And then came the breach seemingly inevitable in Burns’s relations with every woman of higher station. Its details are still obscure. Even its exact date cannot be determined, though it must have been in Christmas week of 1793. The traditional story is that Burns was dining at Woodley Park and that the men’s talk over their wine somehow got round to the Rape of the Sabines. It was drunkenly agreed that on returning to the drawing-room the men should stage a burlesque of the episode. They did, and Burns, singling out his hostess as his prey, put too much ardour into the game. Mrs. Carswell interprets the thing as a deliberate rag on the part of the other men to get Burns to make a fool of himself. Such at any rate was the result. After a stormy scene during which some of the other ladies present tried to intercede for the poet he was ignominiously expelled. The next day he grovelled in contrition before the offended lady in the painfully humiliating ‘letter from Hell’. She refused to be placated and after two more abortive efforts on Burns’s part the breach between them was complete. This accepted story leaves unexplained several important details. Foremost among them is the fact that in his apology Burns blames his host for constraining him to drink more than he wished to. Maria had told Smellie in November that Walter Riddell was in the West Indies and was not expected back until spring. On January 12th, when the breach with Burns had already occurred, she again mentioned her husband’s absence. If these letters were correctly printed by Smellie’s biographer, Walter Riddell could not have been the host; therefore the scene could not have occurred at Woodley Park. The alternative explanation is that it really happened at Friars Carse, with Robert and Elizabeth Riddell in the roles usually assigned to Walter and Maria. In this case Maria, hearing of Burns’s conduct, must have undertaken to discipline him. Whatever the circumstances, Burns’s subsequent conduct was inexcusable. During the early spring of 1794 he wrote several epigrams on Maria which are utterly caddish, lacking alike in wit and decent feeling. One of them he even offered to a London newspaper, the editor of which had sense enough to reject it. He also wrote the long, dull, and vulgar parody of Pope which bears the title ‘Esopus to Maria’ and which attacks everything about Mrs. Riddell from her hair to her morals. This last was meant for the ‘quite private’ delectation of John Syme and one or two other intimates, but even if Burns had published it his conduct could not have appeared in much worse light. The epigrams and the ‘Monody on a Lady Famed for Her Caprice’ are enough in themselves to put it beyond condoning.