, where Flora welcomed them: Boswell admired Allan (“a gallant highlander”) and was captivated by the 51-year-old Flora, as most men were: “here appeared the lady of the house, the celebrated Miss Flora MacDonald. She is a little woman, of a genteel appearance, and uncommonly mild and well bred. To see Dr Samuel Johnson, the great champion of the English Tories, salute Miss Flora MacDonald in the isle of Sky [sic], was a striking sight; for though somewhat congenial in their notions, it was very improbable they should meet here.” With great charm, she told Johnson (then in his mid-sixties) that she had heard that Boswell was travelling to Skye, and had “a young English buck with him”.
Johnson was accorded the honour of sleeping in the bed Prince Charlie had slept in the night he stayed at Kingsburgh in 1746. Boswell noted: “To see Dr Samuel Johnson lying in that bed, in the isle of Sky, in the house of Miss Flora MacDonald, struck me with such a group of ideas as it is not easy for words to describe, as they passed through the mind. He smiled and said, ‘I have had no ambitious thoughts in it’.”
What Happened Next
In 1774, Flora and Allan emigrated to North Carolina, and when the American Revolution broke out they raised Highlanders to fight for George III. Both Allan and Flora, like most Loyalists, suffered much hardship after the rebels won, and they returned to Skye, where Flora died in 1790, aged 68. Dr Johnson said of her that her name “will be mentioned in history, and if courage and fidelity be virtues, mentioned with honour.’