A long-lost letter from Jean Armour, Robert Burns’s heartbroken widow, discovered
hidden away among the detritus of a
New York junk shop, has been donated
to the National Library of Scotland.
Mike Wade
Columnist: The Times
Filed 25Jan10
©Mike Wade
This article was originally published in The TImes on 25th January 2010.
It is reproduced here with the kind permission of its author and of the newspaper.
Scholars agree that the letter, an account of her family’s fortunes after her husband’s death, is remarkable both for its content and scarcity value. It is one of only two written by Armour that are known to have survived. But the story of its discovery is the stuff of dreams as far as Burns enthusiasts are concerned.
The letter was found, protected in a cheap plastic frame and perched on a pile of junk, by Nancy Groce, a folklorist who works for the Library of Congress in Washington. Ms Groce was so surprised to see a letter signed by “Jean Burns”, with its sad postscript about the death of the poet’s youngest son, she thought at first that it must be a copy of an original document.
“My first reaction was, ‘No, couldn’t be’; and my second reaction, after noting the PS reference to the death of Maxwell, was that it must be a facsimile,” she said. “I knew that Jean Burns outlived her husband by many years, and that she was besieged with visitors and autograph collectors, but this was clearly a letter written to someone she knew.”
The junk shop, on Thompson Street, New York, specialised in house clearances. According to Dr Groce, its proprietor knew the price of everything, but the value of little of its stock — “Its offerings ranged from hopelessly dated $5 earrings to forebodingly dark oil paintings mysteriously priced in the thousands of dollars,” she said. When she inquired about the letter, she was quoted a price of $200.
That seemed a little expensive, if the letter proved to be copy, reasoned Dr Groce, and she decided to think things over. After spending a few days researching Armour’s life story, she felt more confident that her find was genuine and returned to the shop.
“This time, I read the letter more closely and realised that it contained significant historical information,” recalled Dr Groce. “I also noticed that it had been folded and there was a remnant of a wax seal, which would be consistent with it being an original document. Based on this, I decided to buy it. In my absence, the shop owner decided he wanted $100 for it. Since I didn’t want to seem too eager, we settled on $75.”
More research into the letter’s provenance proved its authenticity and Dr Groce was told that it was worth many times what she had paid for it. Having hosted a symposium on Burns at the Library of Congress last year, supported by staff from NLS, she decided to donate her find to the Scottish library.
That generosity was warmly received by scholars in Scotland, because the letter throws substantial new light on Armour, who has remained a shadowy figure to generations of literary critics.
The text, from Armour to Maria Riddell, a wealthy family friend, shows that it was a response to a “kind inquiry” about the health of the Burns children and it describes their progress since their father’s death, eight years previously. Two of the boys had grown up and left home, a third was at home, while a fourth, Francis Wallace, “died last year”, Armour wrote. “He was to have gon[e] to the East Indies this spring had he lived.” The fifth Burns child, Maxwell, died in infancy. He had been born on the day of his father’s funeral in 1796.
The letter displays the intelligent pragmatism of Armour’s approach to the relatively wealthy Maria, who had the resources to help the Burns family said Valentina Bold, lecturer in Scottish Studies at Glasgow University. Dr Bold added that Armour was in her mid-thirties by the time she wrote the letter, and it showed her to have become a mature woman who was focused on her children, rather than the sex object that Burns had thrilled too in some of his earlier poems.”
©Mike Wade
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