ROBERT WILLIAMS BUCHANAN (1841 - 1901)
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ROBERT WILLIAMS BUCHANAN (1841 - 1901) |
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Notes on David Gray - continued (iii)
The Eclectic Review (July, 1862 - pp. 19-29) DAVID GRAY: HIS LIFE AND POEMS.* WITH the heartiest disposition in us to pay honour to all who, like David Gray, lived to illustrate the universality and catholicity of true genius, its power to break through all obstacles, and to hallow the shades of humblest life and labour, and to use the scantiest education for the purposes of mental and spiritual elevation—with all this in us, we must yet think that his is a name and genius which has been over-praised, and is in danger of being over-praised. We are forbidden to take any low ground in estimating him, for he says, ‘I am so accustomed to compare my own mental progress with that of such men as Shakspeare, Goethe, and Wordsworth, that the dream of my youth will not be fulfilled if my fame equal not at least that of the latter of these three.’ True, in other moments he modified these expressions, and perhaps even felt shame for a self-consciousness so daring, and an estimate of his powers and hopes so singularly immodest. But this inflated self-exaggeration coloured all his thoughts, his efforts, and his ambitions. It is not much in our way to pat crowing cocks; but in the case of this young man some of the leading journals have done it extravagantly. No doubt his poems are, so far as we have seen them, full of power and full of promise, but we have frequently called the attention of our readers to volumes containing, we believe, the evidence of still higher, and more and varied power. This little volume deserves to be read most affectionately, and appreciating sympathies will find it full of things to admire; and the essay of Mr. Milnes, a matured veteran of letters, Poet, Member of Parliament, and man of the world, is a delightful instance of watchful interest and patience, outliving all the roughening of — * The Luggie and other Poems. By David Gray. With a Memoir by James Hedderwick, and a Prefatory Notice by R. M. Milnes, M.P. Macmillan. — 20 life and society; and while shedding a mild and sufficient glow of encouragement and praise round the course of a young man, exercising also the restraining influences of maturity and sympathetic wisdom in attempting to give profitable vent to his powers, and to save him from wretchedness and disappointment. ‘All his associations, therefore,’ says Mr. Hedderwick, his affectionate biographer, ‘clustered about Merkland, which is situated within a mile of the town of Kirkintilloch, on the Gartshore road. It has neither the dignity of a village, nor the primitive rudeness of a clachan, but is simply a group of road-side cottages, some half-dozen in number, humble, but with slated roofs, having pleasant patches of garden in front and behind, and wholly occupied by hand-loom weavers and their families, who receive their webs and their inadequate remuneration from the manufacturing warehouses of the great city. His parents are both living—an industrious and exemplary couple, with the constant click of the shuttle in one division of their cottage, and with doubtless the occasional squall of juvenile voices in the other. David was the eldest of eight children, there being four boys and three girls now left. The Luggie flows past Merkland, at the foot of a precipitous bank, and shortly afterwards loses itself among the shadows of Oxgang, with its fine old mansion-house and rookery, and debouches at Kirkintilloch into the Kelvin, one of the tributaries of the Clyde, celebrated in Scottish song. It is a mere unpretending rivulet, yet sufficient to turn the wheel of an old meal-mill at the straggling village of Waterside, a little way up the stream, though in a lower level of the valley. Neither, except at one or two points, is it of a character to attract a lover of the picturesque. But although not particularly fitted for a painter’s eye, it sufficed for a poet’s love. The little bright-eyed firstborn of the Merkland handloom weaver had the more accessible nooks of it by heart long before his ambitious feet could carry him to more beautiful regions; and although, in later years, he extended the radius of his rambles, and made intimate acquaintance with the magnificent glens and cascades in the recesses of the Campsie fells, his tiny “natal stream,” at the foot of the familiar “brae,” so associated in his heart with the recollections of childhood and the endearments of home, never lost its freshness or its charm.’ He received his education—and being a Scotch lad he had all the advantages of a classical education—in the Kirkintilloch parish school. It was intended that he should devote himself to the work 21 of the Christian ministry in connection with the Free Church of Scotland, to which his parents belonged. He accordingly studied as a Queen’s scholar in the Free Church Normal Seminary, and in Glasgow he contrived to attend the Humanity, Greek, and other classes in the University, supporting himself as a pupil teacher, and afterwards as a private tutor. He, however, abandoned the idea of the pulpit, and does not seem to have taken kindly to the profession of schoolmaster. With such advantages, we cannot speak of him as evidencing the same native and inborn genius manifested by John Clare, or Robert Nicholl, who never received any aid of training hand or fostering of education. ‘O why within that lusty wood ‘To Dobell he wrote, “I am in London, and dare not look into the middle of next week. What brought me here? God knows, for I don’t. Alone in such a place is a horrible thing. I have seen Dr. Mackay, but it’s all up. People don’t seem to understand me. . . . . . . Westminster Abbey! I was there all day yesterday. If I live I shall be buried there—so help me God! A completely defined consciousness of great poetical genius is my only antidote against utter despair and despicable failure.”’ But he was introduced, or introduced himself, to Monckton Milnes, and he stretched out an affectionate hand to save him from despair, and gave him some slight employment to occupy his time and to satisfy the noble pride which would not allow him to eat the bread of idleness. At last, a few months after his arrival in London, illness severe and prostrating set in upon his frame, and soon assumed the terrible form of pulmonary disease. Sympathy was not denied him. He was surrounded by kind friends: Mrs. Nichol (the beloved and honoured Elizabeth Pease), widow of Dr. Nichol, William Logan, and kind 22 friends in London, among whom foremost appears Mr. Milnes, Miss Coates, Miss James (the accomplished author of ‘Ethel’), and many others. Mr. Milnes wrote to him— ‘“I know how easy a thing it is to give counsel, and how poor is consolation; but still I must expect you to be brave and resigned, and to feel that, above being a poet, is the power of being a man. There is much in this world far sadder and crueller than the thought of leaving it; and the old Greeks counted every man happy who died young.”’ Sentence of death, of course, went forth against him. He was sent to Torquay, but he sighed with irrepressible longing to return home, and he returned. The thought of death was dreadful to him, because he conceived he had not fulfilled the promise of his genius. To one of the dearest of his friends he wrote— ‘“As my time narrows to a completion, you grow dearer. I think of you daily with quiet tears. I think of the happy, happy days we might have spent together at Maryburgh; but the vision darkens. My crown is laid in the dust for ever. Nameless too! God, how that troubles me! Had I but written one immortal poem, what a glorious consolation! But this shall be my epitaph if I have a gravestone at all,— ‘“’Twas not a life, O dear, dear Sutherland! I wish I could spend two healthy months with you; we would make an effort, and do something great. But slowly, insidiously, and I fear fatally, consumption is doing its work, until I shall be only a fair odorous memory (for I have great faith in your affection for me) to you—a sad tale for your old age. Whom the gods love, die young.’ Bless the ancient Greeks for that comfort. If I was not ripe, do you think I would be gathered? The commencement of the poem ‘The Luggie,’ was passing through the press while he was dying, and some of the proof sheets reached him the day before he died, the 3rd of December, 1861. He was in his twenty-fourth year. Almost his last words were, ‘God is love, and I have faith.’ Among his papers the following memorial epitaph was found: it is beautiful, but it betrays 23 the morbid thirst for fame which was indeed the unquenchable desire of his life:— ‘MY EPITAPH. ‘Below lies one whose name was traced in sand— He was buried in the burial-ground on the banks of the stream whose unostentatious loveliness he so sweetly sung. Mr. Hedderwick says:— ‘Not far from Merkland, on an elevation a short distance from the highway, there is situated a lonely place of sepulture, surrounded by a low rude wall of stone, with a little watch-tower over the entrance-gate, useful for shelter and observation during nights, long since bygone, when graveyards were broken into and plundered, but now occupied with the few implements necessary for the performance of the last mortal rites. It has neither church nor house attached, and is known as the “Auld Aisle Burying-ground.” With the poet it had been a favourite place of resort and meditation. He could see from it the Luggie, the Bothlin burn, the Woodilee farm, all the localities which he most loved. There, as appeared from the dates on the grave-stones, had the bones of his ancestors reposed for above two hundred years; and thither, on the Saturday after his death, were his own remains carried—on handspokes, after the old Scotch fashion—followed by about thirty mourners. The wintry day had been lowering, but the hour of the funeral was brightened with gleams of clear sunshine, and in the midst of many regrets, yet of some soothings, all that was mortal of David Gray was laid deep in the mould, near a solitary ash-tree—the only tree in the place—now bare and disconsolate, but ere long to break into foliage, and be an aviary for the songs of summer.’ Every reader with any measure of sensibility will read with pleasure the principal poem of this, which is now a posthumous collection. We think neither it nor its companions awaken that still more exquisite emotion we name delight. ‘The Luggie’ is cast in the mould and vitalised by the spirit of Thomson, more than any considerable poem we remember in our language. His likeness to Keats has also been noticed, and the following lines to Mr. Dobell are like an echo of the earlier style of Keats:— ‘O for the vowell’d flow of knightly Spenser, And so on, and so on, and so on. We only quote the lines as a sample of that spontaneous flexibility of aerial versification to which he could command his pen. The subjective power by which he interpreted nature to his imagination and mood, are shown in the following quotations:— ‘AUTUMNAL NIGHTS. ‘O Autumn nights!
