ROBERT WILLIAMS BUCHANAN (1841 - 1901)

LETTERS TO THE PRESS (19)

The Charlatan

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,
     Station Hotel, Inverness, Jan. 21.                    STUART C. CUMBERLAND.

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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.
—I am, &c.,
                   ROBERT BUCHANAN.
     Prince of Wales’s Club, Coventry-street, W., Jan. 23.

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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?
     On Tuesday, December 19, 1893, at St. George’s Hall, I produced a four-act play entitled “An Unpaid Debt,” in which I treated the subject of hypnotism, and in which exactly the same scene occurred—that of a woman being brought from one room to another by the power of hypnotism. I wrote my play three years ago, and it has been read and criticised by Mr. Kendal, Mr. F. H. Macklin, Mr. John Lart, and Miss Geneviève Ward, and is now in the hands of Mr. Willard in America. I merely mention these facts, as some of the dramatic critics have described Mr. Buchanan’s play as being strikingly original.—Yours truly,
     14, Mortimer-crescent, N.W., Jan. 23.                    CHARLES H. DICKINSON.

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Mr. Buchanan and Other People

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.
     I do not contend for a moment that Criticism is invariably misguided, venal, disingenuous, and untrustworthy. It is merely, when all is said and done, the record of personal impressions. Jeffrey, who honestly despised Wordsworth, was among the first to appreciate Dickens. Darwin, who was “mad sick” by Shakespeare, cordially enjoyed the great Dumas. But no author will advance one step in his profession unless he is prepared to receive praise and blame with equal composure. No author who has anything to say will advance one foot-length through the applause of the quidnuncs. He must reckon, not only with contempt and insult, but with wilful misconstruction. He must be prepared to see Marsyas crowned in the market-place, while Apollo languishes in the casual ward. He must realise that Reputation is a rocket, and Fame a nightmare, and that his only business is to go patiently on his own way, speak the truth that is in him, and shame the Printer’s Devil.
     My own experience as an author has been a curious, and not an uninstructive, one. For many years I was, as is well known, a favourite object of critical attack. At last, at the time when the opposition was at its highest, I determined to put the honesty of criticism to the test, by publishing a new book anonymously. “St. Abe and his Seven Wives” 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 Shakespearean 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.
     Nor are these amenities confined to public print. They pursue an author into private life. It was once my good or evil fortune to be hugely admired by Mr. R. H. Hutton, of the Spectator. He praised me in and out of season, up to the point where I differed from him on matters of opinion; and we were acquainted personally. My last meeting with him was in Lambeth Palace, at the dinner-table of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The good man, after scowling at me for hours, professed not to know me, and since that day he has never lost an opportunity of pillorying me in his excellent newspaper.
     These are facts, not theories, and I could cite others ad infinitum. But what do they prove? Only that blood is ticker than water, and that editors and critics are merely human. Carlyle had sleepless nights because John Stuart Mill “cut” him. Under good and evil report I have never had such sleepless nights. Of course I am pleased when the world speaks well of me. Of course I am pained when the world speaks ill of me. But the man  who follows literature must cultivate indifference to both praise and blame. Personally, I have no quarrel with Criticism qua Criticism. I have been well praised and well abused; in both cases, no doubt, deservedly. So far as the drama is concerned, and it was to the drama that Mr. Pinero particularly referred, I have no complaint to make. As a rule, dramatic criticism is generous and kindly—far more generous and kindly, far less open to malignant influences, than the criticism of general literature. But the man who cannot work out his ideas without the encouragement of contemporary eulogy sacrifices his won independent spirit to the ephemeral Spirit of the Hour.—I am, &c.,

     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.]

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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.’

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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:
     “When the opposition to me was at its highest I determined to put the honesty of criticism to the test by publishing a new book anonymously. ‘St. Abe and His Seven Wives’ was received with a chorus of eulogy. The editor of the Athenæum, who would have cut off his right hand rather than praise a work of mine, was the first to give it welcome. The editor of the Spectator, who had begun to eye me askance because I was skeptical about the Trinity, based on my anonymous poem the whole theory of American humor. Just previous to the publication an even more significant circumstance occurred. The publisher sent proof sheets to a great London daily, and received immediately a communication from the office, saying that a lengthy, eulogistic review was in type, but the chief required to be satisfied on the point whether the poem was by Lowell. The 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 Shakespearean production. The manager concealed my name, and it was whispered that the prologue was by Swinburne. The newspapers praised the trifle immoderately. One zealous critic, who loved Swinburne and hated me, described it as a masterpiece, frankly confessing afterward that he would have torn the thing to shreds if he had guessed the authorship.”
     The editors of the Spectator and Athenæum are yet to be heard from.

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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.”

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The Moral Effect of the Drama

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.
     SIR,—The question asked by Mr. Hall Caine, and which you ask me to assist in answering, appears to me essentially trivial and purposeless, and worthy of serious attention only from the sort of people who interest themselves in conundrums and double acrostics. Who doubts for a moment that good literature and good drama tend to make men both better and happier, at least for the time being? But who can say how great or how little is the outcome of this good influence in actual conduct? Unfortunately, Art is like Religion, and appears to be more a luxury than a serious business, which is saying, in other words, that both Religion and Art are only small parts of life. Many strong and good men do very well without either, just as most wise men do very well without newspapers. The tendency of writers like Mr. Caine is to exaggerate the importance of their own vocation, and to assume that work done primarily for their own benefit and amusement is a department of practical philanthropy. The reductio ad absurdum comes when we are asked to leave the settlement of any artistic question to the “ministers of religion,” and when a novelist seriously quotes the platitudes of a “Nonconformist clergyman.” No true artist under the sun cares twopence what the ministers of religion think about him or his work. A man who strains at the gnat of the drama, and yet pretends to have swallowed the whole camel of theology, can have no opinion worth hearing on any really human subject. The drama exists because it amuses, not because it does good; and Mr. Hall Caine exists as an author for the same reason. If, in addition to amusement there comes a little edification, so much the better; but let it always be understood that the edification is secondary, not primary. There will soon be no Art at all, and less Drama, if authors, instead of sticking to their profession, which is to write books which will be read or plays which will be seen, delude themselves into the belief that they are social benefactors. Cant is excusable in the professors of Religion, since no religion yet invented has been able to thrive thoroughly without it. It is inexcusable in the professors of Literature, which is practically independent of both religion and ethics, though by privilege it embraces both.
                                                                                                                                     ROBERT BUCHANAN.

