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EXTRACTS FROM THE CORRESPONDENCE OF A. C. SWINBURNE,
W. M. ROSSETTI AND D. G. ROSSETTI, RELATING TO R. W. BUCHANAN (3)
[Note: There is no knowing what effect the fact that one of Buchanan’s lawyers in the ‘Devil’s Due’ libel case, Mr. C. R. McClymont, was a friend of John Nichol, who, in turn, was a friend of Algernon Swinburne (in fact, described by Swinburne as “the oldest friend I have”) had on the outcome of the trial. By his own admission McClymont’s main influence on the case was his insistence that the proprietor of The Examiner should be the object of the complaint, rather than Swinburne (“If he [Swinburne] knew it, he owes it to me that he has not been (thanks to Taylor’s and Minto’s loyalty) criminally prosecuted.”). It is true that Buchanan had a better chance of getting some money out of Mr. P. A. Taylor, M.P., which would have appealed to him, but one wonders whether the damages would have been higher if Swinburne had been called as a witness.
I have to thank Prof. Meyers for sending me a scan of the relevant pages from Bonchurch vol. XX, which include the two letters of McClymont to John Nichol. The pdf is available here, but as Prof. Meyers points out in his footnote to Nichol’s letter to Swinburne of 20th June, 1876, “Wise’s introductory bibliographical discussion is all lies”.]
[The Complete Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne. Edited by Sir Edmund Gosse and Thomas James Wise [Bonchurch ed.], Volume 20, pp. 136-138]
MacClymont to Nichol
22 June, 1876.
No action that I know of is threatened against or in progress against Swinburne. Buchanan has raised an action against P. A. Taylor, M.P., the proprietor of The Examiner, for a series of libels published in that paper. After the action had been raised, Taylor’s Solicitors wrote to the Solicitors instructing me, stating that the last of these libels, entitled ‘The Devil’s Due,’ which I do not think you can have seen, was written by Swinburne, and offering to give up his name that he might be prosecuted on condition of the action brought against Taylor being withdrawn. This of course for obvious reasons we refused; for in the mere case of a literary quarrel fought out however bitterly, I would never as a matter of tactics advise resort to a Court of Law. Whatever be the demerits of Buchanan, and I never saw him until after the action had been commenced, he has been grossly ill-used by Minto, the editor of The Examiner, whose attacks are very much worse (in a legal sense) than Swinburne’s. When this avowal of the authorship came out, I met Taylor’s counsel (one Williams of Merton, who used to be called Student Williams) and suggested an arrangement which would have saved all scandal and cost Taylor very little. I was very pleased that I saw my way to propose an arrangement consistently with the interest of my client, because I knew Swinburne was a friend of Jowett’s. I did not know that he was such a personal friend of yours, else my pleasure would have been increased. But William shewed very little good feeling, and I am bound to say as little skill in the way he received my advances. Ever since for more than seven months the defendant’s effort has been to shift the burden from himself to Swinburne and Rossetti; and my effort, which I think has been successful, is to tie him down along with his editor as alone responsible. If it were any business of mine, I should feel very indignant at the persistent way in which they try to put Swinburne in the forefront of the battle to save their own skins; and I have said so in Court more than once, and I think the judges agree with me. Williams 1 comes down to the robing-room with his one brief and entertains the idlers with his conversations with Swinburne about the case, a good deal of which I hear consists of abuse of me. I would not believe a word of it on the word of Williams, but from the report I glean little snatches of reference to the time I spent with Swinburne at Tummel-brig which Williams could have heard only from the poet himself. My recollections of that time are only pleasant, and it vexes me to think that Swinburne should have a different recollection or think so meanly of me as that I could be influenced in a public duty by such mean spite. If he knew it, he owes it to me that he has not been (thanks to Taylor’s and Minto’s loyalty) criminally prosecuted. I do not mean to say that I have sacrificed my client’s interest to favour of Swinburne—though probably if I had seen it to be Buchanan’s interest to prosecute, I would (with the thought of the Master in my mind) have declined to hold the brief. Nine juniors out of ten at the bar would have advised a prosecution because it was the obvious course; the result was pretty certain, and the matter had just the flavour of scandal that is useful as an advertisement. I prevented this, and compelled them to go at Taylor and Minto instead, because in the one case Buchanan would only have had revenge, in the other case he is pretty sure of damages.
