ROBERT WILLIAMS BUCHANAN (1841 - 1901)

LETTERS TO THE PRESS (24)

William Terriss and the Actors’ Benevolent Fund

The Star (24 December, 1897 - p.2)

BUCHANAN ON THE TERRISS TRAGEDY.

IT TEACHES A LESSON TO THE CHARITABLE.

A Few Shillings Given with a Kindly
Hand Might Have Averted a
Tragedy which Everyone Deplores.

TO THE EDITOR OF “THE STAR.”

     SIR,—In common with all those who knew and admired the late Mr. Terriss, I have been shocked and horrified by the accounts of his tragic death. I cannot help remembering, however, that this buoyant and brilliant comrade might have been still spared to us, save for the blunders and vagaries of what is known as Charity Organisation. It is on record that the unfortunate man Prince had just made an unavailing appeal for assistance to the Actors’ Benevolent Fund, as well as to one of his own near relations; that he was driven to desperation by extreme poverty; and that, through one cause and another, but mainly through utter personal despair, he contemplated and carried out the crime which we call deplore. The gift of a few shillings might have saved him, and us, from an everlasting shame and sorrow.

The Charity Which Fails.

     I have some experience of organised charities of all sorts, and by hearsay, of the Actors’ Fund in particular: and I believe, with my master in sociology, Mr. Spencer, that they do infinitely more harm than good—that, in other words, charity should be private and personal, not official and officious. I know at the same time how great an outcry such a statement is likely to arouse among those who believe in both the system and the administration of public charities. My own experience, however, convinces me that I am right. During the past year I have been applied to again and again by individuals whom the Actors’ Fund has failed to assist or assisted very inadequately, under circumstances always humiliating to the applicant and unnecessarily inquisitorial. The relief given is frequently spasmodic and generally insufficient.

A Case in  Point.

     One aged individual, with substantial claims on the profession, receives a few shillings a week to keep body and soul together, and without other help would have long since died miserably; and his case, I believe, is only one of many. I hear invariably the same story of help doled out impertinently and grudgingly, under circumstances of personal humiliation.

The Profession is Liberal.

     The theatrical profession is notoriously liberal and generous to its poorer members, and the beneficence of such distinguished and successful individuals as Sir Henry Irving, Miss Terry, Sir Squire Bancroft, &c., needs n o mention from my pen. But the recent tragedy in our midst, coming close on the season of “peace and goodwill to men,” should impress upon us all the fact that charity is a personal more than a public duty, and loses half its grace when done at second-hand.

Many Give Money but Few Take Trouble.

     Many men who will give money liberally away grudge a little personal time and trouble, although a kind word and a clasp of the hand may do so much. A kind word, a gentle hand-touch, might, even at the last moment, have averted the tragedy at the Adelphi Theatre. They did not come; they would never come, if Charity Organisation ruled the world, and individual love and brotherhood were wholly vicarious.—Yours, &c.,

     23 Dec., 1897.                                                                                              ROBERT BUCHANAN.

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The Star (24 January, 1898 - p.3)

THE ACTOR’S CHARITY.

BUCHANAN’S LETTER TO “THE STAR” ATTACKED.

References to the Adelphi Tragedy at To-day’s
Meeting of the Actors' Benevolent Fund.

     The annual meeting of the Actors’ Benevolent Fund, on the stage of the Lyceum at noon to-day, was one more reminder of the loss the stage, and the public generally, has sustained by the death of Mr. Terriss. At similar gatherings in past years his was always a breezy, unconventional figure.

Irving Speaks of the Tragedy.

     To-day, when Sir Henry Irving took the chair, with Miss Terry, young and buoyant as ever, on his right hand, the assembled actors and actresses must have been reminded of that enthusiastic occasion a year or two ago when Breezy Bill led the cheers for the new theatrical knight. Sir Henry himself alluded to the tragedy. “I cannot sit down,” he said, “without saying one word in allusion to a very valued old friend and comrade whom a very terrible tragedy removed from us only the other day, and whose genial presence we miss and whose untimely loss we now deplore. |

A Word of Warning.

     “Since our fund was frequently mentioned in connection with his death, I speak of it now publicly, and I wish to do so that I may give a word of warning. For since that very horrible crime was committed certain individuals who seem to possess all the murderer’s points of vanity and ill-will, though fortunately devoid, perhaps, of his homicidal mania, try to make capital out of this terrible crime by endeavoring to levy a sort of blackmail under threats. For instance, only the other day it was said to our secretary by some disappointed applicant that Mr. Prince was not the only man who carried a knife. And I would like, ladies and gentlemen—or gentlemen—to say to you that if under any circumstances any sort of threat should be used to any member of our calling I sincerely trust that for the public good, the offender may be handed over to the police for prosecution. (Applause.) It must not be forgotten, it should not be forgotten, that this fund of ours was not created, and is not maintained, to add to the comfort of loafers and worthless people, but to aid those of our brethren who have fallen on evil times, and are genuinely actors and following the calling of an actor. Great discrimination should be used by all who recommend any to the good offices of our fund; and such recommendations should only be made on the ground of personal knowledge of the applicant.” (Applause.)
     Miss Terry very prettily proposed a vote of thanks to and confidence in the committee of the fund.

A Retort on Robert Buchanan.

     Mr. W. H. Macklin, seconding the proposal, referred pointedly to the letter which Mr. Robert Buchanan addressed to The Star on Christmas Eve, in which he said of Prince

that the gift of a few shillings might have saved him, and us, from everlasting shame and sorrow.

Suggesting that Mr. Buchanan suffers from the cacoethes scribendi, Mr. Macklin said the imputation that a few shillings would have saved that very valuable life required no answer from the committee. They all knew full well that the committee was not going to be coerced into maladministration of its funds by foolish letter-writing. They had always administered the fund well, and would, he believed, continue to do so. Their chief work was to help the bona fide actor in distress, and that work he believed they would continue to do fearlessly and well. (Applause.)

“A Very Cruel Letter.”

     Mr. Edward Terry, who acknowledged the resolution on behalf of the committee  endorsed Mr. Macklin’s condemnation of “a very cruel letter.” They had had a very difficult task to perform, at the Actors’ Benevolent Fund, he said, and often a very painful task. It grieved them to refuse help, or to give a small dole where they would like to give a large one, as any charitably-disposed person would imagine, but they had to sift the good from the bad, the deserving from the undeserving, and limitations were put to their work by the amount of money subscribed. Last year they had given £2,555 to 1,071 applicants, and if more money was subscribed more would be given away. The writer of the letter in question had said that “charity should be private and personal, not official and officious.” Theirs certainly was not officious, and if they had occasionally to be official it was because it was absolutely necessary. But everything done by the committee was done in the most sacred confidence and he had never known the necessities of an applicant for relief to be divulged by a member of the committee. How much better was this than the bad old system under which an actor in distress was compelled to come publicly to their stage doors and beg under circumstances which were degrading to him personally and professionally. There was no degradation in filling up a form of application, which was dealt with in the utmost confidence.

A Word for the Secretary.

