40 Maria Riddell, the Friend of Burns. 



g-iven in a " Memorandum by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe 

 (written on the back of a Receipt from his father's Dumfries 

 agents, Messrs Walker and Gordon, dated 8th Jany., 

 1808),'"^° and is as follows : — 



" There was a Lady — it is needless to outrag-e her 

 ashes by recording her name — whose intimacy wdth B. did 

 him essential injury — their connection was notorious — and 

 she made him quarrel for some time with a connexion of 

 her own, a worthy man, to whom her deluded lover lay 

 under many obligations. She was an affected — painted — 

 crooked postiche — wuth a mouth from ear to ear — and a 

 turned up nose — bandy legs — which she however thought 

 fit to display — and a flat bosom, rubbed over with pearl 

 powder, a cornelian cross hung artfully as a contrast, 

 which was bared in the evening to her petticoat tyings, 

 this pickled frog (for such she looked, amid her own col- 

 lection of natural curiosities) Burns admired and loved — 

 they quarrelled once, however, on account of a strolling 

 player'''! — and Burns wrote a copy of satirical verses on the 

 Lady — which she afterwards kindly forgave, for a very 

 obvious reason — amid all his bitterness he spared her in 

 the principal point, which made her shunned by her own 

 sex, "^13, ^nd despised by the rest of the community." 



The date which the memorandum bears is January 8th, 1808, 

 but it must be noted that that date refers only to the receipt, 

 on the blank reverse of which Sharpe, certainly at a subsequent 

 date, but probably soon after the death of Maria Riddell 

 (December 15th, 1808), wrote this caustic description of her. 

 The Poet's lampoons consequent on the Riddell quarrel 

 are now seldom read, but it may be interesting to compare 



■^0 This interesting document was first published in the Annual 

 Burns Chronide and Clah Directory, No. 12 (Januarv, 1903), pp. 

 96-102. 



■71 Probably James Williamson. See footnotes 49 and 50. 



"^la, gee Burns' letter (dated by Cunningham, "Dumfries, 

 1795 "), which confirms this statement (p. 38). 