‘SPRING. ‘Like a fair picture suddenly uncovered
‘WINTER EVENING AMONG THE MOUNTAINS. ‘So thus with fair delapsion softly falls 25 ‘THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY. ‘This is not all: for the invisible soul Such quotations as the above will very plainly reveal the state of affectionate and melancholy thought with which he visited the winding walks and ways of nature. He may especially be called the Poet of the Snow. We know not where so many beautiful things can be found of tender love to the white shroud of nature as in these volumes. There is nothing equal, it is true, to the one poem by Bryant; but the references of Gray are constantly recurring. The following presents a perfect picture:— ‘But now what revelation of fair change, The same rapt regard for the falling snow is shown in many passages of the volume, and especially in one:— ‘A simple tune with quiet flow, We very greatly also admire the tender reverence with which he has woven into his verses some allusions to his father. They are worthy, and reveal in the sire a fine character, mingling the hues of philosophy and poetry. Such characters are not rare, even among the lowliest in Scotland; one of these reveals the cheerful, affectionate poetry of the father. ‘THE ANEMONE. ‘I have wandered far to-day, ‘Beneath a clump of furze it grew; ‘One April day when I was seven, ‘Now, gentle reader, as I live, ‘So with the spirit of a sage ‘Let others sing of that and this, The following reveals a finer, higher character:— ‘A vale of tears, a wilderness of woe, We make ourselves—Son, you are what you are The last quotation reminds us of the ‘Sonnets in the Shadows,’ all of them, apparently, written when near to death, and flowing through their confinement with a great beauty and manifold happiness of expression. Is not the following one struck from a sadly natural and too frequent key!— ‘Last night on coughing slightly with sharp pain, 28 And the following twain:— ‘And thus proceeds the mode of human life ‘O Thou of purer eyes than to behold From all these quotations it will be seen that David Gray was really an extraordinary young man. As in the cases of Thomson and Keats, he charms the ear by a most awakening and quickening power of melody. It would seem that he thought himself likely to equal or eclipse Wordsworth in fame. But there is little that indicates a probable power to make the precious things of nature give up their moral treasures, as in all the 29 poems of the great seer of the English mountains. The versification of Gray, and the tone of his thought, was sensuous. He led along his measures and his images frequently in a maze and dance of verbal witchery—defect some may regard it, ripeness and maturity others; but his poems do not evidence purpose and object: his sentiments, and the flow of his expressions, have the ease, and grace, and happiness of unconditioned nature. ‘That impulse which all beauty gives the soul His powers lack that which crowns and glorifies power—consecration. His mind had much of his favourite river in its flow. It was not so much an enduring crag to receive impressions, as a spring to gush forth upon a wandering and abounding way. And we speak thus of his mind, not merely because death has set the seal upon all performance, as because the writings evidence a maturity, a pre-maturity, a rare roundness and finish of being. Is it sad to think of that early-filled grave in the ‘Auld Aisle Kirkyard’? For the survivors, yes. But do we not possess a faith that teaches the essential elevation of being by death? And we are permitted to hope that David Gray has at once realised the purpose of his being here at all, and, amidst beauties to which all the enchantments of the Luggie are tame, is now fulfilling the glorious purpose of existence more immediately in the presence of God. ___
The Glasgow Herald (29 January, 1938 - p.4) THE POET OF THE LUGGIE A Centenary Estimate of David Gray by WILLIAM JEFFREY ACCIDENTS of birth and of circumstance have won for David Gray, who did not write a single line that is truly memorable, a place in the roll of the poets of the nineteenth century. The Scotland into which he was born 100 years ago to-day was singularly destitute of original poets, and as compensation for the lack the most was made of his “Luggie” and his sonnet sequence, “In the Shadows.” On the strength of these poems in English Gray is to be ranked with Robert Buchanan and Alexander Smith, Scotsmen of his own time who had the luck to live longer than he did, and one of whom has left verse and prose pleasant enough to be remembered. Yet it must be said that the three, for all their ambitions, suffer the hard fate of