LETTERS TO THE PRESS - 5

Ibsen (1)

Robert Buchanan’s essay, ‘The Modern Young Man As Critic’, was published in the March, 1889 issue of the Universal Review (reprinted in The Coming Terror). It contained the following sentence: “In Boston he has measured Shakespeare and Dickens, and found the giants wanting; in France he has talked the argot of L’Assommoir over the grave of Hugo; even in free Scandinavia he has discovered a Zola with a stuttering style and two wooden legs, and made a fetish of Ibsen; while here in England he threatens Turner the painter, and has practically (as he thinks) demolished the gospel of poetical sentiment.”

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The Pall Mall Gazette (11 June, 1889 - Issue 7560)

IS IBSEN “A ZOLA WITH A WOODEN LEG”?

To the EDITOR of the PALL MALL GAZETTE.

     SIR,—On reading my remarks upon Ibsen in the Universal Review, Mr. William Archer was good enough to write me a letter expressing his astonishment at the view I had taken of the Scandinavian dramatist, and asking me if I had really read his works? It is not my habit to discuss writings with which I have only a superficial acquaintance, and those who have read my books are aware that I was among the first to introduce certain leading Scandinavian writers, Björnson, for example, to English readers. Up to last night, however, I had never seen one of Ibsen’s plays acted, and certainly nothing could be more admirable, more thoroughgoing, and more completely representative of the dramatist’s conception, than the performance of “A Doll’s House” at the Novelty Theatre. The result was most interesting, and to me, at least, satisfactory, in so far as I had never been so fully convinced of the truth of my own criticism, and the crude unintelligence of Ibsen’s dramatic method. In “A Doll’s House,” we are presented to half a dozen equally disagreeable characters who are supposed to represent average human nature; to a sensual and worldly-minded husband, an idiotic wife, a maundering physician and friend of the family, a gloomy and tiresome cashier, who has been “cashiered,” and to an unpleasant widow lady who has been relieved by death of an unpleasant husband. Now, we must not look for sympathy in such characters, since the dramatist scoffs at the ordinary “pathetic fallacy,” but one does look for consistency,—to discover that nearly every one of these individuals is a moral chameleon. The husband changes first, from a masterful man of business into a male shrew, from a male shrew into a bully and a coward; after posing as highminded and lofty-souled the physician touches the fringes of sensuous degradation; the gloomy cashier disappears in a cloud of hazy sentiment; and as for the heroine, the Doll herself, she is transformed from a chattering young hussy of criminal proclivities into a sort of Ibsen in petticoats, who describes in philosophical language her disenchantment in awakening to the fact that she has lived “for eight years with a strange man.” It would far exceed the space your courtesy allows me to describe the endless contradictions and perversities, the monstrous and impossible characterization, of this arid attempt at social realism. It merely demonstrates the fact that the foolishest of all possible teachers is you professed moralist, and, per contra, that the old realism of sentiment and sympathy is, so far as art and the drama are concerned, quite certain to outlive the new heresy of cynicism.
     The admirers of Ibsen praise him especially for his indication of women as rational beings, entitled to live their own lives, to regulate their own souls. A close study of his works, however, would soon convert a believer in the Eternal Feminine into an ardent and retrograde advocate for the Suppression of Women, since, according to the Scandinavian, to become a thinking being and a free agent is, so far as women are concerned, to be as rectangular and pragmatic, as dingy and unsympathetic as the dramatist himself. In a word, Ibsen is a very small writer, with very large pretensions, much as I previously described him—a Zola with a wooden leg, stumping the north in the interests of quasi-scientific realism. Neither his cleverness nor his audacity can save him from the doom of all who endeavour to cloak bad Art with superficial moralizing and shabby second-hand doctrine. If, as Mr. William Archer predicts, the modern drama is drifting in this direction, i.e., to a sort of disagreeable Moral Essay, with a tiresome subject and a feeble vocabulary, we had better shut our Shakespeare and turn the theatre into a Little Bethel of cheap social science. Nothing is so common as dull doctrine, nothing is so rare as insight, as imagination. When the dullards seek to found a school for Ibsen, and leave Björnsterne Björnson, the creator of Audhild and Sigurd, out in the cold of his native mountains, it merely means that the dramatist and the actor are not longer in favour, and that the parsons of pessimism are turning life into a prurient sermon.
     17, Cavendish-place, W.                                ROBERT BUCHANAN.

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The Pall Mall Gazette (13 June, 1889 - Issue 7562)

IS MR. BUCHANAN A CRITIC WITH A WOODEN HEAD?

BY G. BERNARD SHAW.

