Date |
Events |
Notes |
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1871 |
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January 1871 |
Napoleon Fallen: a lyrical drama published by Alexander Strahan.
Reviewed in the Athenaeum by William Allingham, January 7, 1871. |
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26 January 1871 |
Letter to Browning asking if he can call on him “to-morrow” before he returns to Scotland: “My wife is out of Town, but I will take the liberty of bringing her younger sister with me instead.” |
The London address is now 4 Bernard Street, Russell Square.
Harriett Jay would have been 17 at this point. |
March 1871 |
The Land of Lorne: including the cruise of the ‘Tern’ to the Outer Hebrides published by Chapman and Hall.
Reviewed in the Athenaeum by John Cordy Jeaffreson, March 18, 1871. ‘George Heath, The Moorland Poet’ published in Good Words. |
This article, later included in Master-Spirits, contains some further thoughts about David Gray and a footnote about Swinburne’s dismissal of Gray’s poetic abilities - evidence that Swinburne’s comment about Gray in his 1867 essay, “Matthew Arnold’s New Poems”, still rankled and perhaps confirming Buchanan’s later statement that this was the root cause of his attack on the ‘Fleshly School’.
The article also includes extracts from the journals of George Heath, which were never published and which are now presumed lost. It is interesting that Buchanan does not mention his local connection to Heath - Buchanan’s birthplace of Caverswall is 10 miles from Heath’s village of Gratton. |
April 1871 |
‘The Teuton before Paris’ published in The Saint Pauls Magazine. |
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2 April 1871 |
The date of the 1871 census. The Buchanan household at ‘Sorobaw Cottage’ now consists of Robert Buchanan (29, ‘Author in Poetry & Belles Letters’), Mary Buchanan (26, wife), Margaret Buchanan (54. mother, widow), Anne Williams (77, grandmother, widow), Harriett Jay (17, sister-in-law) and one general domestic servant, Jane Inglis. |
[click here for copy of 1871 census] |
June 1871 |
‘Mr. John Morley’s Essays’ published in the Contemporary Review. |
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7 June 1871 |
Writes to Tennyson asking for a loan of £200. Buchanan blames ill-health and poor sales of his books for the “difficulty which threatens to drown me altogether.” It appears that Buchanan’s arrangement with Strahan for Napoleon Fallen and The Drama of Kings involved no advance payment and was solely dependent on sales. |
The amount which Buchanan asks for is quite extraordinary. Although such comparisons are never totally accurate, £200 in 1871 would be worth around £9,000 today. Considering his requests for loans to Browning were only for £20, and also considering he was now receiving a £100 pension from the government, the scale of this loan from Tennyson indicates the extent of Buchanan’s financial difficulties at this time. |
14 June 1871 |
Letter to Browning asking for permission to use several of his poems and two of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “in a selection of poems from Homer downwards”. |
Presumably this is a poetry anthology to be edited by Buchanan, but I’ve not come across any evidence that this was ever published and one assumes the deal fell through. |
20 June 1871 |
Writes to Tennyson thanking him for the £200 loan. |
Tennyson’s account books for the period contain an entry for the cheque to Buchanan for £200 dated 27th June, 1871 from Coutts Bank. There is no indication in Tennyson’s accounts that Buchanan ever repaid the loan. |
1 August 1871 |
Letter to Roden Noel which includes the following:
“I do not plead guilty to any wanton desire to make enemies. If you will examine my motives for any personal attack, you will find they are invariably moral & in a sense sacred. I have never yet attacked any man on merely literary grounds. ... In your bustle & fever of seeing many people, & the eagerness of your very keen ambition, I can hardly expect you to be quite fair either to the work or the literary motives of a reserved man like myself—misunderstood & in reality unpopular.”