having added nothing to the Scottish tradition as it now exists. Pathetic History The story of the Kirkintilloch weaver’s son who, after completing his College course in Glasgow, rushed to London, there to have his inordinate pride and his health shattered, and who returned to die in the little back bedroom of the ancestral cottage at Merkland, touched the heart of the influential Monckton Milnes and Dr Hedderwick and made them more favourably disposed towards the lad and his work than they might otherwise have been. There was always the feeling that had the fates been kinder David Gray would have lived to fulfil at least a part of his extraordinary ambition. Echoes of the Great He had indeed a genuine talent for word-spinning, a genuine ear for simple metric, and genuine feelings of the pantheistic kind. Nature was a real source of his afflatus. “O Autumn nights!” he cried, when in the great south But when one searches for evidence of personal, original vision the result is negative. Gray’s verse, in fact, was the product of an unusual talent for assimilating the more obvious qualities of the poetry of Wordsworth, Thomson, Keats, and Tennyson. There is an abundance of “bird-embowering beechen boughs” and such-like echoes in it, and, as a sign of its callowness, it is sprinkled with “copsy villages,” “spiry towns,” “saponaceous loam,” “assimilative snow,” and other ineptitudes. The lack of fresh observation of nature is singularly complete. Amidst pages of dullness one welcomes the phrase “cold drop at nose,” and the Scots “feltie-flier” and “snooving” somehow found a place amid the worn verbal coinage. _____
Just a couple of articles which retread the same David Gray path, but add a little more background information.
i. David Gray’s First Proof-Sheet |
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ii. Kirkintilloch and Luggie-side by Samuel M. Andrew |
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iii. 100 Glasgow Men: William Logan (1813 - 1879) I have included the above webpage about William Logan which includes the following: ‘His sympathies were not, as in the case of some philanthropists, circumscribed. They were far-reaching and intensely human. He had a native refinement which his contact with social degradation had only served to make more refined. He had the keenest appreciation of the beautiful in literature and art, and nothing delighted him more than when he had the opportunity of lending a helping hand to any struggling wielder of the pen or the pencil, on his way to fame. He is specially identified with the brief and tragic history of David Gray, the poet of the Luggie. He had discovered his worth and genius before the young poet left for London, and through his interest in him was brought into friendly relations with Lord Houghton, who found in William Logan a trusted agent through whom he could continue to young Gray, after his return to Scotland, the kindness he had shown him in the South. Logan's ministries of love to the poet were unwearied. He regularly visited him, and helped to soothe his dying hours. When the end had come he set himself to the double task of raising a monument to his memory in the “Auld Aisle” Burying Ground, Kirkintilloch, where he lies buried; and of collecting a fund for promoting the comfort of his mother. He entrusted the fund to other hands, but charged himself with the duty of personally conveying to Mrs. Gray the sums paid to her at regular intervals.’ _____
Robert Buchanan and David Gray - a final note If it hadn’t been for the date on that letter from David Gray to Monckton Milnes quoted in Volume 2 of The Life, Letters, and Friendships of Richard Monckton Milnes, First Lord Houghton by T. Wemyss Reid, I would have just added a link to Gray’s The Luggie and Other Poems at the Internet Archive and let it go at that. But the date is February, 1860 and according to James Hedderwick’s Memoir in The Luggie, Gray did not leave Glasgow for London until 5th May, 1860. And this date is later confirmed by Robert Buchanan, who adds that they made their plan on 3rd May and even adds a bit of dialogue which he recalls from that meeting. So, who to believe? I have no idea where Gray’s letter to Monckton Milnes is, or whether it even still exists, so the February date could well be a mistake on Wemyss Reid’s part. I could, I suppose, go in search of it to make sure, but I fear I would fall into one of those films where the snowglobe would slip from my dead hand, then a quick cut to the basement of the British Library where an old caretaker spots a suitably aged piece of paper beneath a shelf, scoops it into his dustpan and throws it into the furnace, close-up of the