Field Visit
Date 16 October 2002
Event ID 613906
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/613906
Bronze profile portrait of young 'Clarinda', facing right, with her long waving hair held back in an elaborate arrangement of cascading ribbons. The right shoulder, nearest the viewer, is cut off; the chest bare apart from a sweep of drapery over the left shoulder.
The Ninety Burns Club approached the Town Council of Edinburgh in 1899 asking for a subscription towards restoring the grave of Clarinda. The Town Council recommended taking no action (1)
In 1910 The Builder quoted the Glasgow Herald: 'The Edinburgh Ninety Burns Club have initiated a movement to place a tablet on the grave in Canongate Churchyard of Mrs Maclehose, the 'Clarinda' of Burns.' The Builder considered this to be 'a little unreasonable', their argument being that 'to place on the gravestone of one, the resting-place of whose remains is thereby already sufficiently recorded, a tablet to the poet's individual vision of the animated flesh, were not only to commemorate what is not there, to confound with the immortal Clarinda the mortal Mrs Maclehose, but also, and not subtly, to slight the poet the promoters ostensibly esteem.' (2)
On 16 June 1922 The Building News reported that the bronze had been unveiled on 10 June (3).
Inscriptions : Cut in stone below oval portrait: CLARINDA
Signatures : Beneath bust (incised letters): H S Gamley A.R.S.A.
Design period : 1910-1922
Year of unveiling : 1922
Unveiling details : 10 June 1922
Information from Public Monuments and Sculpture Association (PMSA Work Ref : EDIN1480)
