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Event
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Notes
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1876
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January
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Buchanan sues Mr. P. A. Taylor M.P., proprietor of The Examiner, for libel and asks for damages of £5000.
An article by Buchanan on ‘Aeschylus and Victor Hugo’ in the New Quarterly Magazine has this conciliatory passage about Swinburne:
“No charge [atheism] is easier to bring, or harder to bear. As I write, I see it, in several journals, brought against a young poet of the day, Mr. Algernon Swinburne. The present writer cannot certainly be accused of sympathizing unduly with the school Mr. Swinburne represents, but he takes this opportunity of saying that Mr. Swinburne is an atheist in the sense that Shelley was one, and in no other. The wealth of his vocabulary of abuse should not mislead us. He utters the truth as he feels and sees it; he utters it, as a rule, far too madly; but the very fury of his invective is a proof that he is in earnest. He fights his adversaries with a flail, and the weapon too often rebounds, as such weapons will in unpractised hands, upon his own head. But for all that, he is one of the army of God, and we forgive him all his outrageousness when he speaks, as he occasionally can and will, the lovely language of Sion. There are far too many real atheists in the world—men who hate truth, and have no faith in beauty. Let us not class among them any one authentic poet, however much his non-poetical utterances may offend our prejudices, and even shock our reason.”
The serialisation of The Shadow of the Sword begins in the January issue of the Gentleman’s Magazine. Buchanan was paid 180 guineas (payable in monthly instalments) for the book.
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It is fairly obvious that Buchanan saw an opportunity of making a significant amount of money if he sued Taylor rather than Swinburne.
The article was obviously written before Swinburne began attacking Buchanan over Jonas Fisher, but it does indicate that Buchanan, at least, was no longer holding a grudge.
Swinburne’s comment on seeing the article, in a letter to William Minto of 9th January, 1876:
“ I have seen the extended olive-branch, & am so glad if it is enough. Mysterious are the ways of New Grub Street, I expected a great impertinence, & lo an impertinence of the conciliatory order.”
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21 January
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Watts to Swinburne
“That unfortunate letter in the Examiner about Buchanan is giving poor Minto trouble incalculable, trouble in which you, I fear, may have to share.”
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22 January
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Swinburne to Watts:
“As to the letter of last month, I must say it seems to me that it is for the editor, and not for a casual contributor or correspondent who knows nothing of editorial business, duty, or etiquette, to determine whether the contribution offered is or is not safe or advisable to publish, and that he alone by virtue of his office is responsible for the decision arrived at and carried out. Had M. declined to print my letter I should certainly not have been fool enough to resent or dispute his verdict, but he did not; and though I am very sorry he should have got into hot water in consequence of this and of his own additional attack or exposure of the same person in the same number, I cannot hold myself the person (if any there be) in fault. Personally, there are few things that would give me more after satisfaction than an unsought opportunity of bearing public testimony by a simple statement of the circumstances connected with our brief acquaintance, to the high character and honourable conduct of the honest and courageous Mr. Robert Buchanan.”
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27 January
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This report appeared in the Liverpool Mercury (and presumably other papers around this date):
“Lord Southesk is now declared to be the author of that remarkable poem “Jonas Fisher,” which the Spectator said must have been written either by Mr. Robert Buchanan or the Devil. Lord Southesk is a Liberal peer, who has begun a literary career somewhat late in life. He is 48 years old, and I believe that until his recent book about sporting in America he had not appeared before the public.”
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James Carnegie, 9th Earl of Southesk (1827-1905), had a family connection to Buchanan’s friend, Roden Noel, having married his step-sister, Lady Catherine Hamilton Noel (1829–1855), daughter of Charles Noel, 1st Earl of Gainsborough, in 1849. According to his testimony at the trial, Lord Southesk had not met Buchanan until after the publication of Jonas Fisher and the subsequent rumours regarding its authorship.
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15 February
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In the Common Pleas Division of the High Court an unsuccessful attempt is made by The Examiner’s lawyers to get Buchanan to reveal all of his pseudonymous and anonymous attacks on members of the ‘Fleshly School’ during the past ten years.
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19 February
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The Examiner scotches the rumour that The Queen of Connaught was written by Charles Reade:
“The authorship of the ‘Queen of Connaught,’ a novel published some little time since, and wrongly ascribed, for no apparent reason, to Mr. Charles Reade, is now believed to be more rightly attributed to a lady a near connection of Mr. Robert Buchanan.”
