A Darkening of the Heart

by Margaret Thomson-Davis

  His euphoria fed his muse and, crouched in front of the fire at home struggling to see by the small flicker of light from the fire and the crusie lamp hanging from the lintel, with the squeaking of the rats in the rafters above, he penned a long poem. It was called ‘The Holy Tulzie’ (or brawl), satirising a quarrel that had been going on between two ministers of the Auld Lichts – two Reverend Calvinists who had lost all command of temper and abused each other with terrible rages and fiery virulence.

  The poem met with an immediate roar of applause from every friend and neighbour who read it. It was passed around the taverns to the immense entertainment of everyone, as far as Kilmarnock and beyond. He produced another long satire poem, even more savage than ‘The Holy Tulzie’. It was called ‘Holy Willie’s Prayer’. It alarmed the kirk session so much they held several meetings to see if they could find any way of punishing the ‘profane rhymer’.

  Soon Mr Armour was on the warpath again and not only because of the satirical poetry. Jean had confessed that she was pregnant and shown her father the paper they’d signed, making her the wife of Rab of Mossgiel. Mr Armour had vowed to get it annulled. Robert began to worry again. Could the man legally do such a thing? Soon he had worked himself into a state of complete wretchedness.

  During the day, while he was straining over the plough, he turned up a mouse in her nest and was deeply moved by the predicament of the wee thing. Before he’d returned home after his hard day’s work, he had composed a poem in his head to the mouse. The last two verses expressed a sympathetic comparison with his own predicament.

  But mousie, thou art no thy lane

  In proving foresight may be vain;

  The best laid schemes o’ mice and men,

  Gang aft agley,

  An’ lea’e us nought but grief and pain,

  For promised joy!

  Still, thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me!

  The present only toucheth thee;

  But och, I backward cast my e’e,

  On prospects drear!

  An’ forward, tho’ I canna see,

  I guess an’ fear!

  Then he discovered that Jean had agreed to their names being cut out of the paper by the lawyer, Robert Aiken. Aiken was a friend – although now Robert was not even sure of that – and had done the mutilation of the paper which proved that Robert Burns and Jean Armour were no longer joined in matrimony. He had sent Aiken one of the poems he was hoping to gather for eventual publication. Now he wrote in an anguished, confused and almost hysterical state to another friend, Gavin Hamilton, to whom he’d also sent various poems.

  ‘Old Mr Armour prevailed with Mr Aiken to mutilate that unlucky paper, yesterday – would you believe it? – tho’ I had not a hope, nor even a wish, to make her mine after her conduct; yet when he told me, the names were all cut out of the paper, my heart died within me, and he cut my very veins with the news. I am indeed a fool, but a knave is an infinitely worse character than any body, I hope, will dare to give the unfortunate Robert Burns.’

  He felt feverish, delirious with unhappiness and despair. ‘Never a man loved,’ he wrote, ‘or rather admired a woman than I did her and to confess a truth between you and me, I do still love her to distraction.’ He felt nine-tenths mad.

  He found desperate expression and release in writing – even just in letter writing. In one sad, rash, bawdy letter full of sexual braggadocios, he used military metaphors about how he had successfully besieged and captured Jean but had been outflanked by James Armour. He wildly expressed intimate feelings in letters to total strangers. ‘Sad and grievous of late, Sir, has been my tribulation, and many and piercing, my sorrows … I have lost, Sir, that dearest earthly Treasure, that last best gift which complicated Adam’s happiness in the garden of bliss … I have lost a wife …

  ‘But this is not all – Already the holy beagles, the houghmagandy pack, begin to sniff the scent; and I expect every moment to see them cast off, and hear them after me in full cry; but as I am an old fox, I shall give them dodging and doubling for it; and by and by, I intend to earth among the mountains of Jamaica.’

  By April the ‘holy beagles’ had made an entry into the kirk session book: ‘April 1786. The Session being informed that Jean Armour, an unmarried woman, is said to be with child, and that she has gone off from the place of late, to reside elsewhere, the Session think it their duty to enquire … But appoint James Laurie and William Fisher to speak to the parents. April 9th 1786. James Laurie reports that he spoke to Mary Smith, mother to Jean Armour, who told him that she did not suspect her daughter to be with child, that she was gone to Paisley to see her friends and would return soon.’

