ROBERT WILLIAMS BUCHANAN (1841 - 1901)
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ROBERT WILLIAMS BUCHANAN (1841 - 1901) |
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BOOK REVIEWS - NOVELS (1)
The Shadow of the Sword (1876) A Child of Nature (1881) God and the Man (1881)
The Shadow of the Sword (1876)
The Daily News (27 December, 1876) RECENT NOVELS. The keynote of Mr. Robert Buchanan’s novel, “The Shadow of the Sword” (3 vols., Bentley) is struck in some singularly strong and striking verses, which forms a proem to the story. “Who has tied Dollabella to that sword?” cried Cicero when he saw his diminutive son-in-law weighted by the insignia of his office. Mr. Buchanan has attached a hero, who is small and insignificant in conception, to a tremendous and appalling purpose. Rohan Gwenfern’s outcry of despair is supposed to raise the dead Christ from His grave, and to overthrow an empire; and what, if we come to analyse him, is Rohan Gwenfern, the lever which produces these stupendous results? He is a coward, and selfish in his cowardice. “The mere dread,” says Mr. Buchanan, “of being drawn for the conscription paralysed him with fear” (the italics are the author’s), “filled his heart with the sick horror cowards feel, seemed to touch the inmost springs of his enormous strength, and make him tremble to the very soul.” When he contemplates “vistas” of his countrymen fighting for the Fatherland, “he thanks the good God who made him a widow’s son.” He is twice a murderer, once in deed and once in thought. And to succour this abject creature Mr. Buchanan would have us believe that the dead Christ waked, and Buonaparte fell from his throne. It is difficult to feel any interest in a coward, but it is even more difficult to admire a heroine who is a mere doll. Not all the sabots, saffron coifs, and distaffs in Brittany could give Marcelle Derval life. It is small avail to dress the outside of a hero and heroine if the inner man and woman are not real. Even a picturesque background of red rock and green sea becomes raw in tone and monotonous when pressed into the service of a hero, for whom not one of his readers can feel either pity or sympathy. When Rohan’s name is drawn in the conscription, and when he will not fight, he takes refuge in a sea-cave, where he lives in peril of his life as a deserter, till the fall of the Emperor frees him. His cheeks are famished, his form is wasted, his eyes are wild with hunger and despair. “You tell me,” cries one of his admirers, “he is a deserter and revolter; I tell you that he is a hero and a martyr.” Meanwhile “a moral shadow arises between his soul and that of Marcelle.” There are many shadows in this book to which a shadow stands godfather. But strangest of all is that “shadow of Buonaparte” which estranges the soul of Marcelle from her lover. The shadow which lay on her prophetic soul grows deeper, till on the 1st of March, when Rohan learns that the Emperor has landed at Antibes—or Cannes, as Mr. Buchanan has it—and when throwing his arms up into the air her lover “shrieks like a man shot through the heart.” He thinks of the Emperor as a “red (!) shadow;” his face becomes convulsed, and he longs “to strike Buonaparte down, to crush and kill him underneath the rock of his mortal hate.” When warned, he is, as a deserter, again endangered by the return of the Emperor, he gazes “wildly at the air, and utters that strange, unearthly laugh;” he speaks “like a raving madman;” the “light of murder is in his eyes,” and he starts to hunt the Emperor down, his hair hanging over his shoulders, his beard long and matted, his feet and arms bare, and his body wretchedly covered. After the catastrophe of Waterloo, the enemies come face to face; the deserter whets his knife; the Emperor sleeps. Ten pages describe this meeting as the melting of the assassin’s heart; and St. Helena being a matter of history the reader is spared those pangs of uncertainty which give a charm to fiction. Mr. Buchanan bids his readers farewell with the following flight into poetry— So sit those twain, thousands of miles apart, Without pausing to remark on such marvels as a “red shadow,” or the “red hues of an eclipse,” we may conclude by noticing that the definitions of cromlech and dolmen given by Mr. Buchanan are not those usually accepted. The broom does not blossom in March; and March would be late indeed for the first violet. To upbraid the hair, too, is not a term in general use. If it is well that the cobbler should stick to his last, it is even better that a poet should stick to his poetry. Mr. Buchanan has written some brilliant and harmonious verse; and prose which is poor, gaudy, and false is altogether unworthy of him. ___
The British Quarterly Review (January, 1877 - p.279-280) The Shadow of the Sword. A Romance. By ROBERT BUCHANAN. Bentley and Son. Mr. Buchanan has woven a weird and striking romance out of materials that seemed too painful, and concerning a period that one might fancy was as yet too near for completely successful treatment after the manner he has adopted. It is a story of the time of Napoleon the Great, and he finds his motive in the influence of an idea which makes it not only right for a brave man, but imperative upon him, to oppose his family, to sacrifice his love, and all that a brave man most yearns to secure, for the sake of his own self-respect and his deepest convictions. The scene is a little Brittany village, and we are introduced to two young cousins exploring the recesses of a wondrous rock-cathedral at the sea-shore. Marcelle, the maiden, is presented with great skill; and soon the first faint ‘Shadow of the Sword’ is seen in her devotion to the Emperor. Such a devotion as Marcelle’s, rising really to something of a religious sentiment, now sounds incredible; but such was not rare a generation ago among large sections of the French people. Mr. Arfoll, an itinerant teacher, is next introduced, and we soon guess the part he is to play in the story. He is the apostle of the new humanity, the enemy of war, fitted from his peculiar ways to exercise a vast influence over the young. On the other hand stand the brothers and the uncle of Marcelle—the last an old veteran, whose love for Napoleon would be certain to infect all within his range, if they were not defended by great ideas. There is a new conscription; Rohan Gwenfern—the hero—and one of his cousins are drawn; but Rohan, resolved not to fight, disappears, and his friends believe he is dead. Mikel Gallen, a rival, now takes ‘occasion by the hand’ to press his suit with Marcelle, who is too true to listen; for, though she mourns what seems his defection, she truly loves her cousin Rohan. He has gone into hiding in the interminable caverns that there run under the land, even under the village of Kromlaix; but when a great flood comes, he suddenly appears, and, amidst the general paralysis, shows such courage and skill in saving Marcelle and many more, that those who had most condemned him as a coward now declare him to be a hero. But as soon as the danger is over he has simply to hide himself in the cave again. After severe sufferings and many adventures, the great defeat comes at last; the new king is declared, amid the tears and sighs of the faithful old sergeant; and Rohan, with mind weakened by long exposure, appears amongst his people, to be honoured and nursed, and at length to wed Marcelle, now chastened by severe suffering and loss. No such hasty summary can however give any idea of the depth of meaning and the power of this book. Mr. Buchanan has managed, with the utmost skill, to maintain romantic colour and charm by the place which he gives to legend, and by the fine appreciation he shows for the fanciful and superstitious character of the people, and yet many of his portraitures are as real as though there were no element of romance in the story. The humour of the situation when Rohan first steals to his home and confronts the sergeant is of the finest quality, and the unaffected pathos of the scene when the sergeant goes out, to see the new insignia waving from the church tower, is in our opinion simply masterly. Throughout, the book abounds in powerful picturesque passages, is full of weird romantic touches, presents character with great force and truth, and may be regarded as a most successful experiment in a field which has not been much, if at all, ventured upon in this country. ___