     “The writer of the letter,” Mr. Terry went on, “objected again that ‘one aged individual, with substantial claims on the profession, received a few shillings a week to keep body and soul together.’ Well they had not funds to grant life pensions. If actors and actresses would subscribe more freely, if each one would give but 5s. a year, which was an infinitesimal sum out of salaries as salaries now go, the committee would be able to give not £2,500 in a year, but £5,500, and they might be able to behave as magnificently as this irresponsible  gentleman (Mr. Buchanan) suggested. They were not to be worried by any threats, and their secretary treated every case with the utmost kindness. (Applause.) He had had the pleasure of sitting on the committee for many years now, and had always found Mr. Coltson err on the side of generosity. They could not have a better man in the position. (Applause.)
     The meeting concluded with a vote of thanks to Sir Henry Irving, moved by Mr. Beerbohm Tree.

Irving’s Closing Words.

     Sir Henry, in acknowledging the compliment, said he must take the opportunity of complimenting Mr. Tree on the triumphant success which had attended his production of  “Julius Caesar.” (Applause.) For himself, he did not claim that actors were a superior sort of beings, singled out by any special providence to stand apart, from their fellows, and purged from any or all of the weaknesses of human nature, but there was one virtue which he thought distinguished an actor, the virtue which gives life to all other virtues, the virtue of charity.

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The Star (26 January, 1898 - p.2)

THE ACTORS’ BENEVOLENT FUND.

TO THE EDITOR OF “THE STAR.”

     SIR—I have before now had occasion to remark that Actors, benevolent or otherwise, are very like women, in so far as they possess the feminine aptitude for construing a general argument into a personal affront. I am not surprised, therefore, at the hysterical performance which took place yesterday at the meeting of the supporters of the Actors’ Benevolent Fund. My innocent suggestion, that in all possibility a recent tragedy would have been averted if a certain applicant for relief had received the few shillings which, as a matter of fact, he was refused, was resented as a “cruel” attack on the theatrical profession, and on the Benevolent Fund in particular. Nor is that all. Tired for the moment of posing as the most “moral” of human beings (Lord love them!), the leaders of the theatrical profession now proclaim in stentorian tones that they are the most “charitable.” Are they? As Mr. Tree says in one of his cleverest impersonations, “I wonder?”
     Let us take the general question first, and then, by your leave, I will come to the personal detail. Fortunately, we have the report of the Fund before us, and it states that the income for last year was £3,893, while the amount disbursed in gifts and loans was £2,555. The Fund had, therefore, some £1,400 in hand over and above the sums dispensed in charity. Sir Henry Irving pointed out, further, that the Fund had an invested capital of £16,000, and that donations and bequests in addition had been flowing in on every side. At the annual dinner, over £1,000 had been added to the amount available for organised charity,. Naturally, Sir Henry was elated. “There was one virtue,” he exclaimed, “which distinguished actors, a virtue which gave life to all other virtues—charity”; and the statement was received with proud emotion and deep applause.
     Unfortunately, however, Sir Henry pointed out, almost in the same breath, that “the weak spot” in the institution which he lauded was “the small proportion of subscribers to the whole body of actors”! He did not point out how much of the amount annually subscribed was contributed outside the profession altogether; but we may let that pass, and add that Mr. Edward Terry, corroborating his chairman, deplored the smallness of the contributions given to the fund by actors generally! The inference from all this is obvious. Though actors are the most charitable of all human creatures, they show their charity by refusing to support their own Benevolent Fund!
     I, of course, who have expressed my detestation of organised charity, do not blame them for this refusal. They may have good reasons for not subscribing. They may be asking themselves, as I ask myself, why a Benevolent Institution should be boasting of its surplus capital, while actors are starving and crying for aid? They may be wondering, as I am wondering, at the £1,400 just left in hand after the £2,555 disbursed? They may imagine, as I imagine, that money subscribed to such an institution, to support its staff and salary its servants, may be to a large extent money thrown away? Finally, they may, many of them, have had personal experience of what is meant by application for help to the Fund, of the nature and amount of that help, and of the spirit in which it is given, in truly deserving cases?
     Now to the little detail in which I am personally concerned. I now repeat that to my own private knowledge one aged and infirm member of the profession would have died of starvation during the past year had his succor not been undertaken outside the Fund and the theatrical profession. The Fund, with its surplus of £1,400 on the year’s income, and its £16,000 of invested capital, generously allowed this old actor 5s, a week to keep body and soul together, and only allowed this pitiful sum as temporary relief, liable to be withdrawn at any moment. I now repeat, moreover, that I and others are constantly appealed to, ad misericordiam, by deserving actors who fail to receive adequate help from the Fund. Mr. Edward Terry rejoices in the belief that organised charity has quite done away with begging at the stage-door and other forms of pauperism. He knows as well as I do that such begging still goes on, and will always go on, as long as organised charity does its work in the usual deplorable way. Ofticialism, no doubt, with its methods of combined niggardliness and espionage, is very just and very wise, but the great public should remember in connection with it the noble words of Voltaire:—
     Qui n’est que juste est dur, qui n’est que sage est triste!
As matters stand, we are compelled to conclude that the organised “charity” of the theatrical profession, like its organised “morality,” is, to say the least of it, open to criticism.—Yours, &c.,

     25 January.                                                                                                   ROBERT BUCHANAN.

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Clement Scott

An interview with Clement Scott, which dealt with the morality of the stage, was published in the January 1st, 1898 edition of Great Thoughts. This prompted an article from George Bernard Shaw and the Daily Mail sought responses from other members of the theatrical world, including Robert Buchanan. I only have an extract from Buchanan’s reply (I don’t have access to the archives of the Daily Mail so I’ve not seen the original, which I believe was published on 29th December, 1897), but Scott’s article did prompt Buchanan to write to The Star. Clement Scott’s intgerview from Great Thoughts is available below:

The Freeman’s Journal (Dublin) (30 December, 1897 - p.7)

ACTORS AND MR. CLEMENT SCOTT.
_____

     There are signs and portents, say the Daily Mail, indicating that the theatrical profession does not intend to rest silent under the libels which have been flung at it.
     Mr Clement Scott’s interview is published in this week’s Great Thoughts without any watering down of the wholesale allegations against the entire profession; and Mr G B Shaw, in a characteristic article has come forward to corroborate Mr Scott. The Daily Mail has obtained from several actors their comments upon the interview, as follows—

. . .

MR ROBERT BUCHANAN.

     Mr Robert Buchanan, the well-known playwright, confines his comments to a reply to Mr G B Shaw, whom he describes as “St Bernard come to judgment.” Mr Buchanan says—
     “I have read with profound interest your quotation from Mr G Bernard Shaw, apropos of Mr Scott’s diatribe against the players. Personally I have no objection whatever to accept what Mr Shaw says as gospel if he will add as a corollary that every word applies to all the artistic professions, and if he will include himself under the denunciatory clauses. Authors, painters, journalists, as well as actors, still belong to Bohemia—an immoral, or rather, a non-moral region—at war with all the neighbouring proprieties. What then? We live there, and we like to live there. And so does Mr Shaw. Does he think because he assumes to be virtuous and vegetarian that there shall be no more cakes and ale and mutton chops, to say nothing of red hot ginger? What, in the name of all the gods, is our frisky comrade playing at? Personally, I thank God that Bohemia still exists, and that Mr Shaw has pitched his tent in it. The virtue of actresses does not interest me. When I meet a charming artist, I take it for granted that she is virtuous, just as I take it for granted that she washes herself and wears clean garments; but these things merely concern herself, and are none of my business. So with actors, authors, journalists; I am concerned with them merely on the artistic side, and I don’t care twopence about their private morals. If Mr Shaw is going to set up as a ‘censor morum,’ he has clearly mistaken his vocation. Those who live in the glass house of Art should never throw such stones!”

