Locals gathered yesterday to celebrate the life and love of Agnes Maclehose (née Craig), who was born on 26 April 1758.
Maclehose (‘Nancy’ to intimates) came from Glasgow, where she met and married the lawyer James Maclehose in 1776. She parted 4 years later on the grounds of his mental cruelty, by which time she had borne him 4 children.
In 1782 she moved to Edinburgh, living on a modest annuity and the kindness of family and friends. Here she met and fell in love with the poet Robert Burns five years later. The pair conducted an intense but chaste relationship until Burns’ death in 1796.
Their mutual adoration was expressed privately in poetry and letters (between Clarinda and Sylvander). It was suppressed owing to the former’s Christian reservations and the need (financial and social) to avoid scandal.
Maclehose moved from Potterow to 14 Calton Hill in 1810 and continued to live there until her death in 1841.
She was buried in the Canongate Kirkyard, where yesterday’s walk (organised by the Calton Hill Conservation Trust) concluded with readings of her own and Burns’ love poems.
