While employed upon the Union Canal, he accidentally met the woman M‘Dougal at the village of Middiston in Stirlingshire, where she was residing with her father after the death of her husband. The story told of his falling in with her on the streets of Glasgow is incorrect. An intimacy was speedily formed, and about a year from the commencement of their correspondence, they agreed to live as man and wife, and have done so ever since.
A similarity of disposition seems to have produced a corresponding affection, and the sympathy that attracted them to each other appears still to have outlived all their quarrels and the ill usage he subjected her to. They have expressed great attachment to each other since his conviction. It is understood that an account of his connection with M‘Dougal, while his wife was still alive, having been made to the priest of his religion, he was first admonished, and recommended to return to her, and upon his refusal to do so, was excommunicated. This may perhaps in some measure explain his not attending chapel while his religious fits were upon him.
He, after the completion of the canal, came, along with M‘Dougal, to reside in Edinburgh, and engaged in the petty trafficking in various sorts of merchandise practised by many of his countrymen, travelling about the country in prosecution of his trade. He dealt in different sorts of pedlary wares, old clothes, &c. and collected skins, human hair, &c. in the country.
During the work on the canal, he had been noted among the other labourers as of a particularly handy active turn, and skilful in cobbling, in a rude way, his own and the shoes of his acquaintances. After his subsequent settlement in Edinburgh, he turned his talent to some account; and though he never had learned the craft and mystery of shoemaking, contrived to gain from fifteen to twenty shillings a week by his new acquirement. His practice was to purchase quantities of old shoes, and, after cobbling them in the best fashion he could, to send M‘Dougal to hawk them about among the colliers and poor people of her native district.
At this time he lodged in the house of an Irishman named Michael, or more commonly Mikey Culzean, in the West Port, who kept a lodging-house for beggars and vagrants, similar to the one which Hare’s crime has made so familiar to the public,—in the language of the classes who frequent them,—a beggars’ Hotel.
Many will probably recollect of a fire happening in one of these abodes of wretchedness about six years ago, when incredible numbers emerged from the miserable hovels. In this conflagration Mikey’s dwelling suffered, and Burke and M‘Dougal escaped from the flames nearly naked, and with the loss of all the little property they possessed. Some charitable individuals contributed to procure clothes and necessaries for the sufferers, and they received some relief by the hands of the Rev. Dr. Dickson, one of the ministers of the parish. By this disaster he lost his library; and though it is somewhat surprising to hear at all of a collection of books under such circumstances, it is not the less so when the names of some of the works are mentioned. Among them were, Ambrose’s Looking unto Jesus, Boston’s Human Nature in its Fourfold State, the Pilgrim’s Progress, and Booth’s Reign of Grace. His landlord afterwards took a room in Brown’s Close, Grassmarket, where Burke also again went as a lodger.
It was at this time that he attended the religious meeting we have previously mentioned, which was held in the next apartment to the one in which he lodged. During his attendance he was always perfectly decorous in his deportment, and when engaged in worship had an air of great seriousness and devotion. The conductor and frequenters of it had formerly been subjected to much obloquy, and even violence, from the Catholics who abounded in that neighbourhood; and one evening, after Burke’s attendance on it, his landlord, Mikey Culzean, attempted to create annoyance, by breaking through some sheets of paper which were used to cover up an old window, and crying out in a voice of derision, “that the performance was just going to begin.” Burke expressed himself in indignant terms on the occasion, saying, that it was shameful and unworthy of a man to behave in such a manner.
From the general aversion to the meeting so unequivocally manifested by the Catholics, and Burke being universally known to belong to that persuasion, his frequent attendance on it, and reverential behaviour, excited the more notice. It was usual for him to remain conversing with the individual in whose house they assembled after the others had dispersed; and on these occasions the subjects that had occupied their attention during the service naturally were often talked over. His conversation was generally such as to show that he had been attentive to what was passing, and comprehended the topics brought under his notice. Since his conviction he has adverted frequently to the subject, and deplored that the meetings had been discontinued, as even this imperfect form of public worship had a tendency to keep him from flagrant sin. He has kept in his recollection, and mentioned after condemnation, an expression which was used in one of the exhortations—“that there was no standing still in sin.” His career of guilt, gradually advancing in the commission of crime, until the violation of every human and Divine law led him to most flagrant enormities, has awakened him, by bitter experience, to give his unwilling testimony to the justice of the remark.
During his residence in this neighbourhood, he gave no indications of any thing that would lead people to anticipate his future enormities. He was industrious and serviceable, inoffensive and playful in his manner, and was never observed to drink to excess. He was very fond of music and singing, in which he excelled, and during his melancholy moods was most frequently found chanting some favourite plaintive air. All these qualifications, and his obliging manner, joined to a particularly jocular quizzical character, with an interminable fund of low humour and drollery, rendered him a general favourite. His custom was to take a walk almost daily along the streets with an acquaintance, and freely to interfere in any thing which occurred to indulge his humour. Some of these occurrences are still recollected by his companions in his perambulations, a specimen of which, as every thing concerning him now seems to possess interest, may be given. In passing along the Cowgate on one occasion, his musical ear was annoyed by the continued inharmonious cry of an itinerant vender of salt. Upon her approaching him still nearer, the annoyance reached its climax by her drawling out in discordant sounds her reiteration of “wha’ll buy saut;” though flinching under it, he turned and replied with his usual politeness, “Upon my word I do not know, but if you will ask that woman standing gaping at the door opposite, she will perhaps be able to inform you.”
On another occasion, when attacked by a girl of the town in the High Street, instead of replying directly to her solicitations, to the astonishment of the unfortunate girl, he commenced a torrent of abuse, on account of the awkward style in which she had painted her face, saying that he might have passed over the painting, had it been properly done; but that it was shameful to come to the street, bedaubed in such an unskilful manner. Such was the humour with which he continued his remonstrance, that the rude laugh of the crowd was effectually directed against the amazed girl, and she was glad, by a hasty retreat, to save herself from farther ridicule.