Only the day after Susanna’s discovery about the publication by Robert Burns, there was such an evening. This time the ladies launched into an immediate discussion of the book.
‘You haven’t read it, my dear?’ Alice Wilson cried out. ‘Oh, you must. It’s the talk of the whole country. Edinburgh is buzzing with it. There’s even been reviews of it in London magazines and papers. “This Heaven-taught ploughman”, one of the reviewers called him.’
Euphemia Mackie, in a bright yellow gown, twittered with excitement. ‘My husband subscribed for several copies. I’ll give you one, Susanna. I’ll send a servant over with it the moment I return home.’
‘Thank you, Euphemia.’ Susanna managed a tight smile. ‘How very kind of you.’
The book came as promised and Susanna read it in amazement and also with a strange sadness. The poems showed not only keen observation of character, not only much tenderness, but in verses like ‘Despondency – An Ode’, they reflected her own feelings.
Oppress’d with grief and care
A burden more than I can bear …
Suddenly it was all too much for her and she dissolved into broken-hearted weeping. She was obviously no judge of character. She had seen the man and judged him only by his social status. She had dismissed him as a common peasant and no more. She’d always thought of nothing and no-one else except people of what she regarded as ‘the quality’. Her own ambition had been to marry someone with a good fortune and a large house.
Well, she had achieved her ambition and she was being punished for her stupidity. She tried to tell herself that she had been no different from anyone else she knew. Ladies needed to marry gentlemen who could provide for them, give them a decent place in society. She had been unlucky, that was all. But what did anything matter now in her secret hell?
All the wives of Neil’s friends thought he was wonderful, of course, a proper gentleman. This was understandable from their point of view. Neil was quiet-spoken, slim and elegant, with a pale complexion and eyes. The husbands of most of these ladies had robust limbs, fat faces and red noses and spent much of their time dressed for the hunt in red jackets and thick yellow ancestral buckskins with brown tops to their boots. And they were so noisy, especially at the hunt. Such a clatter and chatter. Such a hallooing and horn-blowing and dogs in full-throated chorus.
‘What a charming man,’ they often said of Neil. Sometimes she even believed they were jealous of her. What a joke, she thought. If only they knew. But her thoughts always came back to the bitter question – who would believe her?
Instead of it being a relief to be in company, it had become yet another torture, especially if Neil was present. She preferred to escape outside on her own if she could, after the coaches of the guests had lurched and rumbled away. She’d put on her shawl and slip outside. Even when winter had closed in, even when it was pitch black and the paths around the house were like quagmires, she’d still venture out. The wind screaming through the branches of the trees, the overgrown bushes angrily shaking themselves, nothing was as frightening as being alone in the house with her husband.
This large old house that she’d once admired and coveted so much had become a brooding monster with long silent corridors and dark panelled walls – her prison, her place of misery and terror.
More and more, she was thinking and dreaming of escape. In the crowded mass of humanity of Edinburgh, for instance, she could disappear, never to be found by anyone, not even her brother. She remembered Edinburgh very well from her visits to the capital in previous years. She remembered its warren of side streets and high tenements or ‘lands’, like perpendicular streets. She remembered the dark entries giving glimpses of confusing obscurities, or leading steeply down a narrow tunnel with an unexpected vista of the New Town at the end of it. She could get lost in Edinburgh. She could be free to melt into another world. She didn’t care what that world would be like. Nothing could be worse than, or even as bad as, the world she was in now. Perhaps from Edinburgh she could eventually travel farther afield, away from Scotland altogether.
The desperate dream sustained her. All she needed was enough money to get to the city and to pay for lodgings so that she could feel safe until she decided what her next move would be. She began to make a plan. She began to watch where Neil kept money in the house, and how much. If he had a successful evening gambling he could return with a considerable amount.
She began to feel some of her old reckless excitement returning.
14
His heavy scythe over his shoulder, Robert strode in an easy gait along the rough, muddy track to the high field. The cold air cut sharply into his lungs as he trudged along and a dry, bitter wind hummed eerily through the hedges.