I MAKE no apology for the unmannerliness of the question with which I head this article. I wish to put Mr. Buchanan at his ease with me by falling frankly into his vein, and foregoing all the rebukeful advantage which I might derive by adopting a severely becoming tone. We have the most entire contempt for one another’s opinions; and it would be a pity to blur that sharply-defined position by any affectation of the mere politeness of controversy. Besides, I have no intention of arguing with Mr. Buchanan: I merely wish to attack him in order to discredit his verdict on Ibsen’s great play. It happens that the dramatic critics of London have had this month the great chance that comes once in the lifetime of every critic—the chance that Wagner, not so long ago, offered to the musical critics. Most of them have missed it most miserably. To them, in their disgrace, comes Mr. Buchanan, and voluntarily concentrates all that is blind and puerile in their notices into one intense half-column, which he signs with his own name, taking all their sin upon his shoulders without even the assurance that with his stripes they shall be healed. That is Mr. Buchanan’s situation: now for mine.
     I represent that section of the community which is almost cut off from the enjoyment of dramatic art because theatrical managers refuse to provide entertainment for it, and insist on providing entertainment for Mr. Buchanan. Mr. Buchanan’s plays bore me; and his views do not interest me in the least: I had grown out of them before I was born. His description of “A Doll’s House” as a play in which we are presented with a maundering physician, a cashier who has been cashiered (mark the pun!), the unpleasant widow of an unpleasant husband, &c., &c., is exactly the sort of work a Texan cowboy produces when he turns “dramatic editor,” and begins by being smart at the expense of Shakespere. Mr. Buchanan has not the Texan felicity of epigram; but he has the Texan inadequacy. Now, since I have always let Mr. Buchanan alone, and refrained from writing to the papers to spoil his sport by declaring, whenever a play after his own heart was produced, that to me the whole performance was an idle twaddling, in which mere spite against unconventional conduct was held up as morality, in which the most serious problems of life and conduct were either glozed or shirked, in which marriage was treated as the end instead of the beginning of life, in which the underlying assumptions were known by every one in the theatre to be hypocrisies, and in which the whole action was devitalized by a mechanical stagecraft. I say, since I have held my peace under all this provocation, why cannot Mr. Buchanan do the same when, for once in a way, I get a chance of seeing a play which suits me? I saw the “Doll’s House” on the first night. I went again on Tuesday; I shall go again if I can get another night free before the piece is withdrawn. I find people enjoying themselves there who have been practically driven from the other theatres by the intolerable emptiness of the ordinary performances. I miss the conventional lies of the stage there; and I do not droop, wither, and protest I am being poisoned for want of them. I escape from foolish Egyptian magician’s tricks of “delineating character”, and see a vital truth searched out and held up in a light intense enough to dispel all the mists and shadows that obscure it in actual life. I see people silent, attentive, thoughtful, startled—struck to the heart, some of them. I see an unprecedented dramatic progression, in which a domestic story which is word for word the true story of half our households, first deepens to tragedy, and then sublimates and vanishes, leaving its two figures no longer the Helmer and Nora of the story, but the types of Man and Woman at the point where they now stand, she revealing the new Will in her before which must yield all institutions hostile to it—his harem, his nursery, his lust and superstition, in their established forms of home duties, family ties, and chivalry: he dimly beginning to see that in giving this irresistible Will its way he is not losing her, since he never really possessed her, but standing at last to win her for the first time. And then I come home to my Pall Mall Gazette, and find Mr. Buchanan hovering skittishly over the Ibsen ocean, like the sprite in Mr. Watts’s picture in the New Gallery, dropping his plummet in to the full fathom of his three foot string, and then assuring us that it is not his habit to discuss writings with which he has only a superficial acquaintance. I can in turn assure Mr. Buchanan that his acquaintance with Ibsen is just as deep as himself—no more and no less; and how deep that is may be ascertained from his published works and plays, and especially from those letters of his to the press which contain his direct contributions to the social problems of the age.
     In conclusion, let me say that I do not blame Mr. Buchanan for fighting Ibsen as Krogstad in “The Doll’s House,” declares that he will fight for his position at the bank—“fight as if for life itself.” There are many people who have never admitted any merit in Wagner’s music; but they cannot stand Donizeti’s operas after it, for all that. There are more people who laugh at Mr. Whistler’s “impressions” and rage at M. Monet’s; but when they go back to their pet pictures they find, to their dismay, that there is no air in the landscapes and no light—except studio light—on the figures. The London playgoer has now seen a play of Ibsen’s acted. I do not claim that he likes it—perhaps he is only pretending—but let him just try a Buchanan play after it!

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The Pall Mall Gazette (14 June, 1889 - Issue 7563)

THE “TOP HAT” DRAMATIC HERESY.

BY MR. ROBERT BUCHANAN.