[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.]

The Lesson of Anarchy

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.
     The present trial of Caserio Santo for the murder of President Carnot is a case in point. One sentiment only is awakened by this unfortunate man—a sentiment of mingled loathing, hate, and vengeance. Throughout France rings the cry, Écrasez l’infâme, and England echoes it. Everywhere the pious leader-writer demands “blood for blood.” before long the demand will be gratified, and Santo will gain the apotheosis he so ardently desires—that of the Guillotine.
     In other words, the vendetta will be perpetuated, the war between Society and Anarchy will be carried on.
     Ravachol, a savage criminal, was sacrificed to the public demand for retribution—“an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life.” Almost instantly, he was avenged by Vaillant. Vaillant, in his turn, was sacrificed, and Society breathed again—for a moment. Then Santo, thirsting for vengeance and reckless of his own life, carried the vendetta right into the heart of the State.
     And this Vendetta, begun so terribly, will continue until Society and the State recognise one truth—that human life is sacred, and that retributive justice is merely retributive murder. Let the State set the example of respect for life, let it abolish the hideous farce of capital punishment, and the Anarchist will be ashamed, if not disarmed. Until then, he will become, in the eyes of all who think with him, a hero and a martyr—as Caserio Santo is, to many of his class, at the present moment.
     There is only one justification for capital punishment—its necessity. It has never yet been shown, however, and it never can be shown, that it protects Society in the slightest degree; while it is made clear, daily and hourly, that it reduces the State to the same moral level as the individual assassin.
     This, I contend, is the true lesson of Anarchy, which he that runs may read.—I am, &c.

                                                                                                                           ROBERT BUCHANAN.
     Aug. 3.

[Note:
Wikipedia supplies information on the following Anarchists mentioned in Buchanan’s letter: Caserio Santo, Ravachol and Vaillant.

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The Rewards of Literature

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.
     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, so long as it sells. A leading London publisher once told me that he calculated to make cent. per cent. with the author on every book he published; and in nine cases out of ten, especially when the author is a new man or an ignoramus, the publisher makes infinitely more. The Society of Authors has done the State good service by issuing statistics of the barefaced robberies daily and hourly practised by Barabbas 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 all his glory was not attired like one of them. And it is these gentry, these go-betweens, these pickers and choosers of better men’s brains, these middlemen who coquet with the critics and form “rings” with the libraries, whom you and Count Tolstoy propose to bless. I prefer to think, with Tom Campbell, the poet, who said in answer to a disputant who was denouncing the great Napoleon, “After all, he did one good deed—he hanged a publisher!”
     Of course there are exceptions; I know two or three. There are occasions, too, on which an author is too many for his natural enemy. But the publisher, as a rule, cares as much about literature or the public good as the compositor or the “printer’s devil.” I have my doubts, indeed, whether publishers are wanted at all—whether an author should not rightly be his own publisher, as Mr. Ruskin has been. Personally I long to try the experiment. The other day, at Trouville, I had the honour to do business with the one really practical poet whom I have ever encountered—M. Jehan Sarrazin, author of “Marée Montante.” He combined the occupation of poet-publisher with that of the itinerant vendor of olives, and he carried in his wallet, as he wandered from café to café, the fruit which he sold by measure and his own books which he sold at 2f. 50c. a copy. He looked supremely free and happy. He had left his publishing headquarters, 79. Rue des Martyrs, Paris, to wander merrily about his native Normandy, and to retail his poems on the way.
     There is common sense, no doubt, in your contention that an author should never live by literature; in point of fact, he seldom does—he too often perishes in the attempt. But I am very sceptical when I hear either editors or authors averring that they labour solely for “the public good.” Not long ago a popular novelist informed an interviewer that his object in writing stories was mainly “philanthropical.” I disbelieve as much in the philanthropy of authors who write books for money as I do in the philanthropy of those who publish these books. The labourer is worthy of his hire, and I should like to ask, in this connection, how much you, Sir, receive per annum for “elevating” the minds of the readers of The Daily Chronicle?—I am, &c.,

                                                                                                                           ROBERT BUCHANAN.
     Aug. 30.

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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.
     Notwithstanding the argument can be backed by two such powerful advocates as Tolstoy and Howells, I venture to think the majority of your readers, if asked their opinion, would decide against you. In saying there never could be any relation between a work of genius and any mere money value, I agree with you if you mean that the money value was not the inspiring motive of the work, and that it did not constitute the real reward. Nevertheless, there is as real a relation of “the work of genius” to money value as there is of “ordinary work.”
     I remember William Morris being remonstrated with for the high price of some of his works, and he said in reply that they could not be published cheaper because there was no great demand for them. People apparently valued other works higher—a good dinner, a joke made by Arthur Roberts, or a new hat, for instance; while some were satisfied with scraps of him in a cheap after-dinner form, or in a magazine, and some were satisfied with the complete ignorance of his existence. There is no public assessor of value, and there is no absolute standard of value for ordinary work, or work of genius. To every man the value is that which he puts upon it. I know men who would not go thirsty, while there was good ale, for either Tolstoy or Ruskin; and I know men who have gone without their dinners to purchase a volume, verily they had their reward. To give Tolstoy and Ruskin away will not, I fear, create value to the extent we suppose, any more than the removal of difficulties will always strengthen faith or make athletes. Again, to say that a man should give his “works of genius” to the world, and make his living by keeping a shop and doing “ordinary work” will not honour the works of genius more, but it will honour the ordinary work less, which most of us have to do without choice. How can we separate between the two, and why should we try? Is not all honest work sacred, whether it be the craft of the literary man, the priest, or the printer? You ask for the gifts of genius to be free, like the message of religion. But is the message of religion free? No, Sir. There are endowments either in the shape of bequests or pew rents surely. And since you have alluded to St. Paul as one who laboured with his own hands for his bodily necessities, permit me to say that even he was helped—if not in money, in kind—while our blessed Lord depended entirely upon the offerings of the people, and was not ashamed. He might have given the work of His genius if ever one might, but he humbled Himself and claimed the fellowship of dependence, taking the reward of His labour like and ordinary man.—Yours faithfully,

