Orbost House has touched and inspired many people. Almost everyone who has had the chance to come across it, is enthused by its unique personality, its location and surroundings. So, it is no wonder that the house found its way into a number of publications, some of which we would like to present here.

'The Treasure of the Isle of Mist', W. W. Tarn, 1920

A very lovingly but also most accurate description can be found in W. W. Tarns book 'The Treasure of the Isle of Mist'. W. W. Tarn was a regular visitor to Orbost House from 1892 to his death in 1957 and his daughter Otta (see below), whom he wrote this book for to cheer her up during an illness, and her husband were to buy the house in 1946. Click on Figure 1 to access the full book text or read online here.

Figure 1: Cover of the 1937 edition of W. W: Tarn´s 'Treasure of the Isle of Mist'; click on the picture to access the full text.

'To most people there is some corner of the earth which means more than all others ; and there are two or three in the world whose holy place is the old house on the sea-loch which the Student's humbler neighbors called the "big house." An old square building of gray stone, that matches the gray sky and the gray sea, it has small claims to beauty; it was built in the days of blank windows, and every wind in the island meets and screams round the battered iron balustrade which leads up its steps to the door, and strives to tear down the tendrils of ivy that cling to the east front. To the south front, lashed by the full Atlantic gales, not even ivy can cling; only a few twisted elders and stunted planes grow there, and take the first force of the winter wind ; but the old lawn to the north bursts in summer into a cloud of white marguerites, whose ethereal beauty at sunset is like the ghosts of the dreams that haunt the place. For to some of us the old house is full of dreams, that cling to the dark passages and the uneven floors, and play in and out of the little windows that are still propped open with wood, as they were a hundred years ago; dreams of the bright lights and the bright voices that greeted us, coming in out of the blinding rain; dreams of the dance and the song, songs of old lost causes from which all bitterness has died away, leaving today nothing but beauty behind them; dreams of faded joys and forgotten sorrows, of loves that have passed elsewhiere and of memories that abide; dreams of faces that are seen no more. Some day it will change ownership; it will be sold to someone from whom understanding of these things has been withheld, and who will see only the darkness of the old corridors, the shabbiness of the old doorway; and he will build new doors, and porticoes and a wide verandah, and make it fair within and without, levelling the floors and trimming the lawns ; and he will have destroyed the old house and the fragrance of it, and it will never return. But to-day it still stands as it has stood for many a long year, clothed in the memories that never leave it and rich in all that the past has built into it ; and to some who may never dwell there again it is yet ever present as the home of their heart´s desire, a true house of faery.'


'Skye: The Island and its Legends', Otta Swire, 1952

Otta Swire, daughter of W. W. Tarn, and her husband Roger purchased Orbost House in 1945, She then proceeded to write her well-known books of Scottish Legends, amongst them the book with legends from Skye.

World-famous and multi-award winning author Neil Gaiman remarked on this book that it is the kind of book someone gives you, and you find yourself (after reading it) searching Ebay for more books by the author, and eventually receiving these old, long out-of-print books of stories, 'several of which [he] found really strange and rather inspirational'.


'The road very shortly passes Orbost House, silhouetted against the sky and sea, whith, from its windows, one of the most beautiful, if not the most beautiful view in Skye. Those who built it must have appreciated the fact, for, like Mr. Punch´s celebrated hotel at the North Pole, 'all the windows face south' - or almost all. Orbost, of course, has a ghost, and a rather curious one for the Hebrides, for it is the ghost of a coach and six, which is heard but never seen. It drives up to the front door not infrequently, with considerable noise and rattle and champing of bits, stamping of hoofs, etc., but not everyone hears it. I have been in a room with four others; three of us heard it loud and clear, two could hear nothing. One of those who heard it did not know of the ghost at the time. Of late, however, it has been mechanized, which is most upsetting. Now it is a powerful car or lorry which drives up: the brakes are applied, later the clutch is let in and gears and acceleration can be heard as it departs. Only one sound we never hear; the door of car or coach is never opened or shut. What the story behind the coach and six was I never heard. Either my mother never knew or did not wish to frighten me as a child. But the coming of the coach should not be hidden.

Orbost must have been one of the last places where peafowl were regarded as a normal part of the poultry yard and roast peacock, or better still peahen, was an ordinary dish.'

 

A Summer in Skye', Alexander Smith, 1865'

Alexander Smith, 1830 to 1867, was a Scottish poet. In his book 'A Summer in Skye' he recounts his travels during the Summer of 1864, much of which he spent on the Isle of Skye. The book is an evocative description of a time long gone by. Alexander Smith fell ill in 1865, the year this book was published, and died in 1867, at the age of 37. This gives a certain poignancy to the book, as with hindsight we know it describes what was to be his last visit, certainly in good health, to areas of Scotland he knew well, and loved deeply.  
Portrait of Alexander Smith

"That's Orbost, sir, the house under the hill," said Malcolm, pointing with his whip, and obviously tired of the prolonged silence, "and yonder on the left are the Cuchullins. The sea is down there, but you cannot see it from this. We'll be there in half an hour," and exactly in half an hour, with Macleod's Tables behind us, we passed the garden and the offices, and alighted on the daisied sward before the house.

After I had wandered about for an hour I made up my mind that, had I the choice, I should rather live at Orbost than at any other house in Skye. And yet, at Orbost, the house itself is the only thing that can reasonably be objected to. In the first place, it is one of those elegant expressionless houses in the Italian style with which one is familiar in the suburban districts of large cities, and as such it is quite out of keeping with the scenery and the spiritual atmosphere of the island. It is too modern, and villa like. It is as innocent of a legend as Pall Mall. It does not believe in ghost stories. It has a dandified and sceptical look; and as it has not taken to the island, the island has not taken to it. Around it trees have not grown well; they are mere stunted trunks, bare, hoary, wind-writhen. There is not a lichen or discoloration on its smoothly-chiselled walls; not a single chimney or gable has been shrouded with affectionate ivy. It looks like a house which has "cut" the locality, and which the locality has "cut" in return.

