Pity the poor man or woman who was not quick enough to avoid the terrible downpour. At night every street stank to high heavens and was awash with disgusting effluence. Lower flats or homes were completely engulfed and overpowered with the stench. Even this did not put Susanna off Edinburgh, however. She counted her blessings that she was some way above the torrent and if she went out in the evening, she made sure she had the protection of her grandfather’s carriage. She didn’t believe that anything could spoil her love for and delight in the many pleasures and excitements of the city. They far outweighed any negative aspects.
Even after she married a wealthy gentleman with an estate in the country, she told herself, she would insist on spending much of the year in the capital. The winter probably. The country was always so dull and dreary in winter. A town house as well as a country estate. That was the answer. She took great pleasure in imagining such places. They became so real to her in her imagination, she became totally convinced that her dream would come true. It was only a matter of time. And not too long a time either. She wondered if Neil Guthrie would be at the Dancing Assembly. He had mentioned that he would be away for a few days. Still, there might be a chance that he’d be back in time and of course, everybody of quality attended these Assemblies.
Eventually they set out in the carriage down the long, narrow street with its crush of crowds and carts and dangerous jostle of sedan chairs. Susanna could hardly wait to find out if Neil Guthrie would be at the Assembly. She was distracted for a few minutes by one sedan chair which came ridiculously close to the carriage. Its occupant, a perky madame with a loop of amber beads swinging from her wig, wearing a low-cut gown and wielding a flirtatious fan, peered past Susanna into the coach to admire Alexander unashamedly. Her brother was admittedly looking very handsome in a high collared coat and breeches of russet velvet and a waistcoat of white silk with gold embroidery in a delicate floral design.
Susanna gripped the edge of her seat as the coach bumped along and the horses’ hooves clattered and slithered alarmingly. But at last they had arrived as near as the carriage could take them to their destination. They had then to use a sedan chair, because where the assembly was being held was through an unlit wynd. The sedans were carried by trotting Highlanders holding a torch aloft to light their way.
They all made a vivid splash of colour as they crowded into the lobby together. Grandmother rustled in striped silk in shades of pink and grey. Susanna blossomed in an open gown of apple green, which showed off her embroidered petticoat and flattered her bright green eyes. Grandfather, instead of his usual black, was resplendent in scarlet coat and white breeches.
They swept from the lobby directly into the dancing room. Above stairs, Grandmother said, was a tea room where later, if they wished, they could find refreshment. The room had a railed space in the centre for dancing and spectators sat round the outside, while at one end, the Lady Directress was enthroned on a high chair.
Grandmother and Grandfather danced a stately minuet under guttering sconces but they declined to join in any of the wild Scottish dances.
‘Och, Ah’ve had my time of aw that. For years, naebody could keep up wi’ me,’ Grandmother said, energetically flapping her fan for air because the minuet had, as she said, ‘nearly gone for her’. ‘The spirit’s still willin’,’ she insisted, ‘but the damned flesh has gone sae weak an’ Ah’ve that many aches an’ pains, it takes me aw ma time tae walk these days. Geordie’s the same.’ She cocked her head towards her husband. ‘He says he’s just sittin’ here tae keep me company but Ah’m no’ daft. He’s even mair ancient than me!’
Susanna flung herself joyously into the spirit of all the Scottish dances until she too was breathless. Nevertheless she was sorry to be dragged away home by the family before the evening was finished.
‘Oh please, please, Grandmother, let me stay,’ she pleaded.
‘Stop being so foolish,’ Alexander told her. ‘You’re getting over-excited.’
‘Aye, lassie,’ her grandmother said. ‘It’s time we were in our beds.’ She dug an elbow into her husband who had dozed off despite all the noise around him. ‘Come on, Geordie. Ye’re no’ on the bench the noo.’
Susanna was sorry that Neil Guthrie had not been at the Assembly. So many of the young men there were somewhat foppish and weak-looking in comparison. There was something strange, almost mysterious about Guthrie, she felt, and of course he was quite a few years older than her – which was what a husband should be if he was to prove a protector and supporter. All the same, she enjoyed the evening and hoped she would be allowed to stay in Edinburgh long enough to enjoy many more.
