ROBERT WILLIAMS BUCHANAN (1841 - 1901)

RANDOM CUTTINGS ii

The Sporting Life (27 January, 1891 - p.1)

“ALL THE COMFORTS OF HOME” AT
THE GLOBE THEATRE.

     The large audience which favoured Mr. Norman Forbes on Saturday night by attending the inauguration of his management of the Globe Theatre audibly expressed their pleasure at the important changes which had been wrought during the recess. ...
     The after-piece, “All the Comforts of Home,” is a three-act farcical comedy, adapted from Herr Carl Laufs’s German play, “Ein Toller Einfall,” originally produced at Amber’s Theatre. New York. ... as the temporary landlord, a Mr. De Lange, playing effectively a small part of a Scotchman, made up like Mr. Robert Buchanan, for no apparent reason. ...

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The Speaker (14 March, 1891 - p.308)

. . .
     The mere onlooker, not yet converted to Tolstoyism, is likely to find this jealousy of the music-halls on the part of our theatrical managers as ungenerous as the reasoning which cloaks it is specious. What has the question of art to do with the consumption of alcohol and tobacco? “A good cigar,” says Mr. Buchanan, and most of us will agree with him, “would not interfere with my enjoyment of even the ‘Passion Play,’ nor would the absence of either cigar or whisky and water deepen my appreciation of contemporary burlesque.” And no concession of theatrical privileges to the music-halls could affect our great playhouses. Some of the lesser ones—only now distinguishable from music-halls by the greater vulgarity and fatuity of their entertainment—would add a few marble tables and ash-trays to their pit. . . .

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The Speaker (16 May, 1891 pp.578-579)

WHAT MR. SAINTSBURY THINKS.

. . .

... Everybody has a brick for M. Zola in these days. Messrs. Oscar Wilde and Robert Buchanan (heaven smile upon the fair conjunction) heave one apiece, though from different sides. ...
     What is the matter, then?—for a man who loves Gautier with his whole heart, as Mr. Saintsbury loves him, must needs be listened to when he assails the modern French novel, while Mr. Buchanan, another assailant, who has an idea in what Homer would call “his dear head that Gautier “treats flesh like a pork butcher,” may merely be recommended to learn the language.

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The Speaker (30 May, 1891 pp.646-647)

. . .

     To return to the question of the laureateship, a suggestion is that it should be given to some verse-making peer, so low in the poetic scale that none of the possible men could be offended. He should be someone with a name easily remembered. Or the office could be allowed to die in the blaze of glory called Tennyson. Or, as this is the age of competitive examinations—— Here is an idea.

     But election by marks is only for the small posts. The laureate’s type-writer might be chosen in that way, while applicants for the laureateship could be invited to send in their testimonials, with a preface by themselves setting forth their claims. Think over the poets said to be “in the running,” and you will see at once that these prefaces would make strange reading.

     Such a method, though calculated to let us know the best that could be said of several of the candidates in waiting, would not be fair to all. Mr. Buchanan, for instance, has such a way of nick-naming those he writes of, that force of habit would probably compel him to refer sarcastically to himself as a young man in some sort of suit.

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The Speaker (13 June, 1891 - p.699)

The Daily Chronicle (26 June, 1891 - p.4)

     Those who, like Mr. Robert Buchanan, complain of the “coming terror,” which includes public censorship of literature, will be grieved to learn that in the Orient the same spirit is at work which they deplore in the West. The Chinese Government has issued a stringent decree against immoral literature, in which it is ordered that all Government officials who permit immoral books to be published within their respective jurisdictions shall be discharged. Every private person publishing such a book shall receive one hundred blows and be banished to a distance from his place of residence. The seller of an obnoxious book is also to get a hundred blows. And presumably the literary mandarins are to decide what is an obnoxious book. Young men with “cheap literary suits” had better keep clear of China.

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Aberdeen Evening Express (8 August, 1891 - p.2)

[An item on a proposed Victorian Exhibition with Robert Buchanan mentioned among the “conflicting mediocrities”

Pick-Me-Up (10 October, 1891 - Vol. VII, No. 158, p.18)

     The two best advertised things in the country appear to be Pears’ Soap and Mr. Robert Buchanan. While the soap is justly celebrated for imparting a good complexion to the general countenance, Mr. Buchanan is best known by his perennial and heroic efforts to whitewash his own works and to tar and feather—in a nauseous tissue of Buchananese abuse—all those who may not have happened to like the looks of ’em. The aspiration of the hypertrophied infant for the familiar 3½d. tablet is as nothing to the strength and speed of Mr. Buchanan’s desire for notoriety. He rose to a certain flashy fame by the method (better known in science than in literature) of attacking bigger men than himself; that is to say, men of at least average mental stature. The position thus gained was only a spring-board, a point de départ, for further wild leaps into the hysterical inane, for further instances of the audacity which is not a virtue. But as Mr. Buchanan’s egotism has become more pronounced, he naturally finds his stock of “bigger men” fail him. And so he can devote more attention to the lapses of little men, of critics, for instance, who have read his books without being overwhelmed by the resemblance in them to Goethe, Dante, Virgil, Molière, Swedenborg, Plato, Shakespeare, and the Holy Scriptures. The resemblance—he is always ready to assure them—is there; and were they not purblind creatures at best, they would see it and worship accordingly. All which is very strange and wonderful; almost as strange and wonderful as it is to find a respectable paper like the Echo lending itself to the advertising purposes of such a well-known practitioner as Mr. Buchanan.

