It was February 1788 before Burns could settle with Creech; and, after discharging all expenses, he found a balance in his favour of about five hundred pounds. To Gilbert, who was in sore need of the money, he advanced one hundred and eighty pounds, as his contribution to the support of their mother. With what remained of the money he leased from Mr. Miller of Dalswinton the farm of Ellisland, on which he entered at Whitsunday 1788.
CHAPTER VII
ELLISLAND
When Burns turned his back on Edinburgh in February 1788, and set his face resolutely towards his native county and the work that awaited him, he left the city a happier and healthier man than he had been all the months of his sojourn in it. The times of aimless roving, and of still more demoralising hanging on in the hope of something being done for him, were at an end; he looked to the future with self-reliance. His vain hopes of preferment were already 'thrown behind and far away,' and he saw clearly that by the labour of his own hands he had to live, independent of the dispensations of patronage, and trusting no longer to the accidents of fortune. 'The thoughts of a home,' to quote Cunningham's words, 'of a settled purpose in life, gave him a silent gladness of heart such as he had never before known.'
Burns, though he had hoped and was disappointed, left the city not so much with bitterness as with contempt. If he had been received on this second visit with punctilious politeness, more ceremoniously than cordially, it was just as he had himself expected. Gossip, too, had been busy while he was absent, and his sayings and doings had been bruited abroad. His worst fault was that he was a shrewd observer of men, and drew, in a memorandum book he kept, pen-portraits of the people he met. 'Dr Blair is merely an astonishing proof of what industry and application can do. Natural parts like his are frequently to be met with; his vanity is proverbially known among his acquaintance.' The Lord Advocate he pictured in a verse:
'He clenched his pamphlets in his fist,
He quoted and he hinted,
Till in a declamation-mist,
His argument he tint it.
He gap'd for't, he grap'd for't,
He fand it was awa, man;
But what his common sense came short,
He eked it out wi' law, man.'
Had pen-portraits, such as these, been merely caricatures, they might have been forgiven; but, unfortunately, they were convincing likenesses, therefore libels. We doubt not, as Cunningham tells us, that the literati of Edinburgh were not displeased when such a man left them; they could never feel at their ease so long as he was in their midst. 'Nor were the titled part of the community without their share in this silent rejoicing; his presence was a reproach to them. The illustrious of his native land, from whom he had looked for patronage, had proved that they had the carcass of greatness, but wanted the soul; they subscribed for his poems, and looked on their generosity "as an alms could keep a god alive." He turned his back on Edinburgh, and from that time forward scarcely counted that man his friend who spoke of titled persons in his presence.'
It was with feelings of relief, also, that Burns left the super-scholarly litterateurs; 'white curd of asses' milk,' he called them; gentlemen who reminded him of some spinsters in his country who 'spin their thread so fine that it is neither fit for weft nor woof.' To such men, recognising only the culture of schools, a genius like Burns was a puzzle, easier dismissed than solved. Burns saw them, in all their tinsel of academic tradition, through and through.
Coming from Edinburgh to the quiet home-life of Mossgiel was like coming out of the vitiated atmosphere of a ballroom into the pure and bracing air of early morning. Away from the fever of city life, he only gradually comes back to sanity and health. The artificialities and affectations of polite society are not to be thrown off in a day's time. Hardly had he arrived at Mauchline before he penned a letter to Clarinda, that simply staggers the reader with the shameless and heartless way in which it speaks of Jean Armour. 'I am dissatisfied with her—I cannot endure her! I, while my heart smote me for the profanity, tried to compare her with my Clarinda. 'Twas setting the expiring glimmer of a farthing taper beside the cloudless glory of the meridian sun. Here was tasteless insipidity, vulgarity of soul, and mercenary fawning; there, polished good sense, heaven-born genius, and the most generous, the most delicate, the most tender passion. I have done with her, and she with me.'
Poor Jean! Think of her too confiding and trustful love written down mercenary fawning! But this was not Burns. The whole letter is false and vulgar. Perhaps he thought to please his Clarinda by the comparison; she had little womanly feeling if she felt flattered. Let us believe, for her own sake, that she was disgusted. His letter to Ainslie, ten days later, is something very different, though even yet he gives no hint of acknowledging Jean as his wife. 'Jean I found banished like a martyr—forlorn, destitute, and friendless—all for the good old cause. I have reconciled her to her fate; I have reconciled her to her mother; I have taken her a room; I have taken her to my arms; I have given her a guinea, and I have embraced her till she rejoiced with joy unspeakable and full of glory.'