     I have not the pleasure of knowing Mr. G. Bernard Shaw, but I have been much interested in his insinuation that I have a Wooden Head. It appears that my plays “bore” him, and that he is not bored by “A Doll’s House,” or any other of the rival dramas of Ibsen. He is surely wrong, however, in suggesting that there is no via media between the Scandanavian Mount Pisgah and the dire Abyss, Buchanan? There are whole regions of European literature, whole tracts of English drama, where even a callow critic like Mr. Shaw might find decent amusement—highways and byways which might even content a person who likes to see sluttish young hussies and priggish husbands suddenly and miraculously transformed into Typical Men and Women, asserting (in capital letters) the freedom of the New Will. Unfortunately, the conventional dramatist has generally essayed to be logical; he has never tried to turn his Miss Hoydens into Antigones or Hypatias, never presumed to assert that his Box and Cox represented an “unprecedented dramatic progression.” Perhaps I err, however, in my last illustration. An Ibsenite might readily find in the most familiar of farces a sublime and “vital truth, searched out and held up in a light strong enough to dispel all the mists and shades that obscure it in actual life.” While Box and Cox represent respectively (in capital letters) the forces of Individuality or Will-Freedom and Altruism or Moral Slavery, Mrs. Bouncer embodies that cosmic Law and Order which subsist at the heart of Nature. Every word of this great and misunderstood piece is a sublime Lesson. The realism is colossal, down to the very fryingpan; and I have seen audiences thrilled to the core “silent, attentive, thoughtful, startled,” by the grand ethical teaching of that last Reconciliation. An Ibsenite might suggest, possibly, that “Box and Cox” is well constructed and (woefullest of heresies) is entertaining. A closer examination will show us, nevertheless, that it is, like Ibsen, “an Ocean”—one which, I can assure Mr. G. Bernard Shaw, in his own words, is “just as deep as himself—neither more nor less.”
     I am sorry that the poor critics, whose collective sins I am presumed to take on my shoulders, are nearly all so “blind and puerile” as to decline to be edified by Ibsen at any price. In their benighted “disgrace” they have been accustomed to think that the theatre must amuse as well as edify, and that, at any rate, the dramatist must paint consistent human beings. They cannot quite see why a young woman of criminal instincts should suddenly turn into a grandiose moral philosopher, and while preaching the gospel of the New Will, forsake her little children in order to polish up the stained lenses of her mean little soul. They have been accustomed to see real life upon the stage, even though that life has been disfigured by such barbarisms as personal honour, motherly affection, “homely duties, family ties, and chivalry.” They cannot admit that the story of a hoydenish female forger is “word for word the true story of half our households.” They do not think that it is possible that the dreadful young person of “A Doll’s House” and her equally dreadful husband can be “the types of Man and Woman at the point where they now stand.”
     In all art which appeals to a small minority of jaded appetites, there is nothing like audacity. A German painter of some ability is at the present moment creating great enthusiasm by painting Holy Families in modern costume, and though he has not yet achieved the sublimity of representing St. Joseph in a top hat, his disciples hope the top hat is to come. Meantime, they escape from “the foolish Egyptian’s tricks of delineating character,” and “miss the conventional lies” of the lost Painters, who pictured Joseph and Madonna in their habits as they lived. Ibsen’s “originality” is exactly on a level with the “modern costume” heresy. He has nothing whatever to tell us that is new, he cannot even amuse us; but he amazes the callow critic by representing human beings crowned with the “top hat” of perky modern “individuality,” or the New Will.
     I am well content, at Mr. Shaw’s request, to leave Ibsen the dramatist with Monet the colourist. (Wagner and Mr. Whistler are quite beside the question.) I still survive, after beholding M. Monet’s “impression” of a Scottish sea, and I hope to live on, after being introduced to Ibsen’s miraculous Miss Hoyden. It just happens that I do know the sea, and that I have associated closely with human beings. I never found Water, from any point of view, resembling a sticky, conglomerate lump of those agate-stones which are so dear to schoolboys, and all the human beings I have ever met have been governed by the laws of their own temperaments, their own intelligences. The human chameleon, when he does exist, never develops into a totally different species—except on the stage, to illustrate a feeble dramatist’s dingy social theories. So pace Mr. G. Bernard Shaw, I shall “fight for my position at the bank” of Common Sense and Human Nature, and remain quite content, when producing “Buchanan plays,” to take as my guides the poor, conventional dramatists, from Shakspeare down to Tom Robertson.
     I have omitted to say that I cannot for the life of me understand to what plays Mr. G. Bernard Shaw alludes as being altogether “after my own heart,”—plays in which “mere spite against unconventionality is upheld as morality,” and in which “marriage is treated as the end instead of the beginning of life.” Is this a bold rap at Shakespeare himself, or merely a passing snap at Mr. Pinero? One play very much after my own heart is “Othello,” in which marriage is certainly not treated as life’s beginning; another is “Antony and Cleopatra,” though the “serpent of old Nile” never stultifies herself by any ethical appeal to the New Will!

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TO-DAY’S TITTLE TATTLE.

...

     It is magnificent, but is it argument, this cut-and-thrust which is going on between two correspondents in another column? Why, apart from the insatiable desire to fix a nickname on the other side, does Mr. Buchanan talk about the “Top Hat” dramatic heresy? Why not the Dancing Pump, or the Boot Jack, or the Billingsgate. He suggests that Ibsen is like an artist who gives a meretricious originality to his St. Joseph by painting him in a top-hat. Mr. Buchanan himself, and Shakspeare, and nous autres, apparently differ by resembling “the lost painters, who pictured Joseph and Madonna in their habits as they lived.”
     But is not this eking out bad criticism of the drama by worse criticism of art? Who are these “lost artists?” Not the old masters, who did anything but paint their Holy Families in proper archæological costume. They put their own dress on to ancient characters. But, in any case, what on earth has this to do with Ibsen? It is modern characters that he is clothing, and he clothes them in a modern dress. It is Mr. Buchanan who wants 1889 to strut in powder costume.

