Robert Burns |
Robert Burns was a poet of great repute when he met Mrs Agnes Maclehose at an Edinburgh tea party in 1787. Agnes (‘Nancy’) was married to James Maclehose, a Glasgow law agent, but had left him because of his cruelty and returned to Edinburgh. Almost at once she and Burns began a passionate correspondence and possibly a full-blown love affair. They used the pen-names ‘Sylvander’ and ‘Clarinda’ to protect their identities should their letters be discovered.
Burns was a hopeless (or, alternatively, terrific) womanizer, and rather impressively managed to impregnate Mrs Maclehose’s maidservant Jenny Clow at the same time as carrying on the heated correspondence with her mistress. He was also maintaining a relationship with Jean Armour in Ayrshire, who had borne him twins in 1786 and was once again pregnant. In 1791, Mrs Maclehose and Robert Burns parted for the last time, and in 1792, she sailed for Jamaica, where her husband now lived, in order to try for a reconciliation. The attempt failed, and she returned to Edinburgh three months later, where she remained until her death in 1841.
That you have faults, my Clarinda, I never doubted; but I knew not where they existed; and Saturday night made me more in the dark than ever. O, Clarinda! why would you wound my soul, by hinting that last night must have lessened my opinion of you. True, I was behind the scenes with you; but what did I see? A bosom glowing with honour and benevolence; a mind ennobled by genius, informed and refined by education and reflection, and exalted by native religion, genuine as in the climes of Heaven; a heart formed for all the glorious meltings of friendship, love, and pity. These I saw. I saw the noblest immortal soul creation ever showed me.
I looked long, my dear Clarinda, for your letter; and am vexed that you are complaining. I have not caught you so far wrong as in your idea – that the commerce you have with one friend hurts you, if you cannot tell every tittle of it to another. Why have so injurious a suspicion of a good God, Clarinda, as to think that Friendship and Love, on the sacred, inviolate principles of Truth, Honour and Religion, can be anything else than an object of His divine approbation? I have mentioned, in some of my former scrawls, Saturday evening next. Do allow me to wait on you that evening. Oh, my angel! how soon must we part! And when can we meet again! I look forward on the horrid interval with tearful eyes. What have not I lost by not knowing you sooner!
I fear, I fear, my acquaintance with you is too short to make that lasting impression on your heart I could wish.
Sylvander
