‘The Improvidence of Men of Genius is Proverbial’: Sympathy, Charity and Patronage for the Burns Family Following the Poet's Early Death

Abstract

Robert Burns died in 1796, leaving his widow and children with no financial security. His friends and admirers, through charitable appeals and James Currie's four-volume edition of his life and works, raised a capital sum which allowed Jean Armour Burns to remain in the family home and raise their children until adulthood, when several powerful individuals granted the poet's sons patronage in the service of HM Government and the Honourable East India Company. Later, other relatives and descendants also received charity when facing old age or financial hardship, the last recipient dying as recently as 1944. The equivalent of £8 million (at 2020 values) was raised through public appeal and private patronage for the poet's family, significantly in excess of the monies later subscribed for monuments to the bard. This wellspring of generosity has a level of irony given the very limited patronage Burns received in his final years, and his own attitude to gratuitous charity, his vaunted independence and his expressed dislike of ‘placemen’.