[The rest of this article is available here.]

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The Star (10 January, 1898 - p.1)

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE STAGE.

TO THE EDITOR OF “THE STAR.”

     SIR—As a lover of common-sense and fairplay, 1 should like to say a few words concerning the extraordinary attitude assumed by the Theatrical Profession towards the once popular newspaper critic who has recently delivered his soul to an interviewer on the subject of the Stage. l am the more fitted to do so without suspicion of bias, as I myself, on a memorable public occasion, freely expressed my opinion of Mr. Clement Scott’s character and critical methods. On that occasion, however, I was speaking under sharp provocation, and necessarily with considerable exaggeration, and my diatribe, fierce as it was, was strictly an act of self-defence. It is quite another matter when a whole crowd of adversaries, more or less instructed, rush into the arena to rend one solitary man, with a violence which would be childish if it were not so savage. My sympathy, here as everywhere, is with the weak, and the fact that I have crossed swords with Mr. Scott shall not prevent me from saying that he is not | receiving fair or even honest treatment.
     I am going to ask, in the first place, why the theatrical profession is making all this flutter about an attack on its general morality? True, Mr. Scott made some rather wild statements, which could be easily refuted, but even these statements contained a certain amount of truth, which might have been heard with equanimity. He attacked no individuals, he named no names; yet from the tone of the replies to his attack, one would gather that he had grossly violated the

SANCTITIES OF PRIVATE LIFE.

He stated, no doubt, that it was difficult for an actress, for an artist of any sort, to lead a conventionally pure life. Surely that was a very different thing to asserting that every actress was impure, and every theatre a sink of corruption? No one knows better than Mr. Scott that the majority of our actresses are good, hardworking women, moral to the extremity of convention; but that does not alter the fact that their environment is frequently free and easy, and that the atmosphere of the theatre is, to use a phrase, Bohemian. For my own part, I hope that it will long remain so. The modern Stage is suffering, not from a plethora of immorality, but from one of respectability. The members of the theatrical profession attach far too much importance to gentility and social prestige, and far too little to artistic inspiration and general culture. There are thousands of virtuous women on the stage; there are, possibly, not half a dozen first-class actresses. Mr. G. Bernard Shaw spoke only the truth when he suggested that mere  “morality,” in many instances, was less a help than a hindrance to the artistic temperament.
     The theatrical profession, instead of posing as supremely virtuous and lashing itself into a fury over absurd mis-statements, should have frankly admitted at once that it was temperamentally non-moral, like the other Bohemian professions—Art, Literature, Journalism. Its fury and affectation of virtue were signs of the same unintelligence which have made modern actors and actresses so tenacious of religious and moral conventions. A profession which can boast such names as those of Sir Henry Irving, Sir Squire Bancroft, Mr. Tree, Miss Terry, Mme. Bernhardt, Miss Rehan, should surely disdain to defend itself against charges which might be

RELEVANT IN CLAPHAM

or Brixton, but are absolutely absurd in Bohemia. Does any sane lover of art care twopence about such charges? Greatly as human nature gains by the fearless and enlightened philanthropy of Sir Squire Bancroft, and by the tender and noble human sympathy of Miss Ellen Terry, Art claims these and all other fine artists as her own, and would claim them with equal eagerness if their lives were wholly different.
     The upshot of the whole affair is, that the theatrical profession has been made to look very foolish. Its heroines have deceived no one; its shriek of righteous indignation has been accompanied, in every theatre and every club, with “a wink of the other eye.” Is it not time, therefore, that the persistent personal abuse levelled against Mr. Scott should cease, and that the passing blunder of that gentleman should be pleasantly condoned, in view of his long and priceless services to the profession which would now destroy him? Let us at least be just. If the Stage is now the centre of public sympathy and interest, if wealth and honor have come to our modern actors in full measure, if year by year the interest in things theatrical has grown wider and wider, it is due in no little measure to the doyen of dramatic criticism. No one has written on theatrical subjects so enthusiastically, so good-naturedly, or, on the whole, so sympathetically and fairly. His faults are notorious; his merits and his abilities far outweigh them. To rend him into pieces on the score of a few hasty utterances, possibly exaggerated in “an interview,” is not merely cowardly; it is, distinctly and conspicuously, ungrateful.—Yours, &c.,

     9 January, 1898.                                                                                            ROBERT BUCHANAN.

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The Star (11 January, 1898 - p.3)

A CORRECTION—AND A PROTEST.

TO THE EDITOR OF “THE STAR.”

     SIR—In the last paragraph of my letter in to-day’s Star, you print the word “heroines” instead of the word “heroics,” and make me say that “its heroines have deceived no one,” which is nonsense. May I seize this occasion to comment briefly on the note in your gossip concerning Mr. Paul Potter’s play? This play, you say, “has been passed by the English censor.” Not long ago a play of my own, “The New Don Quixote,” was refused s license, on the score that it was “immoral.” I protested, as in duty and honor bound, and after a second appeal, and some important changes, my piece was licensed and copyrighted. My piece, for which I claim a perfect and even austere morality, will shortly be printed, if not represented, and I shall publicly ask the Lord Chamberlain under what influence he condemned my innocent work, and afterwards stamped with his approval a piece containing the most bestial and revolting incidents ever presented on our own or any stage?—Yours, &c.,

     10 January.                                                                                                   ROBERT BUCHANAN.

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The Aberdeen Journal (11 January, 1898 - p.5)

OUR LONDON LETTER.
BY “JOURNAL” SPECIAL WIRE.
(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT)

                                                                                           5 NEW BRIDGE STREET.
                                                                                                                       Monday night.

     Mr Robert Buchanan does not think that Mr Clement Scott is receiving fair or even honest treatment at the hands of the actors and others who have resented the strictures passed upon the stage in the now famous interview. True, he admits Mr Scott made some rather wild statements which could be easily refuted, but even these statements contained a certain amount of truth which might have been heard with equanimity. For his own part Mr Buchanan thinks the modern stage is suffering not from a plethora of immorality, but from one of respectability. The members of the theatrical profession attach far too much importance to gentility and social prestige, and far too little to artistic inspiration and general culture. There are thousands of virtuous women on the stage; there are possibly not half a dozen first-class actresses. What will Mr Wyndham and Mr Tree say to this?