There were also times she had enjoyed being in the drawing rooms of the Edinburgh literati and proudly heard Alexander reading his poems and being applauded. It had even been suggested that he had his poetry published. Now Alexander was making enquiries about putting this venture into practice. It was all so thrilling she could have wept with happiness. Soon, however, she was weeping for a different cause. No sooner had Neil Guthrie begun visiting her, paying court to her, and had been on the point, she was sure, of declaring his love for her, than a letter had been delivered requesting her return to Tarbolton. Her mother was more poorly than usual and needed her home. Her father was also laid low with an attack of gout and needed Alexander’s help.
A message was sent to Neil Guthrie explaining why they had to cut short their stay in Edinburgh. In reply he appeared in person and assured her that he was sorry to part with her. He requested permission to start a correspondence with her until such times as he also returned to the Tarbolton area.
‘I have been concerned about my uncle’s health for some months and I have been hoping to arrange a visit to see him in the not too distant future.’
Susanna felt cheered again. At least she still had something to look forward to. There could be no doubt now, despite what Alexander said, about the seriousness of Neil Guthrie’s interest in her.
‘Neil,’ she savoured the name. Neil Guthrie. She felt like swooning with pleasurable anticipation as she imagined what it could be like to be his wife.
8
Tarbolton seemed as quiet and still as the grave after the noisy crush and bustle of Edinburgh. Alexander was glad to meet up with Robert Burns again and tell him all about his visit. The ploughman was completely fascinated, as Alexander knew he would be, especially when he spoke about the people.
He listened intently, his dark eyes glowing as if reflecting the picture and bringing it to life in his mind’s eye as it was related to him. Alexander told him of the procession twice every day in which his grandfather walked to and from the court, fully tailed. Horns blew and torches were held aloft if it was dark.
Descriptions of the markets especially fascinated Robert. There was the fish market in Fish Market Close, a steep narrow stinking ravine where fish was sold unwashed because there wasn’t a drop of water in the place, from old rickety, scaly wooden tables exposed to all the dust and filth and any abomination around.
Or the vegetables sold by old gin-drinking women who congregated with stools and tables round the Tron churchyard. Every table had its tallow candle and paper lanterns at night.
Robert was not nearly so fired up, if at all, by descriptions of the architecture of the old town, and the New Town that had started to be built over the other side of the Nor’ Loch. The city had once been enclosed within the Flodden Wall on three sides and the loch on the other. As a result, most homes were built on the narrow rocky ridge on which stood the High Street. As the population increased, the only way to build was upwards.
‘Next time you must come with me, Robert,’ Alexander said. ‘The place will interest you, I’m sure.’
Robert burst out wistfully, ‘Oh Alexander, man, if only I could. If only I was not so burdened with worry and work at Mossgiel. It sorely depresses me.’
Alexander thought he perceived in Burns’ cheeks the symptoms of an energy which had been pushed too far. He offered to make his friend a p
otion that might help to lift his spirits, but Robert was quick to refuse.
‘I still have something your father gave me. But, my dear friend, I do appreciate your concern.’
Alexander felt a rush of genuine affection, as well as concern for his friend. He wasn’t an emotional man as a rule, but there was something so genuinely loving about Robert Burns that it was difficult not to feel warmth in return. It was in the way he gazed at you so sincerely and intensely and gripped your hand in both of his when he shook it. Alexander admired his courage in taking on the church and making people laugh at its faults and hypocrisies. Yet Robert was a religious man who knew his Bible and believed in that of good or God in everyone. It was disturbing yet touching the way the flame, the joy of life, kept blazing up in his ardent soul.
