The McLehose Bible and the Clarinda Connection

                                    

I've finally decided to sell this fascinating Old Testament, with its connection to Robert Burns and his 'Clarinda'. It will be in Thomson, Roddick and Callan's next Fine Art and Antiques sale on 20th November. Here is its story: 

I bought this beautiful little book, with its traditional Scottish ‘herringbone’ binding, some twenty years ago. At the time, I was in the process of researching the life of Robert Burns, initially for a commissioned BBC radio play, but then for my novel about his wife, Jean Armour, the Jewel, which was eventually published by Saraband in 2016, along with a companion volume of Burns’s poems and songs written for Jean herself.

Who was Elizabeth?

With the bible, came an accompanying letter: 
25th December 1925
The enclosed Vol 1 of Bible belonged to my great grandmother Mrs Elizabeth McLehose or Graham and contains the names and dates of birth of her children except Lilias the youngest. It was given to me by my cousin Mrs Jane Hamilton or Patterson, Acton Hill, Stafford, who states she found it among Aunt Kate’s effects after her death. It probably got into Aunt Kate’s hands through her mother Elizabeth Graham or Hamilton, a daughter of Elizabeth McLehose.
James Graham.

For the genealogists among you, the inscriptions in the bible, front and back, are as follows (just as she wrote them herself.) 
Elizebath (sic) McLehose her bible June 30th 1779
John Graham and Elizebath McLehose was married the 26th of Aprill 1779 by Mr Furlong Minister in the Chapel of Ease Glasgow.
Helen was born the 18th day of April at 5 oClock Afternoon 1780
John Graham was born 27th of August at one oClock Afternoon 1781
James was born 5th May at nine oClock Afternoon 1783
William was born the 26th of Febry at one oClock Morning 1785
Patrick was born 26th August at two oClock Forenoon 1786
Kathrine was born the 5th of May at two oClock Forenoon 1788
Elizebath was born Nov 25 at one oClock Forenoon 1789
Marrion was born June 27th at two oClock Forenoon 1793
Adam was born the 28th of January at six oClock Forenoon 1795
Lilias born 1801 - (in a different hand.)

Elizabeth, (or Elizebath as she spelled her name) may have had two of these books – an Old and a New Testament, but it’s possible that she took the New Testament – which hasn’t survived - to the kirk, more often, whereas this Old Testament might have stayed at home, and would have been where she kept a record of her growing family. All the same, it still has its own soft leather case.

Elizabeth McLehose, born in 1753, married John Graham of Kittochside, East Kilbride, in 1779. Wester Kittochside is where the Scottish National Museum of Rural Life is now based, although I think this would have been an adjacent farm. John was a wealthy farmer, as testified by this book (possibly a gift on the occasion of the marriage) – a rare and expensive item, then as now.

 A Burns Connection?

I instantly wondered if there was any connection between Elizabeth McLehose and James McLehose, husband of Agnes Craig, Robert Burns’s Nancy, or ‘Clarinda’ as he called her in his many letters. 

A certain amount of research, with some help from a descendent, Judy Philip, in Australia, revealed that this was indeed the case. They were first cousins, of similar age, and would almost certainly have known each other, especially given the somewhat scandalous tale of Nancy, her unsatisfactory husband, and the celebrity poet.

Nancy

Agnes ‘Nancy’ Craig was born in Glasgow in 1758, the daughter of a prominent surgeon, Andrew Craig. Her mother was Christian McLaurin who died in childbirth in 1767, leaving a young family in the care of their father. Nancy was a sickly child, but grew into an exceptionally pretty and accomplished young woman.

Nancy’s husband, James McLehose, was a lawyer. As a suitor, he was not at all welcomed by Nancy’s father, but he persisted in his courtship, and the couple seem to have met in secret. One of his expedients was to buy all the seats on a coach between Glasgow and Edinburgh, when Nancy was travelling, and then to woo her throughout the long journey. It’s hard to believe that Nancy herself didn’t know about and acquiesce in this ruse.

