Chapter 4
I know you will laugh at it when I tell you that your piano and you together have played the deuce somehow about my heart. My breast has been widowed these many months, and I thought myself proof against the fascinating witchcraft; but I am afraid you will "feelingly convince me what I am.". I say, I am afraid, because I am not sure what is the matter with me. I have one miserable bad symptom,--when you whisper, or look kindly to another, it gives me a draught of damnation. I have a kind of wayward wish to be with you ten minutes by yourself, though what I would say, Heaven above knows, for I am sure I know not. I have no formed design in all this; but just, in the nakedness of my heart, write you down a mere matter-of-fact story. You may perhaps give yourself airs of distance on this, and that will completely cure me; but I wish you would not; just let us meet, if you please, in the old beaten way of friendship.
I will not subscribe myself your humble servant, for that is a phrase, I think, at least fifty miles off from the heart; but I will conclude with sincerely wishing that the Great Protector of innocence may shield you from the barbed dart of calumny, and hand you by the covert snare of deceit. R. B.
[Footnote 9: Lady unidentified.]
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XV.--TO MR. JOHN RICHMOND, LAW CLERK, EDINBURGH.[10]
MOSSGIEL, _Feb. 17th_, 1786.
MY DEAR SIR,--I have not time at present to upbraid you for your silence and neglect; I shall only say I received yours with great pleasure. I have enclosed you a piece of rhyming ware for your perusal. I have been very busy with the muses since I saw you, and have composed, among several others, "The Ordination," a poem on Mr. M'Kinlay's being called to Kilmarnock; "Scotch Drink," a poem; "The Cottar's Saturday Night;" "An Address to the Devil," etc. I have likewise completed my poem on the "Dogs," but have not shown it to the world. My chief patron now is Mr. Aikin, in Ayr, who is pleased to express great approbation of my works. Be so good as send me Fergusson[11], by Connell, and I will remit you the money. I have no news to acquaint you with about Mauchline, they are just going on in the old way. I have some very important news with respect to myself, not the most agreeable--news that I am sure you cannot guess, but I shall give you the particulars another time. I am extremely happy with Smith;[11a] he is the only friend I have now in Mauchline. I can scarcely forgive your long neglect of me, and I beg you will let me hear from you regularly by Connell. If you would act your part as a friend, I am sure neither good nor bad fortune should estrange or alter me. Excuse haste, as I got yours but yesterday.--I am, my dear Sir, yours, ROBERT BURNESS.
[Footnote 10: Three months before this letter was written Richmond was a clerk in the office of Mr. Gavin Hamilton, writer, Mauchline.]
[Footnote 11: Fergusson's _Poems_.]
[Footnote 11a: Keeper of a haberdashery store in Mauchline.]
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XVI.-TO MR. JAMES SMITH[12], SHOPKEEPER, MAUCHLINE.
[_Spring of _1786.]
... Against two things I am fixed as fate,--staying at home, and owning her conjugally. The first, by Heaven, I will not do!--the last, by Hell, I will never do! A good God bless you, and make you happy up to the warmest weeping wish of parting friendship! ... If you see Jean tell her I will meet her, so help me God in my hour of need! R. B.
[Footnote 12: The confidant of his amour with Jean Armour, daughter of James Armour, mason, Mauchline. Notwithstanding the blustering threat--for which Smith was probably more than half responsible--Burns was afterwards content to "own bonny Jean conjugally."]
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XVII.--TO MR. ROBERT MUIR, WINE MERCHANT, KILMARNOCK.
MOSSGIEL, 20_th March_, 1786.
DEAR SIR,--I am heartily sorry I had not the pleasure of seeing you as you returned through Mauchline; but as I was engaged, I could not be in town before the evening.
I here inclose you my "Scotch Drink," and "may the deil follow with a blessing for your edification." I hope, sometime before we hear the gowk, to have the pleasure of seeing you at Kilmarnock, when I intend we shall have a gill between us, in a mutchkin-stoup; which will be a great comfort and consolation to, dear Sir, your humble servant, ROBERT BURNESS.
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XVIII.--To MR. JOHN BALLANTINE, BANKER, AYR. (?)
[_April_ 1786.]