Then with an even rhythm from his waist, he swung the scythe in clean sweeps, slice and step, slice and step. Slowly he cut his way across the rough terrain, the sweet, damp smell of the cut grass redolent in his nostrils. He had been up and working since the crack of dawn. He laboured automatically, ignoring his usual aches and pains and growing fatigue, concentrating all of his mind on his poetry or his songs.
More and more, he was becoming drawn to sing and he often found himself humming a tune to himself.
Today, after his day’s work, he escaped for a short time to enjoy the luxury of a walk alone, and to read, or rather to re-read, McKenzie’s novel, The Man of Feeling. It was one of his favourite books. He always carried it around with him on the farm. Before he realised where he was, he had strayed on to the Ballochmyle Estate. He stopped under the shadows of a tree and, leaning against it, he continued reading his book. After a few minutes, he became aware of someone approaching along the path. It was a young woman.
He watched her with dark observing eyes as she passed with her head disdainfully in the air. She would be the lady of the estate. That fact alone, however, was not a good enough reason – or any reason at all – to be so proud and haughty. Robert bristled with resentment as he always did when he thought of the way the so-called ‘quality’ gave themselves airs and regarded themselves better than anyone else just because they had more money, or by accident of birth, had been born into the aristocracy.
He had had to work hard to deserve anything he’d acquired in life. However, he still couldn’t believe the success he’d acquired with his book of poetry. It certainly meant working hard at distributing the poems and making so many journeys in order to do so. He also had to travel around collecting money from subscribers. There was much business in the course of publication and marketing of a volume. At the same time, he’d been making his preparations for leaving the country. As soon as he’d had the nine guineas, he had booked a ticket on the first ship that was to sail.
With this in mind, he wrote several poems of goodbye to family and friends. What took up a surprising amount of his time was the unexpected number of letters he received from complete strangers. He received letters from well-wishers who wrote to congratulate him. What was most surprising of all was the number of letters he received from professional men and the landed gentry. This, it had to be admitted, proved quite an expense because, of course, it was the custom that the recipient of letters paid the postage. Nevertheless, he couldn’t help feeling some excitement at the amount of post he was receiving, especially from the nobility, even though at the same time, he kept a grain of his normal cynicism about such people and was ever ready to suspect any hint of snobbishness.
However, he not only politely responded but enclosed verse epistles and songs with his letters of reply.
He also took time to write to, and enclose a song to, the young lady he’d seen at Ballochmyle. By the time he’d reached home from his walk, his resentment had melted away and he’d penned ‘The Bonnie Lass o’ Ballochmyle’. He’d sent it to the subject of the song along with a letter in his best ornate style in which he’d asked her permission to publish the song. (Although he did not in fact need the lady’s permission, because he had not specified her name.)
The
lady did not acknowledge the song or the letter. He’d learned afterwards that she’d made enquiries about his character. She had been immediately suspicious of him because, for one thing, she knew very well, as she’d told a friend, that she was anything but bonnie and she was a mature woman in her thirties. Then she found he had a reputation as a well-known fornicator. This infuriated Robert, when he considered the amount of houghmagandy that abounded in the area. At the time, however, he had felt hurt and bitter at having his song and his letter – especially his song – ignored. She had not even sent one polite word of acknowledgement.
It wasn’t until years later it was found that she had made a bower of the place where she had seen Burns, and her friends said she’d treasured his letter so much and had shown it to so many people, it had begun to disintegrate.
Robert had a surprising and different experience with another aristocrat. It was a most unexpected one, while on a visit to the home of the philosopher, Professor Dugald Stewart.
Professor Stewart lived in a house only a few miles from the farm and he’d invited Robert to his home, along with the Mauchline surgeon, Mr McKenzie. It turned out another man joined them by chance. A lord, no less, Lord Daer, son of the Earl of Selkirk, and an exceptionally tall man. Apparently he had been a pupil of the professor.
