ROBERT WILLIAMS BUCHANAN (1841 - 1901)
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ROBERT WILLIAMS BUCHANAN (1841 - 1901) |
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LETTERS TO THE PRESS (19)
The Pall Mall Gazette (23 January, 1894 - p.3) THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE EXTRAORDINARY. To the EDITOR of the PALL MALL GAZETTE. SIR,—A really extraordinary instance of “thought transference” has come to pass. Over two years ago I wrote a Theosophistic play, entitled, “An Adept,” which I submitted to Mr. Tree; it was not produced. To- day Mr. Buchanan produces a Theosophistic play entitled “The Charlatan,” at the Haymarket, which in plot bears a curious resemblance to my play, whilst some of the characters are almost identical. My charlatan was an Anglo-Parsee; he had a hypnotic gift, and established an influence over his host’s niece; there was a séance, followed by a next-morning confession, and the charlatan of my story, as in Mr. Buchanan’s, leaves a reformed man, to return another day to the lady he has deceived. It is all such an extraordinary instance of thought-transference that I shall be glad of any light that can be thrown upon it.—Your obedient servant, ___
The Pall Mall Gazette (24 January, 1894 - p.3) “THE CHARLATAN.” To the EDITOR of the PALL MALL GAZETTE. SIR,—My attention has been directed to a letter in your issue of this evening, in which Mr. Stuart Cumberland states that he submitted to Mr. Tree, over two years ago, a play very similar in plot to “The Charlatan,” now running at the Haymarket Theatre. I can truthfully say that Mr. Tree has never mentioned any such play to me, and that he first became acquainted with “The Charlatan” some six weeks before its production. The manuscript of my first three acts was in existence nearly two years ago, when it was read by me to Mr. George Alexander, of the St. James’s Theatre. Mr. Alexander no doubt remembers the fact, and can, if necessary, substantiate my statement. Of Mr. Cumberland’s play I, of course, know nothing. _____
To the EDITOR of the PALL MALL GAZETTE. SIR,—I notice in this evening’s issue of your paper a letter from Mr. Stuart C. Cumberland referring to the curious resemblance of his play, “An Adept,” to Mr. Buchanan’s “The Charlatan.” May I be allowed to add my cry to the list? __________
The Star (29 January, 1894 - p.1) IN PRAISE OF PRAISE. Mr. Arthur Pinero was hailed with enthusiasm last night, at the huge gathering for the tenth annual dinner of the Playgoers’ Club, as the foremost living English dramatist. No one there dreamed of dissenting from this judgment, and it will not be cavilled at from the outside. But those who were not of the Criterion party will never quite realise how convincingly he proved to those present his title to leadership in something more than the writing of successful plays. When his speech was finished, and the echoes of the prolonged applause had died away, there remained the feeling that we had been listening to a man who had a right to talk—who had big things to say to his fellows. What one remembers best of his remarks—though all that he said gave a new notion of the literary grace and facility of thought which, in his case at least, are the property of the British drama—is the prayerful injunction to the critics to remember that grumbling is the easiest and poorest of achievements, and to believe that a school of great art could only be nourished in an atmosphere of praise. Thus baldly stated, these propositions may not seem either new or striking. But Mr. Pinero was able last evening to put them with an eloquence and a force which took the assemblage off its feet. It was high time that some one with authority should say these things. They are what we see now that we have all been thinking. The modern development of the Press has driven the drama into a corner. The dramatic critic has become a more important personage, a more powerful individuality, than the playwright. Before the awful power of iteration which the daily paper wields, the author is helpless, and the actor is afraid. It is true that a play of genuine vitality, a play which really amuses or impresses the public, can win a notable success now and again in the teeth of the critics. But such a victory is dearly bought. The net effect of it is to anger the critics and embitter the author. At the end, we are farther away than ever from the happy ideal of a stage which should be strengthened and helped by the Press. If Mr. Pinero’s words have the effect of causing the London critics to search their hearts, and ask themselves whether their current attitude of sniffing at everything does not work mischief all round—to the authors, the players, and the institution of criticism alike—great good will come of them. What the existing critical spirit does is to put a premium on epidermis. A thick-skinned person like Robert Buchanan, who is fortunately so organised that he doesn’t mind the mud-batteries of the dramatic reviewers, turns out more plays than anybody else, and gets them produced. Why are they such bad plays? With the possible exception of Mr. Bernard Shaw, he writes more pungent, concise, and readable letters to the newspapers than any other man of our day. He could surely write better dramatic stuff than he does. But he snatched a success once on the stage when the critics were against him, and it gave him the idea that his worst, and not his best, was what was wanted behind the footlights. This must be the controlling notion in the minds of writers, so long as the existing fashion in criticism prevails—where, indeed, they do not shrink from the ordeal altogether. There was a suggestion of promise in one other portion of Mr. Pinero’s speech which invites attention. He claimed for the contemporary British dramatists the credit for having kept the stage clean-swept and bright and wholesome, the while we are waiting for the grand outburst of genius which is to restore the glories of the English drama. The confidence with which he predicted the advent of a genuine, lofty, palpitating dramatic revival, and dealing boldly and honestly with the gravest realities about us, gives hope that he himself intends to lead the way. HAROLD FREDERIC. ___
