Third Degree Burns Transcript (Scotland: A Scottish History Podcast)
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CLARINDA: “Talk not of Love! it gives me pain,
For Love has been my foe;
He bound me in an iron chain,
And plung'd me deep in woe!
But Friendship's pure and lasting joys
My heart was formed to prove ;
The worthy object be of those,
But never talk of Love.
The "Hand of Friendship" I accept,
May Honour be our guard !
Virtue our intercourse direct,
Her smiles our dear reward.”
MICHAEL PARK: A woman stands alone on a dock, watching the gleaming, cerulean blue ocean gently wash in and out of the harbour. She swats at a mosquito - the bane of her life for the three months she's been here - before dabbing her forehead with a handkerchief. The heat is oppressive, and from it there seems to be no escape.
In the distance, bobbing up and down in the gentle tidal breaks sat the Rosette. The same ship that had brought her here those months before, was about to take her home.
This was Kingston, Jamaica in April of 1791. One of the jewels in the crown of the British empire, it was populated by nearly 27,000 people, nearly 60% of them were slaves. The woman had come seeking reconciliation with her husband, the kind of man who is often the villain of these stories, a cruel, heartless, wicked slave owner.
James MacLehose had wooed his wife as a youngster, married her in Glasgow, and she had borne him four children in four years. One of them, little William, had died in infancy.
Just before the birth of their fourth child, she decided to leave him - his cruelty and abuse had gone too far. She returned to her father’s home and James found himself in debtors prison before sailing off to Jamaica, sent away by his family who were tired of paying his debts.
He had one last parting shot at his wife, before taking their three sons away from her. He told her in a letter:
“For my part, I am willing to forget what is past, neither do I require an apology from you.”
So there she stood, nine years on from her final separation from the man who had called on her all those years ago and then mistreated her. Three months after having come all this way to reconcile with a man who she reviled to her core, three months after finding that he was living a comfortable family life with his mistress - who was his slave - while mistreating his other workers.
The water ebbed and her blood was sucked by the mosquitoes she despised so much. He heat sapped away at her, taking her will to fight for something she didn’t want that much anyway… until it was time to go home.
She had come to Jamaica to escape something which, in the eyes of her family, would cause further scandal. She had come all this way at their behest to avoid the worst kept secret in Scottish society circles.
Mrs Agnes MacLehose - Nancy to her friends, and we will become her friends - was involved in a scandalous affair with Robert Burns.
From Be Quiet Media, this is Scotland, a show about history and where we made it. I’m Michael Park.
CLARINDA: Friday Evening, 28th December 1787
“The morning sun shines glorious and bright,
And fills the heart with wonder and delight !
He dazzles, in meridian splendour seen,
Without a blackening cloud to intervene.
So, at a distance view'd, your genius bright,
Your wit, your flowing numbers can delight,
But ah! when error's dark'ning clouds arise,
When passion thunders, folly's lightning flies,
More safe we gaze, but admiration dies:
And as the tempting brightness snares the moth,
Sure ruin marks too near approach to both.”
- Clarinda
After she told her husband where he could shove himself, Nancy threw herself into the pursuits that an educated woman in Edinburgh high society could afford to take part in. She was an excellent poet and graced many a society function with her rapier wit and conversational skill.
One such function was a tea party given by Miss Erskine Nimmo in December 1787. Nancy had heard all about a young farmer from Ayrshire whose prose was causing a storm in the Scottish literary scene and saw the party as the perfect chance to meet him. It was on that day, in that room, over tea brought in from the colonies off the backs of slaves that Nancy MacLehose met the love of her life.
It was there that she met Robert Burns.
She took a fancy to the unmarried Burns and invited him to tea at her home in Edinburgh’s Pottersrow. Burns didn’t make it as he fell out of a cab - they say due to the actions of a drunken driver - but I’ve fallen out of a cab before too, and it wasn’t the driver who was drunk.