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The Penny Illustrated Paper (22 June, 1889 - p.3)

A Very Pretty Controversy

has been going on in the Pall Mall Gazette between Mr. Robert Buchanan and Mr. George Bernard Shaw over Ibsen’s now famous play “The Doll’s House.” Mr. Buchanan calls Ibsen “a Zola with a wooden leg,” meaning presumably to imply that he has all Zola’s realism, without his vitality. Mr. Shaw smartly retorts that Mr. Buchanan is “a critic with a wooden head”—and so the battle rages.

Mr. Robert Buchanan

we all know. The son of a well-known Socialist lecturer, he was born in Warwickshire forty-eight years ago. He first made his name by calling Swinburne and Rossetti indecent, for which he afterwards apologised. His own novels are occasionally very suggestive, particularly “The Shadow of the Sword” and “Foxglove Manor”; but some of his poetry is strong and beautiful. Mr. Buchanan makes many enemies, and, at this moment, “Edmund” of the World, and “Henry” at Truth are united in attacking him; but, as he says, he always makes it up in the end.

Mr. George Bernard Shaw

is less known to the multitude: but he has many admirers in the world of art and letters. Mr. Shaw has written two novels, equally repulsive but equally striking, “An Unsocial Socialist” and “Cashel Byron’s Profession.” In this last the hero is a prize-fighter who is made to marry a lady of fortune. Mr. Shaw is tall and slim, he always dresses in a snuff-coloured suit and refuses to bend in any way to social conventionalities. By some considered the ablest man in the ranks of English Socialism—William Morris is their greatest genius—his propagandist lectures startle one every moment with brilliant paradox. He is known also as the art-critic of the World and the musical critic of the Star.

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The Era (22 June, 1889 - Issue 2648)

