ROBERT WILLIAMS BUCHANAN (1841 - 1901) |
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{Robert Buchanan - The Poet of Modern Revolt by Archibald Stodart-Walker}
‘ST. ABE AND HIS SEVEN WIVES,’ ‘WHITE ROSE AND RED,’
The year 1873 will always have a unique place in the bibliographical history of Mr. Buchanan. It was in this year that he risked a fall with the Philistine, and succeeded even beyond his most ambitious hope. ‘The Ishmael of Song’ had the courage to publish the two volumes, ‘St. Abe and his Seven Wives,’ and ‘White Rose and Red,’ anonymously, with the result that he soon had his enemies in his net. With unanimous voice those who had scourged the poet before joined in the song of praise. ‘Pest on Mr. Buchanan’s dreaming! to oblivion with all such aspiring versifiers! here we have a poet indeed—here is altogether the true characteristic of genius!’ and so on. The poet was a poet of patience. ‘St. Abe’ ran rapidly into four or five editions, and then the thunderbolt burst. The author of ‘St. Abe’ was Robert Buchanan, the Ishmael of Song, the outcast Scotsman—he who sang of trulls and costermongers—’the Celtic madman’; and there was sadness over the land. _____ 1 ‘The Struggle for Success.’ 115 an author finds it impossible to have his work presented fairly to the readers of literary criticism, owing, it may be, to the fact that the virility of his personality and the heaviness of his own critical artillery have caused offence in the critical dovecots, and when it is an open secret that there are men resplendent in the gilded uniforms of official criticism, who day by day lie in wait for possible opportunities to cast a slur on the literary reputations of those for whom they have a personal dislike.’ I would have snatch’d a bay leaf from thy brow, The first of the three volumes we have now to consider, ‘St. Abe and his Seven Wives,’ is a satire on the futility of Mormonism, the embodiment of the doctrines and politics of 119 the Latter Day Saints. The poem has been made the medium of expressing the poet’s admirable sense of humour, a humour touched with that breath of tenderness which is seldom wanting in Mr. Buchanan’s work. In this poem the poet has allowed himself the free use of the spirit of comedy in poetry. A critic who named James Russell Lowell as the possible author, gave it as his opinion that the substance of it was as strong as anything in the entire range of English satirical literature. It is dramatic, the humour is never forced, the local colouring is painted freely and with artistic success, the metres are eminently suited to the dramatic purposes of the work, and as for its effect on Mormonism itself, we can only quote what the ‘Spectator’ of that day said: ‘We believe that this new book will paralyse Mormon resistance far more than any amount of speeches in Congress or messages from President Grant, by bringing home to the minds of the millions the ridiculous, diabolic side of the peculiar institution. The canto called “The Last Epistle of St. Abe to the Polygamist,” with its humorous narrative of the way in which the Saint, sealed to seven wives, fell in love with one, and thenceforward could not abide the jealousy felt by the other six, will do more to weaken the last defence of Mormonism—that, after all, the women like it—than a whole realm of narratives about the discontent in Utah.’ Women is women! Thet’s their style— He reproaches his Cissy as to her change of manner to him, and suspecting physical distress, has his interrogation smothered by the following: It ain’t my stomach, nor my head, He discovers her secret, and vowing vengeance, the woman implores mercy: ‘Spare him!’ I cried, and gev a shout, Her brothers have little sympathy with the 121 Apostle, which fact is hinted in the following lines: We’ve done our best, don’t hev a doubt, In the City of the Saints, whither we are led by the next canto, we have a dialogue between the Stranger and several of the Bishops. Here are some of Bishop Peter’s views: Stranger, I’m with you there, indeed:—it’s been the best of nusses; We hear of St. Abe, who seems to have fallen in the estimation of his brother Bishops: And yet how well I can recall the time when Abe was younger— 122 We catch dramatic and picturesque glimpses of life in the Salt Lake City, and of the pleasures of unlimited domesticity. The calm resignation of the wives, a resignation evidently born of expediency, is pictured thus: When in their midst serenely walks their Master and their Mentor, As for St. Abe’s wives, we have here quite a subject for contrast: BISHOP JOSS. It ain’t a passionate flat like Abe can manage things in your way! Bishop Joss had an aunt, Tabitha Brooks, a virgin under fifty. ‘She warn’t so much for pretty looks, but she was wise and thrifty’: She’d seen the vanities of life, was good at ’counts and