  It was the talk of the parish and no doubt was left in everybody’s mind that James Armour’s fury was intensifying by the day. Two things were most urgently concerning him: the scandal affecting his good name and his pathological hatred of the young blackguard who had violated his daughter.

  Jean had gone. Robert, in his highly emotional state, thought of her going as her total desertion and rejection of him. It hit him hard. He desperately turned to his poetry and his earlier thoughts of going to Jamaica. He needed money for a ticket, however, and thought he might earn enough from the publication of his poems to cover all of his expenses for the journey. He was coming under more and more enthusiastic pressure from friends to gather names of subscribers. Over and over again, they assured him that there would be plenty of people ready and willing to subscribe. Everyone was confident of the outcome, except his good friend Alexander Wallace. Robert could understand Alexander’s attitude. Poor man, his book of poems had sunk without trace. The book had not even merited one single review. The distress caused by this terrible blow still showed on Alexander’s pale, sad face.

  ‘I don’t want you to suffer the disappointment and humiliation that I have suffered, Robert,’ he said. ‘Indeed you may come off even more badly. So many of your poems are in Scots and the vernacular is not fashionable.’

  Robert appreciated his friend’s concern but could not take his advice too seriously. He knew that his poetry – vernacular or not – was better than Alexander’s. Not that he’d dream of saying that to the man. Poor Alexander had suffered enough and had now made up his mind to go and try his luck at doctoring in Edinburgh.

  ‘Although I will not give up my poetry writing. I will never do that,’ he assured Robert. ‘I believe that with perseverance and hard work, I will succeed. That is always the best recipe for success. But alas, my poetry has not yet made me the fortune I’d hoped for and so, until it does, it’s more doctoring for me, Robert.’

  ‘You are a good doctor,’ Robert assured him. ‘You will do well in the city and be much happier there.’

  ‘Yes,’ Alexander agreed. ‘You are right, Robert. I don’t take easily to country living. I doubt if I’d have stayed this long had it not been for your intelligent and entertaining company.’

  Robert had been genuinely, indeed desperately, sorry to see him go. In the midst of all his other losses, to lose a friend was the last thing he wanted. Near to tears, he gave Alexander a bear hug of a goodbye.

  ‘Calm down, Robert. You will come to Edinburgh to visit me one day. I’ll write to you as soon as I find lodgings.’

  Robert grabbed Alexander’s hand and, not daring to say anything, he silently pumped the hand up and down. Then he released his friend and allowed him to climb into the waiting carriage.

  Not long afterwards, Jean returned to Mauchline and was ‘called, compeared not’ which meant that Mr Auld, the minister, was planning to cry out for her to come forward from the body of the kirk to be severely rebuked for her shameful conduct.

  Instead, however, Jean wrote a letter of confession and apology. Robert himself had been chastised before the kirk session where he acknowledged his guilt. Three fortnightly acts of public penance were to be his punishment. Having been told of Jean’s return and her letter, Robert decided to call and see her before his first ordeal. Afterwards he wrote t
o a friend who’d endured a similar experience of kirk vengeance.

  ‘I have waited on Armour since her return home; not from any view of reconciliation, but merely to ask for her health, and – to you I will confess it, from a foolish hankering fondness – very ill-plac’d indeed. The Mother forbade me the house, nor did Jean show that penitence that might have been expected. Now, the Priest, I am informed, will give me a certificate as a single man, if I comply with the rules of the church …’

  Robert flung himself into the business, despite Alexander’s warnings, of collecting subscribers for the publication of a book of his poems. Also he made enquiries about a passage to Jamaica.