They married on 1st July 1776 when Nancy was eighteen and she gave birth to four children in four years, the first of whom died in infancy. The marriage was not a happy one, and there are stories of drunkenness and cruelty. Shortly before the birth of her fourth child, late in 1780, Nancy left her husband and returned to her family home in Glasgow’s Saltmarket, citing his cruelty. James spent some time in a debtor’s prison, then managed to take custody of their surviving children, but soon returned them to her. In 1782, he tried to persuade her to emigrate to Jamaica with him, where his Uncle John was a plantation owner. Nancy refused.

Her father, meanwhile, had died in that same year, having lost most of his money, and Nancy moved to Edinburgh, to a flat off Potterrow. She was supported by small charitable contributions from wealthy relatives and was very much reliant on their good will.

'Sylvander and Clarinda'

Nancy was intelligent and well educated. She wrote poetry and instigated the first meeting with Burns, at a tea party in a friend’s house, in December 1787. He was good looking and charming, and she was instantly attracted to him and he to her. She invited him to visit her at home, but he had injured his knee in a fall from a coach and was confined to his lodgings, so the relationship developed by means of an increasingly intense and flirtatious correspondence, in the course of which, romantic Nancy suggested that they call each other Sylvander and Clarinda, to maintain a certain anonymity. This was a reference to the fashionable fantasy of the classical 'pastoral' life of the shepherd and shepherdess, living in Arcadia, although the poet would have been well aware of the grim realities. Nevertheless, he was happy to indulge Nancy, and had occasionally drawn on this myth himself, in order to be taken seriously by the Edinburgh 'literati'. What else was a farmer poet to do? 

By the end of January, they had met six times. She would certainly have been vulnerable to the advances of this devastatingly attractive man, a celebrity in the city, lionised as an eighteenth century superstar, but she was also a married woman, and afraid of scandal.

She was twenty nine when they met and had been separated from her husband for seven years. It’s doubtful if the ‘affair’ ever amounted to more than a kiss and a cuddle alongside a very overheated  correspondence. Bear in mind that letters could be sent and received on the same day in the city. Nancy resisted any real physical intimacy (as poor Jean Armour clearly could not!) while the poet indulged in his usual self dramatisation and a number of lavish attempts to persuade her into bed, both poetic and actual. 

‘I am at this moment ready to hang myself for a young Edinburgh Widow, who has wit and beauty more murderously fatal than the assassinating stiletto of the Sicilian banditti,’ he wrote to a friend. Of course Nancy was not a widow, as she persisted in reminding him. The relationship resulted in one of the most beautiful songs of lost love ever written, in Ae Fond Kiss, although we should remember that he wrote Red Red Rose for Jean Armour, an equally beautiful celebration of lifelong married love. 

In February 1788, Burns wrote to Nancy from Mossgiel near Mauchline, in very disparaging terms about Jean, followed by a reference on 2nd March 1788 to his proposed farm at Ellisland being only a day and a half ride from Edinburgh, clearly planning future meetings – although it’s hard not to see this as more fantasy.

The following day, on 3rd March, Jean gave birth prematurely to his second set of twins, one of whom died on 10th and the other on 23rd March. By 12th March, Burns had returned to Edinburgh on publishing business, and there were a few more love letters to Nancy, albeit less passionate than previously. He seems to have been feeling guilty. 

The Aftermath

Some six weeks later, the poet and Jean were officially married, possibly in Gavin Hamilton’s house, in Mauchline. There is some evidence that they had never not been married, since they had agreed to marry a couple of years earlier, a binding contract under Scots law, but Jean's parents had objected, strenuously. In a letter to his friend James Smith, dated 28th April 1788, Burns is writing happily about his marriage to Jean and his intention of buying her a printed shawl. The marriage wasn’t officially acknowledged in the Mauchline kirk until August of 1788, probably on the insistence of the minister, the Reverend Mr Auld.