brewin’— He bestows her on the unwilling St. Abe: And round his neck she blushing hung, part holding, part caressing, 123 Under the (at that time) six, St. Abe has a mournful career: His house was peaceful as a church, all solemn, still, and saintly; until the arrival of Jason Jones’s child, and then, his soul opening to love for the first time, storms brew in the household, and St. Abe is unhappier than before. There’s vinegar in Abe’s pale face enough to sour a barrel, The next canto finds the metre varied, and in it we have drawn with characteristic touch a picture of the individual character of St. Abe’s household, and of the combined enmity that the six showed to the newly installed wife. Following this is a canto which gives us a view of the political and physical geography of Utah, with a glimpse, as we pass, of the Red-skin in his drunken degeneracy, and Jonathan’s attitude towards him. Poor devil of the plains, now spent and frail, 124 The sermonising of the prophet Brigham in the synagogue, with which the poem is next concerned, like the following two cantos, defies judicious extraction. The sermon is punctuated by Feminine Whispers, like a subdued chorus in the Greek tragedies. For example: THE PROPHET. Sisters and brothers who love the right, FEMININE WHISPERS. Brother Shuttleworth’s seventeenth wife, . . . THE PROPHET. Out of Egypt hither we flew, FEMININE WHISPERS. Isn’t Jedge Hawkins’s last a fright? . . . THE PROPHET. That night, my lambs, in a wondrous dream, FEMININE WHISPERS. Brigham’s sealed to another Bride . . . THE PROPHET. But I hear some awakening spirit cry, FEMININE WHISPERS. Martha is growing a handsome gel. . . . The finest sight is a man of worth, FEMININE WHISPERS. The babby’s growing black in the face! The falling of the thunderbolt—in other words, the elopement of St. Abe with his own wife—is dramatically conveyed to us in the assembly of the Prophet and his Elders: And the lesser lights all holy, In the midst of their meditations comes a murmur and a tumult, and a voice, ‘Brother Abe’s skedaddled!’ followed by the entry of Six sad female figures moaning, While the Saints again upleaping At the Prophet’s question scowling, After this ‘crusher truly’ come meditation and 127 prayer, and the reading of the Last Epistle of St. Abe to the Polygamists, beginning: O Brother, Prophet of the Light!—don’t let my state distress you, In a serio-comic monologue the Saint tells of his fall from glory, and of the discovery of the essential monogamy of his nature; how he grew to be fond of each wife individually instead of loving them in a body with a vague altruism: Each got to think me, don’t you see,—so foolish was the feeling,— Instead of keeping well apart the Flesh and Spirit, brother, The epistle contains much ‘common’ wisdom on the treatment of women, and on the limitations of human endeavour in the teeth of unlimited female emotions, jealousies, and fears. To a woman’s arms don’t fall, as if you meant to stay there, St. Abe divides the world into Saints so ‘high in bliss that they the Flesh can smother, and Souls inferior,’ and concludes with the eruption that rose on the annexation of the maidenly No. 7. But when the pretty smiling face came blossoming and blooming, And summing up the discovery of his love, his doubts, his determination, and his flight, he says: Such as I am, she takes me, though; and after years of trying, The poem ends with a canto in a varied metre, telling of St. Abe’s monogamous life on the ‘Farm in the Valley,’ in which we see St. Abe at rest at last after the ‘Sturm und Drang’ of his extensively matrimonialised existence, and in those peaceful surroundings we learn of the comfortable disposal of his deserted wives in other matrimonial circles; Tabitha, the grey mare of budding sixty, ending her career in the condition of Free Love. Honest Chaucer, thee I greet In the same year was published ‘White Rose and Red,’ a love-story, by the author of ‘St. Abe.’ Although still in the New World, the poet, in this volume, deals with an entirely different aspect of affairs from that which held his attention in ‘St. Abe.’ We spring at once from the sprightliness of Comedy to the dignity of Tragedy. Comedy there is too, for the two spirits run hand in hand, occasionally losing each other, as when Tragedy soars at white heat to the gateway of the gods, leaving Comedy with blinking eyes gazing upward; or when, Comedy springing forward with irresponsible joy, ‘humanely malign,’ Tragedy seeks the solitude of its own despair. the Land, where the lian-flower the Land where the golden Day 131 and second, the village of Drowsietown: O so drowsy! In a daze The story tells of how one, Eureka Hart, belonging to a body of Thrifty men, devout believers, while out hunting in the far north, is surprised and captured by a bevy of Indian squaws and maidens, and