Robert had barely returned home from this visit before enthusiastically dashing off seven verses to mark the occasion. He was especially pleased with one of the verses:
Then from his Lordship I shall learn,
Henceforth to meet with unconcern,
One rank as weel’s another;
Nae honest, worthy man need care,
To meet with noble youthful Daer,
For he but meets a brother.
It was during this period when he’d been on business to Kilmarnock that a letter from another of the landed gentry was delivered to the farm. It was, he discovered, from a Mrs Dunlop.
‘What is it this time?’ Gilbert asked.
Robert looked up from reading the pages. ‘It’s from a Mrs Dunlop, of Dunlop House.’
‘I know it. It’s that big place about fifteen or sixteen miles from here. You’ll have seen it yourself.’
Robert looked vague, trying to remember. He had so much on his mind these days.
His mother joined in the conversation. ‘I mind her. She’s a widow buddy. Her faither was Sir Thomas Wallace o’ Craigie. She married John Dunlop of Dunlop, och, years ago. She must be gey auld by noo. I heard that the puir buddy has never been the same since her man died. Awfu’ depressed, puir soul.’
‘She hints at that,’ Robert said, ‘and apparently a daughter of the laird of Craigengillen gave her a copy of ‘The Cotter’s Saturday Night’ to read. It must have done her some sort of good. It’s cheered her enough anyway to want half a dozen copies of my poems. She’s also invited me to call at Dunlop House.’
Gilbert sighed as he edged a path across the kitchen, between a couple of Robert’s pet hens, Mailie the sheep and a collie dog.
‘You’ll find that house a lot different from this, I warrant.’
His mother immediately piped up, ‘There’s nothin’ wrong wi’ this hoose, Gilbert Burns.’
‘I didn’t say that, Mother.’
‘I’ve only got five copies but I’ll send them to the lady right away,’ Robert said, and then added, ‘I’m thinking of going to Edinburgh in a week or two to try for a second edition. I’ll tell her I’ll call at Dunlop House as soon as I return.’
Before he had the opportunity to do this, however, he received another long letter, first of all acknowledging the books he’d sent and then going on to suggest that he should appoint her as his literary critic, adding, ‘I have been told that Voltaire read all his manuscripts to an old woman and printed nothing but what she would have approved. I wish you would name me to her office.’
Robert very much doubted the truth of this and had no hesitation in ignoring her suggestion. Despite this, however, the lady enthusiastically took the role upon herself. Meantime, Robert prepared for his journey to Edinburgh with high hopes and a great sense of adventure. He sincerely hoped for a second edition to take place but he still had his sailing ticket to Jamaica. There was also the possibility of gaining security and a long-term solution to his financial and other problems with farming. At the back of his mind, there still lurked the possibility of the Excise.
But now it was Edinburgh and he set off on a pony loaned to him by George Reid of Barquharie, and headed east. He had to make a detour on the journey because George Reid had also arranged for him to break his journey and spend the night with someone Reid knew – a farmer called Archibald Prentice, or ‘Bauldy’ Prentice as he was nicknamed – a huge man of at least six feet three.
What Robert didn’t realise was that Prentice and every farmer for miles around had not only read his book, but were desperate to meet him.
Bauldy Prentice’s farm was situated in the middle of several combined parishes that formed a kind of amphitheatre. The signal of Burns’ arrival was to be a white sheet attached to a pitchfork placed on top of the cornstack in the centre of the barnyard. The moment the flag was seen, and it was seen by every house in the parish, there was a stampede of farmers from their houses to converge at the point of meeting.
Robert, already somewhat exhausted by his long ride over rough and difficult terrain, was flattered but a bit overcome by the admiration and enthusiastic hospitality thrust upon him. However, the dinner, late though it was, and the liquid refreshment pressed upon him made him forget his fatigue. A glorious night it turned out to be, with much conversation and laughter with one man saying, ‘God man, you talk even better than your book.’