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March
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‘Robert Buchanan’ is the third in a series of articles on ‘Our Modern Poets’ by Thomas Bayne in The St. James’s Magazine.
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6 March
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Item in The Manchester Courier:
“Mr. Robert Buchanan, the poet, has just arrived in London from Connemara, Ireland, in order to prosecute his case against Mr. Taylor, M.P., and the proprietor of the Examiner, for alleged libels in that publication.
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13 March
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Buchanan writes to the Daily News concerning Walt Whitman, who has been reported in The Athenæum as being in dire financial need. Buchanan suggests a subscription scheme be set up in England to acquire copies of Whitman’s new book.
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14 March
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William Michael Rosetti writes to the Daily News explaining that he wrote the piece about Whitman in the Athenæum and has already instituted a subscription scheme to help the poet.
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16 March
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Buchanan writes to the Daily News:
“Meantime I take cognisance of the letter from Mr. William Rossetti, published in your columns of to-day, and as that gentleman is, I am glad to see, prepared to undertake the organisation of a fund for the purchase of Whitman’s works, I think all future correspondence, subscriptions, &c., should be addressed to him. For my own part I shall be glad to co-operate in any scheme for Whitman’s benefit.”
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4 April
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Swinburne writes to W. M. Rossetti:
“Du reste, you must allow me to observe that it gives us a pleasing foretaste of the millennial period to see the lion (yourself) lying down (not with the lamb but) with the skunk. I was diverted to see how cautiously (thro’ fear or thro’ respect?) the Saturday abstained from any reference to you while pitching indiscriminately and impartially into the American “eagle” and the Hebridean polecat. Poor old Whitman! the donkey’s caress should be worse to the decrepit and wounded lion than his kick. However, he may set the kick of a Payne against the caress of a Buchanan. Pity he has no friend at hand to keep him from writing such damned nonsense about poetry and verse as I saw quoted in the Examiner—the most blatant bray of impotent and impudent ignorance I ever heard except from the throat of Bavius Buchanan or Maevius Maitland. These are the things that make it difficult always to remember and compromising often to assert the existence of his really high qualities.”
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2 June
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John Nichol writes to Swinburne, mentioning his intention to write to McC. and that:
“You need, for the way I hear people talk of you, give yourself no anxiety about that wretch Buchanan.”
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McC. was Colin Ritchie McClymont, a friend of Nichol’s, acquaintance of Swinburne’s, and one of Buchanan’s lawyers in the upcoming libel trial. Nichols, McClymont and Swinburne were all Balliol men.
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17 June
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Swinburne to Watts:
“One line, please, by return of post, to say whether you think the (legal) coast is now clear. It will be three weeks on Monday since I came down here in compliance with your friendly counsel to make myself scarce for three weeks, during which you thought it convenient that I should not be ‘apprehensible’ in town. I am invited to meet some old friends on Tuesday, but if I come up I should wish to stay awhile in London; so just let me know if the time of possible difficulty as to the subpoena has been tided over or not.”
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19 June
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Watts to Swinburne:
“I scarcely know how to answer you as to coming up to London. I have just learned that the trial is coming on this week—perhaps tomorrow. And yet you have not been summoned by the plaintiff. But Minto tells me that Taylor’s solicitors think it may be necessary to call you and he has given them your Holmwood address. Should I find that [they] really do mean to summon you—which I hope is not the case—I will let you know either by telegram or letter and then you will, no doubt, think it best to come up, and so avoid being served at home with the subpoena. But I think you had better wait until you hear from me.”
Swinburne to John Nichol:
“I have today received the subpoena summoning me to attend (possibly tomorrow) in the Buchanan-Taylor case. The day is not yet fixed. I have only time to tell you this and hope your wrist may have regained its strength, though you may have no occasion to put it forth on your friend’s behalf.”
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20 June
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Nichol to Swinburne:
“I need not tell you that on receipt of yours today I have written I only hope not too strongly to McClymont & that no doctor & no shame of this M.S shall prevent me writing anything else that can be of any use.
I can’t get Crosskey’s authority, but he has behaved so ill to me during the last 3 years that if you think your statement about “Caliban” material make it on my authority.
Above all things treat the hound with calm contempt: & for God or the the Devils sake dont be flustered or take stimulus to help you through. I know the temptation & speak to you, my best male friend, with reckless frankness.”