Swinburne may be very thankful that this case came to my hands. It happens to be Buchanan’s interest in view of his verdict (i.e., his reasonable and forensic interest) to keep his quarrel with Swinburne as much as possible in the background, and I have done so, though Swinburne has done his best through Williams to sting me into temper and forgetfulness of my client’s substantial interest. In the result I hope to secure a large verdict. I don’t think it any part of a lawyer’s duty to serve the passion of his client, and in no case, I hope, much less in the case of a friend of yours and the Master’s, will you find me lending myself to purposes of annoyance.
1. Mr. Robert Williams, one of the Counsel for the defendant. With him were Mr. Hawkins, Q.C., Mr. Murphy, Q.C., and Mr. Warr.
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[Meyers, Vol.2, Letter 751D, p. 82.]
John Nichol to Swinburne, 30 June, 1876
June 30 – 76
My dear Swinburne,
I have just seen a report (probably poor, please if you have it send me a better) of the 1st day of the Trial. 1 I rejoice that, Caliban, – why dignify him by comparison with a gentleman like the Devil? – has been trotted out well by Hawkins 2 & made to confess to his beastly personalities in “The Session.” 3 What a joke to say he meant you were drunk to write your books. What is the relative date of the “Ballads” & the scurrility. Surely Hawkins – would I were in his place – will bring out that after the publication of both he wrote to you as he did: & that he is a jealous cur yelping at the heels of Tennyson, Arnold, Rosetti [sic], of all by whom being kicked he would be honored. If I had my wrist I would try my hand at ‘Marston Redivious’: but alas! I write even this with pain and some injury. (I have <illeg.> just written a final note to McClymont) I mean final as regards this affair, in which I make no question he will now behave as well as he can. Of course I cannot ask a pushing young barrister to throw up a brief, however unfortunately accepted.
I trust nothing will hinder us meeting in 3 weeks. I shall be for a few days with my sister, but I would arrange to stay with you (if convenient) for one day & night at least so as not to hurry away.
It is after all an ungentlemanly thing in the Devil to disable me in this way. I hear Wills of the “Daily News” has been sprained up for 3 months!
Yours Ever
J Nichol
[Meyers’ footnotes:
1. The Times has several short accounts of the trial (30 June, p. 11d-e; 1 July, p. 13c, 3 July, 13c-f), the last of which included the summation by Mr Justice Archibald, who had little good to say about either Swinburne or Buchanan, but who commented that ‘it would have been more satisfactory, as well as logical and rational, if Mr. Swinburne had been the defendant.’
2. QC for the defendant.
3. Buchanan’s ‘The Session of The Poets’, in The Spectator (September 1866).]
___
[The Complete Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne. Edited by Sir Edmund Gosse and Thomas James Wise [Bonchurch ed.], Volume 20, pp. 138-139]
MacClymont to Nichol
5th July.
I must first thank you for so frankly telling me all you thought. You are one of the three or four men whose ill opinion would grieve me more than I can tell, and I am therefore very grateful for your having given me an opportunity of explaining what must have seemed at first sight meanness and worse. The course and result of the trial must have convinced Swinburne I think that I fought the case fairly, and that so far from being animated by personal ill-will and acting on such motives, my whole effort was to divert attention from the personal quarrel of him and Buchanan, and centre the whole blame on Taylor and his editor, the latter of whom I am convinced flatters Swinburne, and tries to use him for his own purposes.
Swinburne seems not to know that at the very beginning of the case I put in an admission of all the anonymous writings of Buchanan, including ‘The Session of the Poets’ and ‘The Monkey and the Microscope,’ neither of which last we attempted for a moment to justify. We insisted on the high qualities of the poet, and brought out the points worthy of admiration in his works which had been admitted in the review. In short, we treated him with every respect that the plaintiff’s interest would permit. But Hawkins began by abusing Whitman, Swinburne, and Rossetti, and repudiating on the part of the defendant all sympathy and even tolerance for their work, etc., etc. Generally he tried to throw them overboard, to lighten the damages. He knew that before the trial in the morning we would have taken £10, 10s., and a promise of being let alone; but all our advances were spurned, with the result you see.