  Then something happened to save him from sinking into total despair. He met a most beautiful and enchanting Highland girl called Margaret Campbell. Alexander tried to discourage his sudden, wild devotion to this serving wench, or light-skirts as Alexander called her. He insisted that, as usual, Robert had blinded himself to the true character of the object of his love. Margaret Campbell, he told him, was loose in the extreme and even had been kept for some time by a brother of Lord Eglinton’s. Nothing produced a change in Robert’s sentiments. Fortunately, in Alexander’s view at least, Robert’s association with the girl was short-lived. Margaret Campbell had gone home like most servant girls to spend the time with her family between her resignation from one situation and her entrance into another.

  After a time, she had obtained a post with a Colonel McIvor in Glasgow. First she travelled with her brother to Greenock where they visited relatives in a tenement house in Charles Street. There, her brother took ill and Margaret nursed him until eventually she too fell ill with a malignant fever and died.

  Alexander didn’t know for certain who wrote the letter informing Robert of Margaret’s death but he guessed it was from her father. This man had much the same attitude to Robert as James Armour had had. As a result, he could imagine the cruel words the letter to Robert must have contained. It was obvious that whatever the words were, they had found their mark. Robert was strangely quiet, refused indeed to talk about Margaret. But his painful grieving was there for all to see.

  Everyone hoped that the publication of his book of poems would raise his spirits, would make his mood swing from the pit of despair to the heights of euphoria. Alexander expected that Robert would find inspiration from this latest bout of love fever for a new poem or song. That is exactly what happened, of course. But he noticed Robert had changed the name from Margaret to Mary.

  He had used the name in a previous poem. It had been about a girl who had turned down his proposal of marriage. Her name had been Elizabeth Gebbie, or Begbie, but Robert could not cope with the rhyme required for a name like that, and so for the purposes of the song, she became Mary Morison.

  Tho’ this was fair, an’ that was braw

  And yon the toast o’ a’ the town

  I sighed and said among them a’

  Ye are na Mary Morison.

  In this more recent case, Mary obviously made for a smoother and better metre than Margaret!

  Alexander believed the Highland girl had caught Robert on the rebound from his mad anguish at losing his ‘bonnie Jean’, and Margaret’s death was yet another blow to his already devastated romantic spirit. But Alexander had no doubt that Robert would be smitten by yet another love fever that would cure him of his present one. As far as he could see, every time Robert wanted to write a song or poem, he had to look for or think of a woman to write it to.

  And then he worked himself into this madness he called love.

  11

  The tiny church was bursting at the seams. It was a tight, jostling, bustling riot of colour. The dazzling shades of the women’s dresses and the elegant apparel of the men made a startling contrast to the usual dark and dirty state of the church. The bride wore sapphire blue taffeta with much silver ribbon and lace flouncing. Earlier Susanna had thought, ‘How beautiful I look’ when she had gazed in delight at the vision of herself in the bedroom mirror. She had spent hours dressing and doing her hair into the long curls that now draped over one shoulder and had been carefully powdered.

  Even Mysie shared in her excitement and helped her as much as she could. ‘Fancy,’ Mysie enthused, ‘ye’ll soon be the mistress o’ that big hoose. Ma wee fat Anna.’

  For a moment, despite her happy excitement, Susanna felt outraged. ‘I am not fat! How dare you try to spoil my wedding day by saying such a thing.’

  ‘Och, Ah was just rememberin’ ye as a wee bairn. Ah know ye’re no’ fat noo. Ye look just grand. Just grand.’

  ‘I was never fat,’ Susanna muttered, mollified now and her happiness fast returning. ‘Should I take my fan, Mysie?’

  ‘Ye shouldnae need it to cool yersel’ in that kirk. It’s aye as cauld as the tomb. But I see yer cheeks are burnin’ that much, maybe ye’ll need a few flaps tae cool doon yer excitement.’

  Eventually, the bride’s party, led by old Doctor Wallace, set out, praying that they’d avoid meeting a funeral on the way because that was bad luck. The bride had to approach the church from right to left and it was sometimes the custom to walk three times around the church sun-wise before entering. Susanna chose not to do this, so impatient was she to ‘tie the knot’, as a marriage was sometimes called because both bride and groom had to have all knots on their person removed before the ceremony to ensure there would be no barrier to fertility. As soon as the ceremony was over, they were retied. The groom had already arrived, resplendent in a maroon silk coat with a gold embroidered waistcoat, followed by the bridesmaids, all led by a piper. Susanna thrilled to the sound of the pipes and the chatter and the squeals of laughter filling the streets outside.