The Star (30 January, 1894 - p.1) THE APPRAISAL OF PRAISE. My friend, Harold Frederic, rightly praises Pinero’s passionate eloquence, which he truly says “took the assemblage off its feet.” I cannot refrain from praising Mr. Harold Frederic’s courage in writing his article for The Star while still in that inconvenient position. When one considers, too, that he wrote it immediately after a dinner of unusual excellence, his bravery almost demands the Victoria Cross and the sobriquet of Harold Frederic the Great. Statements made under such conditions must necessarily be rash, and therefore it would be unfair to examine them too minutely. But surely his general assumption that the London dramatic critics underpraise or dispraise is contradicted by every dramatic column. They may occasionally praise the wrong things, and be violently opposed to the right, but I am sure a statistical investigation would demonstrate the immense preponderance of eulogistic adjectives over libellous. Only the other day a well-known critic was telling me that editors object to damnatory epithets, which, unconscious of the depths of torture to which they sometimes condemn their critic, they cannot imagine to be really deserved. But he consoled himself in his optimistic way by the reflection that the public who, unlike the editors, did go to see the pieces, had by bitter experience learnt to deduct a large discount from Press eulogiums, and that therefore the truth, if the critic should on any occasion diverge into it, and it should accidentally get printed, would be a lie. I suggested that such a criticism ought to be marked “THIS NOTICE IS NET.” He was so edified by the idea that he threatened to use it in print, and I regret that an opportunity has been afforded me of anticipating him. No, Mr. Beerbohm Tree was nearer the truth when he talked of “these log-rolling times.” That art can only exist in an atmosphere of praise is a commonplace, but it is on e of those commonplaces which the world is in danger of forgetting, and Mr. Pinero did well to re-emphasise it. For one thing, if I may drop into prose, art can only exist in an atmosphere of praise because the artist can only exist in an atmosphere of praise, for praise is practically pudding. Only the statement needs careful definition. As it stands, it is only true of the art of log-rolling. That can certainly only exist in an atmosphere of praise. But bad art as well as good can exist in an atmosphere of praise, and if the critics devoted themselves to puffing out this atmosphere of praise, there is no guarantee whatever as to the kin d of art that would be produced. In fine, the apophthegm should be amended thus: Art can only exist in an atmosphere of praise by artistic persons. And this, I imagine (from after conversations with him) is all that Pinero meant. Indiscriminate praise can hardly do much good, except to the advertisement columns of minor journals. There is a great moral in the old story of the gentleman who swore immoderately on the least provocation, and who, when he was really angry, had no expletives left. The man who is always in a rage has ,lost the privilege of being angry, and a universal atmosphere of praise would asphyxiate art altogether. What Pinero was pleading for was a generous recognition of the higher dramas which he foresees coming along—a foresight which is robbed of something of its prophetic quality when one remembers that it is coming along in his coat tail or that he has it up his sleeve. Still, IT WAS NOT FOR HIMSELF that he was pleading; the unanimous plebiscite that has placed him at the head of the contemporary British drama has assuredly surfeited him with praise, and removed any of those lingering dubieties which, as he gracefully pointed out, must arise in the breast of the true artist, confronted with the imperfection of his own achievement. One would not have our great dramatist lose his delightful modesty, for the praise of the pub lic is less a goad to artistic perfection than one’s own inner aspiration, with its irritating accompaniment of perceived deficiencies. Wherefore I am tempted to think that after all the true artist can work even without the atmosphere of praise—nay, that the atmosphere of praise may sometimes enervate him and lead him to aim more at the praise of perfection than at perfection itself. The truth seems to be that praise is good for the praiser. Even if it does encourage the artist it calls forth the art which the praiser enjoys. The pittites that “rose at Kean” were not, as Pinero said, as great as Kean, though there was a germ of truth in the paradox, but they did more good to their souls and got more æsthetic enjoyment than if they had emulated the stateliness of the stalls. It has been well said that it is a mark of mediocrity to praise moderately, and certainly the average critic in every department shrinks timidly from giving himself away by the praise of contemporary greatness. He takes it for granted that a Sheridan or a Milton cannot possibly appear in his own day, forgetting that all the immortals were mortal in their time. Still, Pinero must rest assured that there are plenty of critics left to welcome THE COMING DRAMATIST (who appears to have come) and to extend to his experimental efforts to deal artistically with the facts of life the most hearty and generous encouragement. At the same time, those who are honestly opposed to the dramatic movement which has now begun are quite justified in doing their best to clog or arrest it. To amend the maxim again, art can only progress in an atmosphere of appraisal. No new idea has the right to expect to march in with flags flying and swords sheathed. Only, those who from the conservative camp obstinately resist its entry do so at their own risk, for new ideas march to power over dead reputations. If praise is good for the praiser, dispraise must be bad for the dispraiser. I. ZANGWILL. ______