HONOURED SIR,--My proposals[12a] came to hand last night, and, knowing that you would wish to have it in your power to do me a service as early as any body, I enclose you half a sheet of them. I must consult you, first opportunity, on the propriety of sending my _quondam_ friend, Mr. Aiken,[12b] a copy. If he is now reconciled to my character as an honest man, I would do it with all my soul; but I would not be beholden to the noblest being ever God created if he imagined me to be a rascal. _Apropos_, old Mr. Armour prevailed with him to mutilate that unlucky paper[12c] yesterday. Would you believe it? though I had not a hope, nor even a wish to make her mine after her conduct, yet when he told me the names were cut out of the paper, my heart died within me, and he cut my veins with the news. Perdition seize her falsehood! ROBERT BURNS.
[Footnote 12a: Proposals for publishing his Scottish Poems by subscription.]
[Footnote 12b: Writer in Ayr.]
[Footnote 12c: The written acknowledgment of his marriage which Burns gave to Jean. She, influenced by her father, consented to destroy it.]
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XIX.--TO MR. M'WHINNIE, WRITER, AYR.
[MOSSGIEL, 17_th April_ 1786.]
IT is injuring some hearts, those hearts that elegantly bear the impression of the good Creator, to say to them you give them the trouble of obliging a friend; for this reason, I only tell you that I gratify my own feelings in requesting your friendly offices with respect to the enclosed, because I know it will gratify yours to assist me in it to the utmost of your power.
I have sent you four copies, as I have no less than eight dozen, which is a great deal more than I shall ever need.
Be sure to remember a poor poet militant in your prayers He looks forward with fear[13] and trembling to that, to him, important moment which stamps the die with--with--with, perhaps, the eternal disgrace of, my dear Sir, your humble, afflicted, tormented, ROBERT BURNS.
[Footnote 13: Cp. "Something cries _Hoolie! I rede ye, honest man, tak tent, ye'll show your folly!_"]
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XX.--TO JOHN ARNOT, ESQUIRE, OF DALQUATSWOOD.
[_April_ 1786.]
SIR,--I have long wished for some kind of claim to the honour of your acquaintance, and since it is out of my power to make that claim by the least service of mine to you, I shall do it by asking a friendly office of you to me.--I should be much hurt, Sir, if any one should view my poor Parnassian Pegasus in the light of a spur-galled Hack, and think that I wish to make a shilling or two by him. I spurn the thought.
It may do, maun do, Sir, wi' them who Maun please the great-folk for a wame-fou; For me, sae laigh I needna boo For, Lord be thankit! I can ploo; And, when I downa yoke a naig, Then, Lord be thankit! I can beg.
You will then, I hope, Sir, forgive my troubling you with the enclosed,[14] and spare a poor heart-crushed devil a world of apologies--a business he is very unfit for at any time, but at present, widowed as he is of every woman-giving comfort, he is utterly incapable of. Sad and grievous of late, Sir, has been my tribulation, and many and piercing my sorrows; and, had it not been for the loss the world would have sustained in losing so great a poet, I had ere now done as a much wiser man, the famous Achitophel of long-headed memory, did before me, when he "went home and set his house in order." I have lost, Sir, that dearest earthly treasure, that greatest blessing here below, that last, best gift which completed Adam's happiness in the garden of bliss; I have lost, I have lost--my trembling hand refuses its office, the frighted ink recoils up the quill,--I have lost a, a, a wife.
Fairest of God's creation, last and best, Now art thou lost!
You have doubtless, Sir, heard my story, heard it with all its exaggerations; but as my actions, and my motives for action, are peculiarly like myself and that is peculiarly like nobody else, I shall just beg a leisure moment and a spare tear of you until I tell my own story my own way.
I have been all my life, Sir, one of the rueful-looking, long-visaged sons of disappointment. A damned star has always kept my zenith, and shed its hateful influence in the emphatic curse of the prophet--"And behold whatsoever he doth, it shall not prosper!" I rarely hit where I aim, and if I want anything, I am almost sure never to find it where I seek it. For instance, if my penknife is needed, I pull out twenty things--a plough-wedge, a horse nail, an old letter, or a tattered rhyme, in short, everything but my penknife; and that, at last, after a painful, fruitless search, will be found in the unsuspected corner of an unsuspected pocket, as if on purpose thrust out of the way. Still, Sir, I long had a wishing eye to that inestimable blessing, a wife.
