BEHIND every great man, it is sometimes said, stands an astonished woman.

As if they have not already had enough to contend with, helping their mate reach fame and fortune, it is often also their lot to be airbrushed out of history, allowing their partner to take all the credit for his achievements, while the figure metaphorically toiling in the boiler-room remains sooty-faced, with oily rag in hand, maintaining the engine of household and family.

Jean Armour, lover, muse and – after a struggle – official wife of Robert Burns is one such. Many biographies of the Bard include images of his better-born conquests and admirers, such as the famous “Clarinda”, but none of Jean. The insult is extreme. Despite her pivotal place in his life, most accounts of Burns’ rackety, tempestuous, fascinating career, reduce her to little more than a footnote.

Novelist Catherine Czerkawska has done the Belle of Mauchline a service by gathering all the poems and letters Burns wrote to her, or with her in mind. These carry the editor’s clear-eyed, succinct editorial notes, placing them in context, so that by its end, For Jean feels a much more substantial piece of work than its slim page count suggests. Czerkawska comes to the same conclusion as many Burnsians, that, despite its troubles, Jean and Rabbie’s love affair was profound and abiding. Reading her selection, that becomes abundantly clear.

And yet one suspects that had Burns lived beyond his tragically young death at 37, his roistering roostering ways would have caused Jean more heartache.

Almost on his death bed, where he was tended by his heavily pregnant wife who called on the assistance of a young neighbour, Jessy Lawers, he composed one of his sweetest songs – with Jessy, not his wife, in mind.

The National:

It seems Burns’ creative spirit required constant fresh kindling to spark his imagination. As Czerkawska’s selection shows, however, none was such a constant source of inspiration as the stonemason’s daughter he first saw among the fashionable lassies of Mauchline.

Before he and Jean had done much more than share a flirtatious glance, he wrote in The Belles of Mauchline:

Miss Miller is fine, Miss Markland’s divine,

Miss Smith she has wit, and Miss Betty is Braw,

There’s beauty and fortune to get wi’ Miss Morton,

But Armour’s the jewel for me o’ them a’.

And jewel she was. Despite the many misplaced romantic steps Burns took in his lustful life, he showed discernment in making Jean his wife. She was, of course, lovely, but as he writes in It Is Na, Jean, Thy Bonie Face:

It is na, Jean, thy bonie face,

Nor shape that I admire;

Altho’ thy beauty and thy grace

Might weel awauk desire.

Something, in ilka part o thee,

To praise, to love, I find,

But dear as is thy form to me,

Still dearer is thy mind.

Burns’ Edinburgh supporter Frances Dunlop once visited Jean and remarked on “the cheerful openness of her countenance, the intelligence of her eyes and her easy, modest, unaffected manners”. Though we catch only glimpses of one of the most important background figures in literature, she appears to have been distinguished by sharpness of mind, patience and generosity. How else to explain her willingness to take in one of Burns’ illegitimate children, or to forgive him his trespasses with other women?

From the start, when Jean fell pregnant and scandalised her father – apparently he fainted at the news – she must have known “faithful”

was one of the few words missing from Burns’ vocabulary. Whether it was the mysterious Highland Mary, or the housemaid who had his first child, he was the sort of man to whom Mae West was referring when she said, “give a man a free hand and he’ll run it all over you”. After Jean gave birth to twins, their liaison continued, and when her father discovered she was pregnant again, he threw her out. Such constancy to Burns suggests that the pair had plighted their troth, and considered themselves married in common law.

If that were the case, though, it does not explain one of the least edifying letters Burns wrote, where he refutes any claim Jean could make on him, even while pregnant once more, and boasts of giving her “a thundering scalade that electrified the very marrow of her bones”. Czerkawska struggles with this missive, which she says is “shocking in its implied brutality”.

Jean gave birth prematurely to twins, both of whom died. Despite, or possibly because of these and other bereavements, the pair officially married. While their marital joy was not unalloyed, they were obviously a happy couple. More children followed, Burns found secure employment as a customs and excise officer, and spoke enthusiastically of marriage.

Posterity should be grateful for the contentment they found together, because Burns’ passion for the woman he described as “the blythest bird upon the bush” was to produce some of his most enduring work. From My Wife’s A Winsome Wee Thing to A Red, Red Rose, his words sing with love so true.

For Jean: Poems, Songs and Letters by Robert Burns, Selected by Catherine Czerkawska is published by Saraband, priced £7.99