AUTHORS AND CRITICS. TO THE EDITOR OF “THE STAR.” SIR,—I am obliged to you for sending me your issue of yesterday, and for marking in blue pencil, for my convenience, the contribution of a certain Mr. “Harold Frederic.” Who Mr. “Harold Frederic” may be I am unaware, unless he is the person of the same name who some little time ago rushed into print to champion the morality of Sir Charles Dilke; but what he is may be easily assumed, since he betrays in every line the spirit of the impertinent quidnunc who is the pest of literature. He is quite within his right in describing my plays as “bad,” just as he may have been within his right in describing Sir Charles Dilke’s morality as good. In either case, it is purely a matter of opinion, although, for my own part, I would rather be damned by Mr. ‘Frederic” than saved with the friend of “Fanny.” Were no larger issue involved than the personal malice of an obscure contributor to a newspaper, I should certainly decline to make any comment on the matter. But here we have a writer, under the pretence of defending authors from the barbs of criticism, illustrating in his own person all the spitefulness, all the recklessness of misstatement, all the banality which he assumes to reprimand in critics generally. He is a good enough text, therefore, to preach a little sermon on, apropos of the admirably sane remarks of Mr. Pinero addressed to the Playgoers’ Club. WHO HAS FAITH IN HIMSELF and in his power of staying always in the long run reaches the goal. If he fails to do so, it is generally his own fault. It is simply midsummer madness to argue that criticism is, as a rule, wilfully unfair. Stupid it often is, uninstructed it generally is, spiteful it occasionally is, but on the whole, while it errs on the side of favoritism to individuals, it is seldom deliberately or consciously false and cruel. Mr “Harold Frederic” informs me that I once “snatched a success in the teeth of the critics.” I do not know to what success he alludes, but so far as my memory goes, my most successful plays have been those which have been most cordially approved by the leading dramatic censors. True, I have had other successful plays of which the same critics have disapproved, but that fact only shows that criticism is not infallible. My experience is that the safeguards of an author are (1) the multiplicity of critical opinion, and (2) the sanity of popular judgment—i.e., the determination of readers and playgoers to have just what they want, in defiance of all tasters and cicerones. The leading critics are seldom unanimous. What Mr. Clement Scott dislikes Mr. William Archer frequently enjoys, and what Mr. Nisbet thinks delightful often bores Mr. Moy Thomas. The balance is struck by the playgoing public, and the result is speedily indicated at the box-office of the theatre. No amount of abuse can really destroy a popular play; no amount of eulogy can make an unpopular play “draw money.” THE MAN IS A HYPOCRITE who says that he is indifferent to the world’s good opinion. It is nice to be appreciated, and nasty to be misconceived. ROBERT BUCHANAN. ___
The Star (5 February, 1894 - p.1) IN PRAISE OF MR. PINERO. TO THE EDITOR OF “THE STAR.” SIR,—I have to apologise to Mr. Pinero for Mr. Austin’s report of the private conversation between the eminent dramatist and myself. I have also to regret that Mr. Austin was not present. If Mr. Pinero had read my own remarks (which I can hardly think he has done) he would have seen that I never presumed to interpret his obscurities. My one reference that might be so construed was of the most casual touch-and-go character. I said, “And this, I imagine, was all Pinero meant.” When, on the basis of my imagining, Mr. Austin’s imagination works, I can well imagine the result has no relation to reality. I am glad, though, that the little discussion has provided us with an authoritative version of that reality. For it seems that all of us who have been dissenting from Mr. Pinero have been beating the air. I should never for a moment have ventured to say that I imagined Mr. Pinero meant “anything but exactly what he said,” had there not been a general impression that he meant anything but exactly what he said. Mr. Harold Frederic, with the speech still ringing in his head, rushed off to lecture the dramatic critics on their over severity. Mr. William Archer, who was present at the dinner, gravely criticised in the Pall Mall Gazette what Mr. Pinero did not exactly say, and in the same organ Mr. Justin Huntly McCarthy, whose presence at the dinner reached speaking point, severely inveighed against exactly what Mr. Pinero did not say. Was I not right in saying that the dinner was unusually excellent? Why, I myself should have shared the general delusion had it not been that M r. Pinero remarked, when Mr. Cecil Raleigh (a subsequent speaker) inveighed against the doctrine of butter, “I didn’t say that.” As it was, I knew better, though not much, for I did not finally understand Mr. Pinero’s exact position—viz., that he spoke at the playgoers not the critics—till I read his own explanation in your column s. Is it any wonder that Mr. Austin , in spite of the advantage he enjoyed of not having taken in the speech through the fumes of “very large cigars,” was as much misled as any of his brother critics? Fortunately, owing to that faculty of keeping my head cool to which he genially refers, I am able to explain how the whole pother has arisen. Nothing can be more valuable than Pinero’s advice to the Playgoers, and he certainly exposed an absurdity in the club’s method of procedure, in its curious way of discussing new plays (or some new plays) through the medium of a vote of censure. To this ungenial and ungenerous custom Mr. Pinero’s speech has assuredly given the death-blow, and in future I venture to think discussion will always be carried on through the medium of a vote of thanks. Only, in the middle of his advice to the Playgoers, he brought in a very happy (but as it has turned out unhappy) sentence thus conceived (I quote from memory): If a fond mother brought me her boy and wished to article him to an eminent firm of dramatic critics, the advice I should give him would be Praise, Praise, Praise. And the gifted orator brought out his series of “Praises” with such admirable rhetoric that we had a sense of the heavens opening (to a Handelian fugue) and the cherubim, praising, praising, praising, and we were all “carried off our feet” and praised, praised, praised. After this we forgot about the Playgoers. The eminent firm of dramatic critics was in our mind, the red-herring had been drawn across the trail, and all that Mr. Pinero said subsequently loomed to our distorted imaginations as advice not to Playgoers, but to critics. For us—whatever he said or meant—the trail of the critic was over it all. And, what was worse, it infected all that had gone before, and we went home firmly convinced that Mr. Pinero had read a homily to the atrabilious critic. But never in our wildest moments of enthusiasm did we dream that he was thinking