The idea of taking Mary along with him into exile was soon given up by Burns, if it were ever seriously entertained. Within a very few weeks after his parting from her, we find him, in a letter to a friend, speaking of Jean as still holding sway over his affections. He tells how he had been vainly endeavouring, by 'dissipation and riot,' to drive her out of his head, notwithstanding that he now regarded her as even more unfaithful than ever. At the end of March, and, probably, to escape from her father's displeasure, Jean went to Paisley, to stay for some time with an uncle, Andrew Purdie, a carpenter; and here she found a friendly shelter.* She knew no other person in Paisley except a young weaver named Robert Wilson, who was a native of Mauchline, and who had often danced with her at balls there. Finding herself in want of money, she applied for assistance to Wilson, whose trade was in those days so prosperous as to ensure him a fair income. The young man visited her, and advanced the sum she required. He repeated the visit several times, and in consequence a report reached Mauchline that Jean and he were likely to be married. In reality, all that Wilson said to Jean was that, if she did not marry Burns, he would never take a wife while she remained disengaged. The story, however, reached the ears of Burns in its most exaggerated form. † * The following extracts from Mauchline kirk-session records are curious as indicating a desire on the part of Jean's mother to conceal her daughter's disgrace even at this time: April 2d, 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 Lamie and William Fisher to speak to the parents.' 'April 9th, 1786.-James Lamie 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.' 'June 18th, 1786.-Jean Armour, called, compeared not, but sent a letter directed to the minister: I am heartily sorry that I have given and must give your session trouble on my account. I acknowledge that I am with child, and Robert Burns in Mossgiel is the father. I am, with great respect, your most humble servant, (Signed) "JEAN ARMOUR. "MACHLIN, 13th June 1786."' In 'Some Aspects of Robert Burns,' an essay which Robert Louis Stevenson contributed to the Cornhill Magazine (October 1879), and subsequently included in his Familiar Studies of Men and Books (1882), the statement is made in connection with Burns's first meeting with Jean Armour: 'This facile and empty-headed girl had nothing more in view than a flirtation; and her heart, from the first and on to the end of her story, was engaged by another man.' In support of this statement no evidence whatever is offered. It is highly probable that Mr Stevenson was misled by the story as to the Paisley weaver having offered to marry Jean after her quarrel with Burns. TO MR DAVID BRICE, GLASGOW. DEAR BRICE-I received your message by G. Paterson, and as I am very throng [busy] 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 know —she has made myself completely miserable. Never man loved, or rather adored, a woman more than I did her; and, to confess truth between and me, you I do still love her to distraction after all, though I won't tell her so if I see her, which I don't want to do. My poor dear unfortunate Jean! how happy have I been in her arms! It is not the losing her that makes me so unhappy, but for her sake I feel most severely: I foresee she was in the road to-I am afraid-eternal ruin. And those who made so much noise, and showed so much grief, at the thought of her being my wife may some day see her connected in such a manner as may give them more real cause for vexation. I am sure I do not wish it. 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, to 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 riot, 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 works go to the press. I expect it will be a volume 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. I shall expect a letter from you first leisure moment, and believe me, dear Brice, your friend and well-wisher, ROBT. BURns.† MOSSGIEL, 12th June 1786. * Friday, 9th June. + This remarkable letter is now given for the first time in its entirety, and from what there is every reason to believe to be the original, which is part of the Watson Bequest in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. Hitherto the passage in the second paragraph, beginning 'And those who made so much noise,' and ending 'I do not wish it,' had been omitted. It is of great importance, as it proves the extraordinary character of the rumours as to Jean's conduct which had reached Burns's ears, and confirms his views of her relatives' dislike to the prospect of her becoming his wife. Of the David Brice, to whom the letter was written, and who appears to have been on very intimate terms with Burns, nothing definite TO MR JAMES BURNESS, MONTROSE. MY DEAR SIR-I wrote you about three half-twelve months ago by post, and I wrote you about a year ago by a private hand, and I have not had the least return from you. I have just half-a-minute to write you by an Aberdeen gentleman of my acquaintance who promises to wait upon you with this on his arrival, or soon after I intend to send you a letter accompanied with a singular curiosity* in about five or six weeks hence. I shall then write you more at large; meanwhile you are just to look on this as a memento me. I hope all friends are well. I am ever, my dear Sir, your affectionate cousin, ROBT. BURNESS.