Still he had some one in his eye--a lady, if you please, with
a fine figure and elegant manners, and who had "seen the politest
quarters in Europe." "I frequently visited her," he writes, "and after
passing regularly the intermediate degrees between the distant formal
bow and the familiar grasp round the waist, I ventured, in my careless
way, to talk of friendship in rather ambiguous terms; and after her
return to ----, I wrote her in the same terms. Miss, construing my
remarks farther than even I intended, flew off in a tangent of female
dignity and reserve, like a mounting lark in an April morning; and wrote
me an answer which measured out very completely what an immense way I
had to travel before I could reach the climate of her favours. But I am
an old hawk at the sport, and wrote her such a cool, deliberate, prudent
reply, as brought my bird from her aerial towerings, pop, down to my
foot, like Corporal Trim's hat." I avow a carnal longing, after this
transcription, to buffet the Old Hawk about the ears. There is little
question that to this lady he must have repeated his addresses, and that
he was by her (Miss Chalmers) eventually, though not at all unkindly,
rejected. One more detail to characterise the period. Six months after
the date of this letter, Burns, back to Edinburgh, is served with a writ
_in meditatione fugæ_, on behalf of some Edinburgh fair one, probably of
humble rank, who declared an intention of adding to his family. About the beginning of December (1787) a new period opens in the story
of the poet's random affections. He met at a tea party one Mrs. Agnes
M'Lehose, a married woman of about his own age, who, with her two
children, had been deserted by an unworthy husband. She had wit, could
use her pen, and had read "Werther" with attention. Sociable, and even
somewhat frisky, there was a good, sound, human kernel in the woman; a
warmth of love, strong dogmatic religious feeling, and a considerable,
but not authoritative, sense of the proprieties. Of what biographers
refer to daintily as "her somewhat voluptuous style of beauty," judging
from the silhouette in Mr. Scott Douglas's invaluable edition, the
reader will be fastidious if he does not approve. Take her for all in
all, I believe she was the best woman Burns encountered. The pair took a
fancy for each other on the spot; Mrs. M'Lehose, in her turn, invited
him to tea; but the poet, in his character of the Old Hawk, preferred a
_tête-à-tête_, excused himself at the last moment, and offered a visit
instead. An accident confined him to his room for nearly a month, and
this led to the famous Clarinda and Sylvander correspondence. It was
begun in simple sport; they are already at their fifth or sixth
exchange, when Clarinda writes: "It is really curious so much _fun_
passing between two persons who saw each other only _once_"; but it is
hardly safe for a man and woman in the flower of their years to write
almost daily, and sometimes in terms too ambiguous, sometimes in terms
too plain, and generally in terms too warm, for mere acquaintance. The
exercise partakes a little of the nature of battering, and danger may be
apprehended when next they meet. It is difficult to give any account of
this remarkable correspondence; it is too far away from us, and perhaps
not yet far enough, in point of time and manner; the imagination is
baffled by these stilted literary utterances, warming, in bravura
passages, into downright truculent nonsense. Clarinda has one famous
sentence in which she bids Sylvander connect the thought of his mistress
with the changing phases of the year; it was enthusiastically admired by
the swain, but on the modern mind produces mild amazement and alarm. "Oh, Clarinda", writes Burns, "shall we not meet in a state--some yet
unknown state--of being, where the lavish hand of plenty shall minister
to the highest wish of Benevolence, and where the chill north wind of
Prudence shall never blow over the flowery field of Enjoyment?" The
design may be that of an Old Hawk, but the style is more suggestive of a
Bird of Paradise. It is sometimes hard to fancy they are not gravely
making fun of each other as they write. Religion, poetry, love, and
charming sensibility, are the current topics. "I am delighted, charming
Clarinda, with your honest enthusiasm for religion," writes Burns; and
the pair entertained a fiction that this was their "favourite subject." "This is Sunday," writes the lady, "and not a word on our favourite
subject. O fy! 'divine Clarinda!'" I suspect, although quite
unconsciously on the part of the lady, who was bent on his redemption,
they but used the favourite subject as a stalking-horse. In the
meantime, the sportive acquaintance was ripening steadily into a genuine
passion. Visits took place, and then became frequent. Clarinda's friends
were hurt and suspicious; her clergyman interfered; she herself had
smart attacks of conscience; but her heart had gone from her control; it
was altogether his, and she "counted all things but loss--heaven
excepted--that she might win and keep him." Burns himself was
transported while in her neighbourhood, but his transports somewhat
rapidly declined during an absence. I am tempted to imagine that,
womanlike, he took on the colour of his mistress's feeling; that he
could not but heat himself at the fire of her unaffected passion; but
that, like one who should leave the hearth upon a winter's night, his
temperature soon fell when he was out of sight, and in a word, though he
could share the symptoms, that he had never shared the disease. At the
same time, amid the fustian of the letters there are forcible and true
expressions, and the love-verses that he wrote upon Clarinda are among
the most moving in the language. We are approaching the solution. In mid-winter, Jean, once more in the
family way, was turned out of doors by her family; and Burns had her
received and cared for in the house of a friend. For he remained to the
last imperfect in his character of Don Juan, and lacked the sinister
courage to desert his victim. About the middle of February (1788), he
had to tear himself from his Clarinda and make a journey into the
south-west on business. Clarinda gave him two shirts for his little son. They were daily to meet in prayer at an appointed hour. Burns, too late
for the post at Glasgow, sent her a letter by parcel that she might not
have to wait. Clarinda on her part writes, this time with a beautiful
simplicity: "I think the streets look deserted-like since Monday; and
there's a certain insipidity in good kind folks I once enjoyed not a
little. Miss Wardrobe supped here on Monday. She once named you, which
kept me from falling asleep. I drank your health in a glass of ale--as
the lasses do at Hallowe'en--'in to mysel'.'" Arrived at Mauchline,
Burns installed Jean Armour in a lodging, and prevailed on Mrs. Armour
to promise her help and countenance in the approaching confinement.