Burns left it to his friend Ainslie to give Nancy the bad news.

Her subsequent response to him has not survived, but in his reply, dated a whole year after his letter disparaging Jean, he points out that he has behaved pretty well in the circumstances and refers to Nancy’s accusation of ‘perfidious treachery’! Nevertheless, the correspondence with Nancy continued, intermittently, although by December 1791 Burns is pointing out that he has sent Nancy six letters to which she has not responded – although perhaps she had set off for Jamaica by that time.

In 1791, Nancy sailed for Jamaica in a misguided attempt to reunite with her husband. She arrived to find that Elizabeth’s cousin, James McLehose, was living with a local woman, Ann Challon Rivere, who had given birth to his daughter. With admirable strength of character, she turned around and sailed back to Edinburgh on the same ship.

It’s clear that Jean was aware of her husband’s correspondence and tolerated it, although the ‘disappearance’ of some letters that the poet mentions, sent via Nancy’s friend Mary Peacock, and one about Nancy’s health, sent to the poet from Mary herself, may be connected with Jean’s loss of patience as she coped with a difficult domestic situation. The two women even met, after the death of the poet, a scene which I imagined in The Jewel. I think Nancy's affection was genuine.

What the owner of this little bible thought of her errant cousin, his wife and her association with the greatest poet Scotland has ever known, is a matter for speculation. It’s hard not to imagine that it must have been hotly debated at Kittochside, although perhaps not within earshot of the children. One wonders if – when James briefly took custody of his and Nancy’s young children – he might even have left them with his cousin Elizabeth and her husband for a time. 

A tenuous connection, for sure, but a fascinating one, this beautiful book and its inscriptions are a  gateway to a more widely known tale of love and loss and the creation of one of the finest love songs the world has ever known. 

'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.' 

Sex Pest? Robert Burns? I don't think so!

Sex Pest?
Over the past few days, some of our newspapers have been touting the notion that Robert Burns was a 'sex pest'. Quite apart from the stunning lack of historical perspective displayed, the comparison seems peculiarly invidious to me. And here's why.

First of all, the poet had a great many well documented, close but largely platonic friendships with women of all ages. To be fair, he probably wished some of them were more than platonic, especially when the woman in question was young and pretty. But there's little evidence that he forced himself on anyone who wasn't willing and - a rare quality in an eighteenth century man - he seemed happy to write in the character of a woman in the songs he wrote himself as well as those like this one that he collected, here in an incomparable performance from the late Andy M Stewart.

Jean Armour's abiding affection for her husband.
To label as rape the encounter with Jean Armour described in the notorious 'horse litter letter' is to deliberately over-simplify a relationship of great complexity.  So complex and dramatic, in fact, that I wrote a novel about it: The Jewel, published to critical acclaim by Saraband in 2016. I've spent years researching Jean, who has been neglected not to say denigrated by many Burns's biographers. Even Catherine Carswell, who might have been expected to have some sympathy, dismissed her as an illiterate and 'unfeeling heifer'.

Portrait thought to be of Jean in middle age,
by John Moir, courtesy of Rozelle House, Ayr.

Nothing could have been further from the truth. The more I discovered about Jean, the more I found to love. She emerges from a morass of small and often neglected but vital references, pieced together bit by careful bit, as a woman of strength and wisdom, with an abiding affection for her husband.

Disapproving parents and an impatient lover.
In 1786 the poet had offered Jean marriage and then taken her hesitation for rejection. She had little choice in the matter. She was pregnant. With, as it turned out, twins. Her father had torn up the marriage contract and whisked her away to relatives in Paisley. She found herself trying to please both disapproving parents and an impatient lover, a dilemma which would cause family tensions even today.