A WORD FOR ENGLISH DRAMATISTS.
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     In a letter addressed to a daily contemporary, complaining of certain remarks which he considers unjust, Mr Robert Buchanan says:—
     “I wish to add a few words regarding my ‘curious’ criticism on Ibsen—a criticism drawn from me by those votaries of the Scandinavian who consider it necessary in eulogising a foreign author to insult and vilify every living English dramatist and almost every English critic. I should explain that my remarks referred entirely to Ibsen’s ‘social dramas,’ and mainly to A Doll’s House, Peer Gynt, and the Julian tragedies belong to Ibsen’s earlier manner, and are certainly full of imagination, though I personally should rank them far lower than any of the masterpieces of Björnson. Now, I never accused Ibsen of trying to destroy ‘institutions.’ More than most men, I have been attacked for attacking ‘institutions.’ I said that his characters were moral chameleons, and that his art was simply that of shocking natural expectation and belying experience. If Shakespeare in his tragedy of Romeo and Juliet were suddenly to turn Juliet into an oracular Miss Blimber, or in his tragedy of Othello should make Desdemona just before her strangulation lecture Othello on the moral-philosophical disadvantages of marrying a person of colour, we should find Shakespeare doing on occasion what the egregious Ibsen does almost invariably. Such feats of psychological legerdemain may please a small section of the public; but why, because those persons like to turn the theatre into a museum of moral monstrosities, should every writer who has tried to give innocent amusement to his countrymen be vilified? Why should I, for example, because I think the Doll’s House is a literary crudity, be attacked for upholding ‘institutions,’ taunted with a belief in the ‘conventionalities’ of personal honour, honest humour, and natural affection? I never attacked Ibsen for his morality; I merely said that his psychology was false, and that his characters were devoid of all rational consistency.
     “One of my critics, whom I assume for his own sake to be a very young man indeed, has abused me roundly for describing Ibsen as ‘ a Zola with a wooden leg.’ Another writer avers that A Doll’s House is the only play which has not ‘bored’ him within the last few years, and adds (what is more to the point) that the nightly ‘storm of discussion’ over Ibsen’s ‘ethics’ is a proof of the dramatist’s genius and originality. Now, as a matter of fact, noting is so easy as to outrage common sense, and so arouse discussion and opposition; nothing is so difficult as to please, to refine, and to charm. A playgoer witnessing the great masterpieces of dramatic literature does not become polemical; he carries away with him the pathos, the solemnity, and the calm of life itself. He has been to a theatre, not to a debating room; he has been enjoying a work of art, not a feverish and irritating platform controversy. It has ever been the aim of the great dramatists, from Sophocles downwards, to magnify the divine meaning of life, to depict that truth which is beautiful and spiritualising. The mission of prosaists like Ibsen is the mission of dullards like Zola—to shock and to revolt us with the meannesses of life, and to assume that those meannesses most abound where religion and morality are most powerful. My callow critic is not merely disgusted with the modern dramatist; he describes the average home as a ‘harem,’ the domestic affections of average men and women as stupid and conventional, the religious instincts of average humanity as instincts ‘he grew out of before he was born.’ The same jaded and foolish creature who sees in Ibsen’s Nora a living woman representing Woman in the abstract, would see in the banalities of ‘La Terre,’ if produced upon the stage, a glorious lesson convincing us of the monkeydom of humanity. We want no such lesson, for we have had it of late years ad nauseam. We have not yet arrived at the point of believing that every institution is vile merely because it is an ‘institution.’ The collective sentiment of Humanity has formulated a religion of altruism, not of egoism; it has felt from generation to generation that only by our faithfulness to those who love and depend upon us, our forbearance to those whom we think weak and helpless, our tenderness and compassion, our supreme pity for others, can we save ourselves. In the eyes of rational beings not infected with the poison of the egoistic gospel, the woman who would save her own soul without first seeking to save those of her little children is, under any circumstances, a monster of selfishness and self-conceit; the man who thinks redemption comes through mere self-culture is a man ignorant of the world and its lessons; the dramatist who represents society as an aggregate of moral ‘prigs’ and self-conscious feminine ‘cads,’ catching from the common sunlight all the colours of the chameleon, is not merely unfamiliar with human nature, but ignorant of the first elements of that dramatic art which still keeps Shakespeare a triumphant certainty.
     “I ask you further, Sir, if it is quite fair to grant to a stranger a courteous and a lenient hearing, and to insult upon every occasion possible writers of our own who have sought unpretentiously to entertain the public. I have no hesitation in saying that A Doll’s House, if it had been produced by any living English dramatist, would never have been acted to the end, that it would have terminated with the prurient self-exposure of Dr. Rank. I applaud the spirit which listens attentively to a new play by whomsoever written, but I think it is high time that our own dramatists should receive the same courtesy, and not be wilfully outraged because they have the misfortune to be English. Any attempt at innovation, any slight inconsistency, by an English dramatist, is received in such a way on its first production as to paralyse the actors and distract the general attention. The most trivial excuse is enough for ribald interference; and it so happens that the very class or claque which disturbs the serenity of ordinary first performances is the identical class or claque which, recruited by a few quidnuncs and marshalled by Mr William Archer, flocked to pay homage to Hendrik Ibsen. For my own part, I shall only be too happy if the recent local enthusiasm for ‘ideas’ in the drama results in a more generous, a more respectful, and a more discriminative attitude on the part of English ‘first night’ audiences. I will assume the sincerity of those gentlemen of the pit who constitute themselves the judges of plays and players; I will assume that they wish us poor native dramatists to improve; and I think, if they did their spiriting more gently, we might try. Doubtless, on the modern stage there is a great deal of convention, though it is well to remember that some of our favourite classics, such as “The Vicar of Wakefield,” were pronounced by contemporary critics very conventional. But under the present system of first performances, managers regard first-nighters as enemies, not as friends; as adversaries who come to scoff, not as sympathisers who seek to be entertained. And, after all, why not be patient, since in the long run the public will have its way? A Doll’s House empties every theatre in Scandinavia, and awakens curiosity and discussion for a week or two in London, while Sophia, which ‘bores’ these quidnuncs who treat all home manufactures with contempt, is tolerated by unprejudiced audiences for 500 nights.”

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The Pall Mall Gazette (17 July, 1889 - Issue 7591)

THE ORIGINAL OF IBSEN’S “DOLL’S HOUSE.”

To the EDITOR of the PALL MALL GAZETTE.

     DEAR SIR,—Perhaps it would interest the readers of your journal to know something about the origin of Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House.” Your representative who interviewed Miss Janet Achurch puts to her this question:—“Tell me, what is your reading of what Nora will do afterwards?” Well, Ibsen has, up to the present, left it to every one to form their own idea as to the real conclusion of the play; but some day we shall have his sequel-drama on the stage both in Norway and in London. But to the point. Ibsen took the idea from a Norwegian lady-friend who left her husband for the same motives that made Nora part from Helmer. She asked Ibsen to write the play and to build it up from the lines of her own life. She lives at present in a small town in Denmark, still hoping to be able to return to her husband! When,—or if,—she does so, we shall have the interesting sequel to this realistic drama; which, as you see, was not written to open up a social and moral question, but simply to tell a true story of life. Whether Ibsen considered her action right or wrong I cannot say, nor do I think two people would hold exactly similar opinions on that point. I regret to read in your paper Mr. Buchanan’s weak and lamentable criticism of Ibsen’s works in general. Ibsen is evidently too deep and broad a mind for inexperienced Buchanan, who still professes to believe in mankind, either because he wishes to be odd in this age of pardonable unbelief or because he really has no power of observation. I would recommend Mr. Buchanan to re-read pages 289 and 290 of Moore’s “Confessions of a Young Man.” George Ohnet has said, “Ibsen is the greatest dramatist of the century.” Unfortunately he writes in a language scarcely known, and the very best translations cannot do his thoughts and expressions justice. Had he been English born, his fame would have been such as to make Mr. Buchanan think twice before he would stake his own local reputation by jealous and incorrect criticism of a great superior.—Yours truly,
     Sweden, July 14.                                                                  L.

