Ae fareweel, and then forever!
Deep in heart-wrung tears I’ll pledge thee,
Warring sighs and groans I’ll wage thee.
Who shall say that fortune grieves him,
While the Star of Hope she leaves him?
Me, nae cheerful twinkle lights me,
Dark despair around benights me.
I’ll ne’er blame my partial fancy;
Naething could resist my Nancy!
But to see her was to love her,
Love but her and love forever.
Had we never lov’d sae kindly,
Had we never lov’d sae blindly,
Never met or never parted,
We had ne’er been brokenhearted …
His general health was not good and he was finding his life harder and harder to cope with. He never seemed to get a minute’s peace. He was a sociable man but the number of visitors coming to his farm from every part of Scotland, eager to meet the Bard, was becoming exhausting. He had recently been listed for promotion to Supervisor and so he decided he must give up Ellisland and farming for good. He would move permanently to Dumfries. He’d had more than enough of the rigours of farming and the move would also cut down the amount of riding he had to do, too often in terrible weather, that increased his aches and pains and feverish symptoms. It would also stop him having to spend so many nights away from home.
The crops and farming effects were auctioned off and a crowd came to fight for what they regarded as a bit of Poet Burns. Robert told Alexander in disgust that he’d never seen such drunkenness. Folk were lying about and decanting, causing even the dogs to get so drunk they couldn’t stand.
He remained sober throughout, just as he’d done at the Riddell household when there had been a competition for ‘The Whistle’. This whistle was of historical significance and was always awarded to the person who could match everyone drink for drink and be the last person able to blow it after everyone else had become unconscious.
Riddell had invited two neighbouring land owners to take part in the competition for the trophy. After the dinner, Robert was elected to sit at a separate small table and watch that there was fair play. Two bottles had been placed in front of him but he asked the servant to bring him pen and paper and while the marathon drinking spree was going on with Riddell and his wealthy neighbours, Robert composed a song. Eventually, after the other men were carried to bed, he walked home.
Once the farm was handed over, Robert packed everything, including his wife and family, into a cart and they set off for Dumfries trailing Jean’s milk cow on a rope behind them. The family with them consisted of Robert and Jean, and their sons – Robert aged four, Francis aged two, William aged eight months – as well as Elizabeth Parks, Anna Parks’ daughter by Robert.
Dumfries was a densely packed, bustling place that crammed along the ridge of the bend of the river Nith. It had a hospital, a poor house, several boarding schools for young ladies, a weekly newspaper, two libraries and branches of three Scottish banks. There were horse and cattle fairs, and mail coaches to and from London, Edinburgh and Portpatrick.
It was a low-lying town and surrounded by undrained marshland which caused the place often to have a pall of cloud hanging low over it. It was humid and oppressive in the summer months and very dank and chilly every winter.
When the river was in spate, it burst its banks and caused distressing flooding. The High Street ran parallel to the river and off it were about a dozen vennels or lanes at right angles. Robert and his family settled in the middle floor of a tenement in the Wee Vennel. It was more often known, however, as the Stinking Vennel because of the rubbish and raw sewage which flooded down its gutters and into the river. The only place Robert found to get some peace to write or study was in a middle room no larger than a bed closet.
The town had a busy social life, helped by three large inns, several taverns, a coffee house and seventy-five smaller premises licensed to sell spirits, not to mention illegal drinking dens. Here nevertheless was a focal point for people with moderate income who enjoyed polite society. The Assembly Rooms were a regular meeting place for well-to-do residents, and a glittering addition to the social scene was provided by the officers of the Fencible infantry and cavalry regiments stationed in the town.
In the flat above the Burns family was George Haugh, the local blacksmith. The flat below was the office of the Distributor of Stamps for Dumfries and Galloway. He was a man called John Syme and soon became one of Robert’s closest friends.
Robert’s friendship with the Riddells continued and he helped Maria to get some of her prose work published. She had written an account of her stay in the West Indies. Robert gave her an introduction to the printer, Willie Smellie, when she went to Edinburgh to visit her husband’s relatives.
He wrote, ‘Mrs Riddell, who takes this letter to town with her, is a character that, even in your own way as a Naturalist and Philosopher, would be an acquisition to your acquaintance … To be impartial, however, the lady has one unlucky failing, a failing you will easily discover, as she seems rather pleased with indulging in it – where she dislikes or despises, she is apt to make no more a secret of it than where she esteems and respects …’
His family now settled in the Wee Vennel, Robert took up new duties in the Port Division. He was immediately plunged into a dangerous job of leading a company of dragoons to capture a French smuggling vessel. He succeeded in bringing the ship and its crew into Dumfries harbour. His courage and success in doing this would have merited much praise from his superiors. However, the next day at the public auction of the ship’s effects, Robert bought the ship’s four guns and dispatched them, at his own expense, to the rebels of the French Convention. This, for a servant of the Crown, was not – to say the least – a wise thing to do. But Burns was finding it more and more difficult to curb his democratic beliefs and feelings. He’d managed to express them in various ways. He’d written songs, ‘A Parcel of Rogues in a Nation’ and ‘Scots, Wha Hae’. The last verse of ‘Scots, Wha Hae’ was a rousing,
Lay the proud usurpers low!