... A young fellow, after a few idle commonplace stories from a gentleman in black ... no one durst say black was his eye; while I ... only wanting that ceremony, am made a Sunday's laughing-stock, and abused like a pickpocket. I was well aware, though, that if my ill-starred fortune got the least hint of my connubial wish, my scheme would go to nothing. To prevent this I determined to take my measures with such thought and fore-thought, such cautions and precautions, that all the malignant planets in the hemisphere should be unable to blight my designs .... Heaven and Earth! must I remember? my damned star wheeled about to the zenith, by whose baleful rays Fortune took the alarm.[15a] ... In short, Pharaoh at the Red Sea, Darius at Arbela, Pompey at Pharsalia, Edward at Bannockburn, Charles at Pultoway, Burgoyne at Saratoga--no prince, potentate, or commander of ancient or modern unfortunate memory ever got a more shameful or more total defeat. How I bore this can only be conceived. All powers of recital labour far, far behind. There is a pretty large portion of Bedlam in the composition of a poet at any time; but on this occasion I was nine parts and nine tenths, out of ten, stark staring mad. At first I was fixed in stuporific insensibility, silent, sullen, staring like Lot's wife besaltified in the plains of Gomorrha. But my second paroxysm chiefly beggars description. The rifted northern ocean, when returning suns dissolve the chains of winter, and loosening precipices of long-accumulated ice tempest with hideous crash the foaming deep,--images like these may give some faint shadow of what was the situation of my bosom. My chained faculties broke loose; my maddening passions, roused to tenfold fury, bore over their banks with impetuous, resistless force, carrying every check and principle before them. Counsel was an unheeded call to the passing hurricane; Reason a screaming elk in the vortex of Malstrom; and Religion a feebly-struggling beaver down the roarings of Niagara. I reprobated the first moment of my existence; execrated Adam's folly-infatuated wish for that goodly-looking but poison-breathing gift which had ruined him and undone me; and called on the womb of uncreated night to close over me and all my sorrows.
A storm naturally overblows itself. My spent passions gradually sunk into a lurid calm; and by degrees I have subsided into the time-settled sorrow of the sable-widower, who, wiping away the decent tear, lifts up his grief-worn eye to look-for another wife.
Such is the state of man; to-day he buds His tender leaves of hope; to-morrow blossoms And bears his blushing honours thick upon him; The third day comes a frost, a killing frost, And nips his root, and then he falls as I do.[15]
Such, Sir, has been the fatal era of my life. And it came to pass that when I looked for sweet, behold bitter; and for light, behold darkness.
But this is not all: already the holy beagles begin to snuff 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.
I am so struck, on a review, with the impertinent length of this letter, that I shall not increase it with one single word of apology, but abruptly conclude with assuring you that I am, Sir, yours and misery's most humble servant.
ROBERT BURNS.
[Footnote 14: Proposals for publishing.]
[Footnote 15: Misquoted from Shakspeare's _Henry VIII_.]
[Footnote 15a: Reference to the rejection of his acknowledgment of marriage.]
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XXI.--To MR. DAVID BRICE, SHOEMAKER, GLASGOW.
MOSSGIEL, _June_ 12_th_, 1786.
DEAR BRICE,--I received your message by G. Paterson, and as I am not very _throng_ at present, I just write to let you know that there is such a worthless, rhyming reprobate as your humble servant still in the land of the living, though I can scarcely say in the place of hope. I have no news to tell you that will give me any pleasure to mention, or you to hear.
Poor, ill-advised, ungrateful Armour came home on Friday last. You have heard all the particulars of that affair, and a black affair it is. What she thinks of her conduct now I don't know; one thing I do know--she has made me completely miserable. Never man loved, or rather adored a woman more than I did her; and, to confess a truth between you and me, I do still love her to distraction after all, though I won't tell her so if I were to see her, which I don't want to do. My poor dear unfortunate Jean! how happy have I been in thy arms! It is not the losing her that makes me so unhappy, but for her sake I feel most severely: I foresee she is in the road to, I am afraid, eternal ruin.