of himself. On the contrary, we thought it very graceful and fitting that the one man who had nothing to complain of and no possible grievance should have risen in defence of his brother authors. No playwright could have done it so well as the leader of them all. It was like Mrs. Mona Caird (a happily-married woman) raising the discussion, “Is marriage a failure?” Had Mrs. Mona Caird been a failure as a Mrs., her utterances would have been discredited. So far, then, from suspecting Mr. Pinero of a personal grievance, I, for my part, perhaps superfluously, but, I hope, not offensively, pointed out that he could not be speaking of himself. The Playgoers’ dinner was so enjoyable and agreed so well with us all, that I am sorry we should be disagreeing with one another, and I should infinitely regret if it left the slightest trace of after-bitterness, especially in the mind of Mr. Pinero. What he said has been misconceived, and I venture to think I have pointed out the origin of the misconception (which was aggravated by his sentiment that art can only exist in an atmosphere of praise), but even the misconception was as complimentary to Mr. Pinero as the enthusiastic enjoyment of his audience was complimentary to his genial greatness. I. ZANGWILL. _____
“IN PRAISE OF PRAISE.” TO THE EDITOR OF “THE STAR.” SIR,—No one asks of critics nought but praise; A MAN IN THE GALLERY. P.S.—I do not overlook the fact that “ironic railings” are in some circumstances a “support,” but a sympathetic soul who knows one’s destination can perform an immeasurably greater service. _____
MR. FREDERIC REPLIES. SIR,—The fact that Mr. Robert Buchanan—[I waive any possible advantage there might be in putting his name inside quotation marks, because I am not quite sure what it signifies, and it would pain me to inadvertently seem rude]—the fact, I say, that he does not know about me can be of small importance to anybody. I am more impressed by the fact that I know about him. It must be a long time ago that 1 first read of him in Mr. Edmund Yates’s uncollected works. Since then, both as a private citizen and in my capacity as “an impertinent quidnunc,” when I “swarm in the lobbies on any first night” as one of the “ephemeræ—evil-tempered, malicious, malignant, and disappointed,” “the torment of the author and of the manager,” I have seen a good deal of Mr. Buchanan’s extraordinary output in poems and novels and plays. It interests me, not on account merely of its dimensions, but for intrinsic reasons, into which I need not enter. What I had more in mind when I happened to hit upon him as an illustration of my argument was the fact that he seems always in a public newspaper jangle with somebody or other. I had gathered from this that the critics were habitually ungentle with him, and on this, in turn, had founded, perhaps somewhat loosely, the conclusion that if he had been rubbed the right way earlier, and encouraged onward in the quiet pursuit of knowledge and power in his craft instead of being continually tempted off into noisy and flatulent polemics, he must have been a more valuable figure in his day and generation than we find him to be. To come to pleasanter subjects, I fear that the witty, ingenious, and comprehensive rebuttals of my friends, Messrs. Walkley, Austin, and Zangwill, leave me unconvinced. 1 still think that Mr. Pinero was right in his praise of praise, and I remain of the opinion that the prevailing critical spirit of the London Press has far too much sniffing in it. I do not say that it is conscious, much less suggest that it is premeditated. Fortune has formed for me numerous acquaintanceships and some highly-prized friendships among the men who write the dramatic criticisms of the metropolis. That they should often disagree with me on first nights, and dislike things which I found pleasing, is of course no indictment against their critical acumen. They disagree among themselves just as flatly. But quite apart from these natural divergences of the individual taste, years of contact with them, and of familiarity with their writings, give me the feeling that as a body they do not keep their minds open enough to pleasant impressions. I get the notion that, in much the same way that the North American Indian of Catlin and Cooper deemed it unmanly to relax the muscles of his face, no matter how deeply he was moved, our critical friends of to-day cultivate from a sense of duty a stoicism which they do not naturally feel. I have said this so long and so often in private, in such discussions as the theatre smoking-room and the supper after the play induce, that there is no harm in saying it now in print. When such a deal of commentary, argument, and general philosophy follows upon one small text, the man who gives out the latter may easily find himself loaded up with responsibility for things he had no earthly idea of implying. With what reservations Mr. Pinero mentally hedged about his word “praise,” I cannot tell. I do know that the person who reluctantly wrenched himself free from very pleasant company, and lost the chance of hearing Messrs. Bronson Howard, Huntly McCarthy, Cecil Raleigh, and others, who were to speak, in order that The Star might talk about the chief speech while it was still fresh, had no notion of urging that things not praiseworthy should be praised. What 1 plead for instead is more catholicity of judgment, and the recognition that the drama has not one standard, but many. I do not myself see why a man who felt the strength in “Alan’s Wife,” and was thrilled by the last act of the “Master Builder,” should not also find a restful prettiness in “Sowing the Wind,” and shout with laughter over “Charley’s Aunt.” Mr. Walkley aptly says that “the first duty of the critic is neither to praise nor to blame, but to understand.” My point is that one of the things he should understand is that all art expresses itself through convention, and that in every period of transition—as, shall we say? from the era of “The Squire” to the reign of “The Second Mrs. Tanqueray”—what he is beholding is not that ultimate triumph of the real over the unreal which mankind has believed itself to be pining for since the dawn or time, but is only the substitution of a new convention for the old one. Personally, my instinctive sympathies are always with the men who build barricades. No one has a stronger natural inclination toward the radical, the