Back in 2020, I was asked by the 820th Mayor of Winchester, Cllr Eleanor Bell, to propose the toast to the ‘immortal memory’ of Robert Burns at her Burns night supper – at the Holiday Inn just outside Winchester. I had little idea of what was involved and no idea what to write, but thought it might be fun to try and add a local angle to my comments. After a day or two’s amateur research, I came up with something close to the following, although I have slightly expanded and corrected it before publishing it today. Given the short section about Jane Austen, it seemed particularly apposite to make it available today: January 25 is Burns Night and 2025 is the 250th anniversary year of Jane Austen’s birth:
Thank you, Madam Mayor, for the opportunity to say a few words about the life of Robert Burns.
I cannot claim any particular expertise or insight. Despite a Scottish heritage – the Tods originally come from Dalkeith in Midlothian – I can’t claim to have read all his works. However I will try my best to provide some unexpected insight – and bring to light a few aspects of his life that you might know.
Born in 1759 just outside Ayr – the son of a tenant farming family. He lived in difficult circumstances. His father continuously struggled financially – although the family made sure he got as good an education as they could afford.
He worked for many years as an agricultural worker and as a tenant farmer himself. It was only following the spectacular success of his first published book of poems that his circumstances were transformed.
He moved to Edinburgh before spending all the money he’d earned in about 18 months and retraining as Excise Officer.
But then, tragically young, his health began to fail – and he died at the age of 37.
A man of enormous passions – he had, shall we say, a colourful love life – 12 children are known of – from at least 4 different mothers – only one of which he married – and there are more than 900 direct descendants of his alive today – but also great political passions – and a great ability to capture those passions and the passions of everyday life in verse.
I’m going to try something quite brave now and seek to find linkages between Robert Burns and Winchester
We know that Robert Burns is Scotland’s favourite poet.
But who was Robert Burns’s favourite poet?
Or rather who was the poet he most liked to quote…
And this is something we know – and we know the quote he most appreciated – and repeatedly cited in his letters:
“On reason build resolve
That column of true majesty in man!”
Described by Burns as “My most favourite quotation” in a letter on 10th August 1788.
He really likes this quote – in another letter he writes:
Come, then, let me act up to my favourite motto, that glorious passage in Young:
“On reason build resolve
That column of true majesty in man!”
And who is the Young he refers to?
The Reverend Edward Young.
Born at Upham in 1683. Educated at Winchester College. A true Winchester district man.
Taken from his poem “Night Thoughts” written between 1742 and 1745 – which some of you may know from the engravings prepared for it by William Blake.
And some of you may also know the quote:
Procrastination is the thief of time
Some of you may live it!
The reference to reason and resolve wasn’t the only part of Night Thoughts that Burns liked to cite – another quote – surprisingly relevant and surprisingly prescient for today’s world of fake news:
“What Truth on earth so precious as the Lie!”
and again, from the same, when Burns was unclear how one of his works would turn out, he cited Young’s:
“Tis nonsense destin’d to be future sense.”
And one of Burn’s most brilliant, insightful and oft-cited phrases
‘Man’s inhumanity to man’
also clearly echoes the same poem’s
”man’s revenge, and endless inhumanities on man’
Burns may never have set foot in our county, but if we believe his letters, one of our former residents clearly provided him with a fair share of creative and philosophical inspiration.
So now we know a bit of what Burns thought about a poet originally from our area.
I’m not going to claim any literary knowledge, but I am interested to know what writers from our area thought of Burns.
What, for example, did Jane Austen think of Burns?
We can’t know exactly, but in her unfinished novel Sanditon, sadly unfinished due to her death in our town only a mile or two from here, she has the heroine, Charlotte Heywood say of Burns:
‘I have read several of Burn’s Poems with great delight,’ said Charlotte as soon as she had time to speak, ‘but I am not poetic enough to separate a Man’s Poetry entirely from his Character; – and poor Burns’s known Irregularities, greatly interrupt my enjoyment of his Lines. – I have difficulty in depending on the Truth of his Feelings as a Lover. I have not faith in the sincerity of the affections of a Man of his Description. He felt & he wrote & he forgot.’ ”
While Burns may be Scotland’s favourite poet – I think we can see from that why Jane Austen is England’s favourite novelist.
They are, of course, the opinions of Jane Austen’s heroine – and not of Jane Austen herself. But would she have cited those feelings of ‘great delight’ if they weren’t feelings she had herself. I suspect not!
John Keats – one of our greatest Romantic poets – what does he think of the Scotland poet who helped blaze the way for the romantic movement.
We all know that in September 1819 he came to Winchester and wrote his famous ‘Ode to Autumn’ either on a walk through the meadows to St Cross or up to newly planted corn fields on St Giles’s Hill depending on whom you believe.
“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, close bosom-friend of the maturing sun.”
(Intriguingly, Burns was also quite a fan of autumn. He wrote in a letter in August 1793 that “Autumn is my propitious season; I make more verses in it than all the year else.”)
But coming back to Keats, you may not know that the summer before he visited Winchester, he went on a walking tour of Scotland, Ireland and the Lake District with a close friend. And that he deliberately designed the tour to include Burn’s birthplace and his grave.
On July 13, 1818 he visited Burns’s birthplace and wrote to a friend about it.
Then we proceede[d] to the Cottage he was born in – there was a board to that effect by the door side – it had the same effect as the same sort of memorial at Stratford on Avon – We drank some Toddy to Burns’s Memory with an old Man who knew Burns – damn him and damn his Anecdotes – he was a great bore – it was impossible for a Southron to understand above 5 words in a hundred. – There was something good in his description of Burns’s melancholy the last time he saw him. I was determined to write a sonnet in the Cottage – I did – but it was so bad I cannot venture it here.
However after visiting Burn’s tomb, on July 2, 1818, Keats was rather more successful –
On visiting the tomb of Burns
The town, the churchyard, and the setting sun,
The clouds, the trees, the rounded hills all seem,
Though beautiful, cold—strange—as in a dream
I dreamed long ago. Now new begun,
The short-lived, paly summer is but won
From winter’s ague, for one hour’s gleam;
Though sapphire warm, their stars do never beam;
All is cold beauty; pain is never done
For who has mind to relish, Minos-wise,
The real of beauty free from that dead hue
Sickly imagination and sick pride
Cast wan upon it! Burns! with honour due
I have oft honoured thee. Great shadow, hide
Thy face—I sin against thy native skies.
So as we gather here in Winchester today – and ponder the greatness of Robert Burns – we are lucky to have two local guides to help us along the way – and one man who was a guide to Robert Burns in his journey to greatness.
Edward Young provided Burns with poetic inspiration and Burn’s favourite motto.
Jane Austen seemed unsure of Burn’s morals – but completely clear that we should read his poems with great delight.
And John Keats was so inspired by Burns that he designed a walking tour to visit the sites where he had lived and wrote poetry in his honour.
We can do no less than join them in our admiration.
So please be upstanding and let us join with Keats in honouring Burns, with Austen in delighting in his poetry.
And toasting the immortal memory of Robert Burns.
