Ellisland. Even had the soil been productive, even had he secured a
foreman who could have kept his hands at work, the Burns who undertook
Ellisland was not the Burns of Lochlie or even of Mossgiel. Though by
no means setting up as a gentleman farmer, he had become conscious of
having a position to maintain. Gilbert, he thought, might be able to
take over Ellisland and succeed with it; ‘as he can with propriety
do things that I _now_ cannot do.’ Physical debility was also to be
reckoned with, for he must have got out of training during almost two
years of exemption from regular labour, and his weakened heart would
prevent his easily recovering his lost tone. But in fact his mind was
filled with other matters and metres. That during his first summer
he spent alternate fortnights with Jean in Mauchline was a temporary
circumstance without relation to the success of the farm thereafter,
but that his work for Johnson’s _Museum_ was filling his mind was a
fact less easily discounted. In the middle of his first summer he had
a fiddler with him for at least two days playing over a collection of
Highland music in quest of lyric tunes for Johnson. It was a prelude to
his greatest period of lyric creativeness, but it was not an augury of
success in managing a poor farm on limited capital.
The first season’s harvest offered little encouragement. Wet weather
and scanty labour made it difficult to salvage whatever thin crop the
fields had produced. Before his lease was six months old Burns was
confiding to his friends that he was uncertain of his farm’s doing
well, but, as he told Ainslie, he had his Excise commission in his
pocket and did not care three skips of a cur dog for the gambols of
Fortune. The chance of obtaining the commission had made him willing
to undertake the farm; possession added still another psychological
handicap to its successful conduct. Embittered youthful memories of the
humiliations of a tenant farmer had been reinforced by the development
of his poetic vocation to clog whole-hearted effort. Now the existence
of his commission held always open a door of escape from any threatened
renewal of the old humiliation and thereby unconsciously slowed still
further the endeavours which were his only safeguard. He was defeated
at Ellisland before he began.
By the following spring he had begun to realize his defeat. The farm
and his family, including William, were swallowing the remains of his
capital so rapidly that it was doubtful if he could hold on without
more income than the farm was likely to yield. It occurred to him that
he might use his commission while he still held the farm. He had not
thought of this at first. The usual procedure for a beginner was to
be assigned to some district where a place was vacant, there to serve
several months’ apprenticeship without pay. When pay commenced, it had
until recently been at the rate of £35 a year, but about the time Burns
obtained his commission the initial stipend was raised to £50. Looking
about his own neighbourhood, Burns learned that the officer in charge
of the rural parishes to the north of Dumfries was a certain Leonard
Smith, who had recently inherited money and was not distinguishing
himself by activity in the service. Burns decided to play politics.
His commission had been obtained through Robert Graham of Fintry, one
of the chief Commissioners for Scotland. Fintry had expressed personal
interest in the poet’s welfare in terms which must have soothed his
bristling pride, for Burns had already addressed to him both a prose
letter of thanks and a poetic epistle in imitation of Pope. Though
Fintry never quite supplanted Lord Glencairn in Burns’s esteem, he
in fact became the poet’s second patron and in the long run did more
for him than even the Earl had done. Graham’s first favour had been
the commission itself; his second was the appointment to active duty.
Before his first harvest was over Burns coolly suggested that Smith
might be relieved from duty without serious loss to himself and perhaps
with a gain to the Service. On his visit to Edinburgh in February,
1789, Burns pressed the matter further. Graham promised to do what he
could, but pointed out that it was clean against regulations to start
a new man at full pay without a probationary period. Nevertheless he
undertook to investigate Smith’s conduct and by midsummer had found
cause for removing him, had given Burns the place, and had circumvented
the rule against starting a new man at full duty and on full pay. For
one who had always boasted his independence and had spoken scornfully
of the political quest for favours, Burns had done a neat and
successful job of wire-pulling.