P.S.—I cannot imagine who has been lying and making mischief. Williams is just the man to cover his own gross incompetence by alleging malice in his opponent.
[ At its conclusion the document is signed—
‘Copied literatim, January 2nd, 1877. A C. Swinburne.’]
___
[Lang, Vol. 3, Letter 765, pp. 211-214]
Swinburne to John Nichol, 28 October, 1876
...
Now I must for the last time, as I hope, revert for a moment to a loathsome subject which I have as little as possible allowed to harass me in sickness or in health, but on which I want one last word, not perhaps so much of counsel as of cheer, from my oldest and most trusted friend. After the close of the Taylor-Buchanan lawsuit, Watts in a friendly and informal manner suggested to me that it would be ‘graceful’ on my part to offer to bear some part of the heavy expenses of conducting the suit, etc., which had fallen on the Examiner in consequence (not solely, but chiefly, or in great part) of the publication of my letter. Now I need not tell you that nothing could have been more offensive or irritating to me than the line taken by the counsel for the plaintiff in his reply to the judge’s question why the suit had not been brought against the writer of the principally offending article, to the effect that I was a man of straw who presumably could not be made to pay up, and therefore they had fallen back on the proprietor of the paper as a scapegoat for my offence. This part of scapegoat, by the way, was taken up in an article on the verdict which forthwith appeared in the Examiner itself.
I took a night to consider the matter, and then replied that I could not possibly regard the case as in any degree answering to that of a debt of honour, (the only imaginable aspect under which I could hold myself liable for one penny of the costs), for it was not my business, but that of the editor who was paid to do so, to know or to decide what might or might not be safely or advisably admitted into the paper; and as to the proprietor, with whom 1 had never had any business relations whatever, the pecuniary damage or profit ensuing on the publication of any particular article seemed to me as much a part of his speculation as any other lucky or unlucky accident in the ordinary way of business, for which I could in no degree consider myself responsible.
Watts answered (but I must expressly remark, in a perfectly friendly and inoffensive manner) that from the legal point of view my present position was unimpeachable, but that on a previous occasion I had seemed in talking with him to take a very different view,—and no doubt I then had strongly expressed the regret which I still felt for having innocently brought trouble and heavy loss on persons towards whom I felt sincere goodwill—as far, that is, as I could fairly be held to have brought or helped to bring it by writing a letter of which I instantly (and as Watts himself at the time had said, with personally injudicious and inadvised frankness) had come forward to avow the authorship and assume in public the responsibility for it.
He added, that he felt sure no advantage would be taken of an offer which would look well on my part, but as you will doubtless understand and anticipate, I did not relish the idea of making a formal offer on the tacit understanding or in the secret hope that it would not be accepted. Indeed, had I been able to pay the whole sum without difficulty, I should have felt, not only in nowise bound, but in nowise disposed to do so. I think I may say, and trust I may appeal for confirmation to your old knowledge of my character, that neither yourself nor any man living can be less disposed than I am to shirk the consequences or shuffle off the responsibility of any word or act of mine, and I hope you will be able to tell me, just in a brief word, that you share my view, and would have acted and felt as I have done in my place. As it is always more than possible that a matter of this kind may be brought up by way of reference, or cast up by way of taunt or reproach, or may simply turn up at any time by way of accident, perhaps I may ask you to keep this letter, as a private statement of the case from my own point of view.
Certainly my relations with the old Radical paper to which Landor himself was once wont to contribute have not been prosperous. One editor leaves it, on his own showing £42 in my debt, which I beg him not to trouble himself about paying if inconvenient—and accordingly he doesn’t—another, inadvertently, and out of reluctance to disappoint me by rejecting my letter. lets me in for all this vexation, waste of time and insolence from the Minions of an effete and prostitute Law, and the Myrmidons of a venomous and venal Press.
