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Robert Burns and His Lifein Pictures

Prof. Dr. Se-Soon LeeChung-Ang University

2003

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All the pictures are scanned and edited by Se-Soon Stephen Lee.

No part of this is to be reproduced by any means without permission from the editor.

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Full length portrait of Burns by Alexander Nasmyth. Although painted in 1828, 32 years after the poet’s death, it is the only authentic full-length portrayal of Burns. The head is based on Nasmyth’s bust portrait of 1787, done from life, and the body, on his pencil-sketch, also of 1787. Contemporary accounts confirm that this is how Burns dressed in Edinburgh. Sir Walter Scott said he looked like “a very sagacious country farmer of the old Scotch school”.

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A map of Ayrshire and Dumfriesshire in south-west Scotland where Robert Burns spent most of his life.

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Alexander Reid’s miniature water-color on ivory portrait of Burns, is the last, and perhaps the best likeness of the poet. It was painted in Dumfries, the year before his death, and Burns called it “the most remarkable likeness of what I am at this moment that I ever think was taken of anybody.”

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Bust-portrait of Burns by Alexander Nasmyth. It was commissioned by William Creech to be engraved for the Edinburgh edition of Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect.

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Robert Burns’s signature

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Mount Oliphant Farm, Doonholm, Ayrshire. The Burnes family moved here in 1766 when Robert was seven. The 11years spent here were

marred by poverty and hardship, especially for Robert who took on most of the farmwork.

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Lochlea Farm, Tarbolton. William Burnes, Robert’s father, moved here with his family in 1777 and remained here until his death in

1784. It was a period of worry and illness for him, and of the growing independence of Robert.

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Agnes Broun (1732-1820), the poet’s mother. Her singing gave Burns his enduring love of the Scottish song. Widowed in 1784, she was looked after by Robert’s brother Gilbert, and she died at his home in Bast Lothian, outliving her famous son by 20 years.

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Burns Cottage. The clay cottage in Alloway where Robert Burns was born 25 January 1759, and spent the first seven years

of his life.

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Kirk Alloway. This early 16th-century church was last used in 1756 and was already roofless during Burns’ childhood.

William Burnes is buried in the churchyard.

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Brig O’Doon and Burns Monument. Beyond is the monument built in 1823 by public subscription.

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An illustration from one of the first poems, The Jolly Beggars. The scene for this poem was taken from Poosie Nansie’s Inn in

Mauchline, a favorite haunt of the young poet.

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Mossgiel Farm, rented by Robert and his brother Gilbert at £90 a year in 1784. It was here that Burns wrote and compiled the great poems in the

Edinburgh and Kilmarnock first editions.

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Gilbert Burns (1760-1827). In 1786 Robert transferred his share of Mossgiel Farm to his brother Gilbert who kept it going through a loan from the profits on the Kilmarnock edition. Gilbert also looked after Robert’s first illegitimate child, “Dear-bought Bess”. At the age of 31 he married a Kilmarnock girl who bore him eleven children.

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The statue to Highland Mary at Dunoon. Mary Campbell (1763-86) was an Argyllshire girl whom Burns fell in love with and wanted to take to Jamaica. At Greenock, where she met the poet, she died. Burns said it was a ‘malignant fever’, others say she died in childbirth.

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The statue of Robert Burns in the center of Ayr. It was erected by the people of Ayrshire, the county where Burns lived during his early life.

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Dr. Thomas Blacklock (1721-91). Blinded by smallpox in infancy, Dr. Blacklock was a retired minister with a reputation as a poet and musician in Edinburgh. According to Burns it was his opinion of Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect that convinced him that he should stay in Scotland instead of going to Jamaica: “a letter from Dr. Blacklock to a friend of mine overthrew all my schemes by rousing poetic ambition. The doctor belonged to a set of critics for whose applause I had not even dared to hope.”

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The Kilmarnock edition of Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, Burns’s first appearance in print. It was published on 31 July 1786, when the poet was 27. It cost three shillings a copy and the edition of 612 was sold in a month. For a first book it is remarkable, containing the bulk of Burns’s poetic achievement, for in the last ten years of his life he concentrated more on

song.

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Margaret Chalmers (1763-1843). Burns probably first met Peggy Chalmers at Mauchline and renewed his friendship in Edinburgh, where Peggy played the piano and sang for Dr. Blacklock. She inspired several songs and Burns spent eight days with her during his Stirlingshire tour in 1787. Although she turned down his proposal of marriage, she meant so much to him that Burns wrote to her from his farm at Ellisland in Dumfries saying he “lived more of real life with you in eight days than I can do with almost anybody I meet with in eight years.”

