Rebekah Carmichael, Poems

By Lisa Vargo

Critical Essay

It is unfortunate that the epigraph Rebekah Carmichael (later Hay) chose for her Poems, the opening lines of James Beattie's The Minstrel (1771, 1774)-Ah! how can tell how hard it is to climb / The steep where Fame's proud temples shines afar!" — proved all too appropriate a description for her life and writings, which have been relegated to a mere footnote to the career of Robert Burns. Carmichael met the poet through a mutual friend, the banker and proprietor of the Edinburgh Evening Courant David Ramsay. What little is known about Carmichael's life comes from letters to and about Burns, from some hints in her poetry, and from an account of the life of her son, artist and writer David Ramsay Hay, who was eminent enough to earn a place in the Dictionary of National Biography. Carmichael herself was not as fortunate. The truth of Beattie's allegory of the steep that guards the Temple of Fame is borne out by Carmichael's brief career, during which time her contemporaries misread her aims and intentions.

Carmichael was aware of how words are used to deceive, as she suggests in a rather light-hearted love poem on customary language: "too long I've felt their force, / Curse on your folly, and your words of course!" (28). Her words and actions were appropriated by her contemporaries in the name of demonstrating their own relationship with Burns. An unflattering portrait of Carmichael is contained in one of a series of letters that Robert Anderson wrote to Burns's biographer, James Currie. In his letter of 27 October 1799, an anecdote about Carmichael provides Anderson with an example of the trials of celebrity Burns faced following the publication of the Kilmarnock edition of his Poems in 1786:

The vanity which led many women of rank and character to seek his acquaintance and correspondence is remarkable.

One instance, not generally known, I shall mention, on account of its singular romanticity, from the information of Mr Dalzel. A Miss Carmichael, a young poetess, who adored Burns and studied his manner, had been invited to dine with him at Mr Ramsay's. Sometime after she took the romantic resolution of commencing a sentimental correspondence with him, and sent him a card requesting a meeting in the glen between Arthur's Seat and Salisbury Craigs. Though she was not handsome, he had little confidence in his own virtue, and in the delicate embarrassment of the moment he called upon Mr Dalzel, who happened to be in Town, shewed him the card, and begged he would accompany him to the place of meeting. Dalzel readily agreed to go, and kept his appointment; but in the interval Burns changed his mind and thought proper to go alone. The end of this adventure is not known. Miss C. afterwards published a small volume of poems, and is since dead. (Ewing 16-17)

A small bit of information can be gleaned about the adventure's aftermath. Burns presented an inscribed copy of the 1787 second edition of poems by Robert Fergusson "as a mark of esteem, friendship, and regard, to Miss R. Carmichael, poetess" on 19 March 1787 (Chambers, 2.60-61). When her poems were printed by Burns's friend Peter Hill three years later, Burns subscribed to two copies. It is clear that Carmichael, described in the DNB as a "cultivated lady," participated in Edinburgh literary society, but her place was a tentative one. In spite of more than 450 subscribers to her volume, she quickly fell into poverty and obscurity following the death of her husband. Anderson was inaccurate in claiming she was "since dead," as her 1806 letter asking for a small loan from the Edinburgh publisher Archibald Constable has been tipped into the British Library copy of her poems (Lonsdale 445, 536). But it does seem that by 1799 Carmichael had fallen into obscurity. Her poetry did not receive public critical notice, and the one comment on record takes the private form of a letter to Burns from "Clarinda" (Nancy M'Lehose), another woman who met and corresponded with the poet and was more successful in attracting his attentions. In a letter dated 2 August 1791, she asks Burns if he has seen Miss Carmichael's poems, which she calls "very poor" (Chambers 3.275). Perhaps M'Lehose's dismissal originates in a sense of threat that she may have a rival. Nonetheless these dismissive accounts convey some sense of the obstacles Carmichael faced in her modest ambitions to be a writer. Yet in spite of what Anderson and M'Lehose suggest, more than vanity and poverty of expression are to be found in her poems.