date (February or May doesn’t really matter) or not in the case of the artier directors hoping for auteur status in time. I have spent too long on one obsession with Robert Buchanan to start another one on David Gray, so instead we will tread the much safer paths of pure speculation. Besides, I do like Buchanan, whereas Gray, I find, is a bit of a whiney little bugger. I like to compare him to our own local peasant poet (a proper peasant poet who was taught at the local school and caught consumption repairing the roof of the parish church), George Heath. Their paths did cross posthumously in an article Buchanan wrote for Good Words. In the course of the article, Buchanan quotes this from one of Heath’s journals: “Monday, December 17.—A damp, foggy, uncongenial day. I have not been doing much study, for I am feeling very unwell. I have heard of a terrible calamity which happened at Talk-o’-the-Hill on Thursday last—an explosion of fire-damp, by which eighty lives were lost, leaving some sixty widows and one hundred orphans. I have been round trying to collect something for them.” I’m sorry, but I just can’t see David Gray doing that - not until he’d written to Monckton Milnes and begged for money for an appropriate ‘collecting for a pit disaster’ outfit. ‘Meanwhile, the idea of bursting like a meteor upon London never seems to have left his mind, and was probably stimulated at length into action by the fact that Robert W. Buchanan, a young man whose acquaintance he had made in Glasgow, and who was equally fired with the ambition of literary eminence, entertained a similar project. Gray, however, having probably obtained assistance from some of the friends whom he was continually interesting in his behalf, started on his courageous venture alone. In a brief note to his parents, dated Glasgow, 5th May, 1860, he says, “I start off to-night at 5 o’clock by the Edinburgh and Glasgow railway, right on to London, in good health and spirits.”’ And Monckton Milnes in his Introduction does say that Gray sent him a letter “in the Spring of 1860 ... and desired my advice as to his coming up to London and making his way there in the career of Literature”. If the date on the Wemyss Reid letter (‘Feb. 1860’) is correct, and Gray is already in London in February, then Monckton Milnes is also wrong. In the absence of any other evidence for the February date, perhaps we should leave it there and press on with Buchanan’s side of the story. “We did not meet until upwards of a week after our arrival in London, though each had soon been apprised of the other’s presence in the city.” Within that week David Gray had spent the night in Hyde Park and caught the chill which would lead to the consumption which ultimately killed him, had found a lodging (presumably that mentioned in the ‘February’ letter, of 65, Deveril Street, Boro’ - Buchanan confirms that Gray’s lodging was “situated in a by-street in the Borough”) and made contact with Monckton Milnes, who had found him some employment, copying manuscripts. David Gray then joins Buchanan in his garret at 66 Upper-Stamford Street. “No news of him was received for some weeks, when an intimation came that he was ill and confined to his bed. A wealthy friend from Glasgow, whom I had interested in his favour, accompanied me in a visit to a squalid back room in the second floor of a house in Stamford-street, on the Surrey side of Waterloo-bridge, where we found him in bed in a room fetid with the fumes of bad tobacco—which he had not smoked himself—attended by another young man, who was smoking furiously. He was evidently very ill, and my Glasgow friend, remonstrating somewhat sharply against the cruelty of smoking in that forlorn sick chamber, in the presence of a man with a distressing cough, administered some relief to the sufferer in the shape of gold to procure him the comforts he needed.” I should make clear that I’m not disputing Buchanan’s close friendship with Gray, he did share the garret with him for around six months from May to October, in 1860. And Gray used him as a convenient bolthole on a few occasions in the next three months. I’m just trying to add a little context. After Gray returns for the last time to Scotland, after the Torquay experience, Buchanan visits him once, in April, 1861. He also can’t make it to his funeral. Or the dedication of the monument over his grave (although that doesn’t stop him criticizing the ceremony in a letter to The Athenæum). But 1861 is a busy year for Buchanan. Although there are no dates, as ever, his parents (and presumably his grandmother) have moved down to London following his father’s bankruptcy, Charles Gibbon, another literary acquaintance