He wrote to her, explaining the nature of his misfortune. His doctor had told him to stay off his knee - and probably off the whisky.
Over the next couple of months they managed to meet a few times. On one occasion Burns turned up on a sedan chair, a kind of carriage powered by people - one carrying either side - such was the ‘serious, agonising, damn’d hard knock to the knee’ he had taken.
Over the next few months they exchanged letters and verse at a postal-service-infuriating rate and found themselves caught up in a passionate, if unconsummated affair. Nancy was an extremely devout Christian, a Calvinist with staunch morality instilled in her by years of the church. For every part of her which, in reading the letters, you realise she wanted to cast those shackles off, she was bound - and in many cases protected - by her religion. Burns, on the other hand, had no such qualms.
In order to protect her reputation should anyone ever come across the letters, she suggested they take on Arcadian names Nancy became Clarinda and Burns Sylvander. Their correspondence, for all the drawing room niceties and vaunty praise of their esteemed friends, is some of the most love-lorn in history…
ROBERT BURNS: Monday Evening, 9 o'clock, 18th February 1788
The attraction of love, I find, is in an inverse proportion to the attraction of the Newtonian philosophy. In the system of Sir Isaac, the nearer objects are to one another, the stronger is the attractive force; in my system, every mile-stone that marked my progress from Clarinda, awakened a keener pang of my attachment to her. How do you feel my love? Is your heart ill at ease? I fear it. — God forbid that these persecutors should harass that peace, which is more precious to me than my own. Be assured that I shall ever think of you, muse on you, and, in my moments of devotion, pray for you. The hour that you are not in all my thoughts — “be that hour darkness! let the shadows of death cover it! let it not be numbered in the hours of the day!”
When I forget the darling theme,
Be my tongue mute! my fancy paint no more!
And, dead to joy, forget, my heart, to beat
I have just met with my old friend, the ship captain; guess my pleasure — to meet you could alone have given me more. My brother William, too, the young saddler, has come to Glasgow to meet me; and here are we three spending the evening.
I arrived here too late to write by post, but I’ll wrap half a dozen sheets of blank paper together, and send it by the fly, under the name of a parcel. You shall hear from me next post town. I would write you a long letter, but for the circumstance of my friend.
Adieu, my Clarinda! I am just going to propose your health by way of grace drink. SYLVANDER.
It’s a bit more involved than Tinder but I suppose it’s not a million miles away. We’ll have more right after this…
MID ROLL
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Burns, for all his incredible talent as a poet, was very much the over-sexed society playboy he is often portrayed as being and his respect for women as anything more than playthings was often lacking. While he was unmarried at the time of his writing to Nancy, to say he was chaste in her absence would be pretty wide of the mark. Nancy was reluctant to be in a relationship with Burns as she relied on the generosity of her cousin, Lord ____ to provide for her and her children, so a scandalous, physical affair with Burns could see her destitute - not that they let that stop them, at least not all the time.
This led to Burns having a short, abrupt, brief, child-bearing affair with Jenny Clow. A maid who, depending on whose account you read was maid to an Edinburgh household or, worse still, to Nancy herself. For all Burns feelings for Nancy pour out in the words of the letters, he was never beyond a conquest of the physical nature.
In order to legitimise himself as a member of society, Burns had sought a commission with Customs and Excise in his native Ayrshire but the Excise were uncomfortable about commissioning someone who was unmarried and, to all intents and purposes, a flighty poet.
Burns returned to Ayrshire and wrote to Nancy about Jean Armour, a woman whose name he had trodden on numerous times in the past, and with whom he had a child.
"Now for a little news that will please you. I, this morning as I came home, called for a certain woman. I am disgusted with her; I cannot endure her! I, while my heart smote me for the prophanity, tried to compare her with my Clarinda; 'twas setting the expiring glimmer of a farthing taper beside the cloudless glory of the meridian sun. Here was tasteless insipidity, vulgarity of soul, and mercenary fawning; there, polished good sense, heaven-born genius, and the most generous, the most delicate, the most tender Passion. I have done with her, and she with me...."