Having once got his appointment, however, Burns had no intention of
treating it as a sinecure. His district covered twelve sparsely-settled
parishes and his tours of inspection required, to fulfil the letter of
the law, that he ride two hundred miles a week in all weathers and all
states of the uniformly bad roads. This meant that he could give little
of his time and less of his strength to Ellisland. To provide for the
farm he endeavoured to increase his dairy stock, which Jean could
supervise in the intervals of having babies and managing her household.
The cattle, too, might help in the slow task of rebuilding the worn-out
acres.
But the strain of his new duties soon took physical toll. In the late
fall of 1789, after less than two months of service, ‘a malignant
squinancy and low fever’ laid him up for six weeks. His handwriting
indicates that the illness was really serious; the letters written
during convalescence are in a hand almost as weak and straggling
as that of June and July, 1796. Nevertheless he had proved his
qualifications for the job. An official report on various subordinate
officers in the Excise bears after Burns’s name the notation ‘a
poet--never tried--turns out well.’ He had moreover established
friendly relations with his immediate superiors, Alexander Findlater,
the Supervisor, and John Mitchell, the Collector, of the Dumfries
district. With the latter, indeed, he was already on terms approaching
intimacy, sending him gifts of new-laid eggs from Ellisland and
accompanying them at least once with a poetic epistle so broadly
humorous that no editor has ever printed it all. Both men testified to
Burns’s fidelity by defending his character after his death and--what
is far more significant--by reporting favourably on him during his life.
He was giving reason for favourable reports. His predecessor had
been so slack that Burns was able to appear, at the first session of
court after he began duty, with an impressive array of cases of tax
evasion. In handling these he again displayed political astuteness.
The minor offenders, mostly poor men who could ill afford a fine, he
begged off with warnings or suspended sentences. This almost compelled
the magistrates to fine the larger offenders for whom he refused
to intercede, and inasmuch as Excise officers then, like American
customs inspectors today, received a percentage of these penalties,
Burns found his procedure remunerative in cash as well as in official
credit. He soon discovered, though, that zeal had its drawbacks.
Gentlemen of position, including some of the magistrates themselves,
had their favourite smugglers or home-brewers, and when Burns caught
one of these he started all the machinery of influence and political
pressure so familiar to Americans during the prohibition era. Once
he told Collector Mitchell, after a hard day’s riding in rounding up
witnesses in a case, that he expected for his pains to be clapped in
jail for annoying the friends of half the gentlemen in the county.
The grosser temptations of bribery, however, did not touch him. The
various legends, deriving from highly unreliable oral tradition, of
his leniency with small offenders mean no more, even if literally
true, than that Burns had learned the common sense of his profession.
A customs inspector knows that his job is not to penalize every
tourist who has failed to declare a dozen handkerchiefs but to catch
the large-scale smuggler. The same was true of the laws Burns had to
enforce, which imposed taxes on everything from whisky to candles. Not
but what he made ordinary human distinctions between his public and his
private capacities. William Lorimer, father of ‘Chloris’, was one of
the poet’s intimate friends. He was also a bootlegger whose ways were,
‘like the grace of G--, past all comprehension’. Seemingly Lorimer
maintained a moderate legal stock for inspection purposes, but once
when he was absent and his wife drunk something slipped in the working
of the gentlemen’s agreement, and Burns had to explain to Supervisor
Findlater. Another time he helped, as revenue officer, in a series of
raids on Dumfries haberdashers who had been selling smuggled French
gloves. A few days later, as private citizen, he supplied Maria Riddell
with similar gloves from a still unraided dealer’s stock. The problems
and conditions of law enforcement are among the few immutables in human
history.