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22 June
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McClymont writes to John Nichol:
“No action that I know of is threatened against or in progress against Swinburne. ... 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. “
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This letter (and the one quoted below) from McClymont to Nichol are published in Volume 20 of The Complete Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne. Edited by Sir Edmund Gosse and Thomas James Wise [Bonchurch ed.].
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26 June
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Corinne produced at the Lyceum Theatre, London.
According to a report (following the trial) in The Ipswich Journal of 4th July:
“The drama and the trial got to some extent mixed up. I was at the Lyceum on the opening night, and it was clear enough that the author had enemies in the house, the enemies being described by the initiated as “the Swinburne party.” This party were ready to hiss on every possible chance. They hissed the players, the words of the piece, the scenery and effects, and in the end they so persistently hissed down the call for the author to appear before the curtain, that Mr. Buchanan refrained from coming to the front, and contented himself by bowing quietly from the box in which he had witnessed the performance.”
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29 June
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The case of Buchanan v. Taylor opens in the Common Pleas Division of the High Court before Mr. Justice Archibald and a Special Jury. Buchanan was suing Mr. Peter Taylor, M.P., proprietor of The Examiner, for £5000 damages, in relation to The Examiner’s publication of a review of Jonas Fisher falsely attributed to Buchanan, and Swinburne’s letter of 11 December, 1875, entitled ‘The Devil’s Due’.
Lord Southesk takes the stand and admits he is the author of Jonas Fisher. Buchanan takes the stand and the court is adjourned before the conclusion of his cross-examination.
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In the report of the first day of the trial in The Standard, during the cross-examination of Buchanan, in the section about ‘The Session of the Poets’:
“Mr. Hawkins.—What! To talk in that way of a man of whom you knew nothing except that he was a poet—I was going to say like yourself. Do you not know that Mr. Swinburne is an Oxford man and a gentleman?”
I think that speaks volumes.
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30 June
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Second day of the trial. Buchanan’s cross-examination continues. No other witnesses are called and the defence counsel (Mr. Hawkins Q.C.) confines himself to an attack on Buchanan, reading extracts from ‘The Session of the Poets’, White Rose and Red and the original ‘Fleshly School’ article, and also referring to Buchanan’s praise of “the infamously indecent poetry of Mr. Walter Whitman”.
The diary of Edmund Gosse, who attended the trial on 30th June, contains this description of Buchanan:
“We could not help remarking his appearance. A pale dissipated-looking man, with reddish-yellow hair, moustache & whiskers, attired in a dirty white waistcoat & loud trowsers, altogether shabby-genteel and anything but gentleman-like.”
John Nichol writes to 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. I rejoice that, Caliban, – why dignify him by comparison with a gentleman like the Devil? – has been trotted out well by Hawkins & made to confess to his beastly personalities in “The Session.” 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, of all by whom being kicked he would be honored. ... (I have 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.
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1 July
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Final day of the trial. According to the report in The Times:
“Mr. Justice Archibald summed up the case at considerable length.”
The jury retired for twenty minutes and returned with a verdict in favour of Buchanan but only awarding him £150 in damages.
The diary of Edmund Gosse, contains this entry for 1st July:
‘I hear that Buchanan is extremely cock-a-hoop at his gaining £150 and his case. It is said that at a party to-night he turned his back on Mrs. W. Black. Black & he have quarrelled. The party was at Gowing’s, the Editor of the “Gentleman’s Magazine.” Every one avoided B., and Malcolm Lawson sang one of Rossetti’s songs. B. professed to have never heard of it, “Oh! Is that by Rossetti?”
“Who wrote that song?” Buchanan said,
They answered with one voice, “Rossetti.”
Embarassed, shuffling, pale and red,
“Who wrote that song?” Buchanan said;
They laughed till they were nearly dead,–
This affectation seemed so petty.
“Who wrote that song?” Buchanan said,
They answered with one voice “Rossetti!”’
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Since Buchanan was only awarded £150, rather than the £5000 he had asked for, this is usually viewed as a defeat for Buchanan. It should be pointed out that £150 was still a significant amount - three times the annual rent of Buchanan’s cottage in Ireland
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3 July
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The Pall Mall Gazette publishes a satirical poem about the libel case.