Tyrants, fall in every foe!
Liberty’s in every blow!
Let us do, or die!
Robert could have been in serious trouble, especially in connection with the guns. He escaped dismissal or being officially censured because an influential friend reminded the Excise Commissioner that both he and Burns were Royal Arch Masons. Instead of dismissal, Robert was severely reprimanded and warned about his future conduct. He was also told that he should be obedient and not think. Robert tried to defend his right to think, and his democratic beliefs. He wrote to the Excise Commissioner of his ‘independent British mind, oppression might bend but could not subdue’.
‘Have not I, to me’, he said, ‘a more precious stake in my country’s welfare than the richest Dukedom in it? I have a large family of children, and the probability of more. I have three sons whom, I see already, have brought with them into the world souls ill-qualified to inhabit the bodies of slaves. Can I look tamely on, and see any machinations to wrest from the birthright of my boys, the little independent Britons in whose veins runs my own blood? No! I will not! Should my heart stream around my attempt to defend it!
‘Does any man tell me, that my feeble efforts can be of no service; and that it does not belong to my humble station to meddle with the concerns of a People? I tell him that it is on such individuals as I, that for the hand of support and the eye of intelligence, a nation has to rest. The uninformed mob may swell the nation’s bulk; and the titled, tinsel courtly throng may be its feathered ornament, but the number of those who are elevated enough in life, to reason and reflect; yet low enough to keep clear of the venal contagion of a Court; these are a nation’s strength.’
He survived the cannonade and subsequent political indiscretions, but none of them came anywhere near making him suffer the different kind of anguish that was yet to come.
33
Alexander told
himself that he’d be doing his friend a favour. Robert himself admitted that he was getting absolutely exhausted with not only so many strangers coming to his door, but also the local gentry inviting him to join them in one social occasion or another. Coming home in the evening after riding for many miles, aching in every bone, he wanted and needed to relax with his family.
Isobel was one of the worst offenders – indeed the worst – in putting social pressures on Robert. Apart from anything else, it wasn’t decent for a married woman to be seeking another man’s company so much, or raving about him so much. The Riddells were nearly as bad. Isobel and Susanna had become friends with the Riddells and were included in their social evenings. Robert was always their honoured guest, of course. When Isobel had her soirées, the Riddells came – more to have yet another opportunity to be in the company of Scotland’s Bard, as he was so often referred to now.
The Riddells were the most influential family in the area. If, somehow, they could take a different view of Burns, if they for some reason ostracised him, then all the local gentry would follow suit.
As a result, Robert would have the peace he needed. Even Isobel, for all her admiration of the man, was, he knew, very conscious of what was required by etiquette and society, especially the upper realms of the rural society she was proud to be part of. There were unwritten rules and invisible barriers over which one did not step. Isobel was carried away by Robert because she believed he was not only a genius, but a gentleman.
Alexander thought of a plan. They were all going to the Riddells for supper. There were other friends of the Riddells there including a party of officers. During supper, Alexander could see that the young officers at the table were feeling put out by Burns’ sparkling conversation and by how he was entertaining the ladies and taking up all their attention. Alexander knew that they would be more than willing to take Burns down a peg or two. After the supper, the ladies retired to the drawing room and left the men to their ‘toasts’ and ‘healths’.
Sometimes Robert retired with the ladies to avoid the heavy and prolonged drinking. It played so much havoc with his digestive system and nervous headaches. On this occasion, Alexander persuaded him to stay with the men, most of whom were wearing the King’s uniform. All of them, especially Alexander, kept diverting Robert with stories of people they’d met while abroad. Robert was particularly intrigued with French people and the state of the nation there. At the same time, Burns’ glass kept being refilled. Alexander knew of course that it took very little to make Burns drunk. Soon he became very drunk and fired up to a degree of reckless abandonment.
Alexander proposed ‘a rag’. They were all to re-enact the ‘Rape of the Sabine Women’. Each of the men would be a Roman and each was allotted a woman. Robert, who had become very enthusiastic about the theatre and any kind of acting, had no problem agreeing to the supposed play acting. They were all going to dash into the drawing room together, pounce on the woman allocated to each ‘Roman’ and kiss her.
As planned, they burst open the drawing room door. But all the men held back in the shadows of the other room while Robert rushed in, grabbed Maria Riddell and kissed her passionately. The shocked silence in the room made Robert suddenly realise that he was alone. All the ladies, especially Maria, were horrified and affronted. Robert realised that he had been the victim of a trick.
When the men entered the room, they pretended to be shocked at the animal behaviour of a common gauger. So at the root of it, it was a question of class. A gauger in liquor had insulted and affronted a lady of the ‘quality’ and in front of other members of the gentry. Class, after all, was class. Such behaviour was unforgivable.