The Guardian (1 January, 1877 - p.7) SOME NOVELS. Whatever difference of opinion may exist as to Mr. Robert Buchanan’s literary merits, no one, we think, will deny him such credit as may be due to perseverance and enterprise. Poetry, essays, and the drama he has tried by turns, and now in The Shadow of the Sword (Bentley, London, 1876) he comes before the public as a novelist, or, as he himself puts it, a romance writer. Perhaps it may be necessary in a generation which is not careful about definitions to remind the reader that novel and romance are not exactly convertible terms. The novel is held to deal more with the manners, fashions, and scenery of the hour; the romance with the greater and simpler passions, the play of which may be supposed not to have varied greatly at any time. Hence the romance approaches nearer to poetry, and is allowed a certain rather grandiose style and language which in an ordinary novel would be much out of place. The greatest living writer of romances— perhaps one of the greatest who ever lived—is, of course, Victor Hugo, and students of Mr. Robert Buchanan know that the latter has been a diligent, if not altogether a successful, follower of Victor Hugo in many things. Accordingly it will not surprise anyone to find in “The Shadow of the Sword” a very considerable smack of the great Frenchman’s vintage, more especially of the “Travailleurs de la Mer.” Mr. Buchanan, whose fancy has always been strongly influenced by the history of the Napoleonic family, has chosen for his subject the last years of the great Napoleon’s reign and the merciless conscription which then scourged France. Rohan Gwenfereo, a Breton and the only son of his mother, has, partly from independent thought and partly from the influence of an old Republican schoolmaster, contracted an almost insane abhorrence of the tyrannical rule which is draining his country of her blood. He is an ardent fisher and fowler, and spends almost all his time on the cliffs and in the caverns of the wild Breton coast, usually alone, but not seldom accompanied by his cousin, Marcelle, whom he loves deeply, and who returns his love. Unluckily, Marcelle, under the influence of her uncle, an old soldier, has been brought up to worship the Emperor. Rohan’s horror of the conscription (which owing to the exemption attaching to widows’ only sons has been hitherto abstract and theoretical) is soon put to the test by the withdrawal of that exemption after the retreat from Moscow. He perseveres in his resolve, refuses to attend the drawing, and when Marcelle in his absence has drawn a “bad number” for him absconds. He hides in the sea caverns, supplied by stealth with food by his mother and Marcelle, and blockaded by the gendarmes, whom when the blockade is turned into a storm he vanquishes, unluckily killing their leader, Sergeant Piprive, an old friend of his father’s and his own unwilling persecutor. Remorse for this act, committed in self-defence though it was, and the hardships and privations of his ghastly sojourn in the caves drive him to intermittent madness; but an inundation at his native village, in which he gallantly saves Marcelle and many others, and thus proves to his friends that his (to them incomprehensible) conduct springs from nothing less than from cowardice, restores him somewhat. The persecution is relaxed, and of course dropped altogether at the return of the Bourbons. But the escape from Elba again puts his life in danger and overturns his reason. He again absconds, makes his way to Flanders, and is on the point of assassinating his tyrant, but relents. The book leaves him united to Marcelle, and gradually but slowly returning to sanity, though still haunted by the idea of Napoleon. There is no doubt that this is a very powerful “fable,” and it is only fair to say that the treatment also is by no means lacking in power. It is exactly the sort of story which Mr. Buchanan can treat well. He is thoroughly at home in the description of the endless cavern-realms which Rohan discovers, and in which he roams with the restlessness and the wild fancies of a madman; his misty and turbid style is not badly adapted to the visions and thoughts of his half-frenzied hero; and in Marcelle he has created a character who may stand not so very few below the Déas and Déruchettes who undoubtedly suggested her. It is hardly necessary to say that the whole book is pitched in a key which suggests the perilous neighbourhood of the sublime and the ridiculous, that there are a good many faults both of style and language, and that there are long passages of sheer balderdash. The chapter entitled “The Red Angel” would supply texts for endless sarcastic comment is we cared to avail ourselves of them. But it seems to us much more to the point to say that here is a book which, with very many faults, is a good attempt in a kind not common in English, and that Mr. Robert Buchanan seems at last, as a Frenchman would say, to have “found his way.” He has written a little good and a great deal of atrociously bad poetry; he has shown himself to be possessed of hardly any critical faculty; and his dramas have, to use the mildest term, gone to limbo. But he has produced a really good romance, and has shown that he could produce a still better. ___
The Pall Mall Gazette (3 January, 1877 - p.11-12) “THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD.” * A QUAKER does not seem, at first sight, a very likely hero for a poetical romance, and yet Mr. Robert Buchanan has made an interesting and curious story out of the adventures of his Rohan Gwenfern. When we call Rohan a Quaker it must be remembered that he was not actually a member of the Society of Friends, and only unconsciously held the notions of William Penn and of Mr. Bright, before his late conversion. Rohan was a Breton fisherman, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. A youth of immense strength and daring, the best cragsman of the district, the chosen “patron” of the village-feast at Kromlaix, Rohan loved his cousin Marcelle. The pair had grown up together from childhood, and when we first meet them Rohan is climbing the sea-cliffs, while Marcelle waits for him at the top. The scene is described with an almost dazzling and bewildering exuberance of language, which is the fault, as we venture to think, of Mr. Buchanan’s more laboured pictures in words. After reaching the top of the cliff, Rohan took Marcelle to see the Cathedral of St. Gildas, a vast natural sea-cave, said by tradition to be haunted by evil monks, just as the village might be haunted by spectres from the Roman streets of an ancient submerged town. As the cousins leave the cave Rohan is obliged to carry Marcelle through the rising tide; the girl’s hair, her hidden maiden tresses, drop over her shoulders, and the captivated Rohan wooes her very prettily to be his bride. Now, even in the opening of the story we see the gathering cloud. The “Shadow of the Sword” of Napoleon—a luminous shadow—blazes like a baleful meteor. It is known that there is to be a new conscription, sparing not even only sons. Marcelle, her brothers, and her old uncle, the corporal, are devoted to the Emperor with a religious fanaticism; and unluckily Rohan thinks the Emperor a fiend and war a horrible crime. These unpopular ideas he got from the old semi-revolutionary schoolmaster, Arfol, a figure who reminds one slightly of Patience in “Mauprat.” Other people may have dreaded the conscription, but Rohan had sworn an oath never to wear Cain’s livery, nor fight for “the Avatar,” as Mr. Buchanan persists in calling Napoleon. So here we have a struggle against society, a hopeless struggle of one man, at least as desperate as any of the colossal conflicts in M. Hugo’s romances. Rohan is much more than the mere hater of war and tyranny; he has all the Celt’s delight in solitude and in the sea; all the Celt’s perverse courage on the side of forlorn and impossible causes; much of the Celt’s visionary quality. He beholds in second sight the phantasm of the battle of Leipzig, and, above all, he has a sympathetic power of seeing and shuddering