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5 July
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From Edmund Gosse’s diary:
‘W. B. Scott communicated the above-given triolet of mine to Rossetti, telling him at the same time the anecdote. He sent back the message “Give Gosse my love, and the triolet is great fun!”’
McClymont writes to Nichol:
“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.”
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8 July
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The Examiner sums up the trial and points out the moral of the case.
Final performance of Corinne at the Lyceum Theatre.
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28 October
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Swinburne writes to John Nichol:
“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. ... 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.”
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November
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The Shadow of the Sword published by Richard Bentley and Son.
Advertised in The Times 30 November, 1876.
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16 December
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Swinburne to 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.”
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1877
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January
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The Dark Colleen, Harriett Jay’s second novel, published (anonymously) by Richard Bentley and Son.
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3 January
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Swinburne writes to Watts, asking him to help John Nichol, who wishes to get a response published to a bad review in The Academy of his book, Tables of European Literature and History:
“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. ... 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.”
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4 January
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Swinburne to Watts:
“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.”
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8 January
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Buchanan writes a letter to Walt Whitman (included in With Walt Whitman in Camden Vol. 1 (March 28-July 14, 1888) by Horace Traubel (Boston: Small, Maynard & Company, 1906)) which begins:
“Pray forgive my long silence. I have been deep in troubles of my own. All the books have arrived and been safely transmitted. Many thanks.
You have doubtless heard about affairs in England. The tone adopted by certain of your friends here became so unpleasant that I requested all subscriptions etc. to be paid over to Rossetti, and received no more myself. During a certain lawsuit against the Examiner, your admirers—notably Mr. Swinburne—pleaded against me that I had praised you, cited your words against me in court etc. I never was so shocked and astonished, for I would not have believed human beings capable of such iniquity.”
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15 January
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The Queen of Connaught, an adaptation of Harriett Jay’s novel by Buchanan and Jay, is produced at the Olympic Theatre.
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The authors of The Queen of Connaught remained anonymous, presumably because Buchanan feared the same problems which attended the first night of Corinne.
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March
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Balder the Beautiful published in The Contemporary Review in three parts (concluding in the May edition). The book is published by William Mullan and Son in June.
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September
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‘The Newest Thing In Journalism’ published (anonymously) in The Contemporary Review.
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26 September
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Edmund Yates publishes his reply to ‘The Newest Thing In Journalism” in his paper, The World, under the heading ‘’A Scofulous Scotch Poet.
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29 September
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Swinburne to Edmund 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. 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.”
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25 October
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Buchanan writes to Browning, mentioning Yates’ article in The World, and also saying:
“I have just returned to Town after a long spell in Ireland.”
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1878
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Most of 1878 is spent on Light, which runs from 6th April to 26th October.
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Presumably financed by the success of The Shadow of the Sword.
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1879
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Harriett Jay continues to write novels and also begins her career as an actress. Following the failure of Light, Buchanan publishes very little this year.
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1880
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In February, Buchanan writes to Nicholas Trübner about The City of Dream. Buchanan wishes it to be published in three parts, anonymously. In August he writes to William Canton that “my wife is just now dangerously ill with cancer.” Harriett Jay’s London debut is in The Queen of Connaught, at a Crystal Palace matinée in November. In December she appears in a matinée of Buchanan’s new play, The Nine Days’ Queen, at the Gaiety Theatre.
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The City of Dream was published by Chatto & Windus in 1888. In letters to Andrew Chatto, Buchanan repeats his wish that the poem be issued anonymously. At one point he suggests that it should appear at the same time as The Earthquake, which would bear his name, thus trying to repeat the trick of Saint Abe and The Drama of Kings.
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1881
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January
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The serialisation of God and the Man begins in Day of Rest. It concludes in the December issue.
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I have not seen the original magazine, but I presume that the dedication to Rossetti was not included at this point.
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30 January
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Buchanan writes to Chatto & Windus concerning their agreement to publish The Martyrdom of Madeline.
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This is the first of the Chatto & Windus Letters. Buchanan’s address at this point is 5, Larkhall Rise, Clapham.
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14 February
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The Nine Days Queen, starring Harriett Jay, opens at the Royal Connaught Theatre.
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March
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A Child of Nature published by Richard Bentley and Son.
Advertised in The Times 3 March, 1881.
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12 March
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Final performance of The Nine Days Queen at the Royal Connaught Theatre.
