One lady,
who met him at a ball, gave Chambers a speaking sketch of his
demeanour. "His manner was not prepossessing - scarcely, she
thinks, manly or natural. It seemed as if he affected a
rusticity or LANDERTNESS, so that when he said the music was
`bonnie, bonnie,' it was like the expression of a child."
These would be company manners; and doubtless on a slight
degree of intimacy the affectation would grow less. And his
talk to women had always "a turn either to the pathetic or
humorous, which engaged the attention particularly."
The Edinburgh magnates (to conclude this episode at once)
behaved well to Burns from first to last. Were heaven-born
genius to revisit us in similar guise, I am not venturing too
far when I say that he need expect neither so warm a welcome
nor such solid help. Although Burns was only a peasant, and
one of no very elegant reputation as to morals, he was made
welcome to their homes. They gave him a great deal of good
advice, helped him to some five hundred pounds of ready
money, and got him, as soon as he asked it, a place in the
Excise. Burns, on his part, bore the elevation with perfect
dignity; and with perfect dignity returned, when the time had
come, into a country privacy of life. His powerful sense
never deserted him, and from the first he recognised that his
Edinburgh popularity was but an ovation and the affair of a
day.
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