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The Belfast News-Letter (17 January, 1898 - p.6)

     Quite the last person in the world that I thought would defend Mr. Clement Scott in his uncalled for attack upon the stage is Mr. Robert Buchanan. Mr. Buchanan has had occasion before this to resent some remarks of the “eminent” critic, but now admits that in speaking of Mr. Scott he had uttered his words with considerable exaggeration and under very sharp provocation. No one will forget Mr. Buchanan’s attack upon Mr. Scott, or, to be more correct, Mr. Scott’s attack upon Mr. Buchanan, and the latter gentleman’s fierce defence. It has now fallen to the lot of the very one who has so angrily crossed swords with Mr. Scott to defend his (Scott’s) blunders. Therefore, in looking round to find someone to back up Bernard Shaw and champion Clement Scott our gaze did not wander in the direction of Mr. Buchanan. Mr. Buchanan claims that Mr. Scott’s blunders should be “pleasantly condoned.” Mr. Buchanan did not pleasantly condone with his critic when he condemned his play. On the contrary, he gave him a piece of his mind in self-defence. What is more natural than that the whole profession should feel the unjustness of Mr. Scott’s clumsy remarks, and resent them also in self-defence. Mr. Buchanan goes on to remark that Mr. Scott’s remarks “were exaggerated in an interview.” Why, the editor’s final proof was approved and initialed by Mr. Scott! However, it is perhaps as well to let the matter drop. I should think it is more than probable we shall have some explanatory and defensive article from Mr. Scott, as he is not a man to let his pen remain idle long, rheumatism or no rheumatism, or gout or no gout. The whole thing is very regrettable, and probably no one regrets it more than the author of it. The humorous side of the question is that the notorious interview appeared in “Great Thoughts”—a periodical where we expect to read matter to justify its title. If the interview had been given to “Tit Bits,” or, say, “Comic Cuts,” it is more likely to have reached a portion of the public better calculated to see where the fun came in.

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George Bernard Shaw

In March, 1898, Buchanan began to write a colum for The Sunday Special. On the 3rd April he wrote an open letter to George Bernard Shaw with the title: ‘The Jester as Moral Pioneer’. He followed this up on 24th April with ‘The “Translation” of Bottom the Realist’, The Sunday Special.is not available online, so I don’t have those ‘letters’ but Shaw responded to the first letter in his Theatre column in The Saturday Review, which prompted a response from Buchanan in that journal.

The Saturday Review (9 April, 1898 - p.488)

. . .

     Oh, these sentimental, second-sighted Scotchmen! Reader: would you like to see me idealised by a master hand? If you would , buy the “Sunday Special” of the 3rd instant, and study Mr. Robert Buchanan’s open letter to me. There you will find the ideal G. B. S. in “the daring shamelessness of a powerful and fearless nudity.” This is the sort of thing that flatters a timid, sedentary literary man. Besides, it protects him: other people believe it all, and are afraid to hit the poor paper Titan. Far be it from me to say a word against so effective an advertisement; though when I consider its generosity I cannot but blush for having taken in so magnanimous an idealiser. Yet a great deal of it is very true: Mr. Buchanan is altogether right, it seems to me, in identifying my views with his father’s Owenism; only I claim that Comte’s law of the three stages has been operating busily since Owen’s time, and that modern Fabianism represents the positive stage of Owenism. I shall not plead against the highly complimentary charge of impudence in its proper sense of shamelessness. Shame is to the man who fights with his head what cowardice is to the man who fights with his hands: I have the same opinion of it as Bunyan put into the mouth of Faithful in the Valley of Humiliation. But I do not commit myself to Mr. Buchanan’s account of my notions of practical reform. It is true that when I protest against our marriage laws, and Mr. Buchanan seizes the occasion to observe that “the idea of marriage, spiritually speaking, is absolutely beautiful and ennobling,” I feel very much as if a Chinese mandarin had met my humanitarian objection to starving criminals to death or cutting them into a thousand pieces, by blandly remarking that “the idea of evil-doing leading to suffering is, spiritually speaking, absolutely beautiful and ennobling.” If Mr. Buchanan is content to be forbidden to spiritually ennoble himself except under legal conditions so monstrous and immoral that no disinterestedly prudent and self-respecting person would accept them when free from amorous infatuation, then I am not. Mr. Buchanan’s notion that I assume that “marriage is essentially and absolutely an immoral bargain between the sexes in so far as it conflicts with the aberrations and caprices of the human appetite,” is a wildly bad shot. What on earth has marriage to do with the aberrations and caprices of human appetite? People marry for companionship, not for debauchery. Why that wholesome companionship should be a means of making amiable and honest people the helpless prey of drunkards, criminals, pestiferous invalids, bullies, viragoes, lunatics, or even persons with whom, through no fault on either side, they find it impossible to live happily, I cannot for the life of me see; and if Mr. Buchanan can, I invite him to give his reasons. Can any sane person deny that a contract “for better, for worse” destroys all moral responsibility? And is it not a revolting and indecent thing that any indispensable social contact should compulsorily involve a clause, abhorrent to both parties if they have a scrap of honour in them, by which the persons of the parties are placed at each other’s disposal by legal force? These abominations may not belong to “the idea of marriage, spiritually speaking”; but they belong to the fact of marriage, practically speaking; and it is with this fact that I, as a Realist (Mr. Buchanan’s own quite correct expression), am concerned. If I were to get married myself, I should resort to some country where the marriage law is somewhat less than five centuries out of date; and as this seems to me as unreasonable a condition for the ordinary man as a trip to Bayreuth is to the ordinary gallery opera-goer, I do what I can to relieve him of it, and make married people as responsible for their good behaviour to one another as business partners are. Hereupon Mr. Buchanan discourses in the following terms:—“The Naked Man [me!] posing as a realist, cries, ‘away with sanctions! let us have no more of them;’ but the man who is clothed and in his right mind knows that they are inevitable and accepts them.” Did anyone ever hear such nonsense? Do the Americans accept them? Do the French accept them? Would we accept them but for our national preference for hypocrisy eked out with collusive divorce cases? I have no objection to Mr. Buchanan idealising me; but when he takes to idealising the English law at its stupidest, he oversteps my drawn line. I am none the less obliged to him for giving me an excuse for another assault on these patent beautifiers and ennoblers without which, it is assumed, we should all fall to universal rapine, though the danger of license is plainly all the other way. I verily believe that if the percentage of happy marriages ever rises to, say, twenty-five, the existence of the human intellect will be threatened by the very excesses against which our marriage law is supposed to protect us.

                                                                                                                                   G. B. S.

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The Saturday Review (16 April, 1898 - pp.19-20)

CORRESPONDENCE.

G. B. S. AND MR. ROBERT BUCHANAN.

To the Editor of the SATURDAY REVIEW.

                                                                                                                           Brighton, 12 April, 1898.