at all the horrors of war, which strike but feebly on the tamer imagination. To shed men’s blood at the command of a despot is the one thing impossible to him. This being so, he is in a pitiful position. He will not come to the drawing of lots, but keeps apart in his boat in the bay. Marcelle draws for him—the scene is a common one and well described—and draws No. I. He refuses to serve, though he thus loses his love, who cannot understand him, and his good name, and falls from the proud place of “patron” to the abasement of a coward and a chouan. Nature, however, is his friend in the struggle with man, and in the trou or cave, high in the roof of the haunted sea-cathedral, he defies his foes. But his provisions are cut off. The she-goat that fed him is shot—a very pitiful incident—and, in self-defence, he has the misfortune to kill one of his besiegers, the stout Sergeant Pipriac. Now he is deserted by God and man, and even his conscience is stained with the crime which he abandoned honour and love to avoid. In a wild revulsion of superstition, which takes the place of his lost faith, he prays for a curse on the Emperor in the ruined chapel of our Lady of Hate. The picture of her fane, half fallen, but still holy, still full of ex votis, which are really talismans of evil, is really powerful. “One of the lockets was quite new, and held a lock of human hair. Woe to the head on which that hair grew should our Lady hear the prayer of her who placed it there!” Gwenfern’s nature was soured by the long battle with hunger, and with the darkness and gloom of his hiding place. Meanwhile one of Marcelle’s conscript brothers returned, a wounded but very conceited “scarecrow of glory.” The prayer in the ruined chapel was answered, and Napoleon yielded and went into exile. A happy chance gave Rohan an opportunity of saving many lives in a flood, and of proving that he had not shunned the conscription out of common cowardice. Under the restored white flag he was rather petted and courted, till “the Tiger escaped” from Elba and spoiled poor Marcelle’s love affair, as he spoiled Emmie Sedley’s. Rohan was again the hunted deserter, and, now maddened utterly, he set off to assassinate Napoleon. The scene of their meeting, and of the Emperor’s escape—he said his prayers opportunely, like Claudius, the Dane—is told in too excited a fashion. Indeed, though it is most likely that Rohan would go mad, he is much more interesting when he is comparatively sane. His discovery of the Roman statue and of the submerged city is too melodramatic even for a romance of the Breton coast. * “The Shadow of the Sword.” By Robert Buchanan. (London: Richard Bentley and Son. 1876.) ___
The Graphic (6 January, 1877 - Issue 371) New Novels. “THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD:” a Romance, by Robert Buchanan (3 vols.: Bentley).—Mr. Buchanan’s “romance” is uneven, and sometimes extravagant and even spasmodic, but it is a work, we think, that no one but a poet could have written. Its strength and attraction lie in the depth of the author’s feeling for Nature, especially for Nature in her wilder and weirder aspects, as she shows herself in “the melancholy ocean,” and the awful cliffs and gloomy caverns of a stormy and solitary coast. Mr. Buchanan undoubtedly possesses in a high degree the Celtic turn for what Mr. Matthew Arnold terms “natural magic,” the turn for “catching and rendering the charm of Nature in a wonderfully new and vivid way.” The scene of the story is laid at Kromlaix, “in the loneliest and saddest corner of the Breton coast,” and the sea and the crags form an abiding background to the pictures here shown to us which we are never allowed to lose sight of for long together. The tale opens in the early spring of 1813, the spring that followed on Napoleon’s disastrous retreat from Moscow, when the “Shadow of the Sword” was in truth growing large over all Europe. The characters in the piece are many, but only three of them seem drawn with force and distinctness of outline, the hero and heroine, Rohan Gwenfern and Marcelle Derval, and their common uncle, Corporal Derval, one of Napoleon’s veterans, discharged with a pension after losing a leg at Austerlitz, who has retired to his native village there to burn incense perpetually on the altar of his idol, the Great Emperor, who in his eyes and those of his niece, Marcelle, stands almost on a level with the good God. The case is far otherwise with Marcelle’s cousin and lover, Rohan, who, first in strength and physical beauty among the village youths, is altogether matchless for skill and daring as a sailor and a cragsman, “he swims like a fish, he crawls like a fly, and his joy would be complete if he could soar like a bird.” But, chiefly through the teachings of one Master Arfoll, an itinerant schoolmaster—a character Mr. Buchanan has rather tried to paint than succeeded in painting, for he remains almost as shadowy and unsubstantial as if he were veritably a supernatural being—Rohan has imbued sundry heterodox opinions, among them an utter hatred of all war as evil and abominable, and has sworn to himself that under no compulsion will he ever submit to be made a soldier. Up to this year he has held himself safe, for the conscription has spared the only sons of widows, but now the Emperor’s needs demand even these, and in the new conscription for the campaign of 1813 Rohan’s name is drawn in his absence by his sweetheart, Marcelle. The greater portion of the story is taken up with the events that follow on this turn of fate— Rohan’s refusal to yield obedience to the Emperor’s mandate, though it cost him the loss of all that men hold dear, and he is but as one man against the world; his escape to fastnesses known only to himself, where, though suffering great privations, he hides so successfully that he is long supposed to be dead, and his discovery by an enemy in an almost inaccessible cave in a natural recess on the coast called the Cathedral of St. Gildas, and the siege in miniature he there sustains from the gendarmes who endeavour to scale his eyrie, and against whom he defends himself desperately by hurling down on them huge stones and fragments of rock—but these things, as well as the marvellous discoveries Rohan subsequently makes in his wanderings in the heart of the earth, the episode of the inundation which nearly sweeps Kromlaix into the sea, and Rohan’s bravery therein, and how it finally fares with the valiant deserter we must leave our readers to learn in detail for themselves. We cannot, however, pass over without a word of protest the dangerous, if not immoral doctrine which Mr. Buchanan seems to lay down, that Rohan, because his private conscience disapproved of a law, was justified even in slaying the officer who in the discharge of his duty attempted to execute it—a theory which would justify the Fenian murderers of Sergeant Brett, if not any rough who might kick a policeman to death for interfering with what he might be pleased to think his lawful amusements. However, Mr. Buchanan’s questionable ethics and somewhat random and exaggerated rhetoric on the subject of the great Napoleon need not spoil any reader’s appreciation of his really fine and powerful romance, to whose many beauties in the way of picturesque description we regret our space will not allow us to do justice. ___
