Jean Lorimer
[1] Burns commented "The Lady on whom it was made, is one of the finest women in Scotland" in a letter to George Thomson, enclosing one of the two dozen or so songs that he wrote for her.
Robert wrote several songs on Jean for John when she was only around 16,[11] however in 1793 when she was barely 18 she eloped to Gretna Green to marry the 19 year old Andrew Whelpdale, a native of Penrith in Cumberland who had a small farm near Moffat at Barnhill.
[10] Towards the end of her life, twenty-three years after she had last seen him,[6] Jean visited her spendrift husband in the debtors' prison at Carlisle, generously seeing him every day for a month.
In 1795 the family gave up Kemmishall or Kemys Hall due to his business failing and moved into Dumfries where William steadily developed senile dementia and in 1808 he died in poverty.
She lived under straitened circumstances, a little above begging and worse as implied by Thomas Thorburn who, whilst in Edinburgh encountered her in the street and declined her attentions, but gave her a shilling.
[15] She later was employed as a housekeeper by a gentleman and his wife in Blacket Place, Newington, Edinburgh[14][7] and then, when she became too infirm to work owing to a pulmonary infection,[14] she was provided with a small flat in Middleton's Entry, Potterow where she lived for the remainder of her life.
[16] Jean died aged 56 from 'Winter Cough', chronic bronchitis,[2] in September 1831 and was buried in the Preston Street Burial Ground in Newington, Edinburgh.
[18] Burns composed around two dozen songs on 'Chloris',[7] such as "O Wat Ye Wha's in Youn Town" however he later replaced 'Jean' with 'Lucy' and gave a copy to Lucy Johnston of Auchincruive near Ayr.
"[4][21] In 1791 Burns wrote several songs on behalf of his excise colleague John Gillespie, such as "Sweet Closes the Ev'ning on Craigieburn Wood" to the tune 'Craigieburnwood'.
[9][25] Burns engraved four lines of the song "She Says She Lo'es Me Best of a'" on a window pane at the Globe in Dumfries: Her's are the willing chains of Love, By conquering beauty's sovereign law; But still my Chloris' dearest charm, She says she loes me best of a'.
When just a schoolboy, Dr James Adam was sent by his father, also a doctor, to collect a package of Robert Burns's holograph letters, poems and songs from Lorimer.
[30] Young James duly arrived at her home at 'Middleton's Entry' and, whilst eating the offering of a 'bap and jelly',[31] Jean questioned him to make sure that the precious letters, etc.
It was the time of the resurrectionists or body snatchers and Jean warned him of the "dumbie doctors" who lurked in common stairs, closes and entries, shrouded in large, dark cloaks and provided with pitch plasters, which they suddenly clapped over the mouth and nose of an unwary, night-straggling urchin, while the "dumbie doctor" enveloped his prey in the fearful black mantle, and swiftly hurried it off to the ever-yawning doors of the "dissecting-room".
On 3 August 1795 Burns presented Lorimer with a copy of the last edition of his works published during his lifetime, the 1794 printing of Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect: "inscription, written on the blank leaf of a copy of the last edition of my poems, presented to the lady whom, in so many fictitious reveries of passion, but with the most ardent sentiments of real friendship, I have so often sung under the name of 'Chloris.'"