After which Demosthenic (or rather Bulwerian) peroration I will only add that I hope your wrist is by this time strong enough once more to fell a foe by stroke of clenched or unclenched hand, by fist or pen, and that you will not be too busy or weary to read through and perhaps drop a word of reply to this too tedious letter.
Ever yours,
A. C. Swinburne
...
___
[Lang, Vol. 3, Letter 782, pp. 236-237]
Swinburne to Theodore Watts, 16 December [1876]
Holmwood, December 16 [1876]
My dear Watts
Certainly I have not the slightest objection to the Gentleman’s Magazine—I should indeed prefer it to Belgravia as a medium of publication—on one condition, which I suppose it is unnecessary to say I should insist on as indispensable, and assume that I may take for granted—that from the moment of its passing into the hands of my publishers it will contain no contribution whatsoever in verse or prose, anonymous or subscribed with any of his thousand and one signatures, from the pen of poet Alias. Years ago, when my friend Mme. Venturi proposed to me for discussion with a view to my future publications the names of her respective friends or acquaintances Messrs. King and Messrs Strahan and Co., I told her it was out of the question that I should allow the same person to publish for me and Mr. R. Buchanan.1 It is not wholly (though of course I do not pretend it is not partly) on grounds of personal disgust and contempt for that infamous scribbler that I came and mean to keep to this determination. I seriously think that in these as in other matters, it is the duty of a gentleman who has never done, said, or thought anything in his life to forfeit his self-respect or his claim to that title, to avoid the contact in public, as he would reject the hand in private, of a liar and a coward. Of the two, I should prefer (and I suppose you know me in earnest well enough by this time to be sure, putting aside all chaff and all theorizing or argument for argument’s sake, that you would not really be more loth, or indeed unable, than I should be) to shake hands with a—client of Messrs Carlyle, Gladstone, Bright and Co. (I am not so fond of the name as they are, or as DGR in another fashion used to be, that I should not rather avoid than seek an opportunity for bringing in at full length under any of its forms the too familiar word Bulgar.) I have always thought it the only way of escaping a most just, natural, and inevitable return of opinion to that of the days when any connection with literature other than that of an amateur or a patron was held discreditable and degrading to a gentleman, that a libeller (not in the legal sense, but in that of men of honour) should be shunned as a leper. At all events, by me he always has been and always shall be. I declare I would as soon write in the World or Vanity Fair as permit my publishers to issue my books or to print my name side by side with such as his. Dixi. ...
[Lang’s footnote:
1. Chatto and Windus became Buchanan’s publisher in 1881, and continued to issue his works, advertising them in Swinburne’s own volumes, at least till the appearance of The Duke of Gandia (1908).]
___
[Lang, Vol. 3, Letter 784, pp. 238-241]
Swinburne to Theodore Watts, 19 December [1876]
...
I have picked up lately out of Russell Smith’s catalogues some very curious books which I must show you some day—among them a pseudonymous libel by the Buchanan of the period on ‘the three confederates’—Pope, Gay, and Arbuthnot—with a caricature frontispiece which his emulous modern rival failed to imitate—though the doggrel is as worthy of New as of Old Grub Street. It was much appreciated by Jowett, who takes especial interest in all concerning the famous men of that time. The thing at least proves, when set beside its modern antitype, that men may come and men may go, but skunks go on for ever. ...
___
[Lang, Vol. 3, Letter 796, pp. 253-254]
Swinburne to Theodore Watts, 3 January [1877]
Holmwood, January 3 [1877]
My dear Watts
I believe I am not betraying a friend’s confidence in sending you the enclosed notes by Nichol, which Appleton has in a letter of characteristic impertinence declined to publish in the Academy by way of rectification. Nichol is naturally anxious to get them published as a matter of mere justice to his professional as well as personal reputation; and I believe I need not tell you that no personal kindness could confer a greater obligation on myself than a good turn done to the oldest friend I have. A mere glance over the columns will show the right if not the necessity he has to demand the only means of vindicating the results of his long and heavy labour from the most injurious of almost all possible aspersions. 1 ... I shall be greatly disappointed should you be unable to do me the great service of enabling me to do this small service to Nichol; who has just done me the very greatest that could be done in the way of personal relief and satisfaction to my mind in re Buchanan v. Taylor; but how, I will tell (and show) you when next we meet. I must say I do feel the want of a God (of faith and friendship) to whom I might offer sacrifices of thanksgiving for the gift of such good friends as I have—especially in him and in you. I really know nothing else in my life for which I feel (and I know that I ought to feel) so thankful as for this.