After two years’ experience Burns reaffirmed that the Excise was
after all the business for him. He added, ‘I find no difficulty in
being an honest man in it; the work of itself, is easy; and it is a
devilish different affair, managing money matters where I care not a
damn whether the money is paid or not; from the long faces made to a
haughty Laird or still more haughty Factor, when rents are demanded,
and money, alas, not to be had!’ His position as tenant farmer was no
longer an irritation; it was an obsession. Ellisland, he told Gilbert,
had undone his enjoyment of himself. He looked forward with the same
desperate hope as his father’s at Mount Oliphant to the ‘freedom in his
lease’. The three-year period of the £50 rental ended in 1791. After
that, if he chose to stay, Ellisland would cost £70 a year. Naturally,
his discouragement and defeat on the farm had affected his relations
with his landlord. Miller’s kindness, he said, had been just such
another thing as Creech’s, and the fact that Mrs. Miller had failed to
appreciate one of his poorer contributions to Johnson’s _Museum_ did
not heighten his esteem for the family. He wanted no more to do with
landlords or anything that belonged to them.
His only good luck at Ellisland came at the end. The surrender of the
lease did not annoy Miller as Burns had expected, for a purchaser was
in the market, and Miller was glad enough to dispose of the farm which
the Nith separated from the rest of his estate. After sending Jean and
the children to Mauchline, Burns held an auction of his standing crops
and provided the lavish drinks expected by auction-goers. One result
was that the exhilarated bidders ran up the prices nearly a guinea an
acre beyond the market rates; another was that house and stable-yard
were strewn with helplessly drunk and retching neighbours. The sale
brought ready cash for the first time in two years, and Burns used
some of it to clear up a variety of small debts, including the four
pounds he owed his namesake, Robert Burn of Edinburgh, for erecting
Fergusson’s tombstone. He also celebrated his manumission by a brief
visit to Edinburgh to say farewell to Clarinda and to try to do
something for sick and penniless Jenny Clow.
While things had been going so badly on the farm his position in
the Excise had been improving. After less than a year and a half in
his laborious rural division he had wangled a transfer to a vacant
‘footwalk’, the ‘3d, or Tobacco, Division’, in Dumfries. This meant
lighter work, and enabled him to dispense with his horse--not too soon,
for his poor worn-out mare had given him several nasty falls on the
bad roads, bruising him severely and once breaking his arm. In town,
though, he had small opportunity for increasing his income through
fines and penalties as he had done in the rural division. When at
the end of 1791 he moved his family into Dumfries the best quarters
he could afford were a crowded and uncomfortable half-of-a-house in
the Stinking Vennel, near the river. He was still receiving only the
minimum salary of £50 a year, and though Jean said long afterwards that
they did not come empty-handed into Dumfries not much cash can have
remained after he had discharged his debts. As early as March, 1790,
he had estimated that he would be lucky if he did not lose more than
£100 out of an investment of little more than £200. Such anticipatory
estimates are oftener under the mark than over it; one suspects that if
Burns recovered as much as £50 of the money he had put into Ellisland,
he was lucky.
By comparison, his prospects in the Excise were roseate. The Port
Division in Dumfries, best paid of the subordinate posts, was vacant,
and Burns lobbied for it with William Corbet, general supervisor of
Excise, as he had done with Graham of Fintry for his first appointment.
Corbet was an old friend of Mrs. Dunlop’s, and her intercession was
effectively supplemented by a warm recommendation from Findlater, the
local supervisor. Burns got the job early in 1792. The salary was
£70 a year with various perquisites worth another £20. It scarcely
represented luxurious living, but it was a better income than most
Scottish schoolmasters or even ministers received in the eighteenth
century, and though ‘Robin’s temper was not cold and frugal’ he managed
to be fairly comfortable. After a year in the Stinking Vennel he moved
to a better house in what was then called Mill Street and is now Burns
Street--the last of his numerous abodes.
Even before he left Ellisland Burns’s name had been placed on the list
of those eligible for promotion to the rank of Supervisor. This was the
most laborious of the Excise posts, for the supervisors did most of the
real work of collection and administration. They received salaries
of from £200 to £400 a year, but their duties filled most of their
waking hours. So long as he was merely Port Officer Burns had time and
energy for reading and song-writing. He knew, however, that when in the
course of seniority he became a supervisor most of this would cease.