                                                                                                 J. CARTMEL-ROBINSON.
     Holy Trinity Vicarage, Hoxton. Aug. 31.

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The Leeds Mercury (1 September, 1894)

MR. ROBERT BUCHANAN ON
PUBLISHERS.

     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.

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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.

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Rachel Dene

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.
     (London: Chatto and Windus.)

     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.”
     Still, though it is an indifferent novel, there are the makings in it (as in most of Mr. Buchanan’s works) of a very tolerable melodrama. It lacks the traditional villain, it is true, but with an Inverness cape, a suit of evening dress, and a cigarette he might be made to serve. Melodramatic villainy is largely a matter of clothes. The hero, too, is scarce so innocent or so noble-minded as heroes are wont to be at the Adelphi Theatre. But still he does get drunk, and he does gamble, and his great sufferings must condone for such slight sins as these. There is a racecourse scene with real horses, champagne, lobster salad, and all the usual accessories. Two young gentlemen, one an officer in one of her Majesty’s crack regiments, drug a poor fellow’s wine in the refreshment-room, it being well known on the stage that cavalry officers of a certain set always carry drugs in their pockets, never knowing when they may not come in handy. Then there is “The Murder in the Mill”—think of that!—and a rifled safe, and the wrong man accused, and a trial at the assizes, with tears streaming down the aged cheeks of the judge, and a piercing scream ringing “through the stillness”; and altogether one of the most effective curtains we have ever come across.
     Sensation is continued well up to the end. The convict prison affords some striking scenes. There is a mutiny, with warders letting off guns like mad, and the tramp of soldiers, and an escape by night in a real nobleman's yacht. There is also the touching death of one of the wrong-doers, with his death-bed confession of another man’s crime. The villain’s end is, we regret to say, a trifle tame. Mr. Buchanan seems to have some to the end of his dramatic energy when the moment arrived for getting rid of him. Perhaps he felt that two dying confessions in two consecutive chapters had been inartistic, but for our own part we could gladly have borne with a little lack of artistry to have seen Ralph Hollis, Earl of Beauchamp, make a fitting exit. We are distinctly disappointed at being baldly told that “information was received by cable that an English peer, Earl Beauchamp, had been shot dead in a gambling affray at New Orleans.” But it is downright cruel of Mr. Buchanan to tell us that “further details confirmed the cable report, and added shocking particulars,” and then to add, “with which we decline to trouble the reader.” For he must know that it is just there “shocking particulars” for which we thirst.
     The heroine, Rachel, is not an effective figure. She fails to impress the imagination. Except for that “piercing scream” which “rang through the stillness,” she does nothing that is dramatically interesting.
     Mr. Buchanan informs the reader on the last page that if he demands “further sequel” he must “betake himself to the happy and prosperous valley of Deepdale,” for there he will find the hero and heroine and their children living in domestic felicity. For out own part we do not demand further sequel. We shall not go to Deepdale. We have had enough of Rachel Dene.

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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.
     Concerning the book which your reviewer used as a peg on which to hang the usual personalities, so pleasing to Christian readers, I have nothing to say. It is an old and belated production, resuscitated as a “new novel” by a firm of publishers, in spite of my entreaties. I sold it for a song many years ago, bought it back, was compelled to pledge it again as a security, and finally, at a period of misfortune, tried in vain to spare the public its perusal. My publishers knew my opinion of it, and, although I offered to repurchase it, issued it in spite of my remonstrances, at a time when I was too ill even to correct the proofs. Well, they have had their pound of flesh, and I wish them joy of it. They would have taken my heart and lungs with equal composure, in the usual manner of their trade. But I feel bound to protest when you, a fellow-man of letters lend your countenance to a criticism which is not merely an attack upon a worthless book, but a malignant personal attack upon the writer, in so far as it accuses him of forsaking an art to which the best strength of his working days has been devoted.—I am, &c.,

                                                                                                                           ROBERT BUCHANAN.
     Oct. 8.

[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.]

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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.]

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Parnell

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!
     But he who led us on,
Who held the fiery Cross on high
     Thro’ the long night, is gone!
Full at his heart they smote
     With many a trait’rous thrust,
While Falsehood fasten’d on his throat
     And dragg’d him to the dust!

Ev’n as a Lion fixing eyes
     On something far away,
He stood alone ’neath sunless skies
     On his great triumph-day;
Then, while he march’d the battle-place,
     His jackals gather’d in . . .
And now? The things which fear’d his face
     Fight for the Lion’s skin!

What one of these shall put it on?
     (1) Thou, weakest of the weak,
Who, when thy Lord lay woe-begone,
     First kiss’d, then smote, his cheek?
(2) Or thou, who mock’d him in his fall
     With foul and impious jest?
(3) Or thou, the basest of them all,
     Who gnaw’d the bleeding breast?

Jackals and cowards, mourn elsewhere!
     Not near the mighty Dead!
Your breath pollutes the holy air
     Around a Martyr’s bed.
Go! fatten with the Scribes and Priests
     Who led your foul array,
Or crouch, with all the timorous beasts
     Who follow’d him for prey!