SIR,—I have dealt so fully with Mr. G. B. Shaw in another place that I can only reply very briefly to his playful challenge in the last number of your “Review,” and, indeed, I hardly think a reply is necessary, seeing with what characteristic deliberation my criticism has been misconstrued. Mr. Shaw knows perfectly well, for example, that I have again and again denounced, in language quite as strong as his own, the cruelties and absurdities of our English laws of marriage and divorce, and that I was not championing and defending those laws when I described the “idea of marriage” as ennobling and purifying. Reading his extraordinary rhodomontade, I am driven to the conclusion that a vegetarian diet does not conduce to a clear understanding of human relationships in general or of matrimonial ones in particular! The statement that people “marry for companionship, and not for debauchery,” is worthy of Joseph of Canaan or Joseph Surface rather than of the pupil of Ibsen and a believer in Nietzsche. People marry, primarily, to fulfil a natural function, and to have children of their own; secondly, no doubt, for companionship. What Mr. Shaw means by “debauchery” I fail to comprehend; he seems to be confounding the exercise of natural functions with the other wickednesses he abhors, such as the eating of mutton chops, and the belief in personal immortality. I am very glad nevertheless, that he thinks that I have “idealised” him, that, in other words, I have a higher opinion of him than he has of himself. I believe my opinion to be the right one after all, and it is not altered by the fact that, in moments of controversy, he is wily as the serpent and slippery as an eel.—I am, &c.,

                                                                                                                               ROBERT BUCHANAN.

     [Now I ask, is a man to be called a serpent and an eel because he patiently and straightforwardly tries to explain himself when he is held up to public admiration as a champion of aberrations of the sexual appetite? What I meant by debauchery was precisely what Mr. Buchanan meant. I have not the slightest objection to “the exercise of natural functions;” but I strongly object to Mr. Buchanan’s assumption that it is a natural function of man to murder a sheep, scorch a portion of the dead body on a gridiron, and then eat it. Furthermore, I don’t care how often Mr. Buchanan has denounced the absurdities of our English laws of marriage and divorce. If, when I make free to do the same thing, Mr. Buchanan selects that particular moment to observe that the idea of marriage is ennobling and purifying, and that I am a sublime self-sacrificing ass who cannot discriminate between the social function of marriages and of massage establishments (which is exactly what Mr. Buchanan, no doubt quite unintentionally, conveyed by his definition of my position—I gave it in his own words), then he is for the moment, in effect, playing against his own side and championing those laws. In which extremity I hold that I may without ingratitude venture on a mild remonstrance.

                                                                                                                                                   G. B. S.]

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The Mariners of England

The Era (30 April, 1898)

“YE MARINERS OF ENGLAND.”
_____

TO THE EDITOR OF THE ERA.

     Sir,—On my own behalf and that of Mr Buchanan who collaborated with me in the play produced last year under this title, I wish to explain why our names will be withdrawn from future announcements and advertisements. On the understanding that this should be done, we have parted with all our rights and interests in the piece, so far, at least, as Great Britain is concerned, and have given the purchaser carte blanche to alter and produce it in any way he thinks expedient. We disclaim, therefore, all responsibility for future productions of the piece, from which our names will henceforth be absolutely disassociated. At the same time, we wish it all success, as the arrangement I have described is a perfectly friendly one, and we know that the play is in good hands.
     I am desired by Mr Buchanan to add that his chief reason for disassociating himself from this particular play is the fact that the attempt to celebrate the achievement of a real national Hero has been construed, in some quarters, into sympathy with more ignoble manifestations of the national (or Jingo) spirit, against which he has always protested in his writings. It is better, therefore, that the fame and name of Nelson should be relinquished altogether into other hands.
                   Yours faithfully,                    HARRIETT JAY
     April 28th, 1898.                             (“Charles Marlowe.”).

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Pelleas and Melisande

The Star (6 July, 1898 - p.1)

THE DRAMA AT HIGH-WATER MARK.

TO THE EDITOR OF “THE STAR.”

     SIR—A visit to the Prince of Wales’s Theatre to witness the performance of “Pelleas and Melisande” has set more than one individual speculating as to the chances which may still be open to the poetical dramatist. Certain it is that only an actor-manager of the finest artistic instinct would have ventured on such an experiment. In the ordinary managerial mind, the play itself would have awakened only derision. Yet it is not too much to say that Mr. Forbes Robertson, in staging this very extraordinary and infinitely tender piece of fantasy, has done more for dramatic art than has been done by any manager in England during the last decade.

     There are many trivial and even ridiculous things in “Pelleas and Melisande,” but there are also things of priceless and exquisite beauty, illustrated with a perfection of artistic sympathy positively new it to the native stage. The love scene at the window, Maeterlinck’s “balcony scene,” is worth all “Romeo and Juliet” put together. Compared to Melisande, Juliet is merely a coming-on schoolgirl, while Romeo‘s strident love-making belongs to the method of counter-jumpers. I have seen “Romeo and Juliet” a hundred times; it has always left me cold and “bored.” I could see Maeterlinck’s balcony scene a thousand times, as interpreted by Mrs. Campbell and Mr. Martin Harvey, and I should it always feel that the very heart of Love was beating near me. As for the production at the Prince of Wales’s Theatre, it was, although done only for a few matinees, far and away the most perfect thing I have witnessed for many a day. The stage pictures were simply enchanting, the poetical feeling supremely and dominantly effective, the acting (notably that of Mr. Robertson and Mrs. Campbell) almost faultless, and the music as beautiful as the mise-en-scène, which indeed is saying much.

     My object in writing this letter, however, is not merely to praise a production which represents, I think, the very highest achievement of the contemporary English theatre, but to point out that “Pelleas and Melisande” is just the kind of work at which it is the fashion for the average theatrical manager to scoff, on the score that it is not “wanted” by the public. My own experience is that managers too frequently misapprehend the public taste, and constantly block the way to profitable “new departures.” The two most successful plays in which I myself have been concerned were declined right and left before production; one was ultimately produced almost by accident, and ran for two years in London; the other I was compelled to produce at my own risk years ago, and it is still, after making fortunes for several people, vigorously running. I do not cite these works to claim for them any particular intrinsic merit, quite the contrary, but to suggest how hugely those who deal in unacted dramas may be mistaken.

     The way of salvation for the English stage lies in fearless yet wise experiments, like the splendid experiment of Mr. Forbes Robertson. The way of damnation, I am convinced, lies near the assumption that the public is indifferent to work which fails to appeal to the managerial and to the “box official” intellect. A few years ago Shakespeare spelt bankruptcy; now, because the word Shakespeare not infrequently spells prosperity—that is, because his coarsest dramas draw large audiences, it is used by the box-official mind to warn off enterprising and original experimentalists. Maeterlinck may be, as he has been called, a very “Belgian Shakespeare.” All I can say is that when the art of Shakespeare works as much magic upon me personally as the art of Maeterlinck, illustrated by Mr. Robertson, has done, I shall cease to look upon it as, to a large extent, a bourgeois superstition.

     I do not wish to be misunderstood. The poetry of Shakespeare is superb, but we seldom or never see it on the stage, for the plays which contain the best of it are condemned at the box-office. Instead of it we get the poet’s worst and most reckless work—blood-and-thunder romances adapted to the sympathies of servant girls and historical characterisation on the intellectual level of Mr. Wackford Squeers. And the outcome of this work on the stage is so often artificiality, bunkum, sham feeling, and shoddy rhetoric. Either there is very little nature in Shakespeare's popular pieces, or the nature is of a kind which incommodes the actor; so that an average Shakespearean production is a thing to be detested by men, gods, and columns. I can honestly say, at all events, that no Shakespearean performance has ever stirred me quite so deeply or left on my mind quite so spiritual an expression, as the performance of “Pelleas and Melisande.”