novel, the various developments of the revolutionary young spirit than I have. If I had been a Parisian in the early thirties I know I should have followed, as closely as might be, and with enthusiasm, Théophile Gautier and his red waistcoat in the tussle between Young France and the classical orthodoxy of the day. But we who stand at a distance see now that that historic fight was no more determinative than all the others have been. Sarah Bernhardt’s Phèdre is as popular and familiar, to say the least, as her Doña Sol—and both appear equally antiquated and conventional beside her La Tosca. In 1830 it seemed to the young men of Paris that to secure a hearing for Hugo it was necessary to defile the grave of Racine, so to speak. Their busts stand side by side now in the dramatic pantheon, and one is as old-fashioned—and again as new-fashioned—as the other. So I say that the critics who are alive to the boldness and force of the new do no service to their time by blinding their eyes to the beauties of the old. I remember differing from almost all my newspaper friends a while ago, in being glad to see “The Hunchback” revived. Concede that it did seem awkward and forced and bloodless to a degree in our eyes—as bad a play, qua play, as one can think of. Still it had its quaint and interesting side; it served as the vehicle for Miss Rehan’s Julia, in many respects a unique creation it gave us curious hints of what our fathers and grandfathers thought the stage should be. Why should the critics throw stones at it, and scold the manager for daring to show it to us? We did not need them to tell us that Knowles was not Shakespeare or a Pinero or an Ibsen. We had as much right to go and see the old play, unmolested and protected from critical reproach, as we have to go now to visit the Old Masters at Burlington House, and to my mind the one show was quite as instructive and interesting as the other. What is true of past work stands true of contemporary productions. It has become possible to associate the exquisite conventionality of Alma-Tadema, the robust realism of Stanhope Forbes, the poetic romanticism of John S. Swan, and the masterly eccentricity of Sargent under a common seal of Academic approval in our own day. It is not too much to ask that the dramatic critics should display at least as much sense of the catholicity of art as the Royal Academy. HAROLD FREDERIC. ___
The Daily Chronicle (31 January, 1894 - p.3) MR. BUCHANAN AND OTHER PEOPLE. THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE. SIR,—In a perfervid speech addressed to the Playgoers’ Club, Mr. A. W. Pinero besought us all to remember that Praise is absolutely essential to the artist, and that, without critical appreciation, there is little hope of great work in the drama or any other branch of polite literature. The warning was seasonable, especially in its application to the self-constituted body of amateur critics who listened to it, and it was the more remarkable, because it was uttered by a man who, less than most of us, has had to complain of misappreciation. But read in black print, in cool daylight, by a person unwarmed by after-dinner wine, Mr. Pinero’s speech appears somewhat too suggestive, from point to point, of the magic word “Mesopotamia.” It is quite true, I take leave to ask, that contemporary Praise is an incentive to great or even good work? Is it quite true that, without critical appreciation, the artist must languish and die? Sweet as are the uses of fulsome flattery, precious as are the virtues of log-rolling, I fancy that many fine talents have been ruined by the lollipop, and that many other fine talents have been saved from decay by antiseptics. What “porridge had John Keats”? What praise was vouchsafed to Wordsworth, Shelley, and Coleridge? Was not the young Byron lashed into articulate poetry by contemporary scorn, and did not Robert Browning fight, up to the last few years of his life, against the rancour of the public press, which christened him (see the Saturday Review, passim) “a literary auctioneer”? Of course there is another side to the picture. It is doubtful if the young Dickens, unless popular clamour had encouraged him, would have persisted in those audacious flights of humour which made him world-famous. But in nine cases out of ten, contemporary praise implies a sacrifice on the writer’s part to contemporary prejudices—implies, I mean, that the writer has followed the public bent, and not his own. I think that more than one pet of the parterres (Mr. R. L. Stevenson, for example) might have done fine work in literature but for the constant assurance of the critics that such fine work was being done. I think that there is no more certain hallmark of intellectual mediocrity than the approval of the mob of gentlemen who criticise, and puff, with ease. And I think, on the whole, that writers for the public press, as well as the public generally, betray their incompetence less completely in what they habitually condemn than in what they habitually praise. If there is in the history of literature any great and commanding writer whose career was accompanied by the “Te Deums” of the cliques and the Hosannahs of Grub-street, I should like to hear of him. The master-spirits of Literature have been the martyrs of Criticism. Jan. 30. ROBERT BUCHANAN. [Mr. Buchanan will not misunderstand us, we feel sure, if we once more append to a peculiarly characteristic letter from him the remark that we are compelled to dissociate ourselves from his statements about other people, especially, in this case, about the editors of the Spectator and the Athenæum.—ED. D.C.] ___