Who slew this Man? The cruel Foe
     That stab’d our Nation first;
(4) Then Brutus, loth to strike the blow;
     Then Casca, the accurst;
Then freedmen by his hands unbound,
     And slaves his hands had fed,
Joining the throng that ring’d him round,
     Stoned him till he was dead!

     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.

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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.
     I had meant to pass over without comment “your Reviewer’s” impudent letter of yesterday, in reply to my charge of ignorance and malice. Convicted of a cowardly bétise, the anonymuncule takes refuge in fresh insinuations. Who in the world cares what he “forgets” or what he “remembers,” what wins his contempt or what “moves him deeply”? Let him publish his name, and I promise that he shall have good cause to “remember” me in future. In the meantime, I take leave to assure both you and your readers that I have not abandoned poetry, although I have long ceased to hunger for the praises of those who are “moved deeply” by boyish exercises in Christian sentiment. I have for ever renounced both Christianity and the Christian reviewer, whether he pow-wows in the wigwam of the Spectator or furnishes to readers of The Daily Chronicle with Wegg-like impartiality, the exact “penn’orth” of cheap literary instruction appointed by our critical Magna Charta.—I am, &c.,

                                                                                                                           ROBERT BUCHANAN.
     Oct. 12.

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James Read

[On the evening of Monday, 25th June, 1894, the body of Florence Dennis, aged 23, was discovered in a brook near the village of Prittlewell. She had died from a single bullet wound to the head. Miss Dennis was eight months pregnant and had been staying with her sister, Mrs. Ayriss, in Southend and on her sister’s evidence at the inquest, James Canham Read, a married man who had had a relationship with Miss Dennis, was arrested for the murder. As well as Read’s home in Stepney where he had a wife and several children (accounts varied from four to eight), he also rented another house in Mitcham, under the name Mr. Benson, where he was living with another woman, Miss Kempton, with their young child. In the course of the trial it was revealed that he had also had a relationship with Mrs. Ayriss and was probably the father of one of her children. Read was not a very sympathetic character but maintained throughout the trial that he was innocent of the crime. He was convicted on purely circumstantial evidence and was executed on 4th December, 1894.

Buchanan’s letter was published in The Daily Chronicle and was also copied in full in The Essex County Standard, West Suffolk Gazette and Eastern Counties’ Advertiser and The Bristol Mercury and Daily Post. I feel it should also be noted that Buchanan wrote the letter at the end of November, 1894 - the day before he was due back in the Bankruptcy Court and a little over three weeks since his mother’s death.

The newspapers, both national and provincial, followed the story of James Read avidly, and for the sake of adding some background to the case I have placed the accounts of the trial from The Essex County Standard and Reynolds’s Newspaper below.]

The Pall Mall Gazette (16 November, 1894)

     There rests not a shadow of doubt upon the verdict which the jury found in the Southend murder case. Not one circumstantial link was missing in the chain connecting the crime with the convict Read. The defence was wild and imaginary; its theory was extravagant and unsupported by a single fact of evidence, and its coincidences were too remarkable to influence judge or jury for a moment. Beyond question James Read murdered Florence Dennis in the most horrible circumstances and in the coldest blood. His reasons for the act were obvious, the outcome of an extremely vicious, cruel life. His career was an infamous career of seduction. He added victim to victim without scruple, and, hardened in the end by his own successful villainies, conceived the idea of ridding himself of the woman who had become a burden to him, in order the better to satisfy his evil passion for another. Rarely is so squalid a case discovered in our courts. To be guilty of such infamy a man must lack even the first elements of humanity. When the girl’s condition claimed his remorseful pity and his aid he could think of nothing better than a bloody butchery. If there was ever a criminal worthy of the rope it is James Canham Read.

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The Daily Chronicle (29 November, 1894 - p.5)

THE CASE OF JAMES CANHAM READ.

THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.

     SIR,—I have waited silently from day to day in the hope that some more authoritative voice than mine might be raised in protest against the judicial murder which will take place, unless the royal prerogative is exercised, on Tuesday next. To my surprise and sorrow, the leading newspapers are still silent concerning the sentence of death pronounced on James Canham Read, the reputed murderer of Florence Dennis. I say the “reputed” murder, because in my opinion, and in that of many thinking men, the Crown failed utterly to establish its case against the prisoner. Every one who has followed the case for himself, or who has read the admirable letter of “An ex-Chief of Police” in a contemporary, must admit that the chain of so-called circumstantial evidence was imperfect in many of its links. If the life of a human being is to be taken on such evidence as that, no English citizen is safe, and the hideous and barbaric system of judicial murder, which is already the despair of those who work for human civilisation, will have secured for itself another victim whose guilt has not been proved.
     In such a case as the present, in every case which involves the exaction of the extreme penalty, it is infinitely better that a guilty man should escape scot-free than that an innocent man should die upon the gallows. I am quite aware that the popular feeling, at least in London, runs strongly against Read, on the score that he is a man of immoral life; but until we execute men for being immoral (as in God’s good time we may yet do if English Calvinism obtrudes on legislation at its present rate) it is well to reflect that a man of immoral life is not of necessity a murderer, or a man capable of murder. Much of the animus against the condemned man, however, is based upon the assumption that he betrayed and deserted Florence Dennis, even if he did not take her life; yet beyond the statements of the perjured witness, Mrs. Ayriss, there is no proof whatever that he was in the company of the murdered girl on one solitary occasion during the eighteen months which followed their first acquaintance and ended with her death. The Crown was utterly unable to prove a single meeting during that period, and in the solitary written communication between them Florence Dennis addressed her supposed lover as “Dear sir,” surely a not very probable kind of address from a seduced girl to her betrayer.
     At a first glance, Read’s own failure to account for his time on the day of the murder seems to furnish a certain negative proof against him. It is urged on his behalf that he cannot and will not do so because the so doing would involve the honour, perhaps the life, of another woman. Would a man like Read, it is asked with derision, be so chivalric? But here, again, those who clamour for Read’s life are arguing in a circle, for their chief argument to prove that Read is phenomenally immoral is based upon the assumption that he seduced Florence Dennis, an assumption if which, as I have pointed out, there is no legal proof whatever. Here, as everywhere, the Crown failed to prove his guilt.
     It is fortunate perhaps for humanity that we possess now, at the head of the Home Office, a Minister who, unlike his immediate predecessor, is not afraid to temper justice with mercy, and who is not likely to be carried away by the fevered and prejudiced clamour of ultra-Puritans who cry for blood. If James Canham Read is executed on Tuesday next, he will have been sacrificed to the Mænads of English morality, not to the stern spirit of Justice which cries “a life for a life.” I repeat again, and I refer to the whole case again for my corroboration, that this man’s guilt has not been proved.—I am, &c.,

                                                                                                                         ROBERT BUCHANAN.
     Nov. 28.