Nevertheless, Robert – or Rob or Rab of Mossgiel as he was called now – was a complex human being who had many weaknesses, especially with the female sex. He was a strongly sexed man, and there was also a coarseness about him that could appreciate bawdry. This, it had to be admitted, was a common weakness among his fellow countrymen. Robert often collected bawdy songs and verses to send to a friend of his for the man’s amusement. Indeed, he had also composed a few bawdy verses himself for the private entertainment of some of his other men friends. As usual, he’d horrified the elders by writing a poem called ‘Address to the Deil’ that seemed, to them, to even show a hint of sympathy for the devil.
And of course his poem ‘Address to an Illegitimate Child’, or ‘Welcome to a Bastard Wean’, as Robert preferred to call it, shocked many more. He made just as many, of course, laugh at his poems and his mock epitaphs. A brother Mason called Manson inspired,
Here lies ’mang ither useless matters,
A Manson wi’ his endless clatters.
And of James Humphry, the senior warden who was always arguing with Robert,
Below thir stanes lies Jamie’s banes,
O Death it’s my opinion
Thou ne’er took such a bleth’rin’ bitch
Into thy dark dominion.
Yet he could work himself up to a passionate state of mind that enabled him to write tender love poems. Poetry was something Burns and Alexander had in common. Robert Burns was the only man in Tarbolton to whom Alexander could talk about poetry and know he’d be understood. He could read his work to Robert without feeling nervous or embarrassed. His poetry was different from Robert’s (better too, he thought). His work was more disciplined than Robert’s and classical. But they encouraged one another. Robert Burns was like the brother Alexander had never had. One of the reasons Alexander did not believe Robert’s poetry was as good as his own was that, although Robert spoke proper English, he tended to write in Scots, or in a mixture of both.
‘Writing in Scots is a grave fault, Robert,’ Alexander kept telling him. ‘Surely you can do better than that.’
Alexander was also genuinely concerned to the point of anger about the desperately hard conditions Robert had to contend with on the farm at Mossgiel.
‘If only,’ he told Robert, ‘you could make your fortune and be free of the land. It’s disgusting having to suffer such hard work. If only I could make my fortune, I would gladly free you from it.’
Robert put a comforting hand on his shoulder. ‘Och man, there’s nothing disgusting about honest toil. If a man works hard and has an honest heart, he can be proud of himself and feel as good as any man on earth.’
‘Have you had any amorous adventures while I’ve been away?’ Alexander said, changing the subject.
‘Of course,’ Robert winked. ‘I was at a dance not long ago and was taken notice of by a pretty girl called Jean. I confess, however, it was my dog who really was the means of her attention. The wee rascal would insist on keeping at my heels the whole time, even when I was dancing, and it annoyed her and got in her way.’ He laughed. ‘Then, would you believe it, a few days later she was laying her washing out on the green and the dog ran over it. She tried to aim a blow at it but I rescued it and said, “You can’t think much of me if you’d try to harm my dog.” “No, I don’t think much of you,” she said. But she’s since proved differently, my friend. I’ve been seeing much of my bonnie Jean.’
His face and eyes became so lit up with pleasure and happiness that Alexander groaned.
‘You are yet again enslaved by a woman, Robert. And now you will tell me that she’s all but angelic and the most beautiful creature God ever created.’
‘I am the luckiest of men, Alexander. Oh, wait until you see Jean Armour. You will understand, I promise you.’
He understood all right. He wasn’t a doctor and a student of human nature for nothing. Jean Armour would be a buxom country girl like all the others, with a healthy complexion and the morals of an alley cat. Houghmagandy, as they called it locally, or fornication was the most common pastime for miles around. One of the few pleasures in a hard life, Alexander conceded, and so it was understandable. Not to the church, of course.
What made it a real problem for Robert, as far as he could see, was that his friend always fell in love. Others, he knew, enjoyed sex with a woman and that was all. Robert was always smitten by romantic love. This always inspired him to write a poem. Then, when things went wrong as they usually did, he’d sink into the most dreadful depression. But this mood produced poems as well. Then he’d swing from tremendous self-confidence and sexual boastfulness, expressed in lines like,
O, leave novels, ye Mauchline belles
Ye’re safer at your spinning wheels!
Such witching books are baited hooks
For rakish rooks like Rab Mossgiel.