If Carmichael did not have the range or ability to sustain a distinctive voice, she serves as an example of a poet who is working closely with models provided by writers she believes are worthy of imitation: Robert Fergusson and Robert Burns. And at times she genuinely finds her own voice. The forty-five short poems that comprise Carmichael's volume draw upon a variety of lyric forms practiced in the eighteenth century: ballad, song, soliloquy, pastoral, epigram, narrative tale, elegy, hymn, epitaph, and address. Her subjects, however, are those that one might assume would be of interest to a young woman-tales of unhappy love, addresses to female friends and to young gentleman, and sketches of domestic scenes. At her worst she reflects Burns's belief that "The whinning cant of love, except in real passion, and by a masterly hand, is to me as insufferable as the preaching cant of old Father Smeaton. . . . Darts, flames, Cupids, loves, graces, and all that farrago, are just a Mauchline [sacrament], a senseless rabble" (Bentman 93). At her best Carmichael demonstrates an engagement with the comedy of life and an interest in writing as a Scot, in the tradition of Robert Fergusson and, of course, Burns himself. Her poems present a poignant yet bemused view of the hope and the fragility of life in a series of witty poems, celebrating such disasters as the loss of a tooth and an empty purse. Of interest are poems that mix English and Scottish words and distinguish Carmichael as engaged in personal and nationalistic self-definition within a Scottish tradition.

The poems of love and friendship, which make up a large part of her volume, are perhaps the least interesting of Carmichael's works in that they reflect her immersion in established convention rather than demonstrate an individual voice. The lyrics often take on pastoral attributes with classical names and references-we are presented with the trials of the love-lorn maids and ill-fated lovers Alexis, Hero, Phene, Cleanthus, Biron, Damon, Strephon, and Camilla who sigh to Luna, pine by Phoebus' ray, taste Lethe's stream, listen to Philomel, welcome Aurora, and fall prey to Cupid's dart. Her love poems form a rather dreary catalogue of lovers dying of broken hearts from love triangles, unrequited love, and betrayal. The poems are a testament to her apprenticeship within a particular tradition. Many of these conventions were likely suggested by her reading of English poems by Robert Fergusson in part one of his Poems on Various Subjects, which includes pastoral, elegies, songs, poems to friends, and epigrams. Fergusson, who was himself influenced by William Shenstone, provides Carmichael with models for imitation, much as Burns himself did in his "The Lament. Occasioned by the Unfortunate Issue of a Friend's Amour" and "To Ruin." If Fergusson's English poems are dismissed by one critic as "all worthless performances, reflecting the worst features of English neo-Classical verse in its decadent period" and "misguided attempts to cater to the vitiated tastes of the Edinburgh aristocracy" (MacLaine 28), they are nonetheless noteworthy for representing a Scots poet adapting English poems to a Scots sensibility. David Daiches explains how an early pastoral poem by Fergusson, "Written at the Hermitage of Braid, near Edinburgh" is in the "English Shenstonian mode," a mode that Fergusson chose because it resembled Scots metrical patterns (42). Carmichael includes two poems written in the Hermitage of Braid (42-5, 77-8) and not only incorporates his subject, but also Fergusson's use of Shenstone's ballad-like metre to speak of retirement to a rural retreat. In one of the Braid poems Carmichael tells of a visionary encounter with figures of Virtue and Content (42). The second poem is a more personal utterance in which she suggests how the Scottish setting inspires her to consider her own spiritual terrain:

Tho' from my birth the child of chance,
I prize what Heav'n has lent;
And with the little that's my lot,
I feel myself content. (77)

Through the example of Fergusson and Burns, Carmichael adopts forms from an English tradition in her search for a distinctly Scots poetic expression.