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The Westminster Gazette (29 November, 1894 - p.2)

     Mr. Robert Buchanan has taken up Read. Mr. Buchanan’s argument appears to be this. Read was, or is supposed to have been “immoral.” Therefore, the Prudes, Puritans, and all those other terrible People beginning with P would like to hang him even if he is innocent. Therefore Mr. Robert Buchanan and everybody else ought to try to get him off even if he is guilty. True, Mr. Buchanan repeats the phrase that Read has not been “proved” to be guilty. But according to the forms of English law, he has been proved. The point which Mr. Buchanan labours, so far as there is anything in it, was especially emphasised by the judge in summing up, almost to the length of suggesting that a sensual man is less likely to commit a murder than one of less fleshly fibre—which, indeed, is quite arguable in the abstract. yet when the jury brought in their verdict of “Guilty,” the judge added that it was the only one possible to those who had heard the evidence.

p.5

MR. BUCHANAN AND J. C. READ

     Mr. Robert Buchanan pens an appeal on behalf of J. C. Read in to-day’s Chronicle:—“I repeat again, and I refer to the whole case again for my corroboration, that this man’s guilt has not been proved.”
     Mrs. Read, wife of the convict, and Mrs. Kelly, his sister, had an interview with Read in gaol yesterday afternoon. Both women saw the convict at the same time, and the meeting lasted a little over half an hour. “My husband seemed in excellent health and spirits,” said Mrs. Read afterwards, “and he is very hopeful about the result of his appeal to the Home Secretary. He asked after all the children, and seemed very glad to see us.”

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The Daily Chronicle (30 November, 1894 - p.5)

THE CASE OF JAMES CANHAM READ.

THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.

     SIR,—I am strongly against capital punishment in any and every case; but if I we re not so, I should desire to put in a word in favour of a remission of the death sentence on James Canham Read. I shall not be suspected by any who know what my life work has been of too great a leniency towards immoral men, but if I am a zealous adherent of the cause of social purity, I am still more so of the eternal principles of justice. There is a grave danger in these days of losing sight of the great principles which were handed down to us by our ancestors of respect for individual rights, for liberty, and for justice. Social purity workers will injure the cause to which they are attached if, in their ardour in putting down public immorality, and attacking the outward expression of the cynicism which infects so many minds, they swerve in the least degree from strict justice. Evidence concerning a capital crime should be judged apart from the private life of the person accused.
     I was deeply impressed with these thoughts during the trial of Mrs. Maybrick. The judge on that occasion was one who had a great horror of levity in women, and it was clear to my mind that his summing up against Mrs. Maybrick was very largely coloured by his horror of her alleged infidelity to her husband (who had previously been unfaithful to her); that passionate summing up of the judge carried the jury away, and Mrs. Maybrick was pronounced to be a murderess.
     In this case it is a man who has deceived women, and made them his victims. None the less, as a woman feeling keenly the cruelty of such a man’s acts towards my fellow women, I must add my humble protest against the carrying out of the sentence of death pronounced on him. The evidence in his case seems to me not to justify his execution. The smallest doubt should be held to be enough to alter the sentence.—Yours, &c.,

                                                                                                   JOSEPHINE E. BUTLER.

     Nov. 29.

_____

THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.

     SIR,—If your correspondent Mr. Robert Buchanan be the well-known playwright of that name, I can only say that, judging from huis letter on the case of James Canham Read appearing in your issue of to-day, a man may be a good playwright but an indifferent logician.
     I have no comment to make on the opening paragraph of that letter beyond remarking that its style does not seem quite fitted to form the prelude of a serious argument addressed to a calm and intelligent public; but as to the rest of the letter I will, Mr. Editor, with your permission, refer to it in more detail. First, Mr. Buchanan tells us that beyond the statement of Mrs. Ayriss there is no proof that Read was in the company of Florence Dennis on any occasion during the eighteen months which followed their first acquaintance and ended with her death. I do not know what Mr. Buchanan calls proof; but, apart from the evidence of Mrs. Ayriss, and apart from the fact that Read could not, or would not, give any explanation of his whereabouts at the time of the murder, there was ample evidence before the jury to warrant them in forming the opinion they did as to his whereabouts (vide the evidence of Mrs. Kirby, and of Messrs. Douthwaite, Goulding, and Daniel); there was also strong evidence that he was corresponding with her as late as June 18.
     Next, Mr. Buchanan would have it that “Dear sir” is not the way a girl who had been seduced would address her seducer. In my opinion it is the very way in which a girl would address a seducer who needed to be forced into making some provision for her.
     But perhaps the most curious line of argument is that adopted in the third paragraph of Mr. Buchanan’s letter, in which Mr. Buchanan tries to prove that Read is not phenomenally immoral by setting up a defence which shows that he is ignoring, as he does, the fact that Read, a married man with children, has admittedly seduced two women (Florence Dennis being put out of the question), and was living with one of them when arrested.
     Surely, Mr. Editor, this is an age of common sense, not of maudlin sentiment, as Mr. Robert Buchanan would seem to think.—I am, &c.,

                                                                                                             ARTHUR G. FORD.
     Nov. 29.