May Almighty God forgive her ingratitude and perjury to me, as I from my very soul forgive her; and may His grace be with her and bless her in all her future life! I can have no nearer idea of the place of eternal punishment than what I have felt in my own breast on her account. I have tried often to forget her; I have run into all kinds of dissipation and riots, mason-meetings, drinking-matches, and other mischief, to drive her out of my head, but all in vain. And now for a grand cure; the ship is on her way home that is to take me out to Jamaica; and then, farewell, dear old Scotland! and farewell, dear ungrateful Jean! for never, never will I see you more.
You will have heard that I am going to commence poet in print; and to-morrow my work goes to the press. I expect it will be a volume of about two hundred pages--it is just the last foolish action I intend to do, and then turn a wise man as fast as possible.--Believe me to be, dear Brice, your friend and well-wisher. R. B.
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XXII.--To MR. JOHN RICHMOND, EDINBURGH.
MOSSGIEL, 9_th July_ 1786.
With the sincerest grief I read your letter. You are truly a son of misfortune. I shall be extremely anxious to hear from you how your health goes on; if it is in any way re-establishing, or if Leith promises well; in short, how you feel in the inner man.
No news worth anything; only godly Bryan was in the inquisition yesterday, and half the countryside as witnesses against him. He still stands out steady and denying; but proof was led yesternight of circumstances highly suspicious, almost _de facto_; one of the servant girls made oath that she upon a time rashly entered into the house, to speak in your cant, "in the hour of cause."
I have waited on Armour since her return home; not from the least view of reconciliation, but merely to ask for her health, and to you I will confess it, from a foolish hankering fondness, very ill placed indeed. The mother forbade me the house, nor did Jean show that penitence that might have been expected. However, the priest,[15a] I am informed, will give me a certificate as a single man, if I comply with the rules of the church, which for that very reason I intend to do.[16]
I am going to put on sackcloth and ashes this day. I am indulged so far as to appear in my own seat. _Peccavi, pater, miserere mei_. My book will be ready in a fortnight. If you have any subscribers, return them by Connell. The Lord stand with the righteous; amen, amen. R. B.
[Footnote 15a: Rev. Mr. Auld--Daddie Auld.]
[Footnote 16: This accordingly he did.]
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XXIII--To MR. JOHN RICHMOND.
OLD ROME FOREST,[17] 30_th July_ 1786.
MY DEAR RICHMOND,--My hour is now come--you and I will never meet in Britain more. I have orders, within three weeks at farthest, to repair aboard the _Nancy_, Captain Smith, from Clyde to Jamaica, and to call at Antigua. This, except to our friend Smith, whom God long preserve, is a secret about Mauchline. Would you believe it? Armour has got a warrant to throw me in jail till I find security for an enormous sum. This they keep an entire secret, but I got it by a channel they little dream of; and I am wandering from one friend's house to another, and, like a true son of the Gospel, "have nowhere to lay my head." I know you will pour an execration on her head, but spare the poor, ill-advised girl, for my sake; though may all the furies that rend the injured, enraged lover's bosom await her mother until her latest hour! I write in a moment of rage, reflecting on my miserable situation--exiled, abandoned, forlorn. I can write no more--let me hear from you by the return of the coach. I will write you ere I go.--I am, dear Sir, yours, here and hereafter, R. B.
[Footnote 17: In the neighbourhood of Kilmarnock. Here he had deposited his travelling chest in the house of a relative.]
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XXIV.-To MR. JOHN KENNEDY.
KILMARNOCK, _August_ 1786.
MY DEAR SIR--Your truly facetious epistle of the 3rd instant gave me much entertainment. I was only sorry I had not the pleasure of seeing you as I passed your way; but we shall bring up all our lee way on Wednesday, the 16th current, when I hope to have it in my power to call on you, and take a kind, very probably a last adieu, before I go for Jamaica; and I expect orders to repair to Greenock every day. I have at last made my public appearance, and am solemnly inaugurated into the numerous class.[18] Could I have got a carrier, you should have got a score of vouchers for my authorship; but, now you have them, let them speak for themselves.--
Farewell, dear friend! may guid luck hit you, And 'mang her favourites admit you, If e'er Detraction shore to smit you, May nane believe him, And ony Deil that thinks to get you, Good LORD, deceive him,
R.B.
