Robert Burns

by Gabriel Setoun

In a letter to Dr. Currie, Mr. Ramsay speaks thus of Burns on this visit: 'I have been in the company of many men of genius, some of them poets, but never witnessed such flashes of intellectual brightness, the impulse of the moment, sparks of celestial fire! I never was more delighted, therefore, than with his company for two days' tête-à-tête.' Of his residence with Sir William Murray he has left two poetical souvenirs, one On Scaring some Water Fowl in Loch Turit, and the other, a love song, Blithe, Blithe, and Merry was She, in honour of Miss Euphemia Murray, the flower of Strathearn.

Returning to Harvieston, he went back with Dr. Adair to Edinburgh, by Kinross and Queensferry. At Dunfermline he visited the ruined abbey, where, kneeling, he kissed the stone above Bruce's grave.

It was on this tour, too, that he visited at Clackmannan an old Scottish lady, who claimed to be a lineal descendant of the family of Robert the Bruce. She conferred knighthood on the poet with the great double-handed sword of that monarch, and is said to have delighted him with the toast she gave after dinner, 'Hooi Uncos,' which means literally, 'Away Strangers,' and politically much more.

The year 1787 was now drawing to a close, and Burns was still waiting for a settlement with Creech. He could not understand why he was kept hanging on from month to month. This was a way of doing business quite new to him, and after being put off again and again he at last began to suspect that there was something wrong. He doubted Creech's solvency; doubted even his honesty. More than ever was he eager to be settled in life, and he fretted under commercial delays he could not understand. On the first day of his return to Edinburgh he had written to Mr. Miller of Dalswinton, telling him of his ambitions, and making an offer to rent one of his farms. We know that he visited Dalswinton once or twice, but returned to Edinburgh. His only comfort at this time was the work he had begun in collecting Scottish songs for Johnson's Museum; touching up old ones and writing new ones to old airs. This with Burns was altogether a labour of love. The idea of writing a song with a view to money-making was abhorrent to him. 'He entered into the views of Johnson,' writes Chambers, 'with an industry and earnestness which despised all money considerations, and which money could not have purchased'; while Allan Cunningham marvels at the number of songs Burns was able to write at a time when a sort of civil war was going on between him and Creech. Another reason for staying through the winter in Edinburgh Burns may have had in the hope that through the influence of his aristocratic friends some office of profit, and not unworthy his genius, might have been found for him. Places of profit and honour were at the disposal of many who might have helped him had they so wished. But Burns was not now the favourite he had been when he first came to Edinburgh. The ploughman-poet was no longer a novelty; and, moreover, Burns had the pride of his class, and clung to his early friends. It is not possible for a man to be the boon-companion of peasants and the associate of peers. Had he dissociated himself altogether from his past life, the doors of the nobility might have been still held open to him; and no doubt the cushioned ease of a sinecure's office would have been had for the asking. But in that case he would have lost his manhood, and we should have lost a poet. Burns would not have turned his back on his fellows for the most lucrative office in the kingdom; that, he would have considered as selling his soul to the devil. Yet, on the other hand, what could any of these men do for a poet who was 'owre blate to seek, owre proud to snool'? Burns waited on in the expectation that those who had the power would take it upon themselves to do something for him. Perhaps he credited them with a sense and a generosity they could not lay claim to; though had one of them taken the initiative in this matter, he would have honoured himself in honouring Burns, and endeared his name to the hearts of his countrymen for all time. But such offices are created and kept open for political sycophants, who can importune with years of prostituted service. They are for those who advocate the opinions of others; certainly not for the man who dares to speak fearlessly his own mind, and to assert the privileges and prerogatives of his manhood. The children's bread is not to be thrown to the dogs. Burns asked for nothing, and got nothing. The Excise commission which he applied for, and graduated for, was granted. The work was laborious, the remuneration small, and gauger was a name of contempt.

But whilst waiting on in the hope of something 'turning up,' he was still working busily for Johnson's Museum, and still trying to bring Creech to make a settlement. At last, however, out of all patience with his publisher, and recognising the futility of his hopes of preferment, he had resolved early in December to leave Edinburgh, when he was compelled to stay against his will. A double accident befell him; he was introduced to a Mrs. Maclehose, and three days afterwards, through the carelessness of a drunken coachman, he was thrown from a carriage, and had his knee severely bruised. The latter was an accident that kept him confined to his room for a time, and from which he quickly recovered; but the meeting with Mrs. Maclehose was a serious matter, and for both, most unfortunate in its results.