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George Moore

The Era (9 November, 1889 - Issue 2668)

ONE OF OUR CRITICS.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE ERA.

     Sir,—The Bank Holiday Young Man, with whom I dealt lately in the pages of the Universal Review, is still upon the war path, and in the current number of the Fortnightly Review, a magazine hitherto, I believe, of some literary pretensions, the woeful Young Man belabours to the best of his ability the whole tribe of modern dramatists. I pass over the savage banalities and uninstructed brutalities of a writer who cannot even describe correctly the plots of the plays he has seen, or spell the names of the theatres in which he has seen them, who in every line of his lucubration reveals his total ignorance of the works he is attacking; and I turn, with your permission, to a purely personal reminiscence, which may be of some value in helping us to estimate the honesty of the young man in question. Just after the production of Sophia at the Vaudeville, I was introduced by Mr Thorne to a gentleman who had begged for introduction, and who, while profusely complimenting me on a play which, he said, was “one of the finest literary plays of modern times,” begged my permission to have it translated for the Parisian stage. The gentleman’s name was unknown to me, but on inquiry I found it to be that of an ambitious dramatist who had submitted a play in “blank verse” to Mr Irving, who had made overtures of “collaboration” to Mr H. A. Jones, and who had repeatedly offered his literary services to Mr Thorne—in every case without success, so that he had turned in despair to the manufacture of garbage in the shape of cheap Holywell-street fiction. This gentleman’s name, if I remember rightly, was George Moore; and it is Mr George Moore who, in the pages of the Fortnightly Review, reviles Mr Irving, insults Mr Jones, contemns your humble servant, and publishes in the “pidgeon-English” of Cockney Heathendom his abuse of the contemporary drama. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? The indecent self-exposure of an unfortunate young man rankling with disappointment and determined to become notorious at any price may be passed over in pity, but who in the future will take care of an editor who makes his magazine the receptacle of literary garbage, manufactured by a person so illiterate or so frenzied with despair as to be unable even to recollect his facts, scan his sentences, spell his proper (or improper) names, or correct his “proofs?”                    I am, &c.,
     Nov. 6th, 1889.                                                              ROBERT BUCHANAN.

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The Era (23 November, 1889 - Issue 2670)

MR. “GEORGE MOORE” AGAIN.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE ERA.