Next morning, he breakfasted with a large crowd of admirers at the next farmhouse, tenanted by John Stodart, and had lunch with another crowd of men. It was just as he was leaving the house to make for his pony, which was tethered at the gate, and resume his ride to Edinburgh, that Bauldy Prentice strode out in front of him and called at two or three young lads who were obviously hurrying on their way to school,
‘Stop here, lads, an’ haud the stirrup for this man who’s going to mount this pony.’
One of the boys said worriedly, ‘We’ll be late, an’ we’re feart o’ the maister.’
‘Stop an’ haud the stirrup,’ Bauldy roared from his great height. ‘Ah’ll settle it wi’ the maister. Ye haud this stirrup an’ ye’ll boast o’ it to yer dyin’ day!’
Robert was touched by this and by Prentice’s warm and generous hospitality. The hospitality had perhaps been over-generous because Robert set off on the rest of his journey not feeling one hundred per cent fit.
However, he arrived in the city in the evening and was interested to find that his arrival had coincided with a historic day – the advent of the first of John Palmer’s mail coaches from London. It was on everyone’s lips that this mail coach had accelerated the mail between the capital cities to a mere sixty hours.
He had arranged to share a room with an old friend, John Richmond, who lodged with a Mrs Carfrae in Baxters Close. Tired and weary, Robert struggled to encourage his pony to finish the last few yards of the journey to where the stabling was situated in the Grassmarket. He was finding his first view of Edinburgh at night a traumatic experience. He was a country boy whose only experience of urban life had been Ayr and Kilmarnock.
It appeared to his tired eyes a bustling human ant heap of humanity of the worst kind. He saw pickpockets and street robbers at work and hordes of women obviously abandoned to vice.
He had always had a horror of prostitution – the profession itself, and how it degraded women. Here a multitude of women were jostling, and crowding, screaming, plying their trade unashamedly, and pestering all and sundry.
He was glad to reach Baxters Close. Here in the dark stairwell he had to squeeze past elegant ladies with their hooped skirts, as well as coarsely garbed artisans. Despite his fatigue, Robert was interested in the incongruous mix of differe
nt sorts and classes of people.
At the lodgings, he was warmly welcomed by John Richmond who introduced him to the landlady, Mrs Carfrae. She looked a very staid and pious widow in her forties.
‘This is a respectable hoose, Mr Burns, I’ll have you know,’ she informed Robert. ‘Please dinnae judge my hoose by that awfu’ hoose wi’ awfu’ folk up the stairs.’
‘Who is in the house upstairs?’ Robert enquired politely.
‘Wicked women, that’s who. Wi’ their wicked singin’ an’ drinkin’ and screechin’ and laughin’ an’ aw their wicked carry on wi’ men.’ She worked herself to such a pitch of agitation, her cheeks burned bright scarlet. ‘I toss an’ turn in that bed every night somethin’ terrible. I look for rest, Mr Burns, an’ fin’ none.’
Robert said afterwards to Richmond, ‘Poor woman, I fear she is coming on her grand climacterick and is jealous of her laughter-loving, night-rejoicing neighbours.’
The next day, as if she had read his mind, she engaged him in heated conversation again, saying, ‘We shouldnae be uneasy an’ envious because the wicked enjoy the good things in life, Mr Burns, for those base jades who lie up gandy going with their filthy fellows, drinkin’ the best o’ wines an’ singin’ abominable songs, shall one day lie in Hell, weepin’ an’ wailin’ and gnashin’ their teeth over a cup o’ God’s wrath!’
Mrs Carfrae, he discovered during the many conversations she pressed on him, was a very flesh-disciplining, godly matron who firmly believed her husband was in heaven and, having been very happy with him on earth, now vigorously and perseveringly practised some of the most distinguishing Christian virtues, such as attending church, railing against vice, and so on, so that she would be qualified to meet her late bedfellow again in heaven.
She seemed to find some release in talking to Robert, despite the fact that she said he was ‘but a rough an’ roun’ Christian’.
A Darkening of the Heart Page 10