     Be that as it may, of one thing there can be no longer any question—that we have in Mr. Forbes Robertson an actor of overmastering genius, to whom we may safely look for the continuance of the tradition so powerfully upheld by Sir Henry Irving. It is not a case of “Le Roi est mort, vive le Roi,” for happily the king is still very much alive, and his reign is far from completed. But I believe that Sir Henry Irving would be the first to admit the right of Mr. Robertson’s claim to the legitimate succession, and it should be borne in mind in this connection that Irving first won the public ear, not through conventional Shakespearean productions, but by bold, and, at the same time, subtle, experiments. Both “The Bells” and “Eugene Aram” were original and somewhat risky departures, strong, subtle, magical, full of the actor’s peculiar genius. Even “Charles the First,” despite its barbarous political terminology, was a very remarkable and novel character-study, full of human tenderness. Inheriting all the master’s subtlety, and much of his electric power, combined with a pathetic method even more convincing, fully equipped personally and intellectually, Mr. Robertson comes to his inheritance. We are shortly to witness his Macbeth, which will be followed soon, I trust, by his Othello. Compared to the analogous character in Maeterlinck’s play, Othello, no doubt, is a rough, half-civilised study, coarse in conception, savage in execution —nothing in Shakespeare’s work, at any rate, can ever touch the quick of human pity quite so surely as Golaud’s infinitely tender, yet fiercely irresistible passion; but the art of the actor will triumph again no doubt, and instead of the familiar wild bull roaring, full of baffled lust and hate, we shall behold a great and sympathetic human figure.—Yours, &e.,

     2 July, 1898.                                                                                               ROBERT BUCHANAN.

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The Bedborough Prosecution

The Star (11 June, 1898 - p.2)

The Star (26 August, 1898 - p.1)

LEGAL “INVERSION.”

TO THE EDITOR OF “THE STAR.”

     SIR—Some hundreds of years ago the Town Council of Edinburgh, in a mood of ultra-godliness, passed a local enactment to punish severely and suspend from medical practice any legalised practitioner who cured, or attempted to cure, certain diseases; for such diseases, it was argued, were the natural punishment inflicted by God on persons guilty of indulgence, and to attempt to heal them, or to guard the human race from the consequences of them, was to “fly in the face of the Almighty”!
     Those wise bailies of Edinburgh are dead and buried, but their spirit is still busy in the land, even as far south as London. Only the other day the sapient magistrate of Bow-st., Sir John Bridge, sent a wicked publisher, Mr. George Bedborough, for trial at the Old Bailey for selling and circulating an “indecent” book, written by Dr. Havelock Ellis, and entitled “Sexual Inversion.” A highly offensive book, observe; a book which would have greatly shocked the Edinburgh Town Council, inasmuch as it deals with some of the most horrible forms of human depravity. It is nothing to the purpose that the work in question is written by a distinguished man of science, at no little cost of time and study. The argument against it is that the subject, being exceedingly offensive, is calculated to corrupt the public morals, and that it is inexpedient, even irreligious, to deal with such subjects at all, inasmuch as the inversions and perversions described are, no doubt, best left to the mercy of popular ignorance.
     A few benighted sceptics like myself are foolish enough to think that the best way to save foolish people from sin and disease is to enlighten them scientifically. Unlike the Edinburgh bailies and the Cockney magistrate, we do not find that the study of corruption encourages us to concupiscence; on the contrary, were we not morally inclined already, the dreadful truths detailed in such books as this of Dr. Ellis would appal us into continence and self-respect. We think, therefore, that to insult a man of science, and to punish the unfortunate publisher for carrying out what is in point of fact a noble bit of work, done in the interests of suffering humanity, is more worthy of savages than of sane men living in the nineteenth century.
     Early next month Mr. Bedborough will be tried for selling Dr. Ellis’s book. The usual effort will no doubt be made by the prosecution to confuse the issue, by importing into the case other charges connected with the prisoner’s personal opinions on marriage, free love, literature, and the musical glasses. It is important, therefore, that the defence should be adequate, and for that purpose a Defence Fund has been started, to which all men who care for the freedom of science and literature are invited to contribute. The secretary is Mr. Henry Seymour, of 51, Arundel-sq., London, N., who will gladly receive subscriptions. Only those will refuse to sympathise and help who hold, with Sir John Bridge and the Edinburgh Town Council, that to deal scientifically with the horrors of vice and disease is to foster immorality and “fly in the face of the Almighty.”—Yours, &c.,

     25 Aug.                                                                                                         ROBERT BUCHANAN.

[Note: An account of the hearing of the case from Reynolds’s Newspaper of 19th June is available here.]

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Kate Ellen Shoesmith

The Star (19 September, 1898 - p.1)

“HETTY SORREL” UP TO DATE.

TO THE EDITOR OF “THE STAR.”

     SIR—Even in a semi-savage country like ours, where a bogus Christianity is still tempered by the Maxim gun and the Stock Exchange, there is no danger, I suppose, of poor Hetty Sorrel—or, to use the typical girl-mother’s last cognomen,

KATE ELLEN SHOESMITH

—going to the gallows? She was found guilty yesterday, as your readers know, of having drowned her illegitimate child, and was thereupon, pending the issue of a strong recommendation to mercy, sentenced to death. All the circumstances of the case were familiar. The poor distracted girl, driven to desperation because she was unable to pay for the child’s support out of her miserable earnings, determined to “drown” with her baby, but hesitating at the last moment, because she wanted to say “good-bye” to her sweetheart, made a desperate attempt to snatch the child from the water, failed, fled despairing, and was afterwards arrested. No words of mine could express the horror and the pity of the whole business; yet the story is as old as our marriage market, and is repeated, with heart-breaking variations, every day.

     Everyone who has familiarised himself with the circumstances of our social life must know the invariable history of such a case. A simple, uneducated girl, sent out when still a child to domestic service, and at the mercy of her temperament, is ruined and betrayed. How the thing happens, in nine cases out of a dozen, is very truthfully and subtly described in Mr. George Moore’s story of “Esther Waters.” Almost before she realises her condition, she finds herself about to become a mother. She has no one in whom she can confide; for she knows that she can expect only denunciation and opprobrium from her own relations, more particularly from the average philistine father. In more or less secrecy the child is born; but though the event is hushed up, the trouble is only beginning. The baby is put out to nurse, and the girl-mother, drudging in service from morn to night, is drained of all she earns to keep it living. Blackmail of all kinds is generally demanded and extorted. If the girl hesitates, she is threatened with exposure; her people or her employers shall know the truth, and she shall be driven from respectable service. Possibly the truth does come out, and the girl is dismissed without a character. Mad, terrified, despairing, unable any longer to contribute to the baby’s support, she resolves to remove her child from a world where every hand is raised against it. The rest is to be read, almost every day, in the reports of our newspapers.