In the second place, the house is stupidly situated. It turns a cold shoulder on the grand broken coast; on the ten miles of sparkling sea on which the sun is showering millions of silver coins, ever a new shower as the last one disappears; on Rum, with a veil of haze on its highest peak; on the lyrical Cuchullins - for although of the rigidest granite, they always give one the idea of passion and tumult; on the wild headlands of Bracadale, fading one after another, dimmer and dimmer, into distance ; - on all this the house turns a cold shoulder, and on a meadow on which some dozen colts are feeding, and on a low strip of moory hill beyond, from which the cotters draw their peats, it stares intently with all its doors and windows. Right about face. Attention! That done, the most fastidious could object to nothing at Orbost, on the point of beauty at least The faces of the Skye people, continually set like flints against assaults of wind and rain, are all lined and puckered about the eyes; and in Skye houses you naturally wish to see something of the same weather-beaten look. Orbost, with its smooth front and unwinking windows, outrages the fitness of things.

 Of the interior no one can complain; for on entering you are at once surrounded by a proper antiquity and venerableness. The dining-room is large and somewhat insufficiently lighted, and on the walls hang two of Raeburn's half-lengths - the possession of which are in themselves vouchers of a family's respectability - and several portraits of ladies with obsolete waists and head-dresses, and military gentlemen in the uniform of last century. The furniture is dark and massy; the mahogany drawing depth and colour from age and usage; the carpet has been worn so bare that the pattern has become nearly obliterated. The room was not tidy, I was pleased to see. A small table placed near the window was covered with a litter of papers; in one corner were guns and fishing-rods, and a fishing-basket laid near them on the floor; and the round dusty mirror above the mantelpiece - which had the curious faculty of reducing your size, so that in its depth you saw yourself as it were at a considerable distance - had spills of paper stuck between its gilded frame and the wall. From these spills of paper I concluded that the house was the abode of a bachelor who occasionally smoked after dinner - which, indeed, was the case, only the master of the house was from home at the time of my visit.

In the drawing-room, across the lobby, hooped ladies of Queen Anne's time might have sat and drunk tea out of the tiniest china cups. The furniture was elegant, but it was the elegance of an ancient beau. The draperies were rich, but they had lost colour, like a spinster's cheek. In a corner stood a buffet with specimens of cracked china. Curious Indian ornaments, and a volume of Clarissa Harlowe, and another volume of the Poetical Works of Mr Alexander Pope - the binding faded, the paper dim - lay on the central table. Had the last reader left them there? They reminded me of the lute - it may be seen at this day in Pompeii - which the dancing girl flung down in an idle moment. In a dusky corner a piano stood open, but the ivory keys had grown yellow, and all richness of voice had been knocked out of them by the fingerings of dead girls. I touched them, and heard the metallic complaint of ill-usage, of old age, of utter loneliness and neglect. I thought of Ossian, and the flight of the dark-brown years. It was the first time they had spoken for long. The room, too, seemed to be pervaded by a scent of withered rose leaves, but whether this odour lived in the sense or the imagination, it would be useless to inquire.

Orbost lies pleasantly to the sun, and in the garden I could almost fancy Malvolio walking cross-gartered - so trim it was, so sunnily sedate, so formal, so ancient-looking. The shadow on the dial told the age of the day, clipped box-wood ran along every walk. Trees, crucified to the warm brick walls, stretched out long arms on which fruit was ripening. The bee had stuck his head so deeply into a rose that he could hardly get it out again, and so with the leaves - as a millionaire with bank-notes - he impatiently buzzed and fidgeted. And then you were not without sharp senses of contrast: out of the sunny warmth and floral odours you lifted your eyes, and there were Macleod's Tables rising in an atmosphere of fable; and up in the wind above you, turning now and again its head in alert outlook, skimmed a snow-white gull, weary - as tailors sometimes are with sitting - of dancing on the surges of the sea.

Orbost stands high above the sea, and if you wish thoroughly to enjoy yourself you must walk down the avenue to the stone seat placed on the road which winds along the brow of the broken cliffs, and which, by many a curve and bend, reaches the water level at about a quarter of a mile's distance, where there is a boat-house, and boats lying keel uppermost or sideways, and a stretch of yellow sand on which the tide is flowing, creamy line after creamy line.


'Rambles in Skye', Malcolm Ferguson, 1885

First published in the 'Ayr Observer', Ferguson´s 'Rambles in Skye' that took place in 1882, could be compared to the report of an army officer but nonetheless he had something to say about Orbost.

'On leaving the Manse we went along a footpath for a mile or more through the glebe; thence for another mile or so along the private road leading to Orbost House, which stands on a splendid site, finely sheltered from the northern blasts by a series of wooded craggy knolls, with a very fine seaward view. The estate of Orbost, which consists of a pretty large arable farm -some very good land- and extensive range of hill grazing, is in the hands and farmed by the proprietor, John Robertson, Esq. of Greeshirnish - or rather managed by him for the proprietor, his son, who is still a minor. Here I observed by far the largest dairy of airshire cows I had seen in Skye. A cart road is continued for about another mile beyond the mansion house and large farm steading to the head of Orbost Bay, where I observed several fragments -steering gear, &c.- of a large vessel which had wrecked in the locality some time previous.'

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