The Times (9 January, 1877 - p.3) RECENT NOVELS. The “Shadow of the Sword” is a prose poem in idea as well as expression, a wistful appeal to the Prince of Peace, who seemed still to sleep in his tomb in the garden and delay his coming. The verses of the proem are graceful and mellifluous, though they might savour of Paganism or even profanity were they rendered into literal prose:— “Nineteen sad sleepless centuries The Shadow of the Sword of the great Conqueror is falling over suffering Europe. In France at least this Antichrist of the Gospel revelation bears sway with the horrid tyranny of a Moloch, claiming his human victims by hundreds of thousands. Glory and ambition are the watchwords of his dispensation, although patriotism and promises of peace are more often on his lips and in his bulletins. The conscription becomes more and more exacting. He has still his hosts of devoted worshippers, in the survivors of the soldiers who have died for him on countless battle fields, and he has come to weigh like a relentless and irresistible fate on the population, who are being drained by the blood tribute. There may be murmurings or even bitter expostulations, but there is no open revolt. Men may denounce the criminality of the autocrat’s ambition, but they dare only do so under their breath; and when the lot has fallen the victim must march. The main conception of Mr. Buchanan’s poem is novel, in the opposition of indignant and resolute reason to this iron will and its crushing machinery. The scenes are laid in the wilder districts of “La Bretagne Bretonnante.” A simple fisherman, Rohan Gwenfern, refuses to obey the behests of the tyrant. Partly enlightened by the teachings of an erratic missionary, who escapes the consequences of his opinions by passing with the people for half-mad, Rohan has long been cherishing a profound resentment against this system that is bereaving all the households about him. In an exaltation of the feelings he has brooded over among the savage precipices of the Breton coast, he swears that for himself he will never submit. When his turn comes he keeps his oath. He is put to the ban and hunted like a wild beast. Thanks to his strength and his daring as a cragsman, he saves himself by a series of hairbreadth feats; he lies hid in almost inaccessible lurking places known only to himself. After a course of the sufferings which make him hate his kind, he does become very much of a wild animal. But he has a glimmer of happiness with the better times which come with the exile of the oppressor to Elba, though the glimmer expires again in darkness with the reaction of the hundred days. ___
The Boston Daily Globe (2 February, 1877 - p.3) THREE NOVELS. Robert Buchanan is not a new name in the literary world, but such fame as he possesses has been won by writing poems and not novels, and there are few readers who were not surprised to hear that he had written a romance called “The Shadow of the Sword.” It is a tale of Brittany in the time of the First Empire; a tale in which the hero is a conscript who from conscientious motives refuses to serve, and is hunted like a wild boast until the fall of the Emperor at last puts an end to the pursuit and leaves him crazed in mind and worn in body to the enjoyment of the peace which comes too late to bring him happiness. This hero, Rohan by name, is not the typical Breton peasant; he is tall, indeed, and of preternatural strength of body, but he is not superstitious or even religious, but sceptical; and listens kindly to the teachings of Master Arfoll, a wandering teacher, who contemns the Emperor and all his works. Marcelle, the heroine, is enthusiastic in her admiration of Napoleon, having been taught by her uncle, a disabled veteran, to reverence the hero’s name. The story opens with the betrothal of Rohan and Marcelle, and all its action is carried on during the period in which Rohan is a fugitive from the recruiting sergeant. He hides in caves along the seashore and in Roman ruins, which are very picturesquely described, and he encounters his pursuers sufficiently often to make his story rather exciting. ___
The Contemporary Review (April, 1877, Vol. 29 - p.961-962) THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD. * THE time has gone by for reviewing Mr. Buchanan's Romance, and it is not in these pages that any general sketch of its plan will be sought for. But it need not, for all that, be passed over, without any attempt at a judgment of its claims as a work of art, or any word as to its moral scope. * The Shadow of the Sword. A Romance. By Robert Buchanan. Three volumes. London: Richard Bentley and Son. 1876. ___
The Examiner (6 October, 1877) The chief interest of the present number of the Contemporary Review lies in the Essays and Notices at the end, most of which are very well written. The series of which the attack on the Journals of Society professed to be the first, is not continued. In a laudatory notice of Mr. Robert Buchanan’s poem, “Balder the Beautiful,” a lament is made that the ‘Shadow of the Sword,’ a novel written by Mr. Buchanan, should not have met with greater success, and it is said that “this fine prose romance would, thirty years ago, have made a splendid reputation.” People were much more tolerant of bombastic unreality then. Mr. Swinburne’s “Note on Charlotte Brontë” is favourably noticed, and the poet is reminded that “he is still very young, and has evidently no notion of the errors of judgment, especially in matters of degree, which are inseparable from the heat of youth.” We wonder who the patriarch can be who speaks of a man of forty as “still very young.” He must be entitled to speak of Victor Hugo as a mere boy, or to deplore the premature removal of M. Thiers in the flower of his youth. ___
The Western Times (12 May, 1903 - p.4) SOME COMMENTS UPON RECENT PUBLICATIONS. It appears that the best selling of Robert Buchanan’s novels is his “Shadow of the Sword,” and following it in popularity is “God and the Man.” Of the first book Messrs. Chatto are next week to issue a sixpenny edition in paper covers. The story, as Buchanan wrote, is a “polemic against war,” the “institution which above all others is the disgrace and scourge of modern civilisation.” He said that he cast “The Shadow of the Sword” as a crumb upon the waters. “It may,” he added, “do some good; it cannot possibly do any harm.” Back to Reviews, Bibliography or Fiction _____
The Academy (19 March, 1881 - p.204) The appearance of Mr. Robert Buchanan’s Shadow of the Sword some years ago made some critics think that his considerable but unequal literary power had found a field more suitable than poetry to exercise itself in. A Child of Nature does not altogether discountenance that idea, but it does not confirm it quite so strongly as might be wished. Like its predecessor, A Child of Nature is called a romance; but it hardly justifies the title according to the ordinary acceptation of the word, in which romance is taken to imply a story dealing more with adventure and with the tragic passions than with analytic character-drawing and observation of manners. A Child of Nature, except that its scene is laid in an out-of-the-way place (the north of Sutherland), and that at least one scene (the sawing asunder of a bridge by an ancient Highland foster-father in the desire to destroy a person who is, as he thinks, baleful to his foster-child), does not differ much in style from most novels of the day, and indeed is not nearly so much of a romance as Macleod of Dare or Sunrise. However, there is nothing particular in a name. As a novel A Child of Nature is good, but not of the best. The earlier scenes, which, if our memory does not play tricks with us, Mr. Buchanan published some years ago under the title of The Fair Pilot of Loch Uribol or something of that kind, are perhaps the best part; and two sketches in them, Doctor John and Angus of the Dogs, are either very clever studies from the life or still cleverer imaginations. The heroine, too, Mina Macdonald, is good. Her brother and uncle are more conventional. Her lover, a young landlord who pays his first visit to his property under an assumed name, is a somewhat fragmentary and disappointing sketch in point of character, while his adventures are not particularly striking. The least successful figures in the book, however, are the selfish English aristocrat, Sir Charles Sedley, and his daughter Ethel. Mr. Buchanan may rest assured that no English gentleman of Sir Charles’s class, in speaking to his daughter of her cousin, Lord Arranmore, would talk about “his lordship;” and the young lady’s behaviour to Mina in her first interview with her is the very reverse of probable or characteristic. There is some good description in A Child of Nature—description in which the author produces a fair effect without lavish use of the word-palette. But Mr. Buchanan has been less careful of the minor touches than he might have been. Macdonalds and Macphersons in the north of Sutherland as ancient owners of the soil are surely out of place. ___
