PEARSON'S WEEKLY.
Week Ending Feb. 20, 1892

WORKERS AND THEIR WORK—No. XXV

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MR. ROBERT BUCHANAN, POET, NOVELIST, AND DRAMATIST.

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     MR. ROBERT BUCHANAN may very fairly be described as one of the literary giants of the present day. There are few men whose works have been so popular, and who have excited so large an amount of interest both in the wide public who attend his plays, and among the critics who waste much time discussing his theories and opinions.
     Mr. Buchanan is a typical Englishman in appearance and manner. He is of medium height, and of stout build, and wears a carefully trimmed beard. He was not born, as some fancy, in Scotland, but at Cavarswell (sic), in Staffordshire, in the August of 1841. His father, whose name was also Robert, was first a Socialist missionary, under Robert Owen, who gave away the novelist's mother.
     He spent nearly all his earlier years in Scotland, being educated at the High School and University of Glasgow. There young Buchanan was cradled in a Socialist centre, and there is little doubt that much that took place in his after career may be traced to the influences which guided his youth. At a very early age, indeed, he showed special gifts for poetry, spending nearly all his spare time in writing.
     There is no profession in the world in which it is so difficult to make a name as poetry, and, during those first years of struggle and privation, the future poet and dramatist showed indomitable pluck in surmounting all obstacles. The story of his coming to London when about eighteen years of age, with his friend and fellow-poet, David Gray, is a sad one, and should prove a warning to provincial lads who long to make a mark in London literary life.
     It was amid the dusky and dreary darkness of Glasgow, in the year 1860, that David Gray and Robert Buchanan awoke to the fact that to live they must work. They had made each other's acquaintance as boys, and had spent some years in dreaming and thinking together. One day Gray suddenly said to his companion:
     "Bob, I am off to London."
     "Have you funds?" asked Robert.
     "Enough for one; not enough for two," was the response. "If you can get the money anyhow, we will go together."
     The two young men had arranged to meet at the railway station at Glasgow, but, by mistake, they each went to different stations, and so travelled to London at the same time, but by different roads. Oddly enough, they did not meet for some months in the great city, and poor Gray suffered the stings of poverty and privation. One morning, very early, as young Buchanan was walking through one of the parks, he met his old friend, who, although in the first stages of rapid consumption, had been obliged to spend the night in the open air.
     Through the kindness of Monkton Milnes, Gray was sent back to his native land to die. Robert Buchanan deserves respectful praise for his fidelity to his suffering friend, and in the touching verses entitled "Poet Andrew," he has embalmed his memory in lines full of tender heartbreak worthy of a lasting place in the literature of hopeless and baffled endeavour.
     Robert Buchanan was more fortunate, and found employment on the staff of THE ATHENÆUM and THE LITERARY GAZETTE, being a fellow-worker on the latter with Mr. John Morley.
     Probably none know how hard Mr. Buchanan worked during these early years but himself. Being one of the very few Englishmen of that day who knew the Danish language, he went to Schleswig Holstein and Denmark towards the end of the war as correspondent of THE MORNING STAR. It was on his return from thence that he published his translations of Danish ballads, and wrote freely on Scandinavian literature, an unknown world to the bookmen of that day.
     Doubtless in early days he often sighed for such leisure as would enable him to pursue his favourite themes, for to a poet nothing is more dear than the writing of poetry, but the butcher and the baker must be paid, and if the verses will not do it, the poet may think himself fortunate if he can write plays and novels which will.
     Mr. Buchanan now says himself that he would give worlds to recover some of his early journalistic work, but the magazines and papers in which it appeared have floated out into the space of time, and, as he often did not sign his writings, much that he has done has become lost not only to the world, but to himself. As you sit with the successful writer in his large, comfortable study in one of the most charming houses of South Hampstead, it is hard to realise that (sic) the powerful, genial-looking man before you went through some five and twenty years ago.
     The man who set himself to make

          "The busy life of London musical,
           And phrase in modern scene the troubled lives
           Of dwellers in the sunless lanes and streets"

