Mrs. James had bought a book with quotations from a diary of Burns, and she read out to us while the car stopped at Sanquhar what he had written about one specimen day:
"Left Thornhill at five in the morning. Rode four miles to Enterkinfoot and made a call: thence three miles to Slunkerford with another call: thence six miles to Sanquhar, where there were twenty official visits to be made: thence two miles to Whitehall, with two more calls: and a return journey to Sanquhar, finishing the day's work at seven in the evening."
Poor poet. But he had always his glowing fancies to keep his heart warm. We felt almost guilty because we had no horrid calls to make, as he had; nothing to do but enjoy the scene made magical by his love of it: the valley with its near green hills and distant peaks of Galloway and Lowther; the river girdling wooded reaches with a belt of silver, or burrowing through deep rocky channels, purple as heather petrified. It was all as different from yesterday's Crockettland as if we had crossed the ocean from one to the other.
At Carronbridge we saw the woods of Drumlanrig on our right hand; and Sir S. told me about the Duke of Queensberry who spent all his money in building the splendid castle, slept in it one night, saw the bills for it, cursed himself and it, and went away with nothing left but a broken heart. "Deil pyk out the een of him who sees this," he wrote on the back of the biggest bill.
There's a Burns museum at lime-tree-shaded Thornhill, but I refused to go in and stare at an original cast of his skull. I do think a man, especially a great genius, ought to be allowed the privacy of his own skull!
Closeburn is the place where the Kirkpatricks, the Empress Eugénie's family, used to live before they went to Spain. At Auldgirth we went over a bridge built by Carlyle's father. At Mauchline Burns grew from a boy into a man and fell in love. At Ellisland, Burns lived for a long time with his handsome wife, Jean Armour. At Dalswinton the first steamboat made its first trip, and Burns was on it. All round us now was Scott's "Red-gauntlet" country; and the bridge crossing the Nith at Dumfries was built by Devorgilla. There was something to see and think of every minute; and in fifty-nine miles we had followed Burns's whole life-story on its slow way from Ayr to Dumfries. Only—we couldn't follow his thoughts to the stars!
We had stopped many times; still it wasn't yet five o'clock, and we had time to see all that's sacred to Burns at Dumfries, the "Fair Queen of the South," as Sir S. called it, quoting I don't know what.
First we went to the house in Bank Street where Burns came when he left Ellisland, and had seventy pounds a year to live on instead of fifty—a sad and grim little house, where in the wee closet that was his study we could hear the music of the Nith, but catch no sparkle of its water. He had hardly air enough to fan the fire of genius, yet it went on turning brightly because nothing could put it out. If it was a sad house to live in, it must have been even sadder to die in. He'd have liked his last look to be on sky and meadow, or he would not have said in his "Song of Death":
"Farewell, thou fair day, thou green earth and ye skies,
Now gay with the broad setting sun.
Farewell, loves and friendships, ye dear tender ties!
Our race of existence is run."
I found those words in the Poems bound in tartan which Basil had bought for me in a fascinating bookshop at Ayr and I read them in the room where the poet died. Afterward I was glad to see in St. Michael's churchyard a great many of the "loves and friendships" resting near him in his long sleep. Their presence consoled me for the mausoleum which nobody can admire nowadays, or think worthy of him. Almost, I would rather have had him lie under one of those strange, enormous tombstones like stone cupboards or tables which clutter the graveyard.