But he was already looking beyond. The next rank above Supervisor was
Collector, and the collectors held well-paid sinecures. In theory
at least supervisors were appointed by merit, but collectorships
admittedly went by favour, and Burns began to cultivate political
friendships which might in the future secure him the necessary
influence.
Not that he had any intention of soldiering on his job and trusting to
influence to lift him to a better one. He was taking an intelligent
interest in his work and sought the attention of his superiors by his
understanding of their business. Thus he had not been long in his Port
Division before he wrote to Provost Staig of Dumfries pointing out that
the town was losing revenue through failure to assess a tax on imported
ale, and backed his statement with an estimate of the sums involved
and some shrewd advice as to the best method of getting his chiefs to
enforce their collection. A year or so later he pointed out to Robert
Graham that one of the Dumfries divisions could be abolished and its
duties distributed among the other officers without overburdening them.
There cannot be many instances on record of a government employee’s
informing his superiors that he was underworked. On this occasion at
least Burns took an unusual way of drawing attention to himself. He was
also once more suggesting his own advancement at the expense of another
man, but admitted the fact and coupled his recommendation with a plea
that if the change were made the present incumbent, burdened with an
expensive family, be provided for elsewhere.
He would have been the last to claim that these suggestions were
free of any ulterior motive beside the general one of making himself
known as a thoughtful and efficient officer. He had other and more
immediate purposes. Not long after showing Provost Staig the revenue
possibilities of the ‘twa pennies’ tax on ale he had a petition to
make to the Burgh Council. When he first visited Dumfries in 1787
he had been made an honorary burgess; he now wanted that nominal
citizenship converted into a real one so far at least as concerned the
local schools. The sons of burgesses were entitled to free tuition at
Dumfries Academy, and the chance of getting his boys into a first-rate
school was not to be neglected. His petition set forth in detail
the help he had given to the local revenues. This may not have been
the reason why the Council at once granted his application, but it
certainly did not hamper it. Similarly his letters to Graham were
frankly motivated by a desire to get a post as acting supervisor at
the earliest possible moment and thereby to secure not only some small
immediate increase in income but the experience and reputation which
would count in his favour when a permanent position opened.
These were reasonable and legitimate efforts to gain prestige. He
indulged in others more ticklish and, in the perspective of history,
more futile. Burns lacked the right temperament for cultivating
politicians, but he could not help trying. He was once introduced, for
instance, to that very shady character, the Duke of Queensberry, whom
previously he had rated with some justice as a complete scoundrel.
At their meeting the Duke proved affable, and hearing that Burns had
written a song about the notorious ‘Whistle’ drinking bout mentioned
that he would like a copy. Burns sent it to him with a flattering
letter, no doubt hoping that at some future date the Duke’s influence
might be useful. There was nothing particularly dangerous in this,
for the Duke’s rank made him a public character irrespective of what
party was in power. But when Burns undertook to meddle in parliamentary
contests he was playing with fire. He had of course no vote himself,
but he wrote ballads in support of Whig candidates and continued to
do so until a few months before his death. From the viewpoint of 1792
something might have been said for this as good strategy, regardless of
the poet’s actual sympathies. Except for the brief Rockingham ministry
at the end of the American War the Tories had been in power for nearly
a generation and a reversal was overdue. When and if the Whigs came
in a man who had supported them in their time of adversity would be
entitled to special favours. Neither Burns nor anyone else in Britain
could foresee Napoleon and realize that Pitt’s ministry, which had
already been on the verge of disaster over the Regency Bill, would,
thanks to the Frenchman, remain in office until after Burns and most of
his parliamentary friends were in their graves. As things turned out,
silence would have been the better part for Burns, but he had no gift
for silence.