_____

THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.

     SIR,—No abler pen than Mr. Buchanan’s could be raised in defence of the convict Read, and believing, as I do, that capital punishment is always “judicial murder,” and in every case a vindictive proceeding, I can only wish that Mr. Buchanan’s plea may be successful.
     There is, however, a complaint against an expression in Mr. Buchanan’s letter that many, with me, must feel ought to be voiced, and I accordingly plead for a place in your columns in order to do so. Like many another man of strong opinions, Mr. Buchanan has his “King Charles’s head,” which we must perforce display in almost every controversy/ This time his bête noire is labelled “English Calvinism,” and a plea for justice for a condemned man is made the occasion for a sneer at the efforts made for the creation of a healthy public opinion, which, had it been established, would have prevented the need for Mr. Buchanan’s plea at all. Surely Mr. Buchanan cannot think it other than just that there should exist an animus against such a man as Read? It is nothing for the purity of society, it is nothing for the growth of charity that such a self-confessed villain should have other than the animus of all who love honesty and truth against his abominable vices; and if Mr. Buchanan cares to describe the feeling this fostered as the product of Calvinism, he may be reminded that it is proclaimed by men who yield no sort of allegiance to that stern sectary, and who think their doctrine derived from a greater than he; a doctrine which, whilst it asserts the need for the unsparing condemnation of such vicious men as the convict Read, has a higher doctrine proclaiming the futility of the rules of a “life for a life” and a “tooth for a tooth” as the basis of reform.—I am, &c.,

                                                                                                                   HERBERT HILL.
     East Finchley, Nov. 29.

_____

THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.

     SIR,—We are asked to admire J. C. Read’s chivalry in concealing the name of the place and the person with whom he spent that fatal night, as some unknown woman’s honour, perhaps life, is at stake, and to believe he is not guilty of Florence Dennis’s death because no one saw them together. Is it any more astonishing that no one saw them together than the fact that this woman is presumably able to conceal his visit or visits to her, or that he should have carried on an intrigue with Mrs. Ayriss, unknown so long? No one knew of the liaison. Had Mrs. Ayriss held her tongue, nothing but the fact of acquaintanceship could be proved.
     Where was Read’s chivalry when he instructed Mr. Warburton who compelled the wretched woman to proclaim, to her shame, the relations that had existed between them? Was it not to prove animus, in the hope of saving himself, he had it proclaimed? And can we believe that such a man would lie in prison four months and risk his neck for a point of honour, for any woman’s sake? If he were able, I contend he would have said at once where he was. Even had it been at Southend and with any woman save Florrie Dennis, it would not be difficult to prove.
     In the sympathy they are trying to arouse for this man, are they not losing sight of the two lives sacrificed, becoming hysterical over his morals, and trying to show that these affected thinking men and women.
     If he dies on the 4th it will not be as a martyr to chivalry that J. C. Read will be remembered, in spite of Mr. Buchanan’s sorrow,—I am, Sir, yours,

                                                                                                                           T. CHAPEL.
     Upton Manor, Nov. 29.

_____

THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.

     SIR,—I quite agree with your well-known correspondent Mr. Buchanan. There may be a conviction, amounting almost to a certainty, that Read was the actual murderer, but without actual proof it will be a national scandal if the extreme sentence of the law is carried out on evidence that is admittedly so insufficient and inconclusive. The prosecution failed to show where Read spent the night previous to the murder, and had he stayed in Southend this should have been a comparatively easy task. Where was he? This was for the prosecution to answer, which they failed altogether to do. The identification was, moreover, unsatisfactory.
     Immorality does not necessarily mean murder, and although popular feeling is very strong against Read because of his flagrantly immoral character, yet I submit that the condemned should have the benefit of a very grave doubt, for the following reasons, viz.:—
     1. Lack of evidence adduced as to his previous relationship with Florence Dennis, and inability to prove where he spent the fateful Saturday and Sunday.
     2. Failure to show recent possession of the revolver, and inability to prove ultimate whereabouts of the weapon.
     3. Unsatisfactory identification and general weakness in the prosecution.
     In conclusion, I sincerely hope that clear discrimination, combined with better judgment, will outweigh the natural feelings of repugnance of the man’s immoral life, and ask for further proofs before running the terrible risk of another case of “justice miscarried.”—Yours, &c.,

                                                                                                               UNCONVINCED.

     Nov. 29.

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The Freeman’s Journal (Dublin) (30 November, 1894 - p.4)

     Mr. Robert Buchanan, alleged poet, appears in the newspapers in two somewhat different capacities. In a characteristic letter to the Daily Chronicle he demands the release of the murderer, James Canham Read, the vilest murderer of modern times, of whose guilt the judge and jury had no shadow of doubt, but whom the cocksure Mr. Buchanan proclaims innocent. In another part of the paper the bankruptcy is announced of Mr. Buchanan—debts £15,000, assets nil. It is estimated that his literary income ran close up to two thousand a year, which makes the bankruptcy the less creditable. One would have fancied that his domestic trouble would have diverted his attention for the time being from the vile murderer Read. But Mr. Buchanan is not like the rest of men. We should be glad to have his creditors’ private opinion on the performance.