has not lost his belief in the goodness of human nature. Like so many other poets, Robert Buchanan has learnt in suffering what he taught in verse. The years of struggle, instead of hardening his nature, have only made his intelligence more purely sympathetic.
     "Now, Mr. Buchanan, what do you think of literature as a profession for the coming young man or woman?"
     Sharp and clear came the answer. "No one ought to make literature their profession in life; none work so hard or are paid so comparatively little as writers. A great doctor or famous barrister, nay, even the doctor in average good practice or a fourth-rate Q.C., makes more than the cleverest novelist or dramatist. Look at Dickens, who I suppose may be said to have been one of the best paid literary men of the Victorian era—he worked himself to death, but amassed no real fortune."
     "Then, Mr. Buchanan, what would you do with a lad or girl determined to go in for a career of writing, and of no other?"
     "I should send them a trip round the world; in fact, I should act with them as I should with a lovesick boy who had set his affections on an obviously impossible and unattainable person. Let those who wish to write, do so in their spare time. Let the profession provide the bread, and literature the butter, if you will.
     "To begin with, I must tell you that I do not quite believe in the kind of literary beginner who seeks advice. If a man has it in him to write, he will put pen to paper, however adverse the circumstances round him may be to his doing so. The woman or man who has real literary faculty does not say, 'I wish to be an authoress, I should like to become a poet.' She is an authoress, he is a poet. Although I myself never asked anyone for their opinion as to the advisability of pursuing a literary career, Barry Cornwall wrote to me when I was still quite a boy, and strongly advised my not coming to London. I need hardly add that I disregarded his advice, and came, but I always follow my old friend's example when young people come to me."
     "And yet you yourself must have done all kinds of literary work in your day."
     "I love all forms of work. I have acted, I have lectured, I have run two London theatres. As poet, novelist, dramatist, and critic, I have certainly had my hands pretty full."
     "And your plays, Mr. Buchanan? I suppose that your greatest successes have been made as a dramatist."
     "All my plays have not taken. It is so difficult to say what makes a play popular. So much depends on the interpreters—the actors and actresses. And even if they are all that could be desired, it is impossible to say what will catch the public taste."
     "And when you write a play, do you deliberately try and think out a plot, or do the ideas come of themselves?"
     "Whenever I get an idea of any kind, I always jot it down, in order that it may come into use in its proper time. My best work has been done quickly. If I begin writing a play, and find that I stick in the middle, I put the manuscript aside. I have written a comedy within a week, but that is all a question of mood or power of work, and the week meant work all night as well as all day. I have, in my working days, sat up a whole fortnight with only a few winks of sleep. I prefer poetical plays to all others, but good, vigorous prose is worthy for anything. I try to make my characters, whether they be dukes or costermongers, speak naturally. That I hold to be the highest aim."
     "Then you do not believe in stage conventionalism?"
     "Certainly not—that is to say, I do not believe that elderly gentlemen keep ancient retainers especially to listen to dream speeches, or that hungry signalmen leave their breakfast to make mathematical calculations of how much per second they are paid for pulling points; the consequence is I am told I write down to the pit and gallery."
     "And do you think that it will ever be possible to write a thoroughly unconventional play?"
     "Well, I think all the nonsense about the elevation of the stage is a miserable business. Going to the theatre is merely a more or less harmless form of amusement, like the popular novel or Punch and Judy show. People go to the theatre to have a good time, not to be shown the way in which they should live. Although people think I delight in the melodrama, I am convinced that the public taste lies in the direction of plenty of humour, and my most popular hits have been made in the creation of comedy characters."
     Although Mr. Buchanan talks in this fashion, he has few equals in adapting a story for the stage. His first play was written and produced at Sadler's Wells as far back as '62, and was called "The Witch-finder." Among his most popular plays have been "Alone in London," which brought him in more money than any other two of his plays put together; "Sophia," founded on TOM JONES, which ran for five hundred nights at the Vaudeville; "A Man's Shadow," "Dr. Cupid," "Sweet Nancy," "Clarissa," and, in conjunction with Mr. George R. Sims, "The English Rose," which met with such success at the Adelphi.
     "I believe, Mr. Buchanan, that you are strongly opposed to the censor in any form?"
     "Yes; I do not think that books make good or bad people. I hold with Milton, that strong natures require strong food, and that mere knowledge of evil does not make a man or woman bad. But it is impossible, while the kind of restraint which now exists is placed upon writers and dramatists, to speak the truth as one knows it. We cannot represent truthfully a subject on the stage. The Lord Chancellor licenses almost any music hall dancing or singing, but a strong, earnest, story with a moral, is tabooed."
     Mr. Buchanan's first novel was THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD, a powerfully-written story, which, indeed, excited great attention, and which was shortly followed by GOD AND THE MAN. His other novels include THE MOMENT AFTER, MATT, and THE MARTYRDOM OF MADELEINE. Few modern works of fiction can compare with GOD AND THE MAN, which will make its author famous for many a long day to come.
     His services to literature as a poet were recognised by the State many years ago, when Mr. Gladstone placed him on the Civil List for a pension of £100 per year. Mr. Buchanan resided for some time in France, and it was in Normandy and Brittany that he got the materials for THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD. He also spent a year in America, where his plays are very popular. His first book of poems, UNDERTONES, was published when he was about twenty-one years of age. This was followed by IDYLLS OF INVERBURN and LONDON POEMS. Many other volumes of verse have followed.
     "All my books except poetry," he said, "are almost word for word in my brain before I sit down to write. As a boy, I used to sit and wait for inspiration. Now I know the turn of every phrase, and so it comes clear and red-hot from my pen's point."
     Mr. Buchanan has no fixed mode of work, but he generally writes just after breakfast. He declares that he finds play-writing a great relief, and says that had he not taken it up he would have gone clean off his head, for, until he turned to things dramatic, he took too ardent an interest in the topics of the day, religious, social, and literary. Sometimes, though not often, Mr. Buchanan will talk about his father, the Socialist working tailor. Once, when he was on a steamer at Oban, talking to a steward about the American War, he said:
     "Where on earth did you get all your information from?"
     "From your father, sir, and the articles he wrote in the newspapers," was the very unexpected reply.
     Robert Buchanan has earnest sincerity visible in every line of his work. This advocate of chivalry is essentially optimistic, as he himself has said, in some noble lines:

          "I sing of hope, that all the lost may hear,
           I sing of light, that all may feel its ray,
           I sing of heaven, that no one man may fear,
           I sing of God, that some, perchance, may pray."

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