[Footnote 18: The Kilmarnock Edition of his poems was published on 3ist July.]
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XXV.--To HIS COUSIN, MR. JAMES BURNESS, WRITER, MONTROSE.
MOSSGIEL, _Tuesday Noon_, 26_th Sept._ 1786.
MY DEAR SIR,--I this moment receive yours--receive it with the honest hospitable warmth of a friend's welcome. Whatever comes from you always wakens up the better blood about my heart, which your kind little recollections of my parental friend carries as far as it will go. 'Tis there that man is blest! 'Tis there, my friend, man feels a consciousness of something within him above the trodden clod! The grateful reverence to the hoary earthly authors of his being, the burning glow when he clasps the woman of his soul to his bosom, the tender yearnings of heart for the little angels to whom he has given existence--these Nature has poured in milky streams about the human heart; and the man who never rouses them to action by the inspiring influences of their proper objects loses by far the most pleasurable part of his existence.
My departure is uncertain, but I do not think it will be till after harvest. I will be on very short allowance of time indeed, if I do not comply with your friendly invitation. When it will be I don't know, but if I can make my wish good I will endeavour to drop you a line some time before. My best compliments to Mrs. Burness; I should be equally mortified should I drop in when she is abroad, but of that, I suppose, there is little chance. What I have wrote, heaven knows. I have not time to review it, so accept of it in the beaten way of friendship. With the ordinary phrase, and perhaps rather more than the ordinary sincerity, I am, dear Sir, ever yours, R. B.
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XXVI.-To MRS. STEWART, OF STAIR.[19]
[_Oct_. 1786.?]
MADAM,--The hurry of my preparations for going abroad has hindered me from performing my promise so soon as I intended. I have here sent you a parcel of songs, etc., which never made their appearance, except to a friend or two at most. Perhaps some of them may be no great entertainment to you, but of that I am far from being an adequate judge. The song to the time of "Ettrick Banks"[20] you will easily see the impropriety of exposing much even in manuscript. I think, myself, it has some merit, both as a tolerable description of one of nature's sweetest scenes, a July evening, and as one of the finest pieces of nature's workmanship, the finest indeed we know anything of, an amiable, beautiful young woman; but I have no common friend to procure me that permission, without which I would not dare to spread the copy.
I am quite aware, Madam, what task the world would assign me in this letter. The obscure bard, when any of the great condescend to take notice of him, should heap the altar with the incense of flattery. Their high ancestry, their own great and godlike qualities and actions, should be recounted with the most exaggerated description. This, Madam, is a task for which I am altogether unfit. Besides a certain disqualifying pride of heart, I know nothing of your connections in life, and have no access to where your real character is to be found--the company of your compeers: and more, I am afraid that even the most refined adulation is by no means the road to your good opinion.
One feature of your character I shall ever with grateful pleasure remember--the reception I got when I had the honour of waiting on you at Stair. I am little acquainted with politeness, but I know a good deal of benevolence of temper and goodness of heart. Surely did those in exalted stations know how happy they could make some classes of their inferiors by condescension and affability, they would never stand so high, measuring out with every look the height of their elevation, but condescend as sweetly as did Mrs. Stewart of Stair. R. B.
[Footnote 19: Mrs. Stewart, of Stair, was the first person of note to discover in the Ayrshire ploughman a genius of the first order.]
[Footnote 20: The Bonnie Lass of Ballochmyle]
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XXVII.--TO MR. ROBERT AIKIN, WRITER, AYR.
[_Oct_. 1786.?]
SIR,--I was with Wilson, my printer, t'other day, and settled all our by-gone matters between us. After I had paid him all demands, I made him the offer of the second edition, on the hazard of being paid out of the first and readiest, which he declines. By his account, the paper of a thousand copies would cost about twenty-seven pounds, and the printing about fifteen or sixteen: he offers to agree to this for the printing, if I will advance for the paper, but this, you know, is out of my power; so farewell hopes of a second edition 'till I grow richer! an epocha which, I think, will arrive at the payment of the British national debt.