They married six weeks later. Burns left it to a friend to tell Nancy, and replaced the silouhette he wore of her with one of Jean, featuring the inscription “to err is human; to forgive, divine.” They exchanged a flurry of letters in which he meekly defended his actions, and then, eventually, the correspondence resumed behind Jean Armour’s back - although people say she was fully aware of what was going on.
Then… in November of 1791 Burns received another letter… from AGNES MacLehose
CLARINDA: “Sir, I take the liberty of addressing a few lines in behalf of your old acquaintance, Jenny Clow, who, to all appearance, is at this moment dying. Obliged, from all the symptoms of a rapid decay, to quit her service, she is gone to a room almost without common necessaries, un-tended and unmourned.
In circumstances so distressing, to whom can she so naturally look for aid as to the father of her child, the man for whose sake she has suffered many a sad and anxious night, shut from the world, with no other companions than guilt and solitude? You have now an opportunity to evince you indeed possess those fine feelings you have delineated, so as to claim the just admiration of your country. I am convinced I need add nothing farther to persuade you to act as every consideration of humanity must dictate. I am, Sir, your sincere well-wisher,
A.M.”
The tone, so different, the accusation returned. Burns sent five shillings to be sent on to Jenny before he arrived in Edinburgh the next week. Jenny passed away, and Sylvander and Clarinda met for the last time, on December 6th 1791. She wrote in her diary 40 years later, “This day I can never forget. Parted with Burns, in the year 1791, never more to meet in this world. Oh, may we meet in Heaven!”
Her Sylvander returned to Dumfries, his Clarinda booked passage on the Rosette in an attempt to patch things up with her husband after hearing from a ship captain in Leith that he had been speaking fondly of her. She sent a few lines on before she boarded…
CLARINDA: Agitated, hurried to death, I sit down to write a few lines to you, my ever dear, dear friend! We are ordered aboard on Saturday, to sail on Sunday. And now, my dearest Sir, I have a few things to say to you, as the last advice of her, who could have lived or died with you!
I am happy to know of your applying so steadily to the business you have engaged in; but remember, this life is a short, passing scene ! Seek God's favour, keep His Commandments be solicitous to prepare for a happy eternity! There, I trust, we will meet, in perfect and never-ending bliss.
Read my former letters attentively: let the religious tenets there expressed, sink deep into your mind; meditate on them with candour, and your accurate judgment must be convinced that they accord with the words of Eternal Truth ! Laugh no more at holy things, or holy men: remember, "without holiness, no man shall see God." Another thing, and I have done: as you value my peace, do not write me to Jamaica, until I let you know you may with safety. Write Mary often.
She feels for you! and judges of your present feelings by her own. I am sure you will be happy to hear of my happiness : and I trust you will soon. If there is time, you may drop me a line ere I go, to inform me if you get this, and an- other letter I wrote you, dated the 21st, which I am afraid of having been neglected to be put into the office.
Then in April she stood, on that dock, looking out over the cerulean blue ocean, having found Jamaica the opposite of what she’d hoped. Thinking about the poet. The lesser of two evils. Lustful, untrustworthy, foolish, the man whose parting gift to her had been a remembrance on their final meeting.
A ballad called Ae Fond Kiss, performed here by Cairngorm…
[AE FOND KISS - CAIRNGORM]
Any anniversary, and story, any celebration at which Burns was mentioned all the way into her old age, Nancy MacElhose would write in her diary… “Things I never can forget.”
—
END ROLL
You’ve been listening to Scotland, it was written and produced by me, Michael Park. Ae Fond Kiss was performed for us by Cairngorm - you can find them online at cairngormmusic.com. The voice of Nancy MacElhose was Leanne Milne.
You can find out more about the show on our website, thisisscotland.co, and get in touch with any feedback you have for us on Twitter - @BeQuietMedia or we’re on Facebook if you search for Scotland - Scottish History Podcast