     To find a poor distracted girl like Hetty Sorrel or Kate Ellen Shoesmith guilty of “wilful murder” on the score that she has in her madness and despair destroyed her baby twelve months old is, in my humble opinion, the very height of cruelty and folly. An insane person cannot commit wilful murder, and to all intents and purposes such a girl is, at least temporarily, insane. In the majority of cases it is the girl’s very love for her offspring, her horror at the stigma upon it as upon herself, that drives her to the suicidal act. I have used the word “suicidal” advisedly; the attempt of a young mother to escape from a cruel world, with her little baby in her arms, is an act of suicide and nothing more.
     Suicide, of course, is very wicked—we all know that; but according to the quasi-legal formula, all suicides are “temporarily insane” persons, otherwise we should in our wisdom deny them Christian burial!
     I do not in the least fear, as I have already said, that poor Kate Shoesmith will undergo the extreme penalty. That is hardly possible, even in a country where a jury can be found to convict her, and a judge to sentence her to death for wilful murder. But even if she is reprieved, what then? Conceive the future of shame, of agony, of remorse and misery, that is before her! Perhaps even a death upon the scaffold would be less dreadful. And she might have been spared all this, might have been saved for such happiness as the poor and toiling may gain, save for the cruel and pitiless persecution which follows in this Christian country, the first blind breach of what is called “the moral law.”

Rabbi, the woman still is stoned,
The man still wanders free!

     A wise mother, a loving father, a faithful friend might have been her salvation. A little knowledge of the laws of life, of that knowledge which our censors and our law courts stigmatise as indecent and abominable, might have preserved her even in her fall. As it is, she is another martyr to a system which makes adultery venial in the man, and simply damnable in his victim; which regards it as more evil to destroy a maimed and broken life than to bring miserable beings into the world. In truth, we are still a savage and uncivilised people—able and willing to mow down with artillery such subject races as are not of our way of thinking, but utterly blind and indifferent to the sorrows of the weak and the sufferings of the martyred poor.— Yours, &e.,

     17 September.                                                                                               ROBERT BUCHANAN.

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The Star (21 September, 1898 - p.2)

The Court Report from the Old Bailey is available online. The verdict was “GUILTY.—Strongly recommended to mercy.—DEATH .” Further information rom the Digital Panopticon:

“Born: 1878.
Tried at Old Bailey, London (c.c.c. (p.c. kingsland, 544k)). Accused of murder (and charged, on the coroner's inquisition, with the wilful murder of mary ann shoesmith.). Found guilty with recommendation. Sentenced to death. Sentence outcome was imprisoned.
Granted prison license 12th December 1904. Age 26. Discharged as habitual criminal 18th September 1905.  Age 27.”

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Two Little Maids from School

The Era (26 November, 1898 - p.14)

“TWO LITTLE MAIDS FROM SCHOOL.”
_____

TO THE EDITOR OF THE ERA.

     Sir,—I desire to correct the statement, made in an influential quarter, that Two Little Maids from School is merely a literal translation of Les Demoiselles de St. Cyr. So far from this being the case, the adaptation is unusually free, particularly as regards those scenes between Dubouloy and Louise, which created the greatest amusement, and which it would be very difficult to find in the original. At the same time, I have borne public testimony to the fact that the structure of the play belongs to Alexandre Dumas, who found the material for it in one of the stories of Boccaccio. To those critics who have objected, naturally enough, that the comedy has been developed by the adaptors on somewhat “farcical” lines, I can only reply that the original piece, as played in the formal method of the Théâtre Français, has always failed to awaken the enthusiasm evoked last Monday night at Camberwell. In my opinion, indeed, the theme is distinctly farcical, and should be treated with the vivacity and high spirits which farce demands.
                   Yours faithfully,                    ROBERT BUCHANAN.
     Nov. 24th, 1898.

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The Zoophilist

The British Medical Journal (17 June, 1899)

A VISION OF THE BACK OF BEYOND.

MR. ROBERT BUCHANAN has been glutting his mind with antivivisectionist literature, and after this feast of horrors he not unnaturally had a bad dream. The dream, he candidly admits, was “doubtless a foolish one.” There is nothing uncommon in the experience, but wise people do not tell their dreams. Mr. Buchanan, on the other hand, has told his foolish dream to the editor of the Zoöphilist, who has been unkind enough to print it. Mr. Buchanan was rapt in sleep in the Back of Beyond, where he saw “countless presences” in whom he recognised “disembodied spirits with a shadowy resemblance to human beings.” They were “beautiful beings, grave, calm, graceful, dignified, as immeasurably superior in insight and reasoning power to men and women of flesh and blood as men and women are superior to beasts of the forest and the field.” These august beings apparently found nothing better to exercise their insight and reasoning power upon than contemplating the sufferings of man. “Wherever there was a sickbed or a deathbed they were present,” not altogether for clinical study it would appear, but for the pleasure of the thing. Mr. Buchanan, misconceiving the situation, thought the beings were angels, and proceeded to interview one. But they were only “Beyond- Men,” completing their intellectual development by the study of pain, which they had come to see “as a necessary part of the eternal scheme of education.” One might have thought they would have learned this great truth from their terrestrial schoolmasters; but they may have had the privilege of being taught in Board Schools where even plagosus Orbilius would have had to lay aside his cane. The “Beyond-Man” confided to Mr. Buchanan that he and the other “Presences” increased the tortures of humanity as the means of their enlightenment and progression “even as the human vivisector sacrifices the inferior creatures, animal and human, to his glorious thirst for Knowledge. The “Beyond-Man” added truly enough that “the majority of men cannot reason; they can only feel.” But he added that they have no rights, and are in fact useful only as affording examples of suffering by which the “Beyond-Men” may gain knowledge that will enable them to reach, if we may say so, the Back of Beyond. Mr. Buchanan, on awakening from his dream, “with trembling hands again took up the record of human devilry, done in the name of Science,” and proceeded to make a “deduction.” This was that “if he accepted the right of any creature, under any circumstances whatever, to base its happiness or its security on pain wilfully inflicted on lower creatures,” he must also accept “the fiat (whose ‘fiat,’ one wonderingly asks) that there is no God.” The psychological process by which Mr. Buchanan arrives at this “deduction” is impenetrably obscure, and the argument may be taken as an illustration of the Beyond-Man’s remark that “the majority of men cannot reason.” But leaving aside the “deduction,” what is to be said of the premiss from which he draws it? Would Mr. Buchanan suffer himself without resistance to be made the subject of unscientific, but none the less painful, vivisectional experiments by a wild beast? Would he do nothing to check the too-pressing attentions of a savage dog? Would he let his house be overrun by rats or mice? Would he be careful of the feelings of a flea which might seek security on his person from that of an insufficiently zoöphilist cat? But on his own principles he has no right “under any circumstances whatever” to base his happiness or security on pain wilfully inflicted on lower creatures. Mr. Buchanan is not brilliant in dreaming, but at least he reasons better in his sleep then when he is awake

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The Star (19 June, 1899 - p.1))

“MR. ROBERT BUCHANAN AT THE BACK OF BEYOND.”

TO THE EDITOR OF “THE STAR.”

