£12,500
Rare Books, Manuscripts, Maps & Photographs | 605
Auction: 17 June 2020 at 11:00 BST
One page, 278 x 178mm, [Mossgiel, ca. 1 August 1786], to James Smith, regarding his turbulent courtship with Jean Armour; washed and pressed with residual soiling, green morocco portfolio by Riviere, green silk moire guards, gilt dentelles; [together with] A stipple-engraved portrait of Rogers after Nasmyth, light staining, minor marginal losses, one portfolio flap detached
Note: Transported by the raptures of young love, Burns commits "the sin of rhyme." In a letter to his Mauchline friend James Smith, Burns paraphrases from Addison's Cato (Act I, scene 6):
O Jenny, thou hast stolen away my soul!
In vain I strive against the lov'd idea:
They tender image sallies on my thoughts,
My firm resolves become an easy prey!
In spite of hi claims of yielding to Jean's beguiling charms, he vehemently declares: "Against two things however, I am fix'd as Fate: staying at home and owning her conjugally. - The first, by Heaven I will not do!. The last, by Hell, I will never do!" At Mauchline, Burns had fallen in love with Jean Armour (b. 1767), who, along with Smith's sister, was one of the "six proper young belles" celebrated in his poem of that place. By spring of 1786 it was apparent that Jeans was expecting Burns's child. According to the custom of the country and the morals of the people, Burns gave her a document acknowledging her as his lawful wife. Her father, a master mason and "Auld Lichter", bristled at the idea of his daughter wed to a poor ploughman of the "New Light" persuasion, and insisted the union be dissolved. Jean surrendered the document, and Burns was stung with indignation. Obtaining £20 from the sale of the Kilmarnock edition of his poems, he contemplated emigrating in late summer of 1786 to Jamaica with Mary Campbell ("Highland Mary" with whom he had started an affair that May). Jean's father obtained a warrant against Burns which would force him to provide for Jean's child. She gave birth to twins on 3 September 1786. Burns abandoned his plan for the West India expedition and finally married Jean in 1788, with whom he had nine children.
"If you see Jean tell her, I will meet her. So help me Heaven in my hour of need!" Burns plaintively beseeches his friend at the end of his letter. Burns's correspondence with Smith (this being one of only six recorded letters) is of particular interest for details of the poet's turbulent courtship of Jean, revealing his unguarded thoughts on sex and marriage. Smith, son of a Mauchline merchant, revolted against his strict and repressive upbringing by forming with Burns and Richmond the infamous "Court of Equity" - "a happy triumvirate in village revelry". When his business failed in 1788, he emigrated to St. Lucia in the West Indies, where he was thought to have died about 1808. Mackay: Letters of Robert Burns, I, p.117.
Provenance: John Gribbel (sale, Park-Bernet, 30 October 1940, lot 104)