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3 April
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The date of the 1881 census. Robert Buchanan and Harriett Jay are listed as boarders at the lodging house of George Remnant at 3 Guildford Place, St Pancras, London. Buchanan (39) now lists himself as ‘Author and Dramatist’ and Harriett Jay (24) as ‘Authoress & Actress’. Meanwhile, Mary Buchanan is staying with her elder sister, Eliza Dear, in East Ham, and Margaret Buchanan is living at the Westward Ho Boarding House, Cliftonville Terrace, Prittlewell, Southend-on-Sea.
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7 May
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The Exiles of Erin: or St. Abe and his Seven Wives (based loosely on Buchanan’s poem), starring Harriett Jay, produced at the Olympic Theatre. The title is changed to The Mormons: or St. Abe and his Seven Wives.
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9 May
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The Shadow of the Sword produced at the Theatre Royal, Brighton by John Coleman.
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2 June
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Final performance of The Mormons: or St. Abe and his Seven Wives at the Olympic Theatre.
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July
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The Priest’s Blessing, or Poor Patrick’s Progress from this World to a Better by Harriett Jay, published by F. V. White and Co.
Advertised in The Times 29 July, 1881.
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6 August
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Buchanan writes to Andrew Chatto enclosing Volume 1 of God and the Man. Buchanan’s address is 2, Devereux Terrace, Southend.
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20 October
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Buchanan writes to Andrew Chatto concerning God and the Man:
“I return you the list of newspapers, adding one or two. Please oblige me by not sending to the Athenæum—a journal which has for many years been malignant towards me—I mean, specially & personally malignant.”
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November
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God and the Man published by Chatto & Windus.
Advertised in The Times 7 November, 1881. The novel includes the dedicatory verse, ‘To an Old Enemy’ - Buchanan’s first apology to D. G. Rossetti.
Two Men and a Maid by Harriett Jay, published by F. V. White and Co.
Advertised in The Times 19 November, 1881.
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6 November
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Buchanan writes to F.J. Furnivall (founder of the Browning Society), enclosing a copy of God and the Man:
“Like Browning himself, I have suffered for years from the persecution of a literary Inquisition; and as it is such men as you that scatter light & fight on the side of minorities, I would gladly secure your sympathy in more or less measure.”
He goes on to criticise the Athenaeum “a journal which, to my mind, is a synonym for nepotism & cowardly malignity.”
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7 November
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Death of Mary Buchanan, aged 36.
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10 November
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A second letter to F.J. Furnivall (from 2 Devereux Terrace, Southend), contains the following:
“I thought to be in Queen Anne St temporarily this week, but on Monday night my beloved wife died here. While this great darkness is upon me, I cannot respond to your kindness as I could wish; but I look forward to seeing you some day soon.”
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13 November
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Funeral of Mary Buchanan. She is buried in the churchyard of St. John the Baptist in Southend-on-Sea.
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29 November
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Buchanan writes to Andrew Chatto regarding the publication of his poetry.
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3 December
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Buchanan sells the copyrights of his poetry to Chatto & Windus for £300.
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1882
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March
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Ballads of Life, Love, and Humour published by Chatto & Windus.
Advertised in The Times 23 March, 1882.
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April
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Selected Poems published by Chatto & Windus.
Advertised in The Pall Mall Gazette 8 April, 1882.
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8 April
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Lucy Brandon (adapted from Bulwer-Lytton’s Paul Clifford) produced at a matinée at the Imperial Theatre, Westminster, with Harriett Jay in the title role. It runs for a week of afternoon performances.
The Shadow of the Sword produced at the Olympic Theatre, following a provincial tour.
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9 April
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Death of Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
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12 April
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Buchanan writes a letter to The Era (published on 15th April) criticising John Coleman’s alterations of The Shadow of the Sword. More letters follow throughout April and May.
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20 April
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Final performance of The Shadow of the Sword at the Olympic Theatre
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23 April
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Buchanan writes to Andrew Chatto:
“The failure of my drama, on which I had staked so much, has so broken my peace of mind, that I wish to go away at once into the wilderness, & see what solitude & quiet thought will do to restore me.”
Buchanan asks for an advance of £250.
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Both The Shadow of the Sword and Lucy Brandon had failed, the latter involving a court case in which Buchanan sued the managers of the theatre for £76 12s. 9d.
