She was not going to Tarbolton as Alexander believed. She was carrying on to Edinburgh and was staying in the city at an inn as near as possible to Robert’s lodgings so that she could visit him every day. She wanted to be with him all day, every day, but she knew he needed time on his own to write his many business letters and, no doubt – her mind darkened with jealousy at the thought – letters to his ‘paper passion’.
But a paper passion, she thought recklessly, surely could not compete with the vibrant, real-life passion she could and would offer Robert. Her heart thumped against her rib cage so strongly and noisily at the daring thought, she feared one of the other occupants of the coach might become aware of it. But the coach was rattling and thumping over the stony road and the horses were straining along at what seemed a desperate and alarming pace. Everyone was concentrating on the dangerous swaying of the vehicle. The young woman clutched at her wide-brimmed hat and began to whimper.
The older woman asked her husband, ‘Are we nearly there, Edward?’
‘Yes, yes,’ he replied. ‘Just hold on.’
There had been no conversation with Susanna on the journey. She had discouraged any attempts by keeping her head turned away as if all the time preferring to concentrate on observing the passing countryside.
She was relieved when at last the journey was over and she was in the capital city with its noisy pell-mell of people, the pungent smells, and the shadows enveloping the streets from the high tenements. She couldn’t help remembering Margaret Burns and Sally and felt ashamed that she could never bring herself to meet up with them again. They had done her no harm. Indeed, they had been extremely kind, but they were from a different world. She could not bear to step back into that world again. She wished them well and if she accidentally came across them, she would greet them kindly before passing on.
Now she wasted no time, after obtaining a respectable room, in calling on Robert. He was sitting alone and exactly as she remembered him from her last visit. The man in substance was even more vibrantly, shockingly attractive than the man she remembered.
‘Alone?’ he said.
She began fussing about making tea, producing the cake and biscuits she’d brought from the MacKenzies – supposedly for her mother and father.
‘Alexander is totally carried away with his Isobel. He has proposed to her and she tells him she needs a little time before giving him her answer. He is waiting in much anxiety.’ She laughed nervously. ‘He accused me of taking up too much of Isobel’s time and attention. Attention away from him and his proposal, and eventual discussion of their future plans. Anyway, I have been banished to Edinburgh and then to visit my parents for a time.’
‘Not banished, surely!’
She shrugged. ‘Well, not in so many words. But I know he was pleased and relieved when I left. Oh, but at the same time wishing me well,’ she hastily added. ‘He is the best of brothers. But we have been worried about you, as well as our parents, and Alexander hopes my visits will put our minds at rest. How are you, Robert?’
‘Oh, much better. Worries of one kind or another still torment me. But I am cheered by the thought of having such good friends who are so concerned about me.’
He was smiling at her but was it her fevered imagination, or did she see in his dark, observant eyes a recognition of the real reason for her visit? He was aware, of course, that from a lady’s point of view, it was not at all proper to visit a gentleman alone in his lodgings.
She no longer cared about propriety and the social niceties. All she cared about was him. She wanted to touch him, caress him, hold him. He was not slim and elegant with lean calves and long, silver-buckled feet like Alexander and Alexander’s other male friends and acquaintances. He was broad-shouldered and solid looking.
And oh, those black, smouldering eyes. Had there ever been such eyes in any man before? She ached to touch him. All she needed to do was walk across the room and touch him, and he would know. It would be an invitation and he would know.
She trembled on the verge, and could have wept broken-heartedly when the terror, like a huge wave, came crashing over her once again, drowning all passion. She couldn’t do it. She made an excuse to go and fetch plates from the kitchen for the cakes and biscuits. There, she leaned against the kitchen table for support and she hated herself. How stupid she was! How stupid!
Yet again she tried to tell herself, to repeat over and over, ‘I’m perfectly all right now. I’ve nothing to be afraid of. Nothing at all. Nothing at all. Nothing at all …’
But it was no use. Neil Guthrie had ruined her life. She suddenly realised that if she could not show her passionate love for Robert Burns by any physical contact, she would never be able to do so with any man.
She hoped Neil Guthrie would burn forever in hell. Her face hardened, her body stiffened. She returned to the room and acted the calm hostess, pouring out tea, encouraging Robert to try the delicious baking from the wonderfully talented cook the McKenzies were fortunate to have found. She encouraged Robert to tell her all his news. At least it would stop her stupid chatter. She listened to him and watched the way his expression could change. He could suddenly become animated and gladdened by something, then – just as quickly – saddened by something else.
She sat opposite him, a neat-waisted, straight-backed little figure in plum velvet with a demure ruffle of lace at cuffs and bosom, and one long curl placed prettily over the front of her left shoulder. She laughed when she should at his amusing anecdotes and made sympathetic murmurs when he confided his serious worries. She even listened calmly when he spoke in praise of Nancy MacElhose.
And all the time she was thinking, ‘Oh Robert, Robert …’
And wishing with all her heart that she could undo the damage that Neil Guthrie had done to her.