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A beautiful specimen of Burns’s calligraphy—a letter written during his stay in Edinburgh.

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Sibbald’s Circulating Library, by W. B. Johnstone 1786, depicting some of the famous people of the day. From left to right these are: Dr. Hugh

Blair, Henry Mackenzie, Robert Burns, Alexander Nasmyth, David Allan, James Bruce, Lord Monboddo, Miss Burnett, James Sibbald, Dr. Adam

Fergusson, and the boy Walter Scott.

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An illustration from Burns’s poem “The Devil Cam Fiddlin Thro’ the Town”.

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Henry Mackenzie (1745-1831) whose review in The Lounger of December 1786 launched Burns as a literary phenomenon of the first order. Mackenzie wrote in his review of the poet’s “humble station”, “Lowness of his birth”, but praised the genius of “this heaven-taught ploughman”. Burns was in fact a well read, highly intelligent, tenant-farmer but Mackenzie’s image of him as a noble savage has remained to this day.

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William Smellie, who printed the Edinburgh edition and founded the Crochallan Fencibles, a pseudo-military drinking club. It was for such as “Old Sinful Smellie” that Burns put together the bawdy Merry Muses of Caledonia.

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William Creech (1745-1828). He was a publisher and bookseller in the High Street, Edinburgh, and arranged to bring out a subscription edition of the poems of Burns in Edinburgh. In April 1787 he bought the copyright for 100 guineas. He was notoriously mean and delayed a settlement of this and the £400 due on the book until March 1788.

29This painting of Tam O’Shanter from the Cutty Sark ship in London

illustrates the poem which made Robert Burns famous.

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In the Tam O’Shanter poem the character of Souter Johnnie was based on Burns’s friend John Davidson, whom he came to know when he stayed in Kirkswald in the summer of 1773. Davidson’s friend Douglas Graham of Shanter Farm used to drink at the inn in the High Street, now called the Tam O’Shanter Inn.

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Part of the original script of Tam O’Shanter, written in Burns’s own handwriting.

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Maria Riddell (1772-1808). She married Robert Riddell’s rather simple younger brother Walter, in the West Indies. Burns met her at Friar’s Carse in 1791. While Walter was away in 1793, Burns saw a lot of her, but the Sabine Rape incident effectively ended their relationship. In 1795 they were friendly again and early in 1796 while convalescing at Brow Well she sent her carriage for the poet and saw the “stamp of death” on him.

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A mile upstream from Ellisland on the Nith was Friar’s Carse, owned by Captain Robert Riddell. Riddell and his wife cultivated Burns and offered him the key to the Hermitage on his estate. After the Sabine Rape incident the friendship ended. Captain Riddell died soon after, unreconciled to Burns and the poet wrote a sonnet lamenting “the untimely tomb where Riddell lies”.

34Ellisland Farm, Dumfriesshire

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The town of Dumfries and the old bridge over the River Nith. Burns lived in Dumfries from 1781 to 1796.

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Burns House, Dumfries. The red sandstone house in Mill Cennel (now Burns Street) in which Burns spent his last three years, is now a museum. It was rented at £8 a year in 1793. After her husband’s death Jean Armour Burns lived on here for another 38 years.

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Jean Armour, wife of Burns. “Bonnie Jean” bore Robert nine children, three of whom survived her. She is celebrated in more than a dozen songs. This particular portrait was painted in 1821—Jean survived her husband by 38 years.

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Jessie Lewars (1788-1855). The daughter of John Lewars, Exciseman of Dumfries, she nursed Burns during the last months of his life, when Jean was pregnant.

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Mrs. Frances Anna Dunlop of Dunlop (1730-1815). In 1786, doubly depressed by the recent death of her husband and the financial troubles of her son, she found solace in The Cotter’s Saturday Night and sent a messenger to Mossgiel requesting six more copies of the Kilmarnock volume. Burns let her have as many copies as he could spare and they embarked on a long and satisfying correspondence. She stopped writing to him in 1795, alienated by his enthusiastic attitude towards the revolutionary developments in France. Burns wrote to her shortly before his death, asking for an explanation of her indifference towards him and she responded with a letter which he read on his death-bed.

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Burns Statue, Dumfries, erected by the people of the town as a loving tribute to the national poet of Scotland in April 1882.