The Graphic (2 April, 1881 - Issue 592) New Novels. IT is some years now since Mr. Robert Buchanan wrote his first novel—“The Shadow of the Sword.” Really great work, such as that was has always to be waited for, and is not turned out once or twice a year like the chronic fiction of the usual machine pattern. But then its memory remains, and the reader who has ever once read “The Shadow of the Sword” will be a little surprised, and at first by no means pleasantly, by Mr. Buchanan’s “A Child of Nature” (3 vols.: Bentley and Son). It seems hardly credible that the two novels should have come from the same hand. The first had all the air of being written by a man charged to the full with the enthusiasm of a great subject, and so, by main strength, fascinating into interest the tamest of readers and the most unwilling of admirers. It was the splendid tragedy of a battle waged by one man against mankind and nature combined—as unlike the sentimental romance as the ocean is unlike a saucer. On the other hand, in “A Child of Nature” Mr. Buchanan has gone to work as if he had come to the conclusion that, after all, it is not worth while to write great novels in the face of the inexhaustible demand for little ones. So he has turned out the usual sort of Gaelic story, only differing in character from its fellows by being a good deal better than most of them. When we have once realised the fact that “A Child of Nature” professes to be nothing higher than this, we may put our first bitter disappointment away, and gain from the book a great deal of wholesome pleasure. Oddly enough, considering the hands from which it comes, there is something feminine, in the best sense of the word, about both plot and style. The manner in which Graham Macdonald storms and conquers the heart of Ethel Sedley is true and natural; but Graham is a woman’s ideal, rather than a man’s, of what such a man would be and feel. On the other hand, Ethel, and her contrast, Mina, throw their two lovers’ entirely into the shade. All the incidental sketches of character and coast scenery in the far North are admirable, so far as they go, but we think Mr. Buchanan has carried reticence in description a little too far. It looks as if he had set himself the task of writing a popular novel, and had, with that view, made a point of saying nothing which might possibly raise the work above what he has taken to be the popular level. It is not altogether agreeable to read an author who has the air of consciously writing down to the assumed level of his readers. Popular the novel is certain to be, and that deservedly. At the same time, we feel convinced that Mr. Buchanan has in this instance done justice neither to his own genius nor to the intellectual calibre of readers in general. One would have been content with lower work from almost any other novelist; one has a right to demand infinitely nobler and more durable work from the pen that wrote “The Shadow of the Sword.” ___
Daily News (14 April, 1881) Mr. Robert Buchanan’s novel, “A Child of Nature (3 vols., Richard Bentley and Son), has little of the strength or originality which made “The Shadow of the Sword” remarkable. It is a love story, laid in the far Highlands of Scotland, prettily told, and with some compression would have made a symmetrical enough novel. The quantity as it is rather overweighs the quality, as when one sees the thinness of indifferent water-colours made conspicuous by the too great size of the board. Nevertheless, Mr. Buchanan’s colouring is delicate and refined, and many of his scenes are highly poetic. Lord Arranmore, an impoverished owner of estates in the north of Scotland, determines to visit his property incognito, in order to decide for himself whether his factor or his discontented tenants are most to blame for their disputes. He arrives one evening in a little yacht, more than half a gale blowing, and no pilot on board to take the Jenny in among the dangerous rocks and reefs. In this strait appears Mina-nan-Oran, Fair-haired Mina o’ the Songs, the “Child of Nature,” the girl who can steer a ship, rig a boat, catch salmon, and charm the seals. She charms Lord Arranmore, too, and perhaps her influence may eventually have made him worthy of her love, especially if she left off calling him “My lord” after marrying him. Mr. Buchanan is weakest in his aristocratic characters. Lord Arranmore and Sir Charles Sedley are scarcely gentlemen, and the latter was certainly not a “nobleman.” On the other hand, the Highland figures are striking and picturesque. Old Koll Nicholson is drawn with considerable power, and with both pathos and humour. The value and interest of the story lie in the sympathetic description of the simple grey life of the poor fisher folk—colourless and pathetic as their surrounding seas and shores; but, like them, full of latent intensity, and capable of stormy, violent emotion. Graham Macdonald, the strong-natured, sullen-tempered Highlander, is the strongest character in the book, and his passion for Ethel Sedley is truthfully conceived and told. Here, however, as in other places, the dramatic effect suffers from repetition. The same situations and dialogues are represented again and again, only to spin out the novel. Apart from this defect the story is interesting as a picture of rude, isolated, picturesque society, seldom visited by strangers, and evidently well understood and appreciated by the writer of the book. ___
The Morning Post (16 June, 1881 - p.3) A CHILD OF NATURE.* Mr. Buchanan, who had won for himself no unworthy position amongst the minor poets of the day, seems to have relinquished the service of the muse for the possibly more satisfactory task of writing fiction. In the present instance, at least, the change is little to be regretted, as he has given us a pretty story of Highland life, in which there is sufficient originality to make the novel acceptable and worthy of comment, though the influence of Mr. William Black, our greatest living artist in that particular line, is plainly to be discerned. The scene is laid in a rather different locality to that chiefly affected by the author of “Macleod of Dare;” we are introduced to sterner, more desolate districts than the sunny Hebrides; but the reader will find the bleak surroundings of Loch Uribol no less favourable a background for a picture of Scottish life than are the smiling shores of Ulva or Gometra, and of the story itself it may briefly be said that it is interesting in a high degree. So far as the dialogue is concerned it must be remarked that Mr. Buchanan appears to be a little uncertain what dialect he wishes to employ; on most occasions it is neither exactly Lowland nor Highland English, but a sort of compromise between the two, whilst in places where the interlocutors are supposed to be conversing in their native tongue it might have been better to use the ordinary English of daily Southern life as the vehicle for conveying their meaning. The Gaelic itself is but sparingly used, and wisely so, as it may not be naturally familiar to the author; “Mina nan Oran” does not mean “Fair-haired Mina of the Songs;” there is no allusion to the singer’s personal appearance, and her more probable appellation would have been “Mina Oranach.” The heroine, to whom this poetical designation applies, is an orphan girl of good but reduced family—in fact a Macdonald of the Isles—who, with her only brother, Graham, has been brought up by an old uncle, a Presbyterian minister of the stamp which is, unfortunately for that body, now almost extinct—a scholar, an antiquary, and a gentleman, withal a true and liberal-minded Christian. Considering Mr. Macdonald’s peculiar theological tenets, there was surely nothing very noteworthy in his not having instructed his niece in medieval hagiology—Mr. Buchanan is pleased to call it “that strangest of all mythologies”—it would have been much more so had a dissenting minister known, to say nothing of teaching, the lives of the saints! This by the by. The character of the old man is both noble and lovable, and there is a calm dignity about his life-long existence in his lonely mountain parish, ministering to the wants, both spiritual and corporal, of his scattered flock, yet retaining his native refinement and continually exercising his superior mental attainments. A still more striking, though perhaps less estimable, figure is the queer old physician, Dr. John, the