According to this letter, Chatto & Windus had paid Buchanan £300 for The Martyrdom of Madeline, £250 for God and the Man and £250 for Foxglove Manor to be serialised in The Gentleman’s Magazine. The new advance would replace that serial with The New Abelard and Foxglove Manor would be published in the autumn. Chatto & Windus also agreed to publish The City of Dream on half profits.
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25 April
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Robert Buchanan writes to The Era protesting at the rumour which has appeared in several papers stating that he and Harriett Jay have been secretly married in Switzerland.
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May
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The Martyrdom of Madeline published by Chatto & Windus.
Advertised in The Times 25 May, 1882.
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14 May
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Buchanan writes to Andrew Chatto from the “wilderness” of the Hôtel de la Grande Bretagne in Paris, thanking him for sending the money and asking him to send a copy of The Martyrdom of Madeline to his mother at the Westward Ho boarding house in Southend.
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18 May
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Writes to Hall Caine from 30 Boulevard Ste Beuve, Boulogne- Sur-Mer, France after reading Caine’s memorial to Rossetti in The Academy:
“I have often regretted my old criticism on your friend, not so much because it was stupid, but because, after all, I doubt one poet’s right to criticise another. For the rest, I have long been of opinion that Rossetti was a great spirit; and in that belief I inscribed to him my ‘God and the Man.’
I suppose it was lack of courage which kept me from putting his name boldly on the preprint of my book; but had I dreamed he was ill or ailing, how eagerly would I not have done so! Still, I cannot conceive anyone mistaking the words of that dedication. Some people have been foolish enough to take it as addressed to Swinburne; but every line of it is against that supposition. I wonder now, if Rossetti himself knew of, and understood, that inscription? Perhaps you could tell me, and to ask you I write this letter. It would be a sincere satisfaction to me to know that he did read it, and accepted it in the spirit in which it was written.”
In Hall Caine’s autobiography (where the above letter is ‘dramatised’ as their first meeting), another letter from Buchanan is quoted. This originally appeared as a footnote (pp. 71-72) in Hall Caine’s Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, which was published in 1882:
“In perfect frankness, let me say a few words concerning our old quarrel. While admitting freely that my article in the Contemporary Review was unjust to Rossetti’s claims as a poet, I have ever held, and still hold, that it contained nothing to warrant the manner in which it was received by the poet and his circle. At the time it was written the newspapers were full of panegyric; mine was a mere drop of gall in an ocean of eau sucrée. That it could have had on any man the effect you describe I can scarcely believe, indeed, I think that no living man had so little to complain of as Rossetti on the score of criticism. Well, my protest was received in a way which turned irritation into wrath, wrath into violence; and then ensued the paper war which lasted for years. If you compare what I have written of Rossetti with what his admirers have written of myself, I think you will admit that there has been some cause for me to complain, to shun society, to feel bitter against the world; but, happily, I have a thick epidermis, and the courage of an approving conscience.
“I was unjust, as I have said; most unjust when I impugned the purity and misconceived the passion of writings too hurriedly read and reviewed currente calamo; but I was at least honest and fearless, and wrote with no personal malignity. Save for the action of the literary defence, if I may so term it, my article would have been as ephemeral as the mood which induced its composition. I make full admission of Rossetti’s claims to the purest kind of literary renown, and if I were to criticise his poems now, I should write very differently. But nothing will shake my conviction that the cruelty, the unfairness, the pusillanimity has been on the other side, not on mine. The amende of my dedication in ‘God and the Man’ was a sacred thing— between his spirit and mine; not between my character and the cowards who have attacked it. I thought he would understand—which would have been, and indeed is sufficient. I cried, and cry no truce with the horde of slanderers who hid themselves within his shadow. That is all. But, when all is said, there still remains the pity that our quarrel should ever have been. Our little lives are too short for such animosities. Your friend is at peace with God—that God who will justify and cherish him, who has dried his tears, and who will turn the shadow of his life-dream into full sunshine. My only regret now is that we did not meet—that I did not take him by the hand; but I am
old-fashioned enough to believe that this world is only a prelude, and that our meeting may take place—even yet.”
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This letter is published in Hall Caine, the Man and the Novelist by Charles Frederick Kenyon (London: Greening & Co., Ltd., 1901 - p. 79-80).