Carmichael once again draws upon the examples of Fergusson and Burns for her comic poems that comment on the follies of human vanity in a tone of gentle mockery. One of her lightest poems is her five quatrain long poem "The Tooth," written on the occasion of Eliza's loss of a tooth. Eliza, who is the subject of several of Carmichael's poems, is comforted with the thought that she will still be able to "charm some humble swain" and with her "face and figure e'er divine" (12), but she can only frown in response. The poem concludes with some gentle chiding:

But search some hearts, perhaps you'll find
A greater fault forsooth;
O! it were well for woman kind
Were all their loss a tooth! (13)

"Words of Course" counsels women to "Avoid the man that deals in words of course," that is, words that are to be expected rather than genuine sentiment:

Damon's in love, he swears, with you alone;
Another comes, his heart's not all your own.
Yet still he swears, and still he keeps his word,
Nor ever breaks it, till appears a third. (28)

She writes two poems about the theatre, a subject also treated by Fergusson, including a portrait of an actor who overacts: "In nought so much as bawling you excel" (71). "A Request" tells a short tale about "conscious female pride" (61), while "The Empty Purse" documents the curse of wealth in its portrait of feminine vanity:

When it was full, so was my heart of woe,
I knew not what to do, nor where to go.
I would be gen'rous, but I long'd for dress;
Appearing great, I made myself look less.
I that no kindred ever dar'd to claim,
Found fifty kind relations to my name. (83)

In these poems Carmichael suggests something about her perspective on life and her awareness that the follies of human nature are ample cause for laughter.

At the same time, the comic poems seem but a step away from the more sentimental poems addressed to friends and to her benefactors, in which dispossession and dislocation serve as prominent themes. Some of the verses commemorate the departure and return of young men to the West Indies. "On Mr ******.," a poem addressed to a poet whose "beauteous form must cross the raging seas" (46), might have been written about Burns, who intended to immigrate to Jamaica. "On a Real Instance of Disinterested Friendship" is a portrait of a benefactor whose comfort "was not words alone; / For bounteous deeds did prove" (55). The insistence on "real" in her title not only guarantees truthfulness but suggests wistfully that true disinterested friendship is difficult to find. Elsewhere Carmichael depicts herself as an orphan, including in her tribute to her dead mother "On whom my fond remembrance loves to dwell, / No poet's pen can ever paint thy mind, / Nor tongue of mortal born they praises tell" (88). In the poem on the facing page Carmichael talks affectingly of her desire to "leave the crowded city":

Long have I bore an orphan's name,
And shar'd an orphan's fate;
Few friends I have, nor dare to claim,
Such is my helpless state.

The simple dictates of my heart
To public view they force;
Not pride, but pain does this impart;
It is my last resource. (89-90)

These poems may suggest some motives for Carmichael's poetic ambitions. Her poetry seems to serve as a release for her melancholia. At the same time, perhaps, she hoped that she might realize some money from the sale of her writings. In her "Address to Night" in which she expresses her wish for "the awful previlege of death" (85), the poetry conveys a melancholy conviction, suggesting that Robert Anderson and Nancy M'Lehose reflect their own privilege, overlooking the sorts of misfortunes hinted at in Carmichael's volume. One of her more tempered meditations is "On the Stump of an Old Tree," written in her characteristic form of five quatrain stanzas. The sight of the stump "wakes the tragic muse" as Carmichael imagines its former state as "the pride, the glory of the plain" (48) and the dreaming swain, the children, the houseless wretch, and the birds and bees who visited the tree:

Neglected now alike by man and brute,
The woeful monument of many years;
My spirits sink-I'll on thy stump recline,
And wash they wither'd bark with female tears. (49)

Her meditation on "female tears" is hardly as powerful a poem or as great a work of genius as Burns's meditation on "The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men." But certainly Carmichael echoes Burns's conviction "That Man was made to mourn," and finds kinship with the spirit of his verse.