warmest hearted, most eccentric creature imaginable, addicted to inordinate potations, but really a clever doctor and infallibly attracting our liking in spite of his little weaknesses. But perhaps the most distinctive of all the personages in the story is Mina’s foster-father, the fisherman Koll; he is a true portrait of one of the bygone generation of Highlanders, trusty as a friend, terrible as a foe, and as tender of the welfare of those he loves as a mother of her first-born child. The tinge of dark superstition underlying the nature is well brought out in the dramatic scene of the incantation in which he is disturbed by Mina, whilst his attempt upon Ethel Sedley’s life and subsequent revulsion of feeling upon discovering Graham’s affection for the English beauty are thoroughly characteristic. Even in the episode of the old fisherman’s grotesque peace-offerings there is a subtle kind of pathos, and it may be added that the author is far more successful than usual in the dialect attributed to Koll. Mina, the heroine, is a pretty, graceful study of an innocent girl brought up in ignorance of the world, but a true gentlewoman, although she can steer a smack with any fisher in the village. She first makes her appearance in romantic fashion by going to the assistance of the hero, who, with his puzzled crew, is vainly attempting to work his yacht through the dangerous entrance of Loch Uribol in a heavy squall. Having successfully accomplished her amateur pilotage, Miss Macdonald quietly takes her own skiff and vanishes, leaving those whom she had succoured not a little taken aback. As the so-called Mr. Lawrence is staying in the neighbourhood the pair soon meet again, and there is a good scene in which she prevents him from shooting her tame seal Earach. The yachtsman gives himself out as a poor student, and is welcomed as such in the manse family; but the secret of his identity is so palpable from the beginning that there can be no treason in revealing that the soi-disant Mr. Lawrence was in reality Lord Arranmore, the absentee owner of the property. Actuated by a desire to acquaint himself with the circumstances of his tenants, and in some degree by doubts as to the probity of his factor, Peter Dougall—a highly nefarious old person—his lordship has conceived the idea of visiting his estate incognito, and the results are not altogether pleasant to any concerned. It need hardly be said that the young people fall in love, when Lord Arranmore’s true rank is suddenly revealed, in an objectionable manner, by his cousin Ethel, to whom he had for some years been betrothed; and Mina, deeming herself no longer her lover’s equal, releases him and proceeds to break her heart in silence. It is not very much in keeping with Highland notions of birth and descent that she should have acted thus, but the fact may pass. A good deal of stress is laid on the supposed forfeiture by Lord Arranmore of his honour in transferring his affections from Ethel to Mina, but it would surely have been more dishonourable had he wedded the former whilst loving the latter. And Miss Sedley’ feelings cannot have been very deeply involved since she herself avows at the conclusion of the story that she had given her heart to Graham from their first meeting. It is not necessary, nor would it be desirable, to enter particularly into the further details of the plot; it is a good one and well worked out, and will be found well worth the trouble of unravelment. One of the most powerful scenes is that of Ethel’s rescue from drowning, but the best in every way is her parting from her despairing lover at the Highland festival. Graham’s first declaration of his passion is perhaps a little too melodramatic. It is pleasant to record that in due course all obstacles in the way of the several lovers are overcome and a happy ending is secured, so that the novel may be read without fear by the most tender-hearted, and is well worth reading. * A Child of Nature: A Romance. By Robert Buchanan, author of “The Shadow of the Sword.” 3 vols. London: Richard Bentley and Son. Back to Reviews, Bibliography or Fiction _____
The Birmingham Daily Post (9 November, 1881 - p.7) Mr. Robert Buchanan has broken a long silence by the publication of a new novel, “God and the man,” which he dedicates to “An old enemy,” who is asked to “forget the bitter blame that did thee wrong, and take the gift from me.” Is this “old enemy” Mr. Algernon Swinburne? ___
The Academy (3 December, 1881) NEW NOVELS. ... God and the Man. By Robert Buchanan. (Chatto & Windus.) ... Mr. Robert Buchanan has been more successful in his present book than in either of his two former attempts in the same style. The introduction of the fable may be a little cumbrous, and the verse prologue is pitched too high; but, as soon as the reader gets into the swing of the story, he reads with a great deal of interest, and is actually sorry when it is done—a very rare experience for a reviewer, whatever it may be for an unprofessional reader. One point to be particularly noticed about the book is that there is a steady crescendo of interest. The youthful troubles and quarrels of Christian Christianson; his love affairs; his voyage in the good ship Miles Standish as a sailor before the mast, while his rival and enemy passes the time before his very eyes in the company of Christian’s own lady-love, and urges his suit at pleasure; finally, the sojourn of the two amid ice and snow, and the judgment of God between them, give a succession of strong subjects which are handled with real power. Mr. Buchanan has for the most part avoided his two besetting sins of triviality and extravagance; while the powerful situations he has chosen make a certain amount of ornateness in the style appropriate and not unpleasing. There is, perhaps, a certain want of clearness and cohesion in the personation of the villain, Richard Orchardson; and his victim, Christian’s sister, may be thought also to be insufficiently drawn. But the kind of novel, or rather, to use his own word, romance, which Mr. Buchanan practises admits readily enough of this want of finish in the subordinate characters. In the hero and heroine there is no lack of completeness; the latter, in particular, is a very natural and a very pleasant character. The strength of the book is, however, undoubtedly to be found in Christian Christianson’s narrative of his probation and victory over the evil spirit of revenge in the frozen island. The gradations of mood are excellently managed; and the writing is for the most part as good as the character-drawing. ___
The Graphic (10 December, 1881) New Novels. MR. ROBERT BUCHANAN’S “God and the Man” (3 vols. : Chatto and Windus) is, indeed, a novelty in modern fiction. It reads as if written, not out of a man’s brain—far less from any of the more ordinary sources and causes of novels—but straight and full out of a man’s soul. Whatever its faults may be, from a coldly critical point of view, there can be no question of its overflowing earnestness of purpose, and of the enthusiasm which inspires every page. The Romance (as it is called) deals with strong passions in their simplest and therefore most violent forms: not with the sentiment which pretends to be love, nor with the feeble dislike or collision of interests which imagine themselves, with a certain sort of comfortable self-conceit, to be hate, nor with shufflings between feeble faith and feebler reason, but with love, hate, despair—and with these nakedly, and in their extremes. And it lays them bare with the grasp of one who, if only by poetic insight, knows what they are and all that they can mean—all that they might mean if freed from the common conditions which for the most part veil and bind them. “God and the Man,” we are told, “is a study of the vanity and folly of individual hate, and is prefaced by two poems—one a graceful personal dedication which those who are better versed than we care to be in the quarrels of authors may possibly understand; the second a powerfully passionate overture, in which the motive of the romance is suggested and foreshadowed. This poem should be read first and last: it is the setting of the whole. To adequately trace the plot of the novel itself would need some of the grasp and