     SIR,—Under the above heading, there is printed in a publication called the British Medical Journal, a playfully savage attack upon myself, apropos my little parable about Vivisection published in the current number of the Zoophilist. The editor of the journal laughs to scorn my so-called Dream and makes most merry over my Deduction—that human beings have no right, under any circumstances whatever, to base their happiness or security on pain “wilfully” inflicted on inferior sentient creatures. “Would Mr. Buchanan,” he sarcastically inquires, “suffer himself without resistance to be made the subject of unscientific, but none the less painful, vivisectional experiments by a wild beast? Would he let his house be overrun with rats or mice? Will he be careful of the feelings of a flea?” &c., &c. This, sir, is the sort of retort with which the editorial Bob Sawyer or Benjamin Allen regales his circle of admiring chemists and druggists when it is suggested that a limit should be put to the clumsy cruelties of our so-called scientists! The poor man sees no difference between defending oneself against an attack by a wild animal or even killing a flea, and torturing under circumstances of inhuman devilry harmless dogs and helpless human beings; and he has the impudence, in drawing his absurd parallels, to accuse me of want of logic. Let me take leave, therefore, to assure him that my ideas of beneficence, Quixotic as they may seem, do not imply any abnegation of the right of self-protection, whether the creature who attacks me be a wild beast on four legs or a medical savage on two.
     It has, I believe, been proved up to the hilt that deeds of cold-blooded cruelty, done under the pretence of the service of Humanity, have been comparatively useless in the mitigation of disease and the widening of practical scientific knowledge; that, in other words, Vivisection is worse than a crime, it is an imbecile and brutal blunder. That, however, was not my chief contention in the contribution to the Zoophilist. My contention was, and is, that the argument for Vivisection was an argument against any possible belief in a beneficent God, and that it would be better for Humanity to perish outright, at once and for ever, than to preserve itself (even if that were possible) by acts of infamous torture done to creatures only a little lower, in the scale of sentient existence, than men and women.
     The British Medical Journalist is very much shocked that I should suggest any heterodoxy respecting the special Providence in which he and his class religiously believe. Your vivisector, your cheap scientist, like your military mercenary, is always pious; so that to mow down dervishes at Omdurman and to torment our dumb brethren in Edinburgh and London seem to him equally worthy of beings who aspire to find favour in the eyes of the Almighty. I, sir, am not so constituted. I refuse to worship in the blood-stained temples where the butchers and savages of this latterday Rome set up their Holy of Holies. I reserve my reverence for gods whom I can respect; and I believe that such gods are still at work purifying the human heart and elevating the human conscience, in spite of the ugly blots which still blacken our boasted civilisation.—Yours, &c.,

     17 June.                                                                                                          ROBERT BUCHANAN.

[Note: Buchanan’s letter to The Star was reprinted in full in The Zoophilist on 1st July.]

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The British Medical Journal (8 July, 1899)

“MR. ROBERT BUCHANAN AT THE BACK OF BEYOND.”

IT may be remembered that some little time ago after supping full of the horrors of antivivisectional literature Mr. Robert Buchanan had a nightmare. With this he then, like a naughty boy, tried to frighten the audience—meet, if few—who sit at the feet of the editor of the Zoöphilist. For this we felt it our duty to administer to him a very mild castigation. Mr. Buchanan thereupon went and wept on the sympathetic bosom of the Star. That paper “dwells apart,” and therefore we were undisturbed by the voice of his lamentation till the echo of it reached us from the current number of the Zoöphilist. Though Mr. Buchanan’s epistolary style can hardly be commended as an example of sweetness and light, his letter is one of the funniest things we have read for some time. In his vision of the Back of Beyond he laid it down as a principle that human beings have no right “under any circumstances whatever” to base their happiness or security on pain wilfully inflicted on animals, and we ventured to point out that if his practice was to be consistent with his professed principle, he must look upon the life of the harmless but unnecessary mouse as sacred, treat fleas and such small deer with Buddhist tenderness, and allow a hungry carnivore to lunch off him rather than do anything to hurt its feelings. It turns out, of course, that Mr. Buchanan did not mean what he said, and he naturally is not pleased to have his absurdity exposed. We should recommend him in future to follow the excellent advice of an eminent statesman, and when he means nothing to say nothing. Mr. Buchanan is indignant that we should have accused him of a want of logic. Logic is not by any means the only thing that he wants. But while logic can be learnt, temper and taste cannot be acquired; any attempt to teach them would therefore be labour lost. We cannot honestly congratulate our antivivisectionist friends on their new ally, but we must acknowledge that he has shown good judgment in joining them. Hamlet, according to the gravedigger, because he was mad was sent into England, where it would not be seen in him since the men there were as mad as he. For the same sound reason presumably Mr. Buchanan, because he wants logic, goes among the anitvivisectionists where the want of it will not be noticed. But if he wants logic, he is full of the finest of fine sentiments. He tells us he is not even as “your vivisector, your cheap scientist.” He refuses “to worship in the blood-stained temples where the butchers and savages of this letter-day Rome set up their Holy of Holies.” He reserves his reverence for gods whom he can respect, etc. Mr. Buchanan is mistaken in thinking that we are shocked at what he is pleased to call his “heterodoxy.” We feel not the slightest interest in his “gods,” more particularly as they appear to be of his own making. He is free, as far as we are concerned, to think what he likes on theology or any other subject. But when he speaks about things of which he knows nothing, and brings wanton charges of “cold-blooded cruelty” against men who sacrifice health and wealth and even ambition in their efforts to better the lot of their fellowmen he exceeds the licence of foolish speech allowed even to an excitable poetaster.

[Buchanan’s ‘story’, ‘A Dream; and a Deduction’, was published in The Zoophilist (1 June, 1899) and is available on this site.]

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Empire Builders at Oxford

The Star (21 June, 1899 - p.1)

“EMPIRE-BUILDERS” AT OXFORD.

TO THE EDITOR OF “THE STAR.”

     SIR—ln view of the public enthusiasm over mercenaries of every description, it is pleasant to note the attitude taken with respect to Mr. Rhodes by the Master of Balliol and other pundits of Oxford; but having strained so hard at the gnat of the Jameson Raid, why are these gentlemen so eager to swallow the head of the camel, or Mahdi? For my own part, I think a Christian University should know better than to lavish its peaceful laurels on any men who subsist by either plunder or bloodshed; and with that notion in my mind, may I commend to your readers a careful perusal of the following noble lines by a certain John Milton?

     Glory is false glory, attributed
To things not glorious, men not worthy of fame!
They err who think it glorious to subdue
By conquest far and wide, to overrun
Large countries, and in fields great battles win,
Great cities by assault. What do these worthies
But rob and spoil, burn, slaughter, and enslave
Peaceable nations, neighboring or remote,
Made captive?
But if there be in glory aught of good,
It may by means far different be attained,
Without ambition, war, or violence—
By deeds of peace, by wisdom eminent,
By patience, temperauce.

In Milton’s days, however, warfare was a fair enough stand-up fight between armies equally armed, or almost equally; nowadays it is simply a scientific method of butchering the weak by superior machinery, so that “glory” and “heroism” may be safely assumed to be quite beside the question. For the rest, many objects of our modern civilisation, our restless engine-building, recall to the mind another famous passage—the words of the fretful Thersites in the play: “Lechery, lechery; still, wars and lechery; nothing else holds fashion.” And I take leave to say that to countenance any such abominations is no part of the duty of a pious Alma Mater.—Yours, &c.,

     20 June, 1899.                                                                                              ROBERT BUCHANAN.

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