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Aberdeen Evening Express (30 November, 1894 - p.2)

     THERE are some people in this world who cannot be cowed by adversity. For several months Mr Robert Buchanan, novelist, poet, and general caretaker of public morals, has been under the protecting and watchful eye of the Bankruptcy Court. He has now obtained a discharge on condition that he sets aside one half of his income after £900 a year, until his creditors receive 7s 6d in the pound. Mr Buchanan’s case is not, perhaps, a very exceptional one. He just lived far beyond his income. He speculated, he even indulged in a bet occasionally; but all these matters are quite ordinary accompaniments of bankruptcy. But what singles out Mr Buchanan is the impudent assurance with which he lectures the British public on their lack of morality. If anyone scratches Mr Buchanan he is on his high-horse at once; and if he takes up the cause of a criminal, then everyone who differs from him is at once declared to be utterly destitute of any capacity to understand wrong from right. It will be remembered that over the Maybrick case Mr Buchanan became quite hysterical, abusing judge and jury and a lethargic public in the choicest of Buchananese. Now he has got the Southend murderer on hand. Mr Buchanan, of course, holds that the jury were altogether wrong in returning a verdict of guilty. James Canham Read is, in the eyes of Mr Buchanan, a much injured man. The crime has not been brought home to him, and he declares that if Read is executed “he will have been sacrificed to the Mænads of English morality, not to the stern spirit of Justice which cried ‘a life for a life.’” Hysterical rot of this kind can be repeated too often, and Mr Buchanan is one who has exhausted everybody’s forbearance with his emotional humbug. It is high time that some of Mr Buchanan’s personal friends, if he has any, should undertake the responsibility of telling him that when the British public are desirous of being instructed on questions of morality they will seek a safer guide than Robert Buchanan, poet and novelist.

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The Essex County Standard (1 December, 1894 - p.3)

MR. ROBERT BUCHANAN INTERCEDES
FOR THE CONVICT.

“ANOTHER VICTIM WHOSE GUILT HAS NOT
BEEN PROVED.”

     Mr. Robert Buchanan, the well known poet and writer, has addressed the following letter to the Press, dated Nov. 28:—I have waited silently from day to day in the hope that some more authoritative voice than mine might be raised in protest against the judicial murder which will take place, unless the royal prerogative is exercised, on Tuesday next. To my surprise and sorrow, the leading newspapers are still silent concerning the sentence of death pronounced on James Canham Read, the reputed murderer of Florence Dennis. I say the “reputed” murderer, because in my opinion, and in that of many thinking men, the Crown failed utterly to establish its case against the prisoner. Every one who has followed the case for himself, or who has read the admirable letter of “An ex-Chief of Police” in a contemporary, must admit that the chain of so-called circumstantial evidence was imperfect in many of its links. If the life of a human being is to be taken on such evidence as that, no English citizen is safe, and the hideous and barbaric system of judicial murder, which is already the despair of those who work for human civilization, will have secured for itself another victim whose guilt has not been proved.

IMMORALITY NOT A CAPITAL OFFENCE.

     In such a case as the present, in every case which involves the exaction of the extreme penalty, it is infinitely better that a guilty man should escape scot-free than that an innocent man should die upon the gallows. I am quite aware that the popular feeling, at least in London, runs strongly against Read, on the score that he is a man of immoral life; but until we execute men for being immoral (as in God’s good time we may yet do if English Calvinism obtrudes on legislation at its present rate) it is well to reflect that a man of immoral life is not of necessity a murderer, or a man capable of murder. Much of the animus against the condemned man, however, is based upon the assumption that he betrayed and deserted Florence Dennis, even if he did not take her life; yet beyond the statements of the perjured witness, Mrs. Ayriss, there is no proof, whatever, that he was in the company of the murdered girl on one solitary occasion during the eighteen months which followed their first acquaintance, and ended in her death. The Crown was utterly unable to prove a single meeting during that period, and in the solitary written communication between them, Florence Dennis addressed her supposed lover as “Dear sir,” surely a not very probable kind of address from a seduced girl to her betrayer.

“ARGUING IN A CIRCLE.”

     At a first glance, Read’s own failure to account for his time on the day of the murder seems to furnish a certain negative proof against him. It is urged on his behalf that he cannot and will not do so because the so doing would involve the honour, perhaps the life, of another woman. Would a man like Read, it is asked with derision, be so chivalric? But here, again, those who clamour for Read’s life are arguing in a circle, for their chief argument to prove that Read is phenomenally immoral is based upon the assumption that he seduced Florence Dennis, an assumption of which, as I have pointed out, there is no legal proof whatever. Here, as everywhere, the Crown failed to prove his guilt.

“ULTRA-PURITANS CRYING FOR BLOOD.”

     It is fortunate perhaps for humanity that we possess now, at the head of the Home Office, a Minister who, unlike his immediate predecessor, is not afraid to temper justice with mercy, and who is not likely to be carried away by the fevered and prejudiced clamour of ultra-Puritans who cry for blood. If James Canham Read is executed on Tuesday next, he will have been sacrificed to the Mænads of English morality, not to the stern spirit of Justice which cries “a life for a life.” I repeat again, and I refer to the whole case again for my corroboration, that this man’s guilt has not been proved.

[The rest of that day’s article on ‘The Southend Murder’ is available here.]

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The Essex Newsman (1 December, 1894 - p.2)

The Sheffield Evening Telegraph and Star (1 December, 1894 - p.2)

AN OLD CRY REVIVED.