     Sir,—A fortnight ago I sent to you a few remarks on “Mr George Moore,” to which that individual has at last ventured to reply, not in your reputable columns, but in those of a malodorous contemporary conducted by a Siamese twin brother. I should pass over this reply in silence, since it completely establishes, on the culprit’s own admission, that he is, as I said, a haunter of the stage-door and a hawker of unconsidered trifles in the shape of unacted dramas, that he has “solicited” Mr Irving, has offered Mr Jones his “collaboration,” has said flattering things to the author of Sophia, has even persecuted with some precious “scenario” poor Mr Beerbohm-Tree; that, in short, he hangs upon the heels of every author and manager, and, when driven away, rushes to vent his venom on those who will have none of him, who know his very name to be a synonym for indecency, truculence, sycophancy, and, above all, utter incapacity. The ruffianly abuse of this person should have won no further retort from me, but for the fact that with his last tissue of ferocious falsehoods he has cunningly interwoven an actual fact, viz., that I have written him a private letter, leaving his readers to infer, of course, that this same letter was of a flattering character. I find it necessary, therefore, to explain why I wrote to Mr George Moore at all.
     Some months ago Mr Moore took part in a movement on behalf of Mr Vizetelly, the publisher, and drew up a memorial for his release from prison, which memorial I and many others refused to sign. A report was then circulated by Mr Moore that, although I had strongly expressed my sympathy with Mr Vizetelly, I was despicable enough to refuse my signature to the memorial, simply because it was drawn up by a personal opponent. I thereupon wrote to Mr Moore explaining that my objection to sign had nothing to do with any real or imaginary hostility to himself, but solely with the terms of his document, which would commit any subscriber to the opinion that certain French novels were “masterpieces” of literature. To this letter Mr Moore at once replied, answering, observe, the man to whom he had previously been compelled to make abject apology in a court of law, and of whom he has since written, “were he a man of letters whom we had credited with some esteem (sic) we would have to pity his sad plight, but he is only the Aunt Sally of literature.” I quote this communication in full, verbatim et liberatim.
     “Sir,—I had sorely wanted, but I shrank from writing, to thank you for your pamphlet. Your letter received this morning, however, allows me to tell you how much I appreciate your courage, and at a time when all literary England is sunk in shameful and cowardly silence. I shall never forget that you were the only man of letters who dared to speak a word in defence of his calling.
     “It may, perhaps, interest you to hear that I was asked to write an article on the subject for the Fortnightly. My article was set up and passed by the editor for press, but Mr Chapman put his foot down at the last moment. I took my article to the New Review, and Mr Grove said he would be delighted to print it if he could get the other side of the question from Mr Stead. Mr Stead declined to write, and the article was returned to me. Seeing clearly that no English magazine would print it (!) I took it to the New York Herald. It was accepted, and will appear on Sunday week. I hope you will look out for it.
     “Thanking you again for your brave pamphlet, and also for your letter, believe me, sir, most sincerely yours,                                            “GEORGE MOORE
     “8, King’s Bench Walk, Temple, Thursday Night.”
     I fancy this epistle requires little comment. Taking advantage of a communication written to assure even him that my motives in refusing to sign his memorial were not basely personal, Mr Moore gushes and fawns over the man who condescends to write to him, while at that very moment, with those very words on his lips, he is preparing new slanders, devising new brutalities and personalities.
     Having touched on this subject, let me briefly allude to another. A little while ago there appeared, in a certain nameless publication, a so-called “Interview with Robert Buchanan,” containing, among other passages, the following:—
     “That Mr Robert Buchanan is a scholar few would care to dispute, though many have denied him the right to be called a genius. For my own part I think he is both, and I think more people would think with me if they read his books instead of the reviews upon them * * * It is quite certain that if all critics were to be hounded down for years as Mr Buchanan has been, there would soon be an end to vigorous thought and vigorous English * * * Mr Buchanan is one of our great poets * * * And what about Sophia? That I think one of the most charming plays of the century.”
     These words, let me explain, these words and many others even more flattering, were written by Mr “Augustus M. Moore,” Mr George Moore’s brother, at a time when Mr George Moore had informed me that Sophia was “the most literary play of modern times,” and had humbly begged to have it “adapted” for the French stage. Since that period, for reasons well known to these gentlemen, I have been the subject of constant personal assault from both, and Sophia particularly, which each individual went out of his way to praise, has been singled out for special contumely!
     I should decline to touch upon these matters save for a sense of their importance to literary men. I wish the reading public to understand the character of two individuals calling themselves “journalists” and “critics,” but who live by treachery and by slander, by abuse of all who decline to accept their offers of friendship or “collaboration,” or to purchase the praise of the journals of ordure which they offer for public sale. These Siamese twins of the literary gutter are prepared, for a modest fee, to say anything, to praise or abuse anything or anybody, to become anything. I could buy the one with a few glasses of strong drink, which would flow into the common circulation and so appease the other; I could have purchased the other, body and soul, by befriending him at the stage door, and thus his brother in blood and in banality would have been purchased too. Arcades ambo, let them remain faithful to each other. The wonder is, that no sense of shame, no desire for security, enables them to come to a common understanding, so that every word they utter, either severally or together, is instantly self-stultified. The pity is, that the ways of the Yahoo are still possible, even in the lowest depths of journalism.
                                      I am, &c.,                  ROBERT BUCHANAN.
     Queen’s Hotel, Brighton, Nov. 19th.

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The Ipswich Journal (30 November, 1889 - Issue 9212)

LONDON LETTER.
(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

                                                                                    LONDON, Friday.

...

     There is a very pretty little quarrel going on between Mr. George Moore and his old enemy, Mr. Robert Buchanan. Mr. Moore let out at Mr. Buchanan in the Fortnightly Review, Mr. Buchanan replied in the Era, the former retaliated in his brother’s paper, the Hawk, in which he courteously referred to his opponent as a “literary Aunt Sally,” and the latter, not to be behindhand, followed up with a second article in the Era, which, I understand, the author of “A Mummer’s Wife,” considers grossly libellous. The scene of the next act of this little comedy will, therefore, probably be the Law Courts, where an unappreciative audience may possibly take a serious view of this amusing play. This sort of literary squabble is unworthy of men with any claim to common sense; it has already done an incalculable amount of harm to French journalism, and if once introduced this side of the Channel the result will be the same.

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Theodora

The Pall Mall Gazette (26 November, 1889 - Issue 7704)

     I am told that Mr. Robert Buchanan accomplished one of the quickest poetic feats on record when he took “Theodora” in hand the other day. A prose translation of the play was handed to him, and he proceeded to turn it into blank verse in the short space of five days. I shall be curious to see the result of this lightning literary performance.

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The Pall Mall Gazette (28 November, 1889 - Issue 7706)

CORRESPONDENCE.

“A LIGHTNING LITERARY PERFORMANCE.”

To the EDITOR of the PALL MALL GAZETTE.

     SIR,—The feat of poetical legerdemain to which you allude in to-day’s “Stage and Song” is not quite accurately described. In the first place, the “prose translation” of which you speak was so incomplete that I had to put it entirely aside for M. Sardou’s French original, which, in its turn, I found so disconnected and loose in its dialogue as to require complete alteration for the English stage. I therefore threw the greater part of the play into verse, simply because, although I know it is difficult to get verse spoken correctly, verse is, even when somewhat incorrectly spoken, tenser and more vigorous than diffuse prose. Nor is my work in any sense a mere translation; large portions of the dialogue are original, and the scenes and situations are changed throughout.
     I undertook this task at Miss Hawthorn’s urgent request, and completed it inside eight days—to which I may add eight nights, for I slept little—and when the work was done I was completely worn out. It was done rapidly but with the utmost care. Of course I have not escaped, since the play has achieved a success, the good old charge of having “Bowdlerized” my original! In point of fact I have “Bowdlerized” nothing, though I have rendered one of the situations less sickeningly horrible, and have somewhat accentuated the piteousness of Theodora’s fatal passion. However, the play will be seen in London very soon, and then your critic can judge what I have or have not done.—I am, &c.,
      Nov. 26.                                                                                  ROBERT BUCHANAN.

