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New Light on the Burns-Dunlop Estrangement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

J. DeLancey Ferguson
J. DeLancey Ferguson*
Affiliation:
Ohio Wesleyan University
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Extract

The circumstances which caused Frances Anna Dunlop to cease corresponding with Robert Burns during the final year and a half of the latter's life have always been a puzzle to biographers. Even Wallace's publication, in 1898, of the Lochryan MSS shed little additional light on the affair, though it may be remarked in passing that Wallace—perhaps from timidity, perhaps from reluctance to express any but favorable opinions of the ancestress of the family by whom the manuscripts had been preserved—hardly made full use of such evidence as was available. Unfortunately some vital links were missing.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 44 , Issue 4 , December 1929 , pp. 1106 - 1115
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1929

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References

Note 1 in page 1107 The poem is here omitted, since except for one word—“These,” instead of “Here,” at the beginning of the last stanza—it agrees throughout with the printed texts.

Note 2 in page 1108 Burns's italics.

Note 3 in page 1108 William Roscoe: Song: Written for the purpose of being recited on the anniversary of the 14th August (sic) 1791, stanza 3, 11. 7-8. The song may be found in The Poetical Works of W. R., Liverpool, 1853, p. 104, and also in Henry Roscoe: Life of W. R., I, 78. Evidently Burns and Roscoe had corresponded, though no letters have come to light.

Note 4 in page 1109 From a photostat of the original MS, now a part of the fine Burns collection of Mr. Robert P. and Mrs. Mildred C. Esty of Ardmore, Pennsylvania, whose permission to make use of the unpublished material is gratefully acknowledged.

Note 5 in page 1109 From the original MS in the Burns Birthplace Museum, Alloway. It may be worth noting that Wallace errs in assuming a missing letter in 1795. The letter finished on 12 Jan. crossed Mrs. Dunlop's of the same date; it, and the midsummer letter with The Dumfries Volunteers, are the “two packets” which Burns means.

Note 6 in page 1110 London, 1792. II, 459.

Note 7 in page 1111 W. Wallace: Robert Burns and Mrs. Dunlop, London, 1898, p. 316.

Note 8 in page 1111 Ibid., 415.

Note 9 in page 1112 Burns Chronicle, 1904, pp. 69-70. The letter was not accessible to Wallace in 1898, but he had her letter of 12 July, 1791, in which she expresses fear of Thomas Paine's writing.

Note 10 in page 1112 Wallace, p. 369.

Note 11 in page 1112 Ibid., p. 417. This remark illustrates Wallace's timidity. Even without the additional evidence here presented, he should have realized the weight of the complaints in Mrs. Dunlop's letter of 16 March, 1793.

Note 12 in page 1112 From the original MS in the Adam collection, by permission of Dr. A. S. W. Rosenbach. The complete text has been available since 1922 in Mr. Adam's private printing of his collection, but the italicized portion is not in any of the regular editions of Burns.

Note 13 in page 1113 Wallace, pp. 379-80.

Note 14 in page 1114 Ibid., p. 407.

Note 15 in page 1114 Ibid., p. 415.

Note 16 in page 1115 Ibid., p. 418.