     JAMES CANHAM READ lies under sentence of death for the murder of Florence Dennis, and unless the Royal prerogative be exercised the wretched man will bid the world farewell on Tuesday next. If ever man deserved such fate surely that man is Read. His notoriously immoral life does not enter into calculations; only his cowardly and clod-blooded murder of the girl he had betrayed may be considered. Nothing more is required. A murder so dastardly can be expiated but in one manner. Yet the party of sickly sentimentalism is lifting up its voice in protest against the fulfilment of the sentence; even Read has found supporters who are attempting to argue that the charge was not proven. So long as the agitation was confined to the anonymous correspondents of a journal anxious for a cheap catchpenny boom it was unworthy attention, but when a man of the prominence of Mr. Robert Buchanan comes forward to lend his influence, it is time to protest. The point which Mr. Buchanan and his companions urge is that the guilt of Read has not been proven. The evidence was purely circumstantial, and links of the chain were by the acknowledgment of the prosecution missing; yet, on the whole, as complete a case was presented that the jury had no hesitation in returning the verdict with which Mr. Baron Pollock, a judge of the greatest impartiality, signified his acquiescence. The case against Read was strong; what was his answer? Did he give any information as to his movements on the day of the murder? He has hinted that he was many miles away, but of evidence of the fact he produced not a tittle. It is hinted that he was engaged at the time in yet another of his numerous liaisons, and that rather than reveal the facts and injure the good name borne by some dishonest woman he is prepared to suffer. Read’s conduct does not indicate that pure chivalry would carry him thus far, and what woman, however keenly she would feel the world’s reproaches, would allow her own reputation to outweigh the life of her lover? Besides, supposing Read’s story to be true, the woman would not be the only person with whom he came in contact. Read might if he would indicate his hinted whereabouts on the fatal night without implicating any mistress whom he desired to shield. Yet on the subject he takes refuge in silence—not even to his own brother will he mention the name of the town or village where the alleged mistress resides. Yet in spite of the fact that the evidence against Read is so damning, and that Read declines to prove, as he could by a word, the innocence he asserts, the Home Secretary is warned that the execution of the man will be “judicial murder,” and he is petitioned to grant a reprieve. To transform Read’s condemnation to penal servitude for life would be a piece of foolishness of which Mr. Asquith is too clever a man to be guilty. If Read is not deserving of the full penalty he is an innocent man, and ought not to be kept in prison another hour. If he requires punishment in connection with the murder of Florence Dennis only one punishment is possible. If the Home Secretary, after the perusal of the evidence, comes to the opinion that Read is innocent he must throw open the doors of the gaol; if he cannot arrive at that conclusion, he has no ground for interfering with the due course of the law.

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The Yorkshire Herald (1 December, 1894 - p.5)

     TUESDAY is fixed for the execution of James Canham Read. An attempt is being made to secure a reprieve, in which Mr. Robert Buchanan has joined, with his usual vehemence of language. We entirely agree with Mr. Buchanan that a man amy be grossly immoral without being capable of murder. But the suggestion that Read is to be hanged because of his immorality is too absurd. The man had a perfectly fair trial before a judge who has never been accused of incapacity or prejudice; he was defended by a most able member of the Bar; and he had every opportunity of producing evidence that he was not near Southend on the night of the murder. No such evidence was, however, forthcoming, and in the absence of it, there is difficulty in seeing how any reasonable person can doubt the guilt of Read. So long as capital punishment is the law of the land it must be enforced; and there is nothing to justify intervention in the case of the murderer of Florence Dennis.

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The Referee (2 December, 1894 - p.1)

[A comment piece about court reporting and the importance of circumstantial evidence.]

St. James’s Gazette (3 December, 1894 - p.4-5)

     The Home Secretary, as might have been expected, has not found any reason for over-ruling the verdict of the jury in the case of the murderer Read; and the wretched man will be hanged to-morrow. Such pertinacious and indomitable sentimentalists as Mrs. Josephine Butler and Mr. Robert Buchanan will probably indulge in one or two more shrieks over another failure to redeem from the gallows a man whose guilt was only proved by circumstantial evidence to the satisfaction of twelve average British males and a particularly clear-headed and fair-minded judge. But Mrs. Josephine Butler and Mr. Robert Buchanan would not do much harm, were it not that certain newspapers give them publicity. Why the Prison Commissioners or the visiting justices allow such sensational “copy” as a convict’s letters to be obtained and placarded about the streets, we do not know. Sir Edmund Du Cane should see to it. But the evil effect of this criminal sensationalism is certain. The prisoner himself is deluded; the law is blasphemed; the law-abiding are scandalized; and a cheap notoriety is held out to the reckless and the vicious.

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[Two accounts of the execution of James Canham Read which took place on Tuesday, 4th December, 1894.]

The Dover Express (7 December, 1894 - p.6)

OUR LONDON LETTER.

It is understood that we do not necessarily identify
ourselves with all our able Correspondent’s opinions.

. . .

     The Home Secretary came to Downing-street on purpose to go thoroughly into the petitions that had been sent in asking for a reprieve for James Canham Read. The failure of the agitators who took up the case to obtain signatures, or to advance a single fact to support the convicted man’s assertions, and the character of the agitation itself, circumscribed as it was, was tantamount to a strengthening of the verdict. For a long while not a hand was raised for the wretched convict at Chelmsford gaol, but one halfpenny evening paper for several days latterly, diligently boomed the subject, and opened its columns to all and any who had arguments to advance. The fatal thing about the correspondence was that nearly all who demanded a reprieve confessed themselves hostile on principle to capital punishment, or were avowedly “cranks” who had something of interest only to themselves to obtrude. The most powerful letter was written by Robert Buchanan. This agitation also induced wonder as to what has become of that Society for the Abolition of Capital Punishment, which at one time had real influence. There is confessedly a strong feeling in the country against the capital penalty—witness, for example, the jury who recently recommended to mercy one who had murdered his wife and son, on the plea that he was a man of low type, but it has little organisation. It is a shocking reflection on our civilisation that on the 2nd December there were eight men under sentence of death in this country.

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[More information about the case is available at Murderpedia, including this photo of James Canham Read:

[Note the funny colour - this is because this bit treads into the realm of wild speculation and is solely due to my fondness for American TV crime shows. When looking in the online newspaper archives I accidentally came across another ‘Southend Murder’, which occurred almost exactly a year before the Read case. On Saturday 20th May, 1893, Emma Hunt (aged 38) was found in a brook near the village of Rochford (which lies two and a half miles north of Prittlewell), with her throat cut. The youth who found the body, Alfred Hazell, was later arrested, but the case never came to court, the charges were dropped and the crime remained unsolved.

I found it odd that none of the newspaper accounts of the Read case mentioned this earlier murder and I do think Read’s Q.C. missed a trick by not referring to it in his address to the jury, if only to sow some seeds of doubt in their minds. I’m not suggesting that Read was innocent, or that Jack the Ripper had moved to Southend, I just thought it strange that no one mentioned the similarities with the earlier crime. If your curiosity has been piqued the picture below will take you to a report of the murder from Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper (4 June, 1893).]

Letters to the Press - continued

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