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William Archer (2)

The Pall Mall Gazette (4 December, 1889 - Issue 7711)

A CORRECTION.

To the EDITOR of the PALL MALL GAZETTE.

     SIR,—In this month’s Contemporary Review Mr. Robert Buchanan accuses me of having suggested that the character of Fleance was introduced into “Macbeth” simply because there happened to be a good boy-actor in Shakspeare’s company. “This is the sort of incapacity,” Mr. Buchanan continues, “which exists for the humiliation of modern dramatists. One such illustration of fatuous imperception is worth a hundred assertions which can only be contradicted.” Certainly such a blunder would have shown gross carelessness; for not only is Fleance an essential thread in he tragic web, but he has scarcely anything to say—seventeen words in all. The blunder, however, is Mr. Buchanan’s not mine. I never made any such suggestion with regard to Fleance; but in Murray’s Magazine for February, 1889 (page 183) I suggested that the conversation between Lady Macduff and her son (Act IV., scene 2) may have been introduced for the sake of a child actor. This conjecture appears to me fairly probable; at any rate, I don’t think it is what Mr. Buchanan would call “phenomenally fatuous.”
     I have no wish to enter into a dispute on matters of opinion with such a cuttle-fish controversialist as Mr. Robert Buchanan. least of all am I inclined to wrangle with him over the respective merits of his plays and my criticism. But, as he has been guilty of a palpable error of fact, it may perhaps be worth while to make this correction.—I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
     December 1.                                             WILLIAM ARCHER.

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The Pall Mall Gazette (11 January, 1890 - Issue 7743)

MR. ARCHER AND MR. BUCHANAN.

To the EDITOR of the PALL MALL GAZETTE.

     SIR,—I grieve to find that Mr. William Archer has spent an unhappy Christmas. The season of peace and good will has been darkened for him by the fact that I have not hitherto condescended to notice a certain precious “explanation” or “correction.” It may console him, however, to learn that I write these lines in a sick room, where I have seen no newspapers, not even that Sun which Mr. Archer seems to think must be as familiar to me as the sun in heaven. In answer to my general charge against him as a mean and spiteful critic, Mr. Archer whimpers that I have been unjust to him in one particular. When he suggested that a certain child’s part in “Macbeth” was “written in” to suit a child actor, he was not alluding to the son of Banquo, but to the son of Macduff. This is the precious “explanation” I am taken to task for having “overlooked.” Surely if anything can be more “fatuous” than the suggestion that Fleance was a fortuitous introduction, it is the suggestion that the “son of Macduff” was an afterthought, written in for a child actor, so that the piteous murder scene in Macduff’s castle, so pregnant with solemn issues to Macbeth and all concerned was “wrote accidental”! Is it worth while even for a small critic to puzzle common sense and outrage patience, especially at Christmastide, with such a clownish correction; to wriggle himself from one horn of the dilemma, only to impale himself so ludicrously upon the other?—I am, &c.,
     17, Cavendish-place, W., Jan. 5.                                                           ROBERT BUCHANAN.

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The Pall Mall Gazette (14 January, 1890 - Issue 7745)

CORRESPONDENCE.

MR. ARCHER AND MR. BUCHANAN.

To the EDITOR of the PALL MALL GAZETTE.

     SIR,—I did not “answer” Mr. Robert Buchanan’s “general charge against me as a mean and spiteful critic.” Such “charges,” from such a quarter, are not answered by men of literary self-respect. I simply contradicted a mis-statement of fact, which, uncontradicted, might have done me harm. Mr. Buchanan has now, after his own graceful fashion, admitted his error. The question of fact is at an end; questions of opinion I decline to discuss with Mr. Buchanan.—Your obedient servant,
     January 11.                                                                                  WILLIAM ARCHER.

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Marjorie

The Era (25 January, 1890 - Issue 2679)

A CORRECTION.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE ERA.

     Sir,—I observe that it is stated, in several criticisms of the new opera Marjorie, that I am responsible for all the “new matter” in it, and particularly for the third act. This is not the case. It is true that I was requested to revise the libretto, and that I did so to the best of my ability; but only a very small portion of my work was utilised, and the third act more particularly was constructed and arranged by another hand. I do not say this to deprecate connection with a revision which was admirably and successfully done, though not by me, but to give honour where honour is due. The slight opposition provoked on the first night by one episode was caused by a small minority of not altogether disinterested spectators. The opera, as a whole, was received with generous enthusiasm.
                     I am, &c.,         ROBERT BUCHANAN.

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