how, carried a prisoner to their village, he is received with courtesy by the tribe. He prolongs his stay there, and one of the maidens conceives a passion for him. From a long dream of sensuous delight, he wakes to a morning of grey ennui; and, leaving a broken-hearted love 132 behind, he returns to Drowsietown. We are told how, under the influence of his environment, he becomes accustomed to, and embraces the ease of, civilisation, and is married to a girl of the town. After months of waiting, the neglected Indian girl sets out on a long journey south, with as guide only a scrap of paper on which Eureka’s name and address is written. She passes through the great snowstorm, and arrives, collapsed and stricken with illness, at Eureka Cottage; the whole poem concluding with a picture of her death in the midst of the shadow, in which the intensity and unselfishness of her passion for Eureka is shown. Further in his soul receding, He was neither brilliant, bright, frantic, nor romantic, but he had in his veins a nomad desire to be ever wandering, racing, ‘bird-like, wave-like, chased or chasing.’ His soul only became a living force worthy of the consideration of a poet, under the influence of the Indian maiden. She was a shapely creature, tall, And as for her costume: All the merit of her dress, For the details of the love-story, what new is there to record of love?— As it was in the beginning, (An invocation like this is Lips, and lips to kiss them; The love that waits for the winning, As the story indicates, there are two Nuptial Songs—the one, the song of the children of Nature; the other, the song of the children of Drowsietown. Here is the first: Where were they wedded? In no Temple of ice Who was the Priest? The priest was the still Soul, 135 What was the service? ’Twas the service read Who saw it done? The million starry eyes Who was the Bride? A spirit strong and true, What was her consecration? Innocence! And for contrast we hear the second: Where were they wedded? In the holy house Who was the Priest? ’Twas Parson Pendon, dress’d What was the service? ’Twas the solemn, stale, Who saw it done? The countless rustic eyes Who was the Bride? Sweet Phoebe, dress’d in clothes 136 Her consecration? Peaceful self-control, Surveying with calm eyes the long, straight road With steady little hand she sign’d her name, It is not in our power to quote the many passages of beauty which the poem contains, but the following will indicate some of its moods: The swift is wheeling and gleaming, The eel in the pond is quick’ning, The fir puts out green fingers, The swift is wheeling and gleaming, 137 Phoebe, the wife, In her very style of looking And if the poem contained nothing else, the description of The Great Snow would entitle it to a very high place amongst poems of Nature. From the first breath of the east wind till the time came when not a bird stayed, nor a team could stir, there is detailed all the various changes of the storm, leading up to the grand climax. The falling flakes come first, the vanguard of the Snow; then ‘faint of breath and thin of limb, Hoar-Frost, like a maiden’s ghost, nightly o’er the marshes crost in the moonlight.’ Then comes the Phantom Fog, sitting sullen in the swamp, ‘scowling with a bloodshot eye, till the North Wind, with a shout, thrust his pole and poked him out,’ and then the main Army of the Snow: Black as Erebus afar, Multitudinous and vast, At the melting of the snow: Underneath her death-shroud thick In many ways ‘White Rose and Red’ deserves to be considered in the first line of the poet’s 139 work. It lacks the intellectualism of ‘The City of Dream,’ and the mystic realism of ‘The Book of Orm,’ but considering it as a pure piece of word-painting, and merely from an artistic and a sensuous point of view, we should feel inclined to place it, if not first, very high in the estimating scale. The contrasts are obtained not only by variety of colouring and tone in the painting of the atmosphere, but also in the striking blending of the elements of Comedy and Tragedy; and there is nothing but the highest literary success obtained in the contrasting of the simple, irresponsible, trusting virtue of the red rose, with the equally simple, yet conventional, virtuosity of the white. The red rose is a child of mere sensuous emotions, the handmaiden of the flowers, the trees, the river, and the sky. The white rose is parochial excellence personified, whose ever keen eye is on the protection of her virtue. What the red rose deemed holy were the winds and the waves, the moon and the stars, the waters and God’s hunting-field; for the white, the holy things were all to be gained under the shadow of the nearest belfry. _____
Next: Chapter VI. ‘BALDER THE BEAUTIFUL’ AND ‘THE EARTHQUAKE’ or back to Contents
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