At other times, he’d be a nervous wreck with moods swinging wildly from foolish, reckless anger to equally reckless, despairing action.
The only good thing that resulted in all this was his poetry. He seemed to have written a great deal of late. ‘A Cotter’s Saturday Night’, for instance, painted a moving picture of the lives of simple working folk. Gilbert had said of the fifth, sixth and eighteenth stanzas, ‘They thrilled every ecstasy through my soul.’
Once again Alexander marvelled at the energy of the man, who also managed to write long letters to friends and included verses. Alexander had been both impressed and amused by the letters he’d received while in Edinburgh. Robert’s letters were in pure English but not quite in the easy fashion in which Robert spoke English. Often speaking English while all around him in the countryside spoke broad Scots was unusual enough. In his letters, however, he seemed to have developed an ornate style influenced to some extent no doubt by his one-time tutor, John Murdoch. Murdoch had been, by all accounts, a terrible pedant who referred to the cottage or auld clay biggin’ in which he’d visited the Burns family as an ‘argillaceous fabric’ or ‘mud edifice’ or ‘tabernacle of clay’.
As it turned out, as far as Robert’s new love was concerned, the problem lay with ‘bonnie’ Jean’s family. He’d been told by a patient that Jean’s father hated the sight of Robert and would rather have had the devil come to the house to court his daughter than Robert.
Alexander thought this spiteful and unfair. All right, Robert was known for having had many loves, but he had never hurt anyone. He’d had a child by some woman and, despite the fact that he’d never made any promises to her, he’d taken over all the responsibility of the child, including financial. It was now being brought up with him at the farm as one of the Burns family. Most young men that he knew would have left the girl with the worry, expense and responsibility and even denied being the father. Not Robert. He rejoiced in fatherhood and dearly loved the child, his ‘dear bought Bess’ as he called her.
But Mr Armour was a strictly religious man and a great friend of the minister and the elders who, it had to be said, had no love for Robert Burns either.
Alexander asked Robert what he planned to do and he said he wanted to make Jean his wife but couldn’t take on a wife at the moment. The farm at Mossgiel was not doing well and it looked as if they couldn’t
even be able to afford to keep it on. His life was in a turmoil and he didn’t know what to do. ‘But I’ll have to do something,’ he said.
As he said the words, Alexander observed a cloud of dark melancholy dull Robert’s eyes. But still his friend made an effort to be cheerful. ‘And tell me, Alexander, what of your love life? Has any beautiful Edinburgh lady stolen your heart?’
Alexander sighed. ‘I had been hoping to meet someone suitable but I’m afraid my stay in the city wasn’t long enough.’
‘Suitable?’ Robert raised an eyebrow.
‘Of course. I do not intend to fall in love like you, my friend, unless the lady is of good fortune.’
‘Oh, Alexander!’ It was Robert’s turn to sigh. ‘There’s no greater pleasure in the world than loving a woman, even if she doesn’t have a halfpenny to her name. You don’t realise what you’re missing.’
He could see very well what he was missing – if Robert’s experience was anything to go by. A great deal of suspense and heartache. He shied away from that. Robert, it seemed, enjoyed the challenge and the suspense of the chase, and in his letters he often wrote of courtships as if they were a military operation. It was Alexander’s opinion that this revealed a view, that even Robert was unaware of, of a woman being a target or a quarry to be stormed and captured. In many ways, Alexander found his friend a most interesting subject for study.
That was about the only subject of interest he could find in Tarbolton. His thoughts soon turned to Edinburgh again. It was his only chance of any future. Interest had been shown in his poems and a plan was afoot to publish a slim volume. As soon as he received a letter confirming this, he announced the good news to his father and mother and sister.
‘It means, of course, that I must go back to Edinburgh and this time I believe it will be best if I think in terms of a more permanent move.’
They had all been delighted and excited at the prospect of a published author in the family. Susanna especially was practically dancing with delight and clapping her hands with excitement, her auburn curls flying about.
A Darkening of the Heart Page 6