The Freeman’s Journal (Dublin) (1 February, 1894 - p.4) In a very spirited letter to the Daily Chronicle on “Men and Books and Critics,” Mr Robert Buchanan gives incidentally a very interesting insight to the methods of criticism on the highest charactered London literary papers. The sarcasm in Pendennis on the subject is keen enough. But fiction falls far short of fact if Mr Buchanan’s statements belong to the latter category. He announces how when he himself was the target of universal attack, he published a book anonymously— ‘It was received with a chorus of eulogy. The editor of the Athenæum, who would have cut off his right hand rather than praise any work of mine, was the first to give it a welcome. The editor of the Spectator, who had begun to eye me askance because I was sceptical about the Trinity, based on my anonymous poem a whole theory of American humour. “Would that in England we had humourists who could write as well!” wrote another critic, adding: “but with Thackeray our last writer of humour left us.” Just previous to the publication an even more significant circumstance occurred. My publisher sent early proof-sheets to a great London daily, and received immediately afterwards a communication from the office, stating that a lengthy and eulogistic review was in type, but that the “chief” required to be satisfied on one point, whether the poem was “by Lowell”? My publisher refused to answer the question, and the review was never printed. On another occasion I wrote for a London manager a prologue in verse for a great Shakesperean production. At my request the manager concealed my name, and it was whispered about that the prologue was by Mr Swinburne. The newspapers praised the trifle immoderately, and one zealous critic, who loved Mr Swinburne and hated me, described it as a masterpiece, full of the “large utterance of the early gods”—frankly confessing afterwards that he would have torn the thing to shreds if he had guessed the authorship.’ ___
The Sun (New York) 4 February, 1894 - p.1) Robert Buchanan, who is perhaps the best-abused and best-praised literary man in England, has been setting traps for the critics, and has now taken revenge by exposing relentlessly some of their weaknesses. A characteristic letter from him this week says: ___
New-York Daily Tribune (18 February, 1894 - p.14) The bumptious Robert Buchanan’s latest dictum is that in nine cases out of ten contemporary praise implies a sacrifice on the writer’s part to contemporary prejudices. “I think,” he adds, “that more than one pet of the parterres (Mr. R. L. Stevenson, for example) might have done fine work in literature but for the constant assurance of the critics that such fine work was being done. I think that there is no more certain hallmark of intellectual mediocrity than the approval of the mob of gentlemen who criticise and puff with ease.” __________
The Star (15 May, 1894 - p.2) BUCHANAN v. SCOTT. The Authors of “A Society Butterfly” TO THE EDITOR OF “THE STAR.” SIR,—May I ask you to correct the statement made in the Pall Mall Gazette that my address to the audience at the Opera Comique on Friday evening contained an attack on the private character and habits of Mr. Clement Scott? Of this critic’s private character I know nothing, save by hearsay; of his habits in private life I know even less. I judge him entirely on his public record as a critic, and by acts which are publicly notorious. If he were a very saint at the fireside, and as good to his own flesh and blood as even Heine, that would not alter my opinion concerning his conduct in his profession. In denouncing him from the public stage, I adopted the only course open to an author who had been made the victim of a most cowardly newspaper libel. On a former occasion, when I had been insulted in the columns of the Daily Telegraph, the EDITOR SUPPRESSED MY PROTEST, and when I endeavored to communicate the fact to the other newspapers I was met by the reply that “the proper channel for explanation was the newspaper in which the criticism had appeared.” This is the old familiar device of editors, who are either too interested or too timid to expose each other. But my words, having been spoken, have now been cabled through the length and breadth of the country, its colonies and America. I have accused Mr. Clement Scott of malignant and spiteful falsehood. I have described him as a man “without conscience, without veracity, and without honor.” I have said that he abuses actresses who have fallen out of his good graces, and that, presuming on his influence as a critic, he hawks his own adaptations of French plays from theatre to theatre. In reply to all this, he expresses his opinion (through a contemporary) that it is “only my fun,” and that we shall presently be “AS GOOD FRIENDS AS EVER.” I expected neither more nor less from Mr. Clement Scott. His only reply to my denunciations should be in the law courts of this country. If he refuses to meet me there on his own initiative he proves himself to be, not only what I have described him, but a coward into the bargain; and no shuffling on his part. no flabby protestations of good humor, no feeble assumptions of indifference, will save him from public derision and contempt. My charges were not merely general, but specific. I am ready and willing to substantiate them, and to prove his personal malice by absolute evidence, and now, for the last time, I ask him to give me the opportunity. Should he still refuse I will make that opportunity a necessity.—Yours, &c., ROBERT BUCHANAN. _____
SIR,—Anything quite so ludicrous as the attitude of saintly magnanimity taken up by Mr. Clement Scott to the representative of a contemporary has not come under my notice for a long time. From the stage of a West-end theatre, and in the presence of a crowded audience, Mr. Buchanan insulted Mr. Scott in terms which would be resented by a crossing-sweeper. That, says Mr. Scott, is Mr. Buchanan’s fun. I endorsed the insult in the clearest words I could find. That was my fun, I suppose; and when the house cheered the reiterated insult to the echo, and gave Mrs. Langtry a ringing recall, in compensation of the outrage of the previous evening, that was their way of being funny! Well, Mr. Scott has as good a right to his conception of humor as I have to mine, let these conceptions differ as widely as they may. Mr. Scott says that he and Mr. Buchanan are old friends, and that they will continue to be friends in spite of what happened on Friday night. That, of course, is no affair of mine, but I may remark en passant that Mr. Scott and myself are perfect strangers, that I long ago formed my opinion of his public character, and have, on several occasions, DECLINED TO MAKE HIS ACQUAINTANCE, so that he is under no sort of obligation to extend his supernatural forgiveness to me. Like John Westlock, I decline to be forgiven, though Mr. Scott is free to imitate Mr. Pecksniff if he chooses, and to continue to be magnanimous. SUCH LUDICROUS SOLEMNITY I cannot understand. An American gentleman explained his incredulity regarding a rather tough story by the simple confession that he was “a bit of a liar himself!” I have been a dramatic critic, and exercised my critical acumen for the advantage of a leading London daily of enormous circulation before I had ever crossed the threshold of a stage door, and when I didn’t know a batten from a bunch-light. An experience like that naturally appeals to the overmastering sense of humor which Mr. Scott so much admires in me, and I find it difficult to retain the gaiety proper to a good augur. I find it more difficult every year, for every year pieces slated by the Press are praised by the public, and vice versa. Again I say that the Press can neither make nor mar a dramatic entertainment. They can make either success or failure a little more rapid, but no piece succeeds or fails by any other verdict than that of the great public.—Yours, &c., HENRY MURRAY. [Note: Much more on this particular conflict between Robert Buchanan and Clement Scott is available in the ‘A Society Butterfly’ pages in the Plays section of the site.] _____