Burns was ordered from the house. Speechless with shame, he left alone and in disgrace to travel back to Dumfries. He was near to tears in the acuteness of his anguish. Next day he wrote a long letter. Although it began the words, ‘To the men of the company I make no apology … insisted on my drinking more than I chose … no right to blame me …’, it went on: ‘But to you, madam, I have much to apologise for. Your good opinion I valued as one of the greatest acquisitions I had made on earth, and I was truly a beast to forfeit it. To all the ladies I present my humblest contritions for my conduct, and my petition for their gracious pardon … an intoxicated man is the vilest of beasts … it is not in my nature to be brutal to any one … to be rude to a woman, when in my senses, was impossible with me.’
His letter did nothing to reverse the situation. Maria and the rest of the Riddells ignored him, snubbed him. Not only the Riddells; all the local gentry did the same. Even Isobel McKenzie passed him in the street.
Susanna was the only one who came to speak to him and try to give him comfort. She said she agreed it was a stupid and cruel trick. She had heard the men sniggering behind the door and knew it had been their plan to humiliate him.
She was sure that Alexander was sorry for any part he had played in what had happened. Alexander had not contacted him in person, but had written apologising for any part he might have unwittingly taken during the evening. He said he had been so drunk, he could not remember. Now he had loyalty to his wife to consider and they had decided to go to Edinburgh to visit her parents. Robert said he knew who would be to blame. It would be the young officers – snobbish, epauletted puppies – trying to put the ploughman gauger in his place.
He did not care about them. They were not worth thinking about. But he cared very deeply about losing the friendship of Maria and Elizabeth, and Elizabeth’s husband, his dear friend Robert Riddell.
And of course, Alexander. He knew that Alexander would have to consider his wife but he was grateful when eventually Alexander came to see him on his own.
‘Isobel, alas,’ Alexander said, ‘refuses to have anything more to do with you, Robert.’
Every apology to the Riddells was ignored and Robert continued to be passed on the street with only an icy glance, especially by Maria and Elizabeth. Robert’s anguish and regret turned to hurt and anger, then to nastiness and a desire to wound. But he was deeply touched by Susanna’s loyalty. She visited him as often as she could and he tried to show his gratitude for her continuing and devoted friendship by reading his poems to her. He knew this pleased her greatly.
He tried to concentrate on his song writing. He wrote ‘The Deil’s awa’ wi’ th’Exciseman’, among others. Also, he composed love songs, ‘Bonie Wee Thing’ and ‘Wilt Thou be my Dearie?’. However, he was finding himself once more on dangerous ground with the Excise authorities. He was aware of their watching presence. They were now suspicious about his The Rights of Women. They suspected it mirrored The Rights of Man by Thomas Paine. Paine’s book had been banned. It was a dangerous business to own a copy, as Robert did. He was also aware that he had enemies in and around Dumfries. Someone kept spreading rumours about him. One rumour being spread was that he’d remained seated in the theatre with his hat on when ‘God Save the King’ was sung, while everyone else stood up with their heads uncovered.
Robert tried to keep silent. But for a man with such a democratic tongue it was painfully frustrating. He had at least to try, for the sake of providing some substance for his wife and children. For their sakes as much as his own, he struggled to avoid the fate of Paine and Thomas Muir. Paine had been tried, in absentia, in London and outlawed from England forever. Muir, an enthusiastic follower of Paine, had been sentenced to fourteen years’ penal servitude in Botany Bay.
Robert was accused of being too pro-France. He certainly disliked the Tory administration of William Pitt and had nothing but contempt for the reigning royals, the House of Hanover, but he had complete loyalty to his country and his people. He could not deny, however, like Fox and the Whig party Fox led, his complete opposition to war: ‘War I deprecate, ruin and misery to thousands are in the blast that announces the destructive demon.’
He was an anti-militarist who yearned for the brotherhood of man. In this most dangerous political climate, he was going to publish more dangerous verses but
his friends kept him back and persuaded him to give his copy of Paine’s The Rights of Man and other radical books to a neighbour, George Haugh the blacksmith, to hide in his house.
Susanna also pleaded with him to be more careful. She even offered to take away his ‘dangerous books’, as she called them, and hide them herself. He smiled at her childish eagerness. He thanked her and explained that he could not get her involved and risk causing her any trouble. Despite his friends’ entreaties, he still managed to go ahead and express his dearly held beliefs in song.
Is there, for honest poverty
That hings his head, and a’ that?
The coward-slave, we pass him by –
We dare be poor for a’ that!
For a’ that and a’ that,
Our toils obscure, and a’ that,
The rank is but the guinea’s stamp –
The man’s the gowd for a’ that. (gold)
What tho’ on hamely fare we dine –
Wear hoddin grey, and a’ that?
Gie fools their skills and knaves their wine –
A man’s a man for a’ that;
For a’ that and a’ that,
Their tinsel show, and a’ that;
The honest man, though e’er sae poor,
Is king o’ men for a’ that.
Ye see yon birkie ca’ed a lord, (conceited fellow)
Wha struts, and stares, and a’ that;
Tho’ hundreds worship at his word,
He’s but a coof for a’ that; (fool)
His ribband, star, and a’ that.
The man of independent mind,
He looks and laughs at a’ that.
A prince can mak’ a belted knight,
A marquis, duke and a’ that;
But an honest man’s aboon his might,
Guide faith he mauna fa’ that! (may not lay claim to)
A Darkening of the Heart Page 23