Afterwards, in the shadows of her room at the inn, she wept over her inadequacy. He had enjoyed her company, he said. He valued her friendship, he said. He had been a perfect gentleman and she loved him all the more for not sparking off her terrors by anything other than gentlemanly conduct. He had not even kissed her hand when she left him. There was only a slight bow, and a smile, and gentle words of appreciation for her care and attention.
But oh, his eyes – his eyes seemed to say so much more. Or was it her longing for him that made her imagine he wanted her too?
30
Burns’ sudden decision to marry Jean Armour, especially at the height of his apparent passion for Nancy MacElhose, astonished, puzzled, and even angered the few people who heard of it at the time. He tried to explain.
To Mrs Dunlop he wrote, ‘In housewife matters, of aptness to learn and activity to execute she is eminently mistress; and during my absence in Nithsdale, she is regularly and constantly apprentice to my mother and sisters in their dairy and other rural business. In short, I can easily fancy a more agreeable companion for my journey of life, but, upon my honour, I have never seen the individual instance … Circumstanced as I am, I could never have got a female partner for life who could have entered into my favourite studies, relished my favourite authors, and without entailing on me at the same time, expensive living, fantastic caprice, apish affectation, with all the other blessed, boarding-school acquirements which (pardonnez-moi, Madam!) are sometimes to be found among females of the upper ranks, but almost universally pervade the misses of the would-be gentry.’
To Peggy Chalmers he wrote of Jean, ‘I have got the handsomest figure, the sweetest temper, the soundest constitution and the kindest heart in the country … although she scarcely ever in her life, except the scriptures of the old and new testament, and the psalms of David in metre, spent five minutes together in either prose or verse.’
But he added a sentence about her singing voice, describing it with a phrase from Milton as ‘… the finest wood wild’ he had ever heard.
Nancy MacElhose said of his marriage that it was a ‘perfidious treachery’ and a ‘fatal mistake’.
Someone else said of his marriage to J
ean that although her good singing voice might ‘… rise to B natural all day long, she would still be a peasant to her lettered lord, an object of pity rather than equal affection …’
Another friend believed Robert had always had to have two women, one for his body and one for his mind. He’d tried often enough but could never get both in the same person.
The wedding ceremony was a very quiet affair. It had not been until much later that Robert had managed to write to other friends, apart from Nancy MacElhose and Mrs Dunlop, to tell them of the marriage. First of all, he’d been laid low with the ‘fashionable influenza’. This had stirred up his all too frequent feverish symptoms, as well as the aches and pains and palpitations that had plagued him for years. There had been a time during one of his tours that these symptoms had been so bad that a servant of the family with whom he was staying had to remain up all night to watch over him.
As soon as he was better of the influenza, but still feeling weak, he had once more to see about the Excise. His little surplus of money regularly went to help support his brother Gilbert and the rest of his family in Ayrshire. And if that support was withdrawn, Gilbert would be ruined.
He wrote to an influential friend asking if he could be instructed in his Excise duties nearer home, rather than in Edinburgh at the moment, and he explained his present situation and state of health. This was duly arranged. He then met with much more difficulty and problems. He had to try to explain some of his political indiscretions from the past, like his verses about ‘the idiot race’ and others.
He was reminded that he was, after all, having to swear allegiance to his King. It was his first glimpse of the greatest and most painful and difficult problem he had as an Excise officer – the need to curb his democratic pen and tongue. It was something he did not always manage to do successfully.
The business with Ellisland had also to be settled and, for a long time, he had to live alone in a draughty, smoke-filled hovel until the farmhouse home for his wife and children could be built. Jean stayed with his mother and brother and sisters while he tried to work the fields and also supervise the building work. He now found himself to be a part-time farmer, a part-time poet, and a part-time Excise man. He had to gallop for about two hundred miles every week ‘to inspect dirty ponds and yeasty barrels’. As a result, he was finding no time as yet to write to friends and bring them up to date with his changed circumstances. The songs he composed were hummed to himself while jogging the long miles on his excise duties. He didn’t even have time to contact Alexander who, no doubt, would be married himself by now and back to doctoring in Edinburgh.
At last the house at Ellisland was ready. Jean and two girl relations, who worked as servants, arrived. The usual superstitious procedure was performed. A family bible and a bowl of salt had to be placed one on top of the other and carried into the new house. This was to bring good luck to everyone who tenanted the farm. Burns, with his wife on his arm, followed the bearer of the bible and salt, and so entered upon the possession of his home.
He did not have much time and certainly not much leisure to enjoy his new house and the company of his family. Apart from the usual hard work on the farm, although he was now helped by two farm labourers, his Excise duties were extremely varied. Duty had to be levied on the ‘… making of soap, paper, pasteboard, millboard and scaleboard respectively; and upon printing, painting and storing of paper; or dying of silks, calicoes, linen and stuff respectively; and upon tanning, tarving, or dressing of hides and skins, and pieces of hides and skins, and upon making of vellum and parchment respectively; and upon silver- plate and manufacture of silver respectively; and on the Inland Duties upon coffee, tea and chocolate respectively; and upon making malt, and making and importing rum, cyder and perry respectively; and duties upon glass … and upon every coach, Berlin, Landau, Chanat, Calesh, Chaise-marine, Chaise, Chair and Caravan, or by what name so ever such wheel carriages now are or hereafter may be called or known …’
Duty was mostly charged during manufacture, and this entailed Burns having to make visits day and night. Then there was a huge amount of paperwork, and of course distances travelled on horseback in all weathers. He had sometimes to be on the saddle four, or on occasions five days a week. Often he arrived back at Ellisland exhausted after riding for thirty or forty miles. Then he would have to write his excise book reports.