Burns wrote a string of angry poems and letters. Never man loved or rather adored a woman more than I did her, and to confess a truth between you and me, I do still love her to distraction after all, though I won't tell her so if I were to see her, which I don't want to do. He could self dramatise as much as the next young man - 'hopeless, comfortless I'll mourn a faithless woman's broken vow!' he wrote, but beneath the exaggerated lines runs a deep vein of genuine passion: a prolonged howl of outrage, grief, hurt pride and thwarted desire.

Mossgiel as it once was.

A fond father.
He was driven half mad with it. He may have courted Highland Mary on the rebound, but Edinburgh and potential fame called and that ultimately tragic relationship was short-lived. Meanwhile, Jean's babies were born. Rab was always a fond father and, once weaned, the boy, Robert, went to Mossgiel to be brought up by the poet's mother and sisters while the girl, Jean, stayed with her mother and grandparents along the road in Mauchline.

The relationship was still fraught.

In Edinburgh, Burns met pretty Nancy McLehose. They corresponded under daft pastoral names. The whole Clarinda -Sylvander episode seems to most grown women like an exercise in (almost certainly thwarted) seduction, by means of overheated letters and the occasional equally overheated meeting. The lady was married, middle class and though physically tempted, she was cautious. There's no evidence that the affair involved anything more than a certain amount of touch and go. She probably let him touch, but then she made him go.

Pregnant again.
Unlike Jean who in 1788  found herself again carrying twins.

By John Faed

The poet had been making the most of his Edinburgh celebrity even as he recognised that it might prove ephemeral. Her parents had learned of his financial success and begun to change their minds about him as a prospective son-in-law. Jean and Robert had made hay while the grudging sun of this approval shone. They could not, as the saying goes, keep their hands off each other, but this seems to have been as much at Jean's instigation as the poet's and to suggest otherwise is to deny agency to this strong woman. She was living in the parental home in the Cowgate in Mauchline. James Armour was a man of some consequence in the town who still didn't trust Burns. Jean could have insisted on a chaperone. Instead, she went out walking with the father of her weans, through the woods and fields, well away from the busy household and the prying eyes of the neighbours.

It says a great deal about their relationship and the manner of their courting that in later years, the song O Whistle and I'll Come To Ye, My Lad was a great favourite with Jean, who had her own version  - tho father and mither and a should gae mad, thy Jeanie will venture wi ye my lad. Sadly, this isn't generally the version sung, but it should be.

A girl out of pocket.
The pregnancy must have alarmed them, although it couldn't have come as a surprise. Burns went back to Edinburgh feeling guilty - and truculent - about the emotional and physical mess he had left behind. Unlike many men, he couldn't quite ignore it either. Soon, both of them would be in mourning for their thirteen month old daughter who seems to have died in a domestic accident.

I am a girl out of pocket and by careless murdering mischance too, he writes, bitterly.

He doesn't blame Jean, but I've often wondered if he blamed her mother, since the two were never close, even when Jean's father was reconciled to the marriage. When this second pregnancy began to show, Jean was sent to stay with Willie Muir and his wife at the mill near Tarbolton, a few miles from Mauchline.

Houses at Willie's Mill by Janet Muir

At Willie's Mill.
Willie Muir had been a friend to the poet's father, William, and would have been well acquainted with the Armour family too. In fact the story told in Mauchline isn't that the Armours had 'shown Jean the door' - a myth the poet himself liked to perpetuate - but that, anxious to shield their daughter and themselves from the Mauchline gossips, they waited until Jean was visiting the Muirs and then suggested that she stay put.

Certainly this second pregnancy, unlike the first, seems to have escaped the notice of the Kirk Session, since there is no reference to it in the minutes book for those months. Willie and his wife were fond of Jean and when the poet came back from Edinburgh, I reckon Willie told the younger man exactly what he thought of his behaviour. It didn't go down well, but it must have stung. Muir would know all the right buttons to push, where the troubled relationship between Burns and his late father was concerned.

Near the scene of the 'horse litter letter'.

