ROBERT WILLIAMS BUCHANAN (1841 - 1901)

ROBERT BUCHANAN’S LETTERS TO ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE

These four letters from Robert Buchanan to Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace (naturalist, scientist, explorer, author, social campaigner and humanitarian) are in the collection of the British Library (Add. 46441 ff. 191-196. Alfred Russel Wallace Papers). Fully annotated transcripts of the letters are available at Wallace Letters Online ( part of the Natural History Museum site).

I have not seen the originals, so cannot add my own notes, but I thought it worthwhile to add the letters here. They were all written in 1899, two from the ‘88, South Side, Clapham Common’ address (there are four letters from this address in the Chatto collection, dated November, 1899) and two from Pevensey Bay. According to Chapter 29 of the Jay biography:

“About the beginning of June we again left town, going this time to a small furnished house in Pevensey Bay. The house was not very comfortable, and it was, moreover, somewhat depressing, but the quiet and perfect unconventionality of the little spot suited him so well that he resolved to remain. ... We remained at Pevensey Bay till the second week in October, and had a very happy time there. The roads were good, and he took up his cycling with relish, and he equally enjoyed his dips in the sea. We made one or two excursions to Bexhill, visiting together the places which we had known so many years before; we put up a tent on the shore and spent most of our time in the open air, taking our meals in the tent even on wet days. We had a succession of visitors, and only a few hundred yards from our front door stood the house occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Walter Slaughter, both jovial and most delightful companions. They, too, had their visitors, and we formed a little colony in ourselves. We all cycled, we all played cricket, we all enjoyed to the full the sunny blue skies and the rippling waves of the sea, and it seemed to me that Mr. Buchanan was laying in a stock of health which would last him for many years.”

A few words in the transcripts are followed by a [?], I’ve rendered these ‘best guesses’ in italics.

_____

Letter 1: 29th June, 1899.

St Germains
88 South Side
Clapham Common
                   S.W.
June 29. 1899

Dear Sir,

                   I have just been reading with much interest your Wonderful Century, with most of the contents of I heartily agree. I should like much to send you a book of my own, if you will inform me whether the address to which I sending this has found you. 
         With all good wishes

                   Yours truly
                   Robert Buchanan.

Alfred Russel Wallace Esq.

_____

Letter 2: 1st July, 1899.

St Germains
88 South Side
Clapham Common
                   S.W.
July 1. 1899

Dear M^r Wallace,

                   I send you herewith The New Rome, in which you may possibly find some ideas which accord with Sims. It is of course out of accord with the Age, & has therefore achieved little popularity—tho’ I am vain enough to fancy that it utters many truths that cannot die.—Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to grasp the hand of one for whom I have long had an affectionate sympathy & veneration, and if the chance comes, be sure I shall take it. Just now I am very slowly recovering from a long illness, & about to set out for the seaside, somewhere or other. I fancy Bournemouth would be too relaxing at this time of year.
         If you glance at the book, please note particularly the Carmen Deific, Justinian, the Coruisken Sonnets, & The New Buddha. All the pieces are heterodox enough in all conscience, as you will discover.
         With all respect & sympathy

                   Yours truly
                   Robert Buchanan

A. F. Wallace Esq

_____

Letter 3: 10th July [1899].

16 Fielding Terrace
Pevensey Bay
Sussex
July 10

Dear Mr Wallace,

                   Your letter interests me very much, its frank & unbiased criticism being most valuable in every way, quite apart from the noble & unselfish source from which it springs. Only on one point must I join issue with you, and that is your crediting me with a larger faith than I possess. In many of the pieces doubtless the faith is present, but poems of this kind must be taken as representing moods, not fixed opinions. Intellectually and au fond I have no belief whatever; emotionally I have a great deal, and I only cling to a belief in a Divine solution because, like most men, I am a coward. I know nothing of spiritualism; what experience I have had of its professors has simply disgusted and shocked me. In one a word, I am a man whose whole life is warped & darkened because he desires passionately to believe, & cannot—cannot, that is, with any pretence of logical conviction, yet still, feebly & sentimentally makes the ‘wish the father to the thought’ & writes L’Envoi to which you allude.
         My great sorrow was the loss of my mother, under circumstances which shattered broke the last thread of my belief in immortality.

                   Always yours
                   R Buchanan

A. R. Wallace Esq.

         I have had a long illness & am down by the sea recuperating. When I return to town I will send you my Devil’s Case & my Mary the Mother, to glance at if ever you feel inclined. I only care to write for the few good & true men who are honestly feeling Light, and I need hardly say that I relish you among them — B.

[Note:
I thought I should add a note here to correct Endnote 4 on the Wallace Letters Online site. The ‘L’Envoi’ which Buchanan refers to is presumably ‘I End As I Began’ in The New Rome.]

_____

Letter 4: 4th August, 1899.

I shall endeavour to get your Miracle book from the Library.

16 Fielding Terrace
Pevensey Bay
Sussex
Aug^t 4 1899.

Dear Mr Wallace,

                   It was most kind of you to write to me so fully, but I don’t want you to think that I wished to bore you with my cerebrations or to insist on your reading them. I really sent the books as an expression of my sympathy and admiration; not to extract friendly criticism.
         But since you have read the books, I thank you for your remarks about them—remarks of great value coming from one ‘so strongly arm’d in honesty’. My only objection is to your suggestion that the two works are contradictory. I regard them as facets of the same conception, viz. that all creation is governed by inexorable Law, ag^t which the creature strives in vain. The Devil’s Case is an arraignment of the priestly dogma, that knowledge is evil in itself; the Devil being the adumbration of the human quest for truth & certainty, as well as the spirit of human pity. Mary the Mother is a reduction into natural terms of a supernatural tradition. In both books, something strong & living is found revolting in the very heart of the cosmic Law.
         If you glance at the enclosed “Letter to Neitzsche”, one of my letters to the Sunday Special, you will gather that I sympathise deeply with the Christian conception, unable as I am to accept it on any kind of supernaturalism. What you say ab^t Spiritualism interests me deeply, coming from such a quarter; but all my personal experience is opposed to it, in every way. I would cut off my right hand to feel as you do on the subject. My whole life has been darkened and frustrated by the growing belief that there is no solution to the great problem. I am not a pessimist, but my optimism has no power to cheer my advancing age.
         As to the preponderance of happiness, you are doubtless right—but if ninety-nine percent of living creatures were happy, and only one miserable, that would be enough to poison my cup. I see no moral justification for the horrible tortures by sentient things. And I fail altogether to feel that pain is beneficent. On the contrary, I think that it is often corrupting & corroding, besides being generally capricious.—But this is too long a theme to traverse in a letter.
         Your note ab^t technical defects in the poems is valuable, but you may be assured that I am never wilfully careless, & possibly some of the faults you observe are systematic. I have sent the books by me to refer to, so I cannot enter into detail. I can only say that in most cases where such objections are raised, the difference is one of opinion as to the true technique of verse.
         Thanking you once more for your kind & thoughtful letter, I am as ever

                   Yours most truly
                   Robert Buchanan

Alfred Russel Wallace Esq.

_____

Back to Letters