Robert Burns

by Gabriel Setoun

This is flippant in tone, but something more manly in sentiment; Burns was coming to his senses. On 13th June, twin girls were born to Jean, but they only lived a few days. On the same day their father wrote from Ellisland to Mrs. Dunlop a letter, in which we see the real Burns, true to the best feelings of his nature, and true to his sorely-tried and long-suffering wife. 'This is the second day, my honoured friend, that I have been on my farm. A solitary inmate of an old smoky spence, far from every object I love, or by whom I am beloved; nor any acquaintance older than yesterday, except Jenny Geddes, the old mare I ride on; while uncouth cares and novel plans hourly insult my awkward ignorance and bashful inexperience.... Your surmise, madam, is just; I am, indeed, a husband.... You are right that a bachelor state would have ensured me more friends; but, from a cause you will easily guess, conscious peace in the enjoyment of my own mind, and unmistrusting confidence in approaching my God, would seldom have been of the number. I found a once much-loved and still much-loved female, literally and truly cast out to the mercy of the naked elements; but I enabled her to purchase a shelter,—there is no sporting with a fellow-creature's happiness or misery.'

It was not till August that the marriage was ratified by the Church, when Robert Burns and Jean Armour were rebuked for their acknowledged irregularity, and admonished 'to adhere faithfully to one another, as man and wife, all the days of their life.'

This was the only fit and proper ending of Burns's acquaintance with Jean Armour. As an honourable man, he could not have done otherwise than he did. To have deserted her now, and married another, even admitting he was legally free to do so, which is doubtful, would have been the act of an abandoned wretch, and certainly have wrought ruin in the moral and spiritual life of the poet. In taking Jean as his wedded wife, he acted not only honourably, but wisely; and wisdom and prudence were not always distinguishing qualities of Robert Burns.

Some months had to elapse, however, before the wife could join her husband at Ellisland. The first thing he had to do when he entered on his lease was to rebuild the dwelling-house, he himself lodging in the meanwhile in the smoky spence which he mentions in his letter to Mrs. Dunlop. In the progress of the building he not only took a lively interest, but actually worked with his own hands as a labourer, and gloried in his strength: 'he beat all for a dour lift.' But it was some time before he could settle down to the necessarily monotonous work of farming. 'My late scenes of idleness and dissipation,' he confessed to Dunbar, 'have enervated my mind to a considerable degree.' He was restless and rebellious at times, and we are not surprised to find the sudden settling down from gaiety and travel to the home-life of a farmer marked by bursts of impatience, irritation, and discontent. The only steadying influence was the thought of his wife and children, and the responsibility of a husband and a father. He grew despondent occasionally, and would gladly have been at rest, but a wife and children bound him to struggle with the stream. His melancholy blinded him even to the good qualities of his neighbours. The only things he saw in perfection were stupidity and canting. 'Prose they only know in graces, prayers, etc., and the value of these they estimate, as they do their plaiding webs, by the ell. As for the Muses, they have as much an idea of a rhinoceros as of a poet.' He was, in fact, ungracious towards his neighbours, not that they were boorish or uninformed folk, but simply because, though living at Ellisland in body, his mind was in Ayrshire with his darling Jean, and he was looking to the future when he should have a home and a wife of his own. His eyes would ever wander to the west, and he sang, to cheer him in his loneliness, a song of love to his Bonnie Jean:

'Of a' the airts the wind can blaw,
I dearly lo'e the west;
For there the bonnie lassie lives,
The lassie I lo'e best.'

It was not till the beginning of December that he was in a position to bring his wife and children to Ellisland; and this event brought him into kindlier relations with his fellow-farmers. His neighbours gathered to bid his wife welcome; and drank to the roof-tree of the house of Burns. The poet, now that he had made his home amongst them, was regarded as one of themselves; while Burns, on his part, having at last got his wife and children beside him, was in a healthier frame of mind and more charitably disposed towards those who had come to give them a welcome. That he was now as one settled in life with something worthy to live for, we have ample proof in his letter written to Mrs. Dunlop on the first day of the New Year. It is discursive, yet philosophical and reflective, and its whole tone is that of a man who looks on the world round about him with a kindly charity, and looks to the future with faith and trust. Life passed very sweetly and peacefully with the poet and his family for a time here. The farm, it would appear, was none of the best,—Mr. Cunningham told him he had made a poet's not a farmer's choice,—but Burns was hopeful and worked hard. Yet the labour of the farm was not to be his life-work. Even while waiting impatiently the coming of his wife, he had been contributing to Johnson's Museum, and he fondly imagined that he was going to be farmer, poet, and exciseman all in one. Some have regretted his appointment to the Excise at this time, and attributed to his frequent absences from home his failure as a farmer. They may be right. But what was the poet to do? He knew by bitter experience how precarious the business of farming was, and thought that a certain salary, even though small, would always stand between his family and absolute want. 'I know not,' he wrote to Ainslie, 'how the word exciseman, or, still more opprobrious, gauger, will sound in your ears. I too have seen the day when my auditory nerves would have felt very delicately on this subject; but a wife and children have a wonderful power in blunting these kind of sensations. Fifty pounds a year for life and a pension for widows and orphans, you will allow, is no bad settlement for a poet.' And to Blacklock he wrote in verse:

'But what d'ye think, my trusty fier,
I'm turned a gauger—Peace be here!
Parnassian queans, I fear, I fear,
Ye'll now disdain me!
And then my fifty pounds a year
Will little gain me.

I hae a wife and twa wee laddies,
They maun hae brose and brats o' duddies;
Ye ken yoursel's my heart right proud is—
I needna vaunt,
But I'll sned besoms—thraw saugh woodies,
Before they want.

But to conclude my silly rhyme
(I'm scant o' verse, and scant o' time),
To make a happy fireside clime
To weans and wife,
That's the true pathos and sublime
Of human life.'

This was nobly said; and the poet spoke from the heart.