It was while he was 'on the rack of his present agony' that the Sylvander-Clarinda correspondence was begun and continued. That much may be said in excuse for Burns. A man, especially one with the passion and sensitiveness of a poet, cannot be expected to write in all sanity when he is racked by the pain of an injured limb. Certainly the poet does not show up in a pleasant light in this absurd interchange of gasping epistles; nor does Mrs. Maclehose. 'I like the idea of Arcadian names in a commerce of this kind,' he unguardedly admits. The most obvious comment that occurs to the mind of the reader is that they ought never to have been written. It is a pity they were written; more than a pity they were ever published. It seems a terrible thing that, merely to gratify the morbid curiosity of the world, the very love-letters of a man of genius should be made public. Is there nothing sacred in the lives of our great men? 'Did I imagine,' Burns remarked to Mrs. Basil Montagu in Dumfries, 'that one half of the letters which I have written would be published when I die, I would this moment recall them and burn them without redemption.'

After all, what was gained by publishing this correspondence? It adds literally nothing to our knowledge of the poet. He could have, and has, given more of himself in a verse than he gives in the whole series of letters signed Sylvander. Occasionally he is natural in them, but rarely. 'I shall certainly be ashamed of scrawling whole sheets of incoherence.' We trust he was. The letters are false in sentiment, stilted in diction, artificial in morality. We have a picture of the poet all through trying to batter himself into a passion he does not feel, into love of an accomplished and intellectual woman; while in his heart's core is registered the image of Jean Armour, the mother of his children. He shows his paces before Clarinda and tears passion to tatters in inflated prose; he poses as a stylist, a moralist, a religious enthusiast, a poet, a man of the world, and now and again accidentally he assumes the face and figure of Robert Burns. We read and wonder if this be really the same man who wrote in his journal, 'The whining cant of love, except in real passion and by a masterly hand, is to me as insufferable as the preaching cant of old father Smeaton, Whig minister at Kilmaurs. Darts, flames, cupids, love graces and all that farrago are just ... a senseless rabble.'

Clarinda comes out of the correspondence better than Sylvander. Her letters are more natural and vastly more clever. She grieves to hear of his accident, and sympathises with him in his suffering; were she his sister she would call and see him. He is too romantic in his style of address, and must remember she is a married woman. Would he wait like Jacob seven years for a wife? And perhaps be disappointed! She is not unhappy: religion has been her balm for every woe. She had read his autobiography as Desdemona listened to the narration of Othello, but she was pained because of his hatred of Calvinism; he must study it seriously. She could well believe him when he said that no woman could love as ardently as himself. The only woman for him would be one qualified for the companion, the friend, and the mistress. The last might gain Sylvander, but the others alone could keep him. She admires him for his continued fondness for Jean, who perhaps does not possess his tenderest, faithfulest friendship. How could that bonnie lassie refuse him after such proofs of love? But he must not rave; he must limit himself to friendship. The evening of their third meeting was one of the most exquisite she had ever experienced. Only he must now know she has faults. She means well, but is liable to become the victim of her sensibility. She too now prefers the religion of the bosom. She cannot deny his power over her: would he pay another evening visit on Saturday?

When the poet is leaving Edinburgh, Clarinda is heartbroken. 'Oh, let the scenes of nature remind you of Clarinda! In winter, remember the dark shades of her fate; in summer, the warmth of her friendship; in autumn, her glowing wishes to bestow plenty on all; and let spring animate you with hopes that your friend may yet surmount the wintry blasts of life, and revive to taste a spring-time of happiness. At all events, Sylvander, the storms of life will quickly pass, and one unbounded spring encircle all. Love, there, is not a crime. I charge you to meet me there, O God! I must lay down my pen.'

Poor Clarinda! Well for her peace of mind that the poet was leaving her; well for Burns, also, that he was leaving Clarinda and Edinburgh. Only one thing remained for both to do, and it had been wise, to burn their letters. Would that Clarinda had been as much alive to her own good name, and the poet's fair fame, as Peggy Chalmers, who did not preserve her letters from Burns!