He became so overworked, exhausted and depressed at this period, he wrote to his dear friend, Peggy Chalmers, ‘… when I think of you – when I think I have met with you, and have lived more of real life with you in eight days, than I can do with almost any body I meet with in eight years – when I think of the improbability of meeting you in this world again – I could sit down and cry like a child.’
In the same letter, he conceded that he may not have married Jean ‘in consequence of the attachment of romance’, but went on to say that he had no cause to repent it.
Again it was observed that there were always two Robert Burns’s. The one who was a tenant farmer, intent on making ‘a happy fireside clime’. And the other man, the poet – eager, indeed desperate, to broaden his intellectual horizons and not be spiritually destroyed by the grindingly hard physical conditions of his life.
He wrote to Mrs Dunlop and enclosed some verses of a song he’d composed.
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne?
For auld lang syne, my jo,
For auld lang syne,
We’ll tak’ a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.
He also managed to pen another song, this time about the love between a man and his wife, and their growing old together.
John Anderson my jo, John.
When we were first acquent;
Your locks were like the raven,
Your bonnie brow was brent;
But now your brow is beld, John,
Your locks are like the snaw;
But blessings on your frosty pow,
John Anderson my jo!
John Anderson my jo, John,
We clam the hill thegither;
And mony a canty day, John,
We had wi’ ane anither;
Now we maun totter down, John,
And hand in hand we’ll go;
And sleep the gither at the foot,
John Anderson my jo!
His spirits were eventually raised by meeting his neighbours – Captain Robert Riddell and his family who lived at Friars Carse. Robert Riddell, at thirty-three, was four years older than Burns and was himself devoted to music, coin-collecting, and other antiquarian pursuits. Riddell had built a ‘Hermitage’ in the grounds of his mansion because he’d discovered the area had been the site of an old monastic retreat. The two men quickly became good friends and Riddell gave Burns a key to the Hermitage, where he composed some verses.
Very rashly – for a man with an Excise commission – Burns wrote an open letter to an English newspaper addressed to William Pitt, criticising the government’s unfair treatment of the Scottish distillers. He wanted it to be anonymous but the paper printed his name. He sent a copy to Mrs Dunlop ‘for your sole amusement; it is dangerous ground to tread on.’ He also enclosed the lyrics of Afton Water.
Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes,
Flow gently, I’ll sing thee a song in thy praise;
My Mary’s asleep by thy murmuring stream,
Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.
He received not a very pleasant letter from her in which she upbraided him for something else she accused him of writing.
‘I heard a man say lately he had seen a poem of yours so grossly indelicate he was ashamed to read it alone on the braeside.’ She went on to say that she hoped this was ‘one of the follies long cast to air and polished off by mine, if not by better company.’
Burns was annoyed. It could have b
een one of the bawdy ballads he’d collected by various authors and not originated by him at all. It could have been, on the other hand, one of his that he’d been persuaded to pen for the entertainment of the Crochallan Fencible Club. Either way he was annoyed.
‘I am very sorry that you should be informed of my supposed guilt in composing, in some midnight frolic, a stanza or two perhaps not quite proper for a clergyman’s reading to a company of ladies. That I am the author of the verses alluded to in your letter is what I much doubt. You may guess that the convivial hours of men have their mysteries of wit and mirth; and I hold it a piece of contemptible baseness to detail the sallies of thoughtless merriment or the orgies of accidental intoxication, to the ear of cool Sobriety or female Delicacy.’
He was seriously worried about who the man was who had tried to undermine his long standing and treasured friendship with Mrs Dunlop. He couldn’t bear the high regard she had always had for him to be tarnished. He knew he had enemies who were jealous of him, but for someone to try to undermine one of his most valued friendships made him feel very uneasy and apprehensive.
31
She knew. Alexander had done his best to keep the fact of Burns’ presence in Dumfriesshire from Isobel, and he had done so successfully for a time. That was while Burns had been living in isolation in some hovel or other while a farmhouse was being built. Now, however, he was installed in the farmhouse with his wife and young family. And Isobel knew.
Alexander had by now received two long letters from Burns bringing him up to date with the news of his marriage, and the conditions at Ellisland. He was of course suffering the usual difficulties with the land. He’d written that after a shower had fallen on a field of new-sown and new-rolled barley, it looked like a new paved street! ‘Soil,’ he said, ‘there never was such soil; but I see how it has been – God has riddled the whole creation, and flung the riddlings on Ellisland.’
A Darkening of the Heart Page 21