from Glasgow, has moved into the Stamford Street garret, and at some point Buchanan meets and marries Mary Ann Jay. He is also editing The Welcome Guest, contributing poems and essays to Temple Bar, writing reviews for The Athenæum, and his third published book appears in December 1861, a collaboration with Charles Gibbon, Storm-Beaten or Christmas Eve at the “Old Anchor” Inn. Gibbon would figure in a later revision of the Buchanan/Gray story, being witness to the close, almost spiritual, bond between the pair: “Gibbon came to London when Gray had gone home to die, and lodged with me at 66 Stamford Street, Blackfriars. We were sleeping together the night Gray died, and I woke Gibbon and said to him, ‘David Gray is dead.’ This was confirmed the second morning afterwards.”’ If that’s true, this occurs on 3rd December, 1861, so one has to ask, where’s Mrs. Mary Ann Buchanan? since even Harriett Jay with her bad memory has them being married “towards the close of the year 1861”. I suppose they’ve got the rest of December to tie the knot, but even so, like the two train stations, it seems like a nice bit of fiction to spice up the story a bit. And this is the problem I have with the whole David Gray saga as it relates to Buchanan. I do feel he over-eggs his pudding a bit. For example, his finding the only known picture of David Gray to adorn his first collection of essays in 1868. As I said before, I don’t doubt the sincerity of Buchanan’s friendship with David Gray, I just think he can embellish it a little for greater effect. And I also think he comes to believe the legend, leading to the ridiculous excuse for the whole Fleshly School affair being caused by Swinburne’s throwaway comment about ‘poor David Gray’. So, let’s attempt another sequence of events. “Gray was at length completely prostrated with illness. In his loneliness, he became, I believe, a fellow-lodger, for a short time, with Buchanan, who had arrived in London about the same time, and who was pushing his way successfully among certain of the metropolitan periodicals. But thanks to the kindness of his wealthier friends, there was no fear of destitution to aggravate his physical and mental sufferings.” May also sees the production of The Rathboys; or Erin’s Fair Daughter, written by Buchanan and Gibbon, at the Standard Theatre, London. Buchanan continues with his work for various magazines. At some point Buchanan makes the acquaintance of G. H. Lewes and George Eliot. They encourage him to write his own account of David Gray. On 10th June, 1862 Buchanan writes to David Gray’s father: “Tell me what you think of my plan to write a long loving memoir of David, and to include in the volume his remains. His genius can never be truthfully represented unless by one who knew him as well as I; and to me it would be indeed a labour of love.” During 1863 Buchanan works on his ‘first’ book of poems, Undertones, which is published in December. It opens with the poem, ‘To David In Heaven’. In February, 1864, Buchanan’s ‘Story of David Gray’ is published in the Cornhill Magazine. In September Buchanan visits Scandinavia with his father (ostensibly to report on the Second Schleswig-Holstein War for the Morning Star). October sees the production of Buchanan’s first solo play, The Witchfinder at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre. In November Buchanan writes to both Robert Browning (whom he has met at G. H. Lewes’ house) and Alfred Tennyson (whom he has never met) to ask them to contribute something to ‘Memorials of David Gray’, in order to raise money for Gray’s family. In December Buchanan abandons the idea of the book. In May 1865 Buchanan publishes his ‘second’ book of poetry, Idyls and Legends of Inverburn, which includes the poem, ‘Poet Andrew’, a fictionalised account of the story of David Gray. In July, G. H. Lewes, editor of The Fortnightly Review, writes a 16 page review of Idyls and Legends of Inverburn in which he declares: “Robert Buchanan seems to me a man of genius.” In August a monument is erected over David Gray’s grave and Buchanan writes to The Athenæum complaining about the ceremony. By this time Buchanan has moved out of London and is living in Bexhill (and this is possibly when Harriett Jay joins the family). His father dies in March 1866. London Poems is published in July 1866, and he also produces books for the Dalziel Brothers. In February 1868 David Gray and other Essays, chiefly on poetry is published and towards the end of the year he leaves London and returns to Scotland. _____ Back to Notes on David Gray Menu or David Gray, and other Essays, chiefly on Poetry continued
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