Carmichael also responded to Burns's interest is employing elements of the Scots language and his admiration for "the genius of a Ramsay, or the glorious dawnings of the poor, unfortunate Ferguson" and his desire "to kindle at their flame, than for servile imitation" (v). Carmichael wrote three poems that employ a mixed register of Scots vernacular and English poetic diction: "The Twa Dows" (4-6), "A Song" (40-1), and "A Young Lass's Soliloquy" (52-3). Carmichael's poems, while making use of a few Scots words, are more concerned with capturing the sound of dialect rather than employing Scots words. Only one of the words included in the glossary to Burns's Kilmarnock Edition is used by Carmichael-"dowie," defined as "crazy and dull" (Burns 237). Burns also provides Carmichael with subjects for emulation. In Burns's satirical poem "The Twa Dogs" a gentleman's dog and a ploughman's collie have a discussion about the lots of their human masters and "Rejoic'd they were na men but dogs" (Burns 21). In Carmichael's poem two doves have a similar dispute and come to realize:

Then envy not the rich an' great;
You'r better in your present state,
Though but a dow;
For they hae griefs ye dinna ken,
An' aft these nobel creatures men
Do envy you. (6)

Carmichael adopts the traditional six-line "Habbie" stanza employed by Allan Ramsay and exploited by Fergusson who "was the first to exploit the full potentialities of this stanza as a vehicle for general social description and satire" (MacLaine 33). Carmichael makes use of the form again in "A Young Lass's Soliloquy" which concerns a woman who "was cald as winter snaw" and whose "icy breast" is melted by "a lad wi' yellow hair" who loves a lassy who has silver. The poem ends with the young lass suggesting "I hae five an five good nails, / An', ere my strength or courage fails, / I'll wi' them till her" (53). "A Song," written in ballad form, tells the story of the murder of a shepherd Harry Howie from the point of view of his beloved. In these three poems Carmichael signals that she writes as a Scot ready to take her place with other Scots poets.

But a place for Rebekah Carmichael could not be found. Beneath the portrait frontispiece in the volume of Fergusson Burns gave her Carmichael would have found some verses Burns addressed to Fergusson:

With tears I pity thy unhappy fate!
Why is the bard unfitted for the world
Yet has so keen a relish of its pleasures? (Wallace 2.61)

If the bard is unfit for the world, the Scots romantic women poet is unfitted to be a bard, no matter how all too fitting her own unhappy fate. If Burns concludes his volume with "A Bard's Epitaph" and the admonition, "Know, prudent, cautious, self-controul / Is Wisdom's root" (235), Carmichael ends hers with a poem about her birthday in which she hopes

O might I be enabled to relieve
The wants, and sooth the cares of those that grieve;
I'd view my birth-day with a heart elate,
And leave the world without the least regret. (92)

That Burns might not have realized self-control is a part of his legend. That Carmichael likely realized hers is part of her tragedy.

Works Cited

Bentman, Raymond. "Robert Burns's Use of Scottish Diction." 1965; rpt. Critical Essays on Robert Burns. Ed. Carol McGuirk. New York: G. K. Hall, 1998. 79-94.
Burns, Robert. Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect. Kilmarnock: John Wilson, 1786; rpt. London: T. Werner Laurie, 1927.
Carmichael, Rebekah. Poems. Edinburgh: Peter Hill, 1790.
Chambers, Robert. The Life and Works of Robert Burns. Rev. William Wallace. 4 vols. Edinburgh: W & R Chambers, 1896.
Daiches, David. Robert Fergusson. Edinburgh: Scottish Acadmic Press, 1982.
Ewing, J. C. "Letters from Dr. Robert Anderson to Dr. James Currie, 1799-1801." Annual Burns Chronicle and Club Directory. Ed. D. McNaught. No. 34 (January 1925): 8-19.
Fergusson, Robert. Poems on Various Subjects. Perth: R. Morison, 1788.
Fitzhugh, Robert T. Robert Burns, The Man and the Poet: A Round, Unvarnished Account. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970.
"Hay, David Ramsay." DNB Volume IX. London: Oxford UP, 1917.
Lonsdale, Roger ed. Eighteenth-Century Women Poets. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1990.
MacLaine, Allan H. Robert Fergusson. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1965.

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