1. Isobel (or Isabella) Begg (1770–1858), youngest sister of Robert Burns, m., 1793, John Begg; widowed with nine children, 1813; at this time living in Tranent, ca. 10 mi. from Haddington, with her dressmaker das. Agnes (1800–83) and Isabella (1806–80). Chambers had already ed. The Poetical Works of Robert Burns (Edinburgh, 1838) and The Prose Works of Robert Burns (Edinburgh, 1839), and he was to make use of much information from her for his Life and Works of Robert Burns, 4 vols. (Edinburgh, 1851–52), and to give £300 in 1856 from a cheap edn. for the support of the das. They were to move to Ayr, 1843; see R. B. Begg, Isobel Burns (Mrs. Begg) A Memoir by her Grandson (Ayr, 1891). A printed circular, found with TC's letters to Milnes at Trinity College, Cambridge, is headed, “The Sister of Burns /
(Extract of a letter from Mr Robert Chambers, of Edinburgh, to T. Carlyle Esq.),” and says: “A sister of Burns, the last survivor
of the father's family, still lives. She is now a widow at an advanced age, and resides at the village of Tranent, in Haddingtonshire,
with two unmarried daughters, who endeavour to support her by the exercise of their needles. I lately paid her a visit, and
found her a decent-looking old person, with a good deal of the poet's physiognomy, and particularly his fine dark eyes. The
youngest of William Burns's children, she was twelve years old at the time he died at Lochlea, a broken-spirited man. She
was one of the household at Mossgiel during its occupancy by Robert and Gilbert Burns in succession, and she afterwards married
a person named Begg, who, for ten years, conducted the business of Gilbert's farm of Dunning, on the estate of Sir Charles
S. Monteath of Closeburn. Since the death of her husband, her sons being all removed from her, and unable to assist her, she
has been dependent on her two daughters, who, though active and most respectable young women, are barely able to keep house
for themselves and their venerable parent. In short, the Sister of Burns has fallen in the course of Providence into poverty,
and her last years are threatened with those distresses, the dread of which is the theme of so many of her brother's verses.
I was much affected on hearing her say that, having in her earliest years been witness of the troubles which lowered over
her father's house, having afterwards partaken of the hardships at Mossgiel, having passed through a long married life in
circumstances at no time easy, and being now reduced to absolute indigence, she felt as if she had walked side by side with
Grief from her very childhood. One only alleviation of her fate has sprung from the fame of her brother, in the shape of the
most trifling annual pittance from the Scottish Exchequer. She was lately a candidate for the benefit of a fund called the
Craig-Crook-Mortification (Anglice, endowment); but her application, for the mean time, failed.” Chambers went on to recommend her and the das. as “worthy persons”:
“The public is doubtless much taxed; but … some claims are sacred. The poems of Burns daily give delight to thousands, and
will continue to do so for ages. His productions wax yearly in public esteem, as time passes and brings no second Burns. The
name of the Ayrshire bard has been associated by some living writers with those of which England is proudest. While He soars
so high, to think of one so near and dear to him as a sister sinking into penury—hearing from a cold ingle-cheek the echoes
of a nation's acclaim at every mention of the name she bears—she, the last of the real members of that group which, as a poetical
picture, must live for ever in the ‘Cotter's Saturday Night’—in short the SISTER OF BURNS—to think of all this, I say, is
more than I can suppose the public patiently enduring, burdened as it is.” The circular explains that a committee had been
formed to raise and receive contributions consisting of Chambers as sec. and treas., Charles Menteath (given as “Monteath”),
TC himself, and the Scottish singer John Wilson (1800–1849; ODNB), of Covent Garden Theatre.