In the same year moreover in which Burns secured his Port Division
the effects of the upheaval in France were stirring both Burns and
Scotland. The cries of Liberty and Equality and Fraternity were
echoed in the North and enlisted as in England a motley collection of
supporters who ranged from poetic idealists, like Burns and Wordsworth,
through professional agitators like Thomas Paine and Horne Tooke to
unprincipled rabble. Burns’s first public gesture of sympathy with the
French Revolution came as a by-product of the most exciting episode
in his career as an Excise officer. In the early spring of 1792 a
smuggling schooner named the _Rosamond_ was caught in the Solway.
The ship was heavily armed and thanks to the active co-operation of
the coastwise folks, who staved in all their rowboats to keep the
Excise officers from using them, she landed her cargo. The _Rosamond_,
however, remained aground on the tidal flats and when an armed force
of dragoons and Excise officers--Burns among them--waded out to attack
her the crew fled after scuttling the ship. Salvaged and towed into
the Nith the _Rosamond_ with all her gear was confiscated and sold at
auction. Her armament included four carronades which Burns bought for
£4 and dispatched as a gift to the French Convention. Such at least
is the traditional story, and every detail of it, except the actual
dispatch of the carronades, is corroborated by documents found among
the Abbotsford papers. The tradition continues that the guns never
reached France, being seized by the customs officials at Dover; but
here again confirmation is lacking. Legally there was nothing wrong
in Burns’s action. France and England were still officially at peace,
though their relations were steadily growing tenser. Nevertheless,
from the practical viewpoint of a government employee with a dependent
family it was a gesture of almost criminal recklessness. The government
has never yet existed which looked benevolently upon manifestations of
revolutionary sympathies among its servants, and before many months had
passed Burns had good reason to be frightened.
The autumn of 1792 saw England ready to join the coalition against
revolutionary France, though war was not declared until February
1, 1793. To the privileged classes in England the war had all
the characteristics of a crusade except the obligation to take a
personal share. The Revolution threatened the very foundations of the
aristocratic social system, and the depth of the government’s fear is
measured by the violence alike of official denunciations of France and
of the suppression of dissenting opinion at home. Charges of sedition
were pressed not only against avowed revolutionary sympathizers but
against almost anyone who had advocated the slightest modification of
the existing order. It was not surprising that Burns, always unguarded
in speech and action, should face investigation of his conduct. The
details of the charges and their outcome belong in another chapter. For
a time Burns thought that all his hopes of advancement were blasted,
but the storm soon blew over, and even before he advertised his
loyalty by enlisting in the Dumfries Volunteers he had good reason to
anticipate that promotion would come in due course.
But though he escaped the storm of persecution he did not escape the
economic consequences of the war. It had the usual and inevitable
results of tight money and rising prices; a wave of bankruptcies swept
over Scotland; the monthly lists of failures in the _Scots Magazine_
increased from an average of half-a-dozen a month to forty-six in
July, 1793, and among the victims was Burns’s friend, Walter Auld
the saddler. The poet himself was not exempt. The war cut off the
greater part of the import trade and with it much of the income and
perquisites of Dumfries Port Division. Burns had just begun to extend
his expenditures in keeping with his increased income. The carronades
and his better house were only part of the expansion. He had backed
a friend’s note and had to pay it when the friend defaulted; he had
lent considerable sums to another friend, the schoolmaster at Moffat,
who was engaged in a long-drawn-out wrangle with the Earl of Hopetoun,
patron of the school; there were other smaller loans as well. Caught
thus with ready cash exhausted, income reduced, and prices rising,
Burns found himself once again in the grimly familiar position of
being unable to pay his landlord. That the landlord was a gentleman
and a personal friend who did not dun for his money made the situation
more painful. In January, 1795, Burns had actually to borrow three
guineas from his friend, William Stewart, in order to pay part of his
rent. Nevertheless even in these hard times he managed occasional
expenditures that came in the class of luxuries--a week’s tour in
Galloway with John Syme, the restoration of a Jacobite relic in form
of Lord Balmerino’s dirk, even a miniature portrait of himself. He and
his family never lacked for the necessaries of life, and though he was
somewhat in debt the accounting of his executors is proof that the
amount never passed reasonable bounds.