[Lang’s footnote:
1. Nichol’s Tables of European Literature and History were attacked by H. A. Pottinger in the Academy, Dec. 2, 1876. In a letter (now in the British Museum) to Swinburne on Dec. 29th Nichol, explaining the animosity of the Academy, revealed that Appleton, a former pupil, had been hostile since Nichol had refused him letters of introduction to friends in America.]
___
[Lang, Vol. 3, Letter 797, pp. 254-255]
Swinburne to Theodore Watts, 4 January, 1877
...
I hope you and MacColl will find yourselves able to help Nichol (and consequently to serve me) in the matter on which I wrote to you a day since enclosing his notes. Thanks to his faithful friendship, I have (in strictly private confidence) some evidence at first hand to shew you when we meet as to the conduct of the Examiner’s case last summer, which from what you said to me at the time I have no doubt will astonish you as much as it did me—and in much the same fashion. ‘Foul deeds’ and foul play ‘will rise’ etc.
___
[Lang, Vol. 3, Letter 800, pp. 256-258]
Swinburne to Theodore Watts, 6 January [1877]
...
The sight of the dedication to Harold made my blood run cold at the unutterable idea that I (or say that DGR) might come in a green old age—a very green one—to inscribe an effusion of that peaceful and all-reconciling time of life to the son—to the degenerate and degraded son—of Mr. Robert Buchanan. Tableau. Drop Scene....
[Note:
Swinburne is referring to the enmity between Tennyson and Edward Bulwer-Lytton, and the fact that Tennyson had dedicated his play, Harold to Bulwer-Lytton’s son, Robert.]
___
[Lang, Vol. 3, Letter 807, pp. 264-265]
Swinburne to Theodore Watts, 28 January, 1877
Holmwood, January 28, 1877
My dear Watts,
May I once more tax your kindness with two small commissions—to be discharged only if—and when—you may happen to have a convenient opportunity? 1) I must positively have back my own (and my only) copy of ‘Under the Microscope’—no other being now procurable—which last year at his earnest request I lent to Minto on condition of its prompt return—and might have done as well to keep in my own hands; but to ask for it again through your friendly medium seems a less peremptory method of procedure than the alternative of sending him an immediate demand for what I certainly must have back, and only lent on that distinct and positive understanding. ...
___
[Lang, Vol. 4, Letter 857, p. 2]
Swinburne to A. W. Brown, 9 May, 1877
Holmwood, Henley on Thames,
May 9, 1877
Mr. Ahab W. Brown
Sir
I am sorry I cannot tell you (as I should not myself know) how to procure a copy of the pamphlet 2 you wish to possess. Like other impromptus dealing mainly or partly with matters of temporary concern, its one edition was rapidly exhausted—a second was not called for—and its place consequently knows it no more. But there was never any question of withdrawal or suppression. Such notice (I believe) as it attracted was favourable and rather flattering: but the main thing memorable to me in the matter is that to my inexpressible amusement it was entered by name in a published German catalogue of the year’s scientific publications throughout Europe!
Yours sincerely,
A. C. Swinburne
[Lang’s footnote:
2. Under the Microscope.]
___
[Lang, Vol. 4, Letter 882, p. 22]
Swinburne to Edmund Gosse, 29 September, 1877
3 Great James Street,
September 29, 1877
My dear Gosse
Thanks for your note—none the less that I had already seen Yates in his character of beadle laying the lash on Buchanan’s mangy hide. 1 Let us hope that a cudgel or a ‘cat’ such as that wielded by the editor of the World may haply make more impression on that currish cuticle than the rapier or the horsewhip of higher and finer satire.