  Now she was actually in the packed kirk. The minister had performed the ceremony. Now pistols were firing and church bells ringing, and everyone was stamping energetically to keep the evil spirits away. There was the custom to kiss the bride. The minister got to her first and then she was nearly knocked over in the rush. Now they had reached the tavern where a room had been provided for the dinner.

  After the dinner, the bride’s mother broke a cake of shortbread over Susanna’s head. If it broke into small pieces the marriage would be fruitful. Unmarried girls in the company scrambled to grab a piece so that they could put it under their pillow to dream on. Then the bride’s cog or bowl was passed around from lip to lip, filled with hot ale, whisky, cream, beaten eggs, sugar and spices, and everyone drank Susanna’s health.

  By the time Susanna reached Guthrie House, her head was in a swirl and she was exhausted with all the noise of talking, of laughter, and of the dazzle of colour. The house made a shocking comparison. Had it ever seemed so shadowy, so silent, so gloomy, when old Lord Guthrie had been alive? She had no recollection of it being so. He had been a coarse but jolly, noisy old fellow who seemed to fill the whole place with his rude good cheer.

  On reflection, she thought it rather insensitive of Neil, the way he’d told her of his uncle’s death, insensitive to her feelings as well as to the suddenness of the old man’s demise. He’d dropped dead in the middle of enjoying an evening in the ale house with friends. It was the casual tone of Neil’s voice even more than his words that had taken her aback.

  ‘My uncle has died and so we can now begin planning our marriage.’

  She did not detect one note of sadness or regret in his expression or demeanour.

  ‘Oh, Neil, poor Lord Guthrie,’ she’d cried out. ‘Everyone had a high regard for him and I’m sure everyone will be as sorry as I am.’

  Neil shrugged. ‘He was an old man. He’d had his day.’

  Susanna’s mind tightened with worry and apprehension. It suddenly occurred to her that her father and mother were old. She fervently hoped and prayed that they both would be spared many, many days yet. She suddenly felt lonely without them, and her brother, and the old familiar servants Mysie and John. She even felt a pang for the familiar old house and its dreadful stinks.

  Neil said, ‘Why are
you standing there dreaming? The servants are waiting with candelabra to light our way to the bedchamber.’

  She had not heard or even noticed the servants entering the hallway holding the candelabra in front of them. The yellow pools seemed to make the surrounding darkness even darker.

  She tried to smile as she walked beside her new husband across the hall, up the creaking stairway and along a corridor. Eventually they stopped at a door, the servants flung it open, entered and put one of the candelabras down on to a high chest of drawers. A flickering fire did little to dispel the chill in the room. The woman servant gave a little curtsy, the man a slight bow.

  Susanna’s euphoria frittered away, leaving her confused. She felt embarrassed too. She’d known of course that married couples slept together. Her mother and father, and her grandmother and grandfather slept together. Now that she came to think of it, that must mean they undressed in front of each other as well. The trouble was, she’d never really thought of it before. Not really. Not in any detail. Vague thoughts of such embarrassing intimacies had only occasionally fluttered across the surface of her mind. There had been so many other more exciting and pleasurable thoughts and dreams to busy herself with.

  Now details crowded in on her. She was thankful her dress had front fastenings so that she could manage unaided. But if she took off her dress standing here in the light of the fire and the candelabra, she would be naked. The thought was an agony of embarrassment. It was bad enough to witness Neil divesting himself of his clothes. Closing her eyes, she fumbled to unhook herself. If she did so quickly, then immediately plunged under the covers of the bed, perhaps her modesty could be protected.

  She did this as best she could but she had no sooner cowered under the bedclothes when Neil came into bed beside her and immediately flung back the covers. Appalled, she struggled to clutch at them for protection again but Neil tore them completely from the bed and began to roughly knead at her breasts. In pain now as well as panic, she managed in a tremulous voice,