The Westminster Budget (29 June, 1894 - p.14) THE MORAL EFFECT OF THE DRAMA. A QUESTION of perennial interest—for its discussion began more than 2,000 years ago, and still continues—was raised afresh the other day by Mr. Hall Caine in a speech at the dinner of the Royal Theatrical Fund. Mr. Hall Caine. Mr. Hall Caine’s contribution to the discussion, which has called forth the letters subjoined, was as follows:— As to the moral effect of the drama upon the world—a well-known Nonconformist preacher, who was an enemy of the stage, once said that he had noticed that the young people of his congregation who went most to the theatre and wept most at the imaginative woes of the afflicted heroine in melodrama were precisely those who were hardest to move to pity and sympathy when a case of actual distress came their way in real life. I can only say this (said Mr. Caine), it is exactly the opposite of my own experience. My experience has been that the tears that are shed in the theatre do not exhaust the fount of tears; that the exercise of the muscles of the soul which the drama requires is good for the growth of the soul; and that if you want to test the moral effects of the drama on the world at large you cannot do better than look at the people who come closest to it; and that it is impossible to find a class more tender of heart, more easily moved to pity, more ready to respond to the cry of trouble than actors and actresses themselves. At all events, I should like to see the point discussed by ministers of religion generally. It is the very pith and marrow of a question of great importance to the drama and to society. The following letters show that any general agreement on the question is as far off as ever. One aspect of it, however, seems to have been overlooked. If the moral drama has the effect of exhausting the moral feelings, then does it not follow that the immoral drama must similarly exhaust the immoral feelings? And if that be so, “the playhouse,” even with its “objectionable features,” should, rightly understood, be the minister’s valuable ally.
Mr. Robert Buchanan. To the EDITOR of THE WESTMINSTER BUDGET.
[The other contributions, from the Rev. Hugh Price Hughes, Rev. Dr. Thain Davidson and Rev. F. B. Meyer, as well as the views of Herbert Spencer on the matter, can be read if you click the picture below.] |
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The Daily Chronicle (4 August, 1894 - p.5) THE LESSON OF ANARCHY. THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE. SIR,—Amid the chorus of righteous indignation which fills Society and the newspapers, whenever the red hand of the modern Anarchist selects a victim, not a voice has been yet heard to proclaim the true inwardness of Anarchy, and its chief social lesson. Yet to some of us, at least, the lesson is very clear. So long as the State adopts the hideous doctrine of retributive justice, proclaimed by the late Mr. Justice Stephen and other lawyers as a necessary factor in jurisprudence, so long will the State be at the mercy of its enemies, and so long will our criminal annals record a shameful war à outrance between Society and individuals. ROBERT BUCHANAN. [Note: _____
The Daily Chronicle (1 September, 1894 - p.3) THE REWARDS OF LITERATURE THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE. SIR,—I hardly know which to admire most, Count Tolstoy’s mistaken enthusiasm in refusing to accept money for his works, or your own editorial acumen in recognising the advantages of gratuitous contributions to literature. It is not long since that Barabbas and Co., the well-known publishers, to whom I complained of the small profits to be derived from serious books, informed me that, in their opinion, the labour of genius should be its own reward, and that the real guerdon of writing should be the delight in doing good. Et tu quoque, Brute, one of us, a labourer in the vineyard, is echoing that old cry! Has it not occurred to you, however, that the action of Count Tolstoy is calculated to be of benefit to one class of men only—the middlemen, the accredited thieves and robbers, who deal in authors’ brains? If an author could give his work direct to the public, without the intervention of Barabbas and Co., there might be some satisfaction in the deed; but I fail to see why any author who is not a madman should labour to put money into the pockets of men who have been justly described as “the enemies of literature.” There is far more sanity in Mr. Ruskin’s contention that cheap books tend to lower the quality of literature, and that the only true reader is he who is prepared to pay, and pay liberally, for his pleasure. ROBERT BUCHANAN. _____
THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE. SIR,—In Thursday’s leader on Tolstoy you speak of his refusal to “write for money,” and uphold his practice against that of Ruskin and other teachers who accept payment for their work. J. CARTMEL-ROBINSON. ___
The Leeds Mercury (1 September, 1894) MR. ROBERT BUCHANAN ON The “Chronicle” publishes a letter from Mr. Robert Buchanan, who says—I have been frequently informed that publishers are entitled to large pecuniary gains because they risk their capital in a very precarious business. In my experience this is altogether untrue. As a rule, a publisher risks nothing. He gives the very lowest price possible for a certain marketable commodity, and he is utterly indifferent to its quality as long as it sells. The Society of Authors has done the State good service by issuing statistics of the bare-faced robberies daily and hourly practised by Barrabas and his kin, and though I personally decline to have my private transactions regulated by any society or Trades Union whatever, I am fully alive to the importance of the facts so issued. Publishers, like lawyers, are thieves within the shadow of the law. They toil not, neither do they spin, yet Solomon, in his glory, was not attired like one of them. ___