Ever yours,
A. C. Swinburne
[Lang’ footnote:
1. An unsigned article by Buchanan, “The Newest Thing in Journalism,” in the Contemporary Review (Sep. 1877), aroused an astonishingly virulent rebuttal by Edmund Yates—“A Scrofulous Scotch Poet,” in the World, Sep. 26.]
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[Lang, Vol. 4, Letter 898, p. 34]
Swinburne to John Nichol, 18 January [1878]
January 18 [1878]
My dear Nichol
Monday will suit me exactly and should neither God nor Devil put a spoke in my wheels I shall be punctually (8 P.M.) at the Buchanan (?alias Maitland alias Hutcheson) street station—defying all malodorous associations with its name. ...
___
[Lang, Vol. 4, Letter 964, pp. 92-95]
John Nichol to Swinburne, 27 September, 1879
... In our island, since Burns and before you, there are two great witnesses against the still menacing hypocrisy and curse of Puritanism, Shelley and Byron. It is a blunder to exalt one at the expense of the other or, if our sympathies are substantially with them to decry either. When you join the hue and cry against the latter you gladden the hearts of Hutton and Spew and R. Buchanan—a notable denouncer of most poets who have not risen from the slums, of Lord B in particular—you cheer the ghosts of Southey and Cotton and Dr. John Watkins and of that pestilent and withered bitch Miss Harriet Martineau. ...
I have just got a most impertinent letter from a fellow Japp, subeditor of ‘Good Words,’ because having previously given him on urgent request some information about De Quincey, I did not approve of his getting the degree of LL.D. Avoid that creature—a friend and kin of Buchanan—if he comes near you. My opinion of Carlyle—except as an artist—has been diminishing at an accelerating rate. The plain English or Scotch is that he was dead jealous of Sir W. Scott. ...
___
[Lang, Vol. 4, Letter 976, pp. 108-109]
Swinburne to Andrew Chatto, 16 October [1879]
The Pines, Putney Hill, S.W.,
October 16 [1879]
Dear Sir
I write, first, to acknowledge with thanks the receipt of the note containing the further information I required as to the quotation in Hallam and the verse I cited from the ‘Merchant of Venice’; and secondly, to ask if you can at once procure for me three old numbers of magazines; one, from a Christmas or December number of Good Words (I think it was) about two or perhaps three years ago, containing some verses addressed to the Cuckoo, signed ‘Robert Buchanan,” and beginning
Bravo, Cuckoo, call again!— 1
a poem filling about a column or so of small print, in short four-line stanzas. — The other two are numbers of Macmillan; one containing a review of my ‘Bothwell’ by Mr. John Morley in the year of its publication—September or October I think: the other, an article on ‘Tennyson,’ by Mr. R. H. Hutton, published in December of the year (‘72?) in which I had published my pamphlet ‘Under the Microscope’; of which pamphlet also I shall be glad if you can send me a copy.
Yours truly,
A. C. Swinburne
[Lang’s footnote:
1. Unidentified.]
[Note:
Buchanan did write ‘The Cuckoo Song’, first published in The Argosy, July, 1866, but this does not match Swinburne’s description at all. However there is an earlier (c. 1837) poem by William Empson, ‘Lines to the Cuckoo’, in four line stanzas, which begins with “Bravo, Cuckoo, call again!” Presumably Swinburne thought he had caught Buchanan out in a case of plagiarism.]
___
[Lang, Vol. 4, Letter 1185, pp. 310-311]
Swinburne to Theodore Watts, 31 October, 1882
...
