Home Life of Great Authors

by Hattie Tyng Griswold

"What's done we partly may compute,
But know not what's resisted."

And surely, there must have been much that was worthy of honor and esteem, even of reverence, in the heart of the man, to have brought the whole world to his feet, in spite of the faults and follies to which we allude in passing, but upon which we have no disposition to dwell. As a friendly hand long ago wrote, after visiting his poor, mean home and his unhonored burial place:—

"We listened readily enough to this paltry gossip, but found that it robbed the poet's memory of some of the reverence that was its due. Indeed, this talk over his grave had very much the same effect as the home-scene of his life, which we had been visiting just previously. Beholding his poor, mean dwelling and its surroundings, and picturing his outward life and earthly manifestations from these, one does not so much wonder that the people of that day should have failed to recognize all that was admirable and immortal in a disreputable, drunken, shabbily-clothed, and shabbily-housed man, consorting with associates of damaged character, and as his only ostensible occupation gauging the whiskey which he too often tasted. Siding with Burns, as we needs must, in his plea against the world, let us try to do the world a little justice too. It is far easier to know and honor a poet when his fame has taken shape in the spotlessness of marble, than when the actual man comes staggering before you, besmeared with the sordid stains of his daily life. For my part, I chiefly wonder that his recognition dawned as brightly as it did while he was still living. There must have been something very grand in his immediate presence, some strangely impressive characteristic in his natural behavior, to have caused him to seem like a demigod so soon."

To do even faintest justice to the memory of the poet, we must go to Ayr, and look upon the humble cottage which was his birthplace. It consisted of but two small rooms paved with flag-stones, and with but one window of four small panes, while the thatched roof formed the only ceiling. The whole place is inconceivably small for the dwelling of a family, for there is not even an attic-room, or any other spot where children could have been hidden away. In such a hut as this it is hard to conceive of a family being reared in purity and delicacy, even though the parents should have done their best by their children, and been, like the father of Burns, prudent and well-disposed.

This housing of the poor is of immense moral significance in all cases; and it is growing to be a recognized fact that no help which can be rendered them is of much avail, when they are left in these little, one or two room dwellings.

There were seven children in the Burns household, and during the childhood of Robert the family were very poor; and he and his brother were expected to do the work of men, at the age of thirteen. He had some schooling before that age, and must have improved his time, for he could read and spell well, and had some knowledge of English grammar.

Near by the cottage flows the beautiful Bonny Doon, through deep wooded banks, and across it is an ancient ivy-covered bridge with a high arch, making a very picturesque object in the landscape, which is one of great loveliness. Kirk Alloway is not far away,—the smallest church that ever filled so large a place in the imagination of the world. The one-mullioned window in the eastern gable might have been seen by Tam O'Shanter blazing with devilish light as he approached it along the road from Ayr, and there is a small square one on the side next the road; there is also an odd kind of belfry, almost the smallest ever made, with a little bell in it,—and this is all. But no grand and storied cathedral pile in all Europe is better known, and to no shrine of famous minster do more pilgrims journey than to this wee kirk immortalized by the pen of Burns.

The father of Burns has been thus described by one who knew him well:—

"He was a tender and affectionate father; he took pleasure in leading his children in the path of virtue, not in driving them as some parents do to the performance of duties to which they are themselves averse. He took care to find fault but seldom; and therefore when he did rebuke, he was listened to with a kind of reverential awe. A look of disapprobation was felt; a reproof was severely so; and a stripe even on the skirt of the coat, gave heartfelt pain."