The Leeds Times (8 September, 1894 -p.4) BUCHANAN ON PUBLISHERS. Mr. Robert Buchanan, author and dramatist, strikes me as a most unreasonable man. He has done well out of literature. He has a civil list pension of £200, and at the time of his bankruptcy he admitted that he drove a brougham because riding was easier than walking. Now, in a letter to the Daily Chronicle, he denounces publishers as “thieves within the shadow of the law,” in league with the critics. Somehow Mr. Buchanan has spent the greater part of his life in bringing, not peace, but a double-edged sword; which, as the Reviewers never fail to remind him, is a dangerous weapon to fight with. __________
The Daily Chronicle (3 October, 1894 - p.3) MR. ROBERT BUCHANAN ONCE MORE. “Rachel Dene.” A Tale of the Deepdale Mills. By Robert Buchanan. In two volumes. When Mr. Buchanan abandoned verse for prose the world lost a poet of some distinction, and gained a very ordinary novelist. And the worst of it is that Mr. Buchanan’s fiction becomes more and more ordinary. Here is a book without a new idea, without an original situation, without a felicitously-told incident. It is no exaggeration to say that there are at least a thousand novelists in England who could have written “Rachel Dene.” ___
The Daily Chronicle (10 October, 1894 - p.3) “RACHEL DENE.” THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE. SIR,—My attention has been drawn to a review in your columns of a story called “Rachel Dene,” in which review is made the extraordinary statement that at some indefinite period of other I “abandoned” the writing of poetry for that of novel-writing. Seeing that some of my recent poetical works have been chronicled in your columns, and that one of them provoked a controversy which raged under your editorial direction for many weeks, I am at a loss to know whether the statement in question is inspired by malice or by mere stupidity. The stupidity I always take for granted when I read newspaper criticisms; the malice, in most instances, is equally obvious. But I think the manufacturers of cheap criticism for the Christian masses should be corrected when they travel out of their own region of uninstructed impudence into that of lying and spiteful imputation. ROBERT BUCHANAN. [Our reviewer was not aware of the circumstances under which “Rachel Dene” which Mr. Buchanan admits to be unworthy of him, was produced.—ED. D.C.] ___
St. James’s Gazette (10 October, 1894 - p.13) MR. ROBERT BUCHANAN, who, in a court which it would be unkind to name, recently described the literary profession as a gambling one, is contemplating a new gamble in the form of a non-political weekly journal. By way of keeping his pen in practice he takes the editor of the Chronicle to task for having slashed at him on account of “Rachel Dene;” a story of which he seems now to be ashamed, and which has been re-issued in spite of his entreaties to the publishers. Here are some gems from the Buchanan treasury of recrimination:— I am at a loss to know whether the statement in question is inspired by malice or by mere stupidity. The stupidity I always take for granted when I read newspaper criticisms; the malice, in most instances, is equally obvious. But I think the manufacturers of cheap criticism for the Christian masses should be corrected when they travel out of their own region of uninstructed impudence into that of lying and spiteful imputation. There is no critic—cheap or otherwise—who could out do this. [Note: For more information about Buchanan’s problems with Chatto and Windus regarding Rachel Dene see the relevant page in the Letters section of this site.] __________
The Daily Chronicle (12 October, 1894 - p.3) MR. ROBERT BUCHANAN AND THE PARNELLITES. Mr. Buchanan hotly denied in our columns lately that he had abandoned poetry. We find he has contributed a poem to the Dublin Weekly Independent, anent the Parnell Anniversary Celebration last Sunday. He introduces it by the following note:— When the noble Leader of Irish Freedom was first offered up to the false gods of moral and religious superstition; when the first foul blow was struck by the accredited High Priest, to be followed by the countless stabs of the Journalists in Absolution, one English voice alone arose in protestation. That voice was mine. What I feared has come to pass; so it is not unfitting that I, an alien, but a lover of Irish freedom, should place this poor wreath of verse on the great Irishman’s grave.—R. B. Here are a few characteristic verses from the poem:— The dim Light grows, the Dawn is nigh! Ev’n as a Lion fixing eyes What one of these shall put it on? Jackals and cowards, mourn elsewhere! Who slew this Man? The cruel Foe In order that there may be no difficulty in identifying the persons alluded to in the foregoing verses, Mr. Buchanan names them as follows in a footnote:—(1) Sexton, (2) Healy, (3) O’Brien, (4) Gladstone. ___
The Daily Chronicle (13 October, 1894 - p.3) MR. ROBERT BUCHANAN AND THE PARNELLITES. THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE. SIR,—The poem from which you quote this morning, and which you say has just appeared in the Dublin Weekly Independent, was published in the London Echo immediately after the death of Parnell. I am in no way responsible for its reappearance, though I am glad that it is thought worthy of being connected with the great Leader’s anniversary. The numbered notes, giving the names of individuals alluded to in the poem, are now added for the first time, and not by me; they are quite beside the mark, and I must particularly disclaim having made any reference to Mr. O’Brien, for whom I have a deep and sincere respect. Moreover, the poem is printed incorrectly—e.g., line 5 of your quotation should read “Full at his suffering heart they smote,” instead of being docked of the two syllables italicised. ROBERT BUCHANAN. __________
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