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20 June
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Buchanan writes to The Academy (published 1st July) complaining about their review of The Martyrdom of Madeline, including the following about the reviewer’s suggestion that the character of Blanco Serena in the novel was based on D. G. Rossetti:
“One word more. Your reviewer insinuates (there is no mistaking his innuendo) that a certain character in my story is a shadow-picture of the late Mr. Dante Rossetti. To show the injustice of this supposition, I will simply ask your readers to compare the lineaments of my Blanco Serena, a society-hunting, worldly minded, insincere, but good-humoured, fashionable painter, with the literary image of Mr. Rossetti a solitude-loving, unworldly, thoroughly sincere and earnest, if sometimes saturnine, man of genius, in revolt against society. The blundering of windmill-criticism could surely go no further. I wish to have no mistake on this, to me, very solemn matter. What I wrote of Mr. Rossetti, ten years ago, stands. What I wrote of Mr. Rossetti in the inscription of God and the Man also stands. Time brings about its revenges. Can the least acute observer of literature have failed to notice that the so-called fleshly school, in proportion as it has grown saner, purer, and more truly impassioned in the cause of humanity, has lost its hold upon the so-called fleshly public—even on the dapper master-miller’s and miller’s men of the journals of nepotism and malignity? Certain of our critics said to certain of our poets—“Go that way; there lies the short cut to immortality!” But the poets, after going a few paces, paused, recognising, as only true poets can recognise, the easy descent to Acheron. How strange it would be, after all, if we, the so-called Pharisees of ten years ago, should find ourselves called upon, in the end, to defend these very poets against their own critics, against society, against the world. Stranger things have happened. Ishmael, after all, is close akin to Esau; and I can say for my own part that not even the dread of the brutal, blundering windmills would prevent me from championing Esau, if ever I should find the smooth hands of Jacob raised to destroy him.”
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July
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Buchanan writes ‘A Note on Dante Rossetti’. It concludes:
“And so, when all is said and done, the friendly criticism remains the best and wisest. Those who have read Mr. Swinburne’s eulogy of his master, and thought it, perhaps, a little strained, may admit, at least, that it was strained, like all eulogy of love, in the right direction. My own abuse was and is, like all hasty contemporary abuse, nothing. Mr. Swinburne’s honest praise was, and is, like all honest praise, something. The poet of the “House of Life” is beyond both; but his fame will remain, when all detraction is forgotten, as a golden symbol, ære perennius, of much that was best and brightest in the culture of our time.”
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The ‘note’ was published in Buchanan’s collection of essays, A Look Round Literature, which was published in 1887. Neither Cassidy or Murray offer an earlier date for its publication, but it is clear from the context (the reference to an article on Rossetti in the July, 1882 edition of The British Quarterly Review) that it was written a few months after the death of Rossetti.
Cassidy suggests several motives for Buchanan’s series of apologies to Rossetti during this period, citing in particular the sickness and death of his wife. One speculation he does not indulge in, but I feel should be mentioned, is the fact that Buchanan was engaged in negotiations with Chatto & Windus to relaunch his career as a poet. After the poor reception of the three volume edition of his Poetical Works in 1874 and Balder the Beautiful in 1877, it is not inconceivable that Buchanan wished to draw a line under the whole ‘Fleshly School’ affair before Chatto & Windus published Ballads of Life, Love and Humour and Selected Poems in 1882. And, more especially, his next great ‘epic’, The City of Dream. Buchanan’s letters to Hall Caine do confirm the sincerity of Buchanan’s apologies to Rossetti, but the ‘Note on Dante Rossetti’ does seem to read more like a legal statement, retracting all charges, where all the boxes are ticked, including the mention of Swinburne’s “honest praise”.
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6 July
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Buchanan writes to Chatto & Windus (from Boulogne):
“Please dont issue the cheap edition of God & the Man without a few lines of preface (which I have written) & Rossetti’s name in Dedication.”
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8 July
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Buchanan writes to Chatto & Windus:
“I shall be very much obliged if you will post me a copy of “God & the Man” & one of “Child of Nature”. If you would send me at the same time Mr Swinburne’s new poems & the current Gent. Magne, I should take it as a special favour.”
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August
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Buchanan returns from France. According to the Chatto correspondence, he writes from Boulogne on 15th August, and the Preface to the new edition of God and the Man is dated “London: August 18, 1882.”