power with which it is treated in Mr. Buchanan’s hands. Step by step, the two deadly enemies, Christian Christianson, who hates like a hero, with what seems to be the most just and righteous reason, and Richard Orchardson, who hates back in the style of a poisonous snake, are left “by themselves, alone with God” in the midst of a frozen sea. Christian’s prayer has been answered, and his enemy is given into his hands, and by his hands. It was hatred that had brought them there. How Christian comes to save the life of the foe whom he had brought there to kill, finally tends his death-bed with more than a brother’s love, and prays over his grave in the snow, is told with very little of the sentiment which such a subject might seem to demand, but in the very spirit and manner of tragedy. A great deal is made of the personal influence of John Wesley, who is even, by a curious and not very commendable caprice, introduced as an annotator of the story. And this influence also Mr. Buchanan appears completely to comprehend, even so far as to evolve from it his delicate portrait of Priscilla Sefton, the young saint for whose sake, more than for the hundred other causes, Christian and Richard hated one another. It must not be supposed that “God and the Man” is by any means a faultless work. It might easily have been better and more effectively constructed, and it nearly resembles “The Shadow of the Sword” in its want of relief by light or humour. But it is easy to understand that Mr. Buchanan went to work less in the spirit of an artist than of a man who had something to say. What he loses in trenchancy he gains in depth of reach and breadth of power; and we have to thank him for the strongest, sincerest, and wisest romance that has appeared for more years than there is any need to say. ___
The Pall Mall Gazette (10 December, 1881) MR. BUCHANAN’S NEW NOVEL.* IT would be somewhat rash to declare that Mr. Robert Buchanan has definitely found his way in the writing of what he calls romances; but in this book he has come very near to finding it, if he has not fully done so. “The Shadow of the Sword,” with some passages of great excellence (notably those describing the cave palaces or dungeons in which Rohan wandered) was spoiled by the same extravagance of diction and thought which had been fatal to not a few of Mr. Buchanan’s poems. “A Child of Nature,” free from these defects and containing some very charming bits of scenery, was destitute of central interest, and had not a few faults of character-drawing. Neither of these unfavourable criticisms applies to “God and the Man;” and, indeed, if we were making what is called a “dead set” at the book, we should have to confine ourselves chiefly to the title and the illustrations, of which the former is unnecessarily startling and grandiose, and the latter—for which, of course, the author is not to blame—preposterous. There is a kind of mystic rose of dawn, too, on the cover shining down on some very odd arrangements of concentric circles and a black thing looking like the dark part of a moon in an astronomical diagram—all of which help the title in conveying a quite erroneous impression of extravagance to the timid reader; an impression not diminished, we must add, by some verses which Mr. Buchanan has prefixed, and which remind one of his “Book of Orm” mood not reassuringly. * “God and the Man.” By Robert Buchanan. Three vols. (London: Chatto and Windus. 1881.) ___
Daily News (22 December, 1881 - p.3) Mr. Robert Buchanan has not exhibited his remarkable power of telling a striking story more forcibly than in his romance “God and the Man” (3 vols., Chatto and Windus). It is a highly melodramatic work, dealing with strong and violent emotion, and full of extraordinary incident and adventure, but it is done with a robust energy and command of invention which justifies what would in weaker hands seem extravagant conceptions. Not only are the situations powerful, but they are dramatically led up to and accounted for by the character and mental processes of the individuals concerned. The long struggle between the two men whose history forms the framework of the story is not merely arbitrarily set forth in the language of the author, but it is a growth of feeling of which the reader is made witness, and which works itself out to its distinct end as a drama passes before a spectator. Mr. Buchanan’s poetic sense of the beautiful in nature is always present in his narrative. The background he is able to give his picturesque creations of sublime or terrible scenery helps to carry on the illusion of their reality, and is always appropriate and suggestive. The passages in this novel which describe the ice-bound desolate island in the wild northern seas, with the two men cast away upon it whose lives have been so bound together for evil and good, are singularly bold and fine. The gloom of the plot is lightened by the sweet figure of Priscilla, whose life runs through that or her stormy lover like a silver thread through some dark rich tissue. The story is preceded by a short and impressive “proem” in verse, embodying its motive and scope. In the opening chapter there are some hints of the nature of Christian Christianson’s past career, which do not appear to be justified by the events which are further narrated. This may or may not be an effect of carelessness on the part of the author, and it scarcely counts as a blemish in what we must certainly consider one of the most interesting, exciting, and romantic of recent novels. ___
The Standard (26 December, 1881 - p.2) NEW NOVELS. “God and the Man: A Romance.” By Robert Buchanan. Author of “The Shadow of the Sword,” &c. Three Vols. Chatto and Windus.—In a “Proem” of great power and beauty Mr. Buchanan shadows forth the burden of the tale he is about to tell. We quote a few of the stanzas, which give the keynote, as it were, of what is to follow:— “All men, each one beneath the sun, “If God stood there, revealed full bare, “And the prayer would be ‘Yield up to me At the end of the first chapter of the romance the utterer of this “accursed prayer” is introduced to us as an old man of ninety, pressing in his feeble hand the hands of two boys who had quarrelled, and murmuring feebly, “Love one another.” This old man was Christian Christianson. He was the representative of a family which for centuries had cherished an undying hatred of another family called Orchardson. This hatred had been reciprocated to the full; and the Christiansons, a race of tall, stalwart yeomen, had ever fared the worst in their contests with the narrow-chested, stooping, diminutive Orchardsons. Nature seemed to have made these two clans antipathetic to each other. “The two families were heat and frost, fire and water, peace and war.” But good luck was ever on the side of the punier race, and the giant Christiansons were always pushed to the wall. Young Christian Christianson seemed to think that fate had ordained it should be so for ever. He believed supremely in his own evil destiny. His philosophy was akin to that of Eugène Sue’s Sœur Jeanne. “Il y a des heureux et des malheureux, comme il y a des bons et des méchants.” His father’s contemporary, Squire Orchardson, had possessed himself, but in a fair way of business, of nearly all that remained of the Christiansons’ property; and Mrs. Christianson and her son could hardly forgive their dead husband and father for putting them in the power of their enemy. “It is in the blood,” cried the widow; “a fox is a fox, and a kestrel a kestrel, and an Orchardson is an Orchardson till the world doth end. The wicked breed! If God would blot it out.” But the wrongs to be endured by the Christiansons at the hands of their hereditary foes did not end here. The son of Squire Orchardson seduced and abandoned Christian’s sister, and entered the lists as his rival for the hand of the pretty Methodist, Priscilla Sefton, as sweet and loveable a heroine as poet ever dreamed of. Then Mrs. Christianson dies, and her son drags the old Squire through the stormy night to gaze on the corpse of his victim. “You killed her,” he cries. “You killed my father first, then her. Your son hath betrayed my sister. No law will save your son from me. It will be life for life; and may God’s curse blast