The notorious letter.
And so we come to the subject of that notorious letter. Burns had arrived in Mauchline, all high handedness and self righteous sympathy. But stubborn as a mule too. No, he would not marry her. She had rejected him once and that was that. His protests ring a little too loudly for truth. The best we can say of his behaviour at this time is that it is out of character. He took a room for Jean in Mauchline and later, in a horribly laddish letter to a friend, he bragged that he had made love to a receptive Jean on some 'dry horse litter' in the nearby stable.

I suspect the truth was that Jean, utterly conflicted, submitted to him without much enjoyment and probably in some pain. This was contrary to all their past encounters. I think he knew it, was immediately guilty about it and felt the need to justify it. To recast it as something it was not. The babies, little girls, born soon after, were premature and did not survive for long.

Marriage.
Never a cruel man, Burns had betrayed not just Jean but his own self imposed code of kindness. Even the briefest analysis of his poems and songs shows just how often he uses that word as one of the greatest of all virtues. How often he uses it to describe Jean herself. Even while he was writing pompous rubbish to 'Clarinda' about how much he despised Jean, he was planning something quite different: a future into which she would fit as easily as breathing. He must have known that too.

Within an extraordinarily short space of time, he had trotted back to Mauchline seeking her forgiveness and the couple were officially married - traditionally at Gavin Hamilton's house, just along the road from Jean's lodgings. There is some evidence, in fact, that they were never not married, according to Scots law. But now the liaison was officially recognised.

Gavin Hamilton's house.

The Honeymoon.
The honeymoon period, as described in songs and letters, seems to have been both passionate and happy. This was the time of the exuberant I hae a wife of my ain and the simple but beautiful there's not a bonnie flower that springs by fountain, shaw or green, there's not a bonnie bird that sings, but minds me o my Jean.

Ellisland

Who among us would not melt at the final verse of Parnassus Hill, in which - travelling between Ellisland where their new farm was being built, and Mauchline where Jean was waiting for him - the poet envisaged Corsencon  Hill near Cumnock as Parnassus with Jean as his sweet muse?

By night, by day, afield, at hame, the thoughts of thee my breast inflame, and aye I muse and sing thy name - I only live to love thee. Though I were doomed to wander on, beyond the sea, beyond the sun, till my last weary sand was run - till then, and then I love thee.

Nobody knows.
Nobody ever knows what really goes on in a marriage and we sit in judgment at our peril. From the moment when they first set eyes on each other, Jean was never absent from Rab's story for very long. She lived for many years after his death and had offers of marriage, but turned them all down. She and James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, were good friends. She even took tea with Nancy McLehose. (Oh to have been a fly on the wall at that meeting!)

She kept flowers in the windows of the house in Dumfries and was endlessly patient with her many visitors. She looked after her grand-daughter for a short time and the girl never forgot her kindness. She visited Gilbert, Rab's brother, on the East Coast, but she was a poor correspondent and always neglected to tell them that she had arrived home safely, so he wrote her plaintive letters saying that for all they knew she could have fallen over Ettrick Stane on the journey.

I think I would have liked her immensely.

A kindly woman and a good humoured man.
I'm often asked what I think of Burns, having spent so long on research for my novel. I always say that I can feel the warm blast of his charm, his sexuality, but most of all his good humour, some 230 years later. There are very few 'sex pests' who would elicit that response. Very few too, who would elicit the kind of lifelong love shown by a fine woman like Jean Armour.

If you want to read more about Jean, the true story, you can seek out The Jewel. You should be able to find or order it in Waterstones and other good bookshops, as well as in the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum in Alloway and - of course - online. There's also a companion book called For Jean, in which I've collected the poems, songs and letters for and about Jean, so that you can read them for yourself.

The truth is rarely simple, but we owe it to history to inform ourselves before making 21st century judgments. What do you think?

All about Jean.

.

Read the poems and letters for yourself.