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September
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The new edition of God and the Man is published, with the second dedicatory poem to Rossetti (dated August 1882). A new Preface contains the following:
“Since this work was first published, the ‘Old Enemy’ to whom it was dedicated has passed away. Although his name did not appear on the front of the book, as it would certainly have done had I possessed more moral courage, it is a melancholy pleasure to me to reflect that he understood the dedication and accepted it in the spirit in which it was offered. That I should ever have underrated his exquisite work, is simply a proof of the incompetency of all criticism, however honest, which is conceived adversely, hastily, and from an unsympathetic point of view; but that I should have ranked myself for the time being with the Philistines, and encouraged them to resist an ennobling and refining literary influence (of which they stood, and stand, so mournfully in need), must remain to me a matter of permanent regret.”
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1883
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More novels and Buchanan’s first popular successes in the theatre, Storm-Beaten (based on his novel, God and the Man) and Lady Clare (an unauthorised adaptation of Georges Ohnet’s Le Maître de Forges). Harriett Jay also has her first real success as an actress playing the Hon. Cecil Brookfield in Lady Clare, which leads to her playing a succession of ‘trouser-parts’.
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1884
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21 January
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Buchanan writes to Andrew Chatto sending the conclusions of both The City of Dream and The New Abelard. In the letter Buchanan suggests that The City of Dream should be published anonymously, simultaneously with The Great Problem (i.e. The Earthquake) obviously intending to duplicate the effect of publishing St. Abe and His Seven Wives and The Drama of Kings together in 1871.
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2 April
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Edmund Yates is sentenced to four months in prison for libel against the Earl of Lonsdale.
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10 April
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The Pall Mall Gazette prints a letter from Buchanan in support of Edmund Yates. It concludes:
“This sending of journalists to prison is at the very best a barbarous business, and unworthy of the civilization under which we live.”
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7 August
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Buchanan and Harriett Jay go to America, embarking on the steamship Eider from Southampton.
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December
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The Poetical Works of Robert Buchanan published by Chatto & Windus.
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1885
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7 January
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W. M. Rossetti writes to William Bell Scott:
“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.”
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March
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While in Philadelphia preparing for the opening of Alone in London Buchanan visits Walt Whitman at Camden, New Jersey.
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30 March
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Alone in London (written in collaboration with Harriett Jay) is produced at the Chestnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia. The American rights to the play are then sold to Col. Sinn of Brooklyn.
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June
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Buchanan and Jay are back in England.
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November
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The Earthquake; or, Six Days and a Sabbath published by Chatto & Windus.
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2 November
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Alone in London opens at the Olympic Theatre, London.
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The London production of Alone in London was beset by problems and Buchanan let the provincial rights go for a pittance. It continued to tour the provinces for the next 25 years.
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1886
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12 April
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Sophia (Buchanan’s adaptation of Fielding’s Tom Jones) is produced at the Vaudeville Theatre, London at a matinée performance.
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This was the beginning of the most (economically) successful period of Buchanan’s life.
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June
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Swinburne’s new book, Miscellanies, includes the following squib (noticed by W. M. Rossetti in a letter to Swinburne of 2nd July) about 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”
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21 October
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The Pall Mall Gazette prints a letter from Buchanan in support of Edmund Gosse in which he states:
“I have no particular reason to love this gentleman, and perhaps some right to distrust the circle to which he belongs; I do love fair play, however, and when I see a man of letters coming under the ban of a literary vendetta my sympathy is all for the victim. A plague on all your cliques, say I, who am neither a Capulet nor a Montague.”
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This was Buchanan’s only contribution to a debate which was sparked by a review of Edmund Gosse’s From Shakespeare to Pope and was carried on in the pages of The Quarterly Review and The Athenæum as well as the Pall Mall Gazette. Oscar Wilde also joined the debate and in a letter to the Pall Mall Gazette (6/11/1886) noted a similarity between Buchanan’s letter and one from Swinburne:
“Truly the thunders of the Quarterly Review would seem to be like adversity: they make strange bedfellows. Mr. Swinburne, as we all know, has at other times paid Mr. Buchanan the compliment of immoderate abuse; but never before, I imagine, has he rendered in that quarter the last flattery of all—the flattery of imitation.”
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1889
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May
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Buchanan includes an explanation of the Fleshly school incident in his article, ‘Imperial Cockneydom’, published in The Universal Review. The article is later reprinted in The Coming Terror, but this passage is omitted.
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