† MOSSGIEL, near MAUCHLIN, July 5th, 1786. : It serves to add to the strange confusion of the love-affairs of Burns, that a canzonet in which the same ideas we have already seen brought forward regarding an eternal constancy to 'Mary' and'Eliza' are worked up in favour of Jean. THE NORTHERN LASS. Tho' cruel fate should bid us part, Far as the pole and line; Her dear idea round my heart Should tenderly entwine. Tho' mountains rise, and deserts howl, And oceans roar between ; Yet, dearer than my deathless soul, There is no positive evidence that this slight lyric was composed in 1786 (see page 135); a parting 'far as the pole and line' is suspicious. The piece was printed in the second volume of Johnson's Museum, which was in the engraver's hands during the later half of 1787, and appeared in the beginning of 1788. is known, except that he was a Mauchline man who had become a shoemaker in Glasgow. A Thomas Brice, from Glasgow, who settled in Mauchline as a weaver and shoemaker about the end of last century, and ultimately became beadle and gravedigger, may have been a son of David Brice. For a time he went by the name of Thomas Kirkland. Latterly, however, he resumed the name of Thomas Brice. * No doubt the curiosity' was a copy of the Kilmarnock edition. + Burns here returns, out of deference to his cousin, to the mode of spelling the family name which he and Gilbert had abandoned a few months previously. In the midst of the cross-fire of various affections, and in spite of depression caused by the prospects of exile, the pen of Burns was not inactive. On Tuesday [May 23, 1786] there was a meeting of the Highland Society at London for the encouragement of the fisheries in the Highlands, &c. Three thousand pounds were immediately subscribed by eleven gentlemen present, for this particular purpose. The Earl of Breadalbane * informed the meeting that five hundred persons had agreed to emigrate from the estates of M'Donald of Glengary; that they had subscribed money, purchased ships, &c., to carry their design into effect. The noblemen and gentlemen agreed to co-operate with government to frustrate their design; and to recommend to the principal noblemen and gentlemen in the Highlands to endeavour to prevent emigration, by improving the fisheries, agriculture, and manufactures, and particularly to enter into a subscription for that purpose.' Such is an announcement in the Edinburgh Advertiser of 30th May. Burns took up the matter otherwise, and wrote, though he did not publish, an ADDRESS OF BEELZEBU B. To the Right Honorable the Earl of Breadalbine, President of the Right Honorable and Honorable the Highland Society, which met on the 23d of May last, at the Shakespeare, Covent Garden, to concert ways and means to frustrate the designs of FIVE HUNDRED HIGHLANDERS who, as the Society were informed by Mr M'Kenzie of Applecross,† were so audacious as to attempt an escape from their lawful lords and masters whose property they were, by emigrating from the lands of Mr M'Donald of Glengary to the wilds of Canada, in search of that fantastic thingLIBERTY. Long Life, my lord, an' health be yours, Unharmed ragged * John Campbell, fourth Earl of Breadalbane, was born in 1762, was one of the representative peers of Scotland from 1784 to 1802, was created Baron Breadalbane of Taymouth Castle in 1806, was raised to the marquisate of Breadalbane in 1831, and died in 1834. Thomas M'Kenzie of Applecross (a considerable estate in the west of Ross-shire), had a reputation for generosity. Knox, in his Tour of the Highlands, written about this very time, mentions an act of M'Kenzie's precisely contrary in its character to the motive which the poet attributes to him. 'Perceiving,' says Knox, 'the bad policy of servitude in the Highlands, Mr M'Kenzie has totally relinquished all the feudal claims upon the labour of his tenants, whom he pays, with the strictest regard to justice, at the rate of sevenpence or eightpence for every day employed upon his works.' May twin auld Scotland o' a life Faith, you and Applecross were right Nae sage North now, nor sager Sackville, To cowe the rebel generation, An' save the honor o' the nation? deprive propose over those rule frighten They, an' be d-mn'd! what right hae they * Variation in Edinburgh Magazine-' Butchers.' being in harmony with the ironical strain of the poem. 'Lambkins' is generally accepted as ↑ Burns introduces in this poem the names of several of the most prominent figures, both on the British and on the American side, in the War of Independence. The parts played by Franklin (1706–1790), Washington (1732-1799), and Lord North (1732–1792) are too familiar to require detailed description. John Hancock (1737-1793) was President of the Congress of Philadelphia, and is understood to have been the first to sign the Declaration of Independence. Major-general Richard Montgomery (1736-1775), a native of Ireland, and at one time a distinguished soldier in the British army, 'sadly and reluctantly' joined the American side in 1775. He was killed while leading an attack on Quebec on 31st December of that year. George Viscount Sackville (1716-1785) fought at Dettingen and Fontenoy, and fell into disgrace for disobeying orders at the battle of Minden. He was restored to royal favour in 1775, and was Secretary of State for the Colonies during the war. General William Howe (1729-1814) succeeded General Gage in 1775 as commanderin-chief of the British forces in America, commanded at Bunker's Hill, captured New York, defeating Washington at White Plains and Brandywine, but was superseded by Sir Henry Clinton in 1778, because he had not destroyed the American force at Valley Forge. Sir Henry Clinton (1738-1795) captured Charleston two years after being appointed Howe's successor, but after the capitulation of Cornwallis at Yorktown in 1781, he resigned his command and returned to England. |