Hall Caine’s book 4 seems to have done as cruel and fatal a service to the memory of his late friend and yours as Froude has done to that of Carlyle. For myself, if it is really to be received as the truth that such a thing as Buchanan’s attack—less in itself than the least of a thousand onslaughts which have never for one hour affected my own peace of mind or impaired my self-reliance and self-respect—is to be classed in its effect on the victim with so fearful a catastrophe as the loss of his wife in so terrible and heart-rending a manner—in that case, remembering the loyal, devoted, and unselfish affection which I lavished for fifteen years on the meanest, poorest, most abject and unmanly nature of which any record remains in even literary history, I cannot say I wonder at the final upshot of our relations, but I can most truly say from the very depth of my heart and conscience, ‘I am ashamed through all my nature to have loved so vile a thing.’ 5 Thank God for the difference between my ‘best friend’ of the past and my best friend of the present.
With all our kind remembrances
Ever affectionately yours,
A. C. Swinburne
[Lang’s footnotes:
4. Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1882).
5. See Tennyson’s “Locksley Hall,” l. 148.]
___
[Peattie, Letter 380, pp. 463-464]
W. M. Rossetti to William Bell Scott, 7 January, 1885
5 Endsleigh Gardens,
7 January 1885
Dear Scotus,
Thanks for your last letter. Without reflecting upon the present case, I very much agree in your general observations about coterie-management etc. I often sadly reflect that I used to urge my dear Gabriel in 1870 not to go “diplomatizing” (as I got to call it) to have his book reviewed in various papers by friends and henchmen, but to stand aside and leave it to prove its own merits; and that, if he had taken this advice and not got so jubilant a proclamation of the merits of the poems, the soreness of outsiders would perhaps never have obtained so acrid an expression as in Buchanan’s attack, with all its train of morbid and miserable consequences. ...
___
[Peattie, Letter 410, pp. 496-497]
W. M. Rossetti to Swinburne, 2 July, 1886
5 Endsleigh Gardens,
2 July 1886
Dear Swinburne,
With the greatest satisfaction did I receive your note of 16 June announcing that a copy of your new book 1 was to come to me — and in due sequel the book itself. ...
One thing in the volume which I find very good is the appendix on Mary Stuart: have not read Hosack’s book, 2 but what you say of it seems to familiarize me with the scope of its argument, and to demonstrate that your rejoinder thereto must be right. The sentences about Buchanan and Maitland 3 are curiously apt — and amusing in proportion to
Your affectionate
W. M. Rossetti
[Peattie’s footnotes:
1. Miscellanies.
2. John Hosack, Mary Queen of Scots and Her Accusers (1869; 2d ed., 1870-74).
3. George Buchanan (1506-82), scholar, historian, secretary of Regent Moray’s commissioners in England, 1568-69, affirmed that the casket letters were in Queen Mary’s handwriting. William Maitland (1528?-73) was entrusted with the conduct of Mary’s foreign policy in 1561, and from 1570 was the leader of the Queen’s party. Swinburne’s summary of Hosack’s argument provided another welcome chance to ridicule Robert Buchanan: “Let us suppose that a Buchanan, for example, was what Mr. Hosack has called him, ‘the prince of literary prostitutes’: a rascal cowardly enough to put forth in print a foul and formless mass of undigested falsehood and rancorous ribaldry, and venal enough to traffic in the disgrace of his dishonourable name for a purpose as infamous as his act. Let us concede that a Maitland was cur enough to steal that name as a mask for the impudent malice of ingratitude” (p. 378).]
___
[Lang, Vol. 6, Letter 1832, pp. 201-202]
Swinburne to W. M. Rossetti, 16 October, 1906
...
I am glad you tied the female Jay 3 to the cart’s tail 4 for a lash or two. I saw her book on the polypseudonymous poisoner who is now in Malebolge.
Non ragioniam di lor. 5 Have you seen a book now five years old on ‘the pavement masters of Siena,’ by R. H. Hobart Cust? I have just fallen in with it. I am afraid Ruskin did not care for that divinest (in my poor mind) of all cathedrals. I hope and think you know it? ...
[Lang’s footnotes:
3. Harriet Jay (1863-1932), dramatist, novelist; Buchanan’s adopted daughter, author of Robert Buchanan (1903).
4. See above, Letter 408.
5. “Let us not speak of them” (Inferno, Canto III, 51).]
[Note:
Swinburne is referring to a passage in W. M. Rossetti’s recently published Some Reminiscences of William Michael Rossetti.]
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