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Ally Sloper’s Half Holiday (17 October, 1891 - p. 6)

     THE Mildewed and Moth Eaten Edifice has been pleased to confer the “Sloper Award of Merit” upon MR. ROBERT BUCHANAN, because he’s done so much to elevate the British Drama. “In my humble opinion, feyther,” commenced the Blue Eyed Pigeon, “Robert is a Big Chief, and I’m positively amazed that you have not spotted him for an F.O.S. long ere this. It only shows how thoroughly hignorant——” But at this point the peroration was cut short and the rolling-pin séance commenced.

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Truth (17 December, 1891 - p.35)

     I doubt, though, if even from the steps of the Burlington Arcade Mr. Walter Sickert’s so-called portrait of Mr. George Moore would look like anything but a grotesque and ill-natured caricature. It is a picture which Mr. Robert Buchanan may very possibly have gloated over; but which the average visitor to the Dudley Gallery will be apt to resent as an outrage, which even an Impressionist should have been slow to perpetrate.

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The People (25 September, 1892 - p.4)

THE ACTOR.

     If there is anything more tiresome than reading novelists’ reasons for not writing plays, it is reading playwrights; descriptions of the mode in which they produce their works. The reason why certain novelists don’t write plays, is because they can’t or don’t want to; as for the making of plays, every playwright has his method, and, such as it is, he is not likely to reveal it wholly.
     Moreover, when he has professed to reveal it nobody is a bit the wiser. You cannot be a successful playwright by simply following other people’s advice. Dickens, “explaining” the origin of “The Pickwick Papers,” says, “I thought of Mr. Pickwick.” No doubt, but how did he think of him? It is for this sort of inspiration that no writer can account. Yet, inspiration there must be.
     There is a great deal too much of this talk about “how things are done.” Nowadays it seems possible to “draw” anybody. I am quite sure that playwrights and players are unwise in shedding so much light as they do upon their artistic methods. Reticence is good from a professional as well as from a personal point of view. If you tell the public so much, it will think it knows everything. There is money in mystery.
     Mr. Robert Buchanan, I note, carries the war into the enemy’s country. The novelists have lately been pouring contempt upon the trade of writer for the theatre. Mr. Buchanan promptly flings Æschylus and Terence, and Shakspere, and Molière at their heads, and at the same time tells them that the greatest novels are without form, a series of brilliant episodes, connected by a slight thread of story.
     Mr. Buchanan has in his time played many parts. He was first a poet, then a novelist, and lastly a playwright. He has also done a good deal of journalism. By what is he likely to be longest remembered? Not, certainly, by his newspaper articles or by his plays, or by his novels; but by his poems, many of which are admirable. In them he struck an individual note. The best of his plays are mere adaptations, without any speciality of their own.

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The Daily Chronicle (21 October, 1892 - p.3)

The Dundee Evening Telegraph (11 November, 1892 - p.2)

[Extracts from a letter of Buchanan’s on the subject of Alexander Smith, from an unnamed paper.]

The Glasgow Herald (11 November, 1892 - p.11)

[A letter from William Hodgson on the same subject, which mentions Robert Buchanan Snr. and Jun.]

The Glasgow Herald (16 December, 1892 - p.7)

The Dover Express (28 April, 1893 - p.6)

So far, no more information about Kate Lloyd-Jones, although I did come across this in The Co-operative News of 4th February, 1888 and I should imagine that this Lloyd Jones is the old newspaper business partner of Robert Buchanan Snr.

The Boston Daily Globe (24 June, 1893 - p.4)

     Robert Buchanan, the Scotch poet and playwriter, prints this remark: “I have known only two really sane men in my life, Walt Whitman and Herbert Spencer.” All the other people of his acquaintance are flighty. We must hope that Buchanan himself isn’t rattled, hasn’t gone crazy, hasn’t lost his senses, isn’t moonstruck, hasn’t a screw loose In his head, never talks giddily, and is really sane, without even a touch of corybancy.—[Editor Dana.]

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The Bazaar, Exchange and Mart, And Journal of the Household (30 August, 1893 - Vol. XLIX, p.550)

THE LITERARY WORLD.

. . .

     The next volume of Mr. Walter Scott’s excellent “Canterbury Poets” is devoted to a collection of contemporary Scottish verse by Professor Blackie, Andrew Lang, R. L. Stevenson, and “others,” as the stereotyped newspaper announcement has it. We do not know whether Robert Buchanan, who is Scotch enough in all conscience, is included in the “others,” but his name is not specifically mentioned. Not only in our opinion, but in that of many—not to say most—present-day critics, Mr. Buchanan is the best living poet of Scottish nationality, and head and shoulders above the three persons mentioned. They have their merits in their particular line of literature no doubt, but as poets they do not shine with any great lustre. Mr. Lang can write pretty dedicatory verses—sometimes; Professor Blackie is a Greek scholar and author of philosophical works first and a poet afterwards; and R. L. Stevenson is a novelist than whom there is none better living—his “Child’s Garden of Verses” and other poems are superior, but not works of genius by a long way.

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The Glasgow Herald (28 September, 1893 - p.7)

The Edinburgh Evening News (21 November, 1893 - p.3)

Random Cuttings continued