me if I do not as I have sworn. Now begone?” We have not space to tell how Orchardson followed the Seftons as a passenger in the ship which was taking them to New England; how Christianson engaged himself as a common seaman on board the same vessel; how the ill-fated lover was put in irons for attempting to slay his enemy; or how that enemy set the Miles Standish on fire in order that his chained rival might be burned without hope of escape. After adventures and misadventures, described with a terrible power which sets the reader’s heart throbbing and makes his breath come short, the two enemies find themselves sole occupants of a frozen island in a frozen sea. When Orchardson saw his fearful situation he fell sick with terror, and fainted away. “Then a white face was pressed to his, and, while a hot breath touched his cheek, a voice hissed these words—‘At last!’” We will tell no more of the tale. How the two enemies fared, and whether Christian Christianson, now that God had heard his wicked prayer, and given his enemy into his hands, wreaked the slow and terrible vengeance on him which he had sworn to wreak, our readers will have to discover for themselves. We will merely quote the last paragraph of the book—“Without the certainty of a Divine explanation, without the last hope of heavenly meeting and reconciliation, the life we live would be profitless as a book left unfinished, as a song half unsung, as a tale just begun.” “God and Man” is a very noble poem written in beautiful prose. Its teachings are the best of all teachings. ___
The British Quarterly Review (January, 1882 - p.226-227) NOVELS OF THE QUARTER. God and the Man: a Romance. By ROBERT BUCHANAN, Author of ‘The Shadow of the Sword,’ &c. (Chatto and Windus.) The Portrait of a Lady. By HENRY JAMES, Jun. Three Vols. (Macmillan and Co.) ___
The Liverpool Mercury (6 January, 1882 - p.5) It should not escape attention that Mr. Robert Buchanan’s recently-published romance, entitled “God and the Man,” is prefaced by a very remarkable dedication, which runs as follows:— TO AN OLD ENEMY. I tried to pluck a bay leaf from thy brow, Pure as thy purpose, blameless as thy song, Few readers can have forgotten the keen—indeed, acrimonious—controversy as to a modern school of poetry, which began with an article published in the Contemporary Review nine years ago; and few will need to be told that the apology offered in the foregoing lines must be addressed either to Mr. Swinburne or Mr. Dante Rossetti. In metropolitan circles the interpretation put upon the verses is that they are meant for the second of the poets named, and have been prompted equally by generous appreciation of the fine humanity displayed in Mr. Rossetti’s recent volume (wherein he tells the story of James I. of Scotland with an enthusiasm that must touch the heart of every Scotsman), and by the known fact that, though grossly and wantonly attacked, Mr. Rossetti has made no attempt at retort, but has suffered perhaps the more deeply for his silence from criticisms which are now allowed to have been groundless, and which are most magnanimously withdrawn. Moreover, Mr. Rossetti, it is well known, has been for many months seriously out of health, and this may have helped to inspire a generous adversary with a love of justice. ___
The Morning Post (9 January, 1882 - p.2) GOD AND THE MAN.* An explanatory note prefixed to the first chapter states that this novel is intended to form one of a sort of biology of fiction, each part of which will enforce some distinct tenet entertained by the author. Thus “The Shadow of the Sword,” which has already appeared, was directed against war, and a work yet to come will treat of what Mr. Buchanan calls “The Social Conspiracy against Womankind.” Meanwhile we have in the present instance an exposition of the wickedness and folly of cherishing private animosities. Entirely apart from any good that may be done by the story, it will claim attention on the ground of its merits as a work of fiction, which are of a high order. The story is exciting to a degree, and simply told, with a praiseworthy absence of the didactic tone, which might have been dreaded from the preliminary note, added to which the plot is worked out well and dramatically, and the characters are not wanting in originality. Nearly the only objection that can be fairly taken is that in the opening chapter—which must be dated sometime in the present century—the language of the speakers strikes one as being rather too archaic, and more in accordance with the period of the main body of the narrative, the action of which takes place sixty or seventy years earlier; this, however, is not a very serious blemish. The opening scenes are laid in the Fen Country, at a date of John Wesley’s early attempts at evangelising the masses. The principal actors are members of two families, named Christianson and Orchardson, between whom a sort of vendetta has existed from time immemorial, and it is upon the ruthless prosecution of this by the hero, Christian Christianson, that the plot hinges, the course of the story tending to show how, when he had gained his wished-for revenge, the accomplishment of his desire proved the greatest disaster that could have happened to him. It must be admitted that however immoral Christian’s ruthless hunting down of Richard Orchardson may have been, the young man had received bitter provocation, since he owed to his enemy not only the ruin of an only sister, but indirectly the sudden and miserable death of both father and mother; in addition to which Richard had used every means to supplant him in the affections of Priscilla Sefton and to blacken his character in her eyes, besides setting fire to the ship in which they all sailed with a view to destroying his rival. Some, also, may think that when this promising individual dies at last in such calm assurance of ultimate salvation, a few words of contrition for his several atrocities would have been more in accordance with the spirit of a true penitent, however well-grounded his hopes may have been. Still the scene in question is most pathetic and effective, and forms a worthy climax to the section of the novel in which it occurs, viz.: Christian’s personal narrative of their solitary residence on the desert island. This is by far the best part of the book, and there is much subtlety in the way the plot is worked out; the gradual awakening in the avenger’s mind of compassion for the wretched object of his hatred, his stubborn attempts to stifle the promptings of his better nature, and finally his despair when it bursts upon him that Richard is dying, and he will be left alone in that horrible solitude, are all finely portrayed, and nothing could be better of the kind. By the bye, when Mr. Buchanan represents the villain as fleeing so swiftly over the icefloe when pursued by his would-be assassin, he has surely forgotten that at an earlier stage in the action Richard Orchardson has been represented as being so lame that he was unable to walk any distance. This, however, is a detail. So it is when a greyhound is spoken of as hunting by scent. The old Methodist preacher Sefton is well, though slightly, drawn, and his pretty simple daughter Priscilla is a charming heroine of the ingénue type. As a good contrast poor Kate Christianson makes a striking figure, and it is satisfactory to know that she recovered her position notwithstanding her misfortune. But perhaps the best imagined and most telling scene in the novel is that in which the despairing hero, after his return to England, suddenly hears the voice of his lost love singing at the Methodist meeting; the effect is highly dramatic, as may well be conceived, and leads up naturally to a happy termination of the story. It remains but to thank Mr. Buchanan for an excellent novel, and to draw attention to the striking poem which serves as a prologue, and tends to show that the author’s right hand has by no means lost its cunning. * God and the Man: A Romance. By Robert Buchanan, author of “A Child of Nature,” &c. 3 vols. London: Chatto and Windus. Back to Reviews, Bibliography or Fiction _____
Book Reviews - Novels continued The Martyrdom of Madeline (1882) to The New Abelard (1884)
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