The letter also includes Buchanan’s dismissal of Ruskin:
“Whatever Ruskin may say on any conceivable subject is to me a matter of such supreme indifference that the only wonder to me is that any intelligent thinker can quote the words of such a foolish gibbering person.” |
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October 1871 |
‘The Fleshly School of Poetry: Mr. D. G. Rossetti’ published in the Contemporary Review, under the pseudonym ‘Thomas Maitland’. |
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7 October 1871 |
A review of the month’s magazines in The Examiner links Buchanan’s name to ‘Thomas Maitland’, perhaps coincidentally:
‘Mr Ruskin says in the new number of his Fors Clavigera, “There was an article—I believe it got in by mistake, but the editor, of course, won’t say so—in the ‘Contemporary Review,’ two months back, on Mr Morley’s Essays, by a Mr Buchanan, with an incidental page on Carlyle in it, unmatchable (to the length of my poor knowledge) for obliquitous platitude, in the mud-walks of literature.” Many will be disposed to say nearly the same of an article in this month’s ‘Contemporary,’ by a Mr Thomas Maitland, who commences a series of strictures on “The Fleshly School of Poetry,” with seventeen pages about Mr Dante Rossetti.’ |
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14 October 1871 |
Writes to Professor Blackie, returning a copy of Joaquin Miller’s poems (Buchanan is not impressed) and enclosing a photograph of Walt Whitman. Comparing Whitman to Goethe, Buchanan writes:
“Walt is one of the few men who are born to prove that Goethe’s life was a lie, his literature a sham, and his whole gospel of economy (what Novalis calls das Evangelium de Oeconomie) a weary failure.” |
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November 1871 |
The Drama of Kings published by Alexander Strahan.
Reviewed in the Athenaeum November 25, 1871. The Land of Lorne: including the cruise of the ‘Tern’ to the Outer Hebrides published in New York (in one volume) by Francis B. Felt & Co.
Reviewed in The New York Times, November 8, 1871. Towards the end of November, into early December, Buchanan writes to Browning from the 4, Bernard Street, Russell Square address. |
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16 November 1871 |
Writes to Tennyson (from 4, Bernard Street, Russell Square) asking his opinion of The Drama of Kings. He also writes:
“I fear this book wont put much into my pockets, as it has few elements of popularity; but I am labouring in other ways, and do not forget my obligations.”
The ‘other ways’ presumably refer to Saint Abe and His Seven Wives and the ‘obligations’ to the £200 loan. |
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19 November 1871 |
Tennyson writes to Buchanan inviting him to visit him at his London lodgings. |
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22 November 1871 |
Visits Tennyson at 16 Albert Mansions, Victoria St., London. |
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28 November 1871 |
Writes to Tennyson asking for another loan of £100.
“The “Drama of Kings” will not give me a penny—it will yield me no cup but critical abuse—but that I should not mind, if I did not need money so much; for even regarding the drama as a failure in every sense, I know well a dozen such failures would not keep me from rising to the summit of modern thought in time.But, strictly in confidence, let me say that I have other work of a more successful kind slowly making its way, and that what that work has already done for me makes it next to certain that I shall have plenty of money in a month or little more. Indeed, I have every hope of being able in in Janry to pay the debt I owe you; and then visiting you in the Isle of Wight. For I cannot summon up heart to be your guest till I have returned you what you so generously lent me.
You will guess, perhaps from your own reminiscences, that I have no means of getting money apart from work. Moreover, I have no wealthy friends, no connections, no anything.”
The “other work of a more successful kind” is Saint Abe and His Seven Wives, which Buchanan published anonymously, hence the “strictly in confidence”. Buchanan then launches into an attack on James Knowles, a close friend of Tennyson’s and, at the time, the editor of The Contemporary Review. Knowles had rejected an article which Buchanan had written on the subject of Goethe (for which he was expecting to receive 70 guineas). He then goes on to say:
“Mr Knowles has done me more injustice than this. He has broken confidence as to my authorship of the article on Rossetti, & led to the inference that I wilfully took a false name. Strahan can tell you that he (Strahan) coined & affixed the name to the article, without my knowledge, when I was far from the spot. It was a weak & badly written article, I admit, but I flinch from none of its opinions.” |
There is no record in Tennyson’s account books of this second loan and one presumes that he (quite rightly) turned Buchanan down. |
2 December 1871 |
The Athenaeum prints a short paragraph in its “Literary Gossip” column stating that Sidney Colvin is shortly to publish an answer to “ ‘The Fleshly School of Poetry,’ by Thomas Maitland, a nom de plume assumed by Mr. Robert Buchanan”. |
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4 December 1871 |
Writes to Professor Blackie asking him to review The Drama of Kings:
“But you have not only eyes, but you have the subject at your finger ends: so why dont you help the public to understand the opus a little bit?” |
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6 December 1871 |
Writes to Browning asking for another loan.
“Several schemes have gone wrong & I am in a fix—not that your loan would clear me, but I am absolutely at a stand for spare cash.
Along with what seems dispiriting, I've better news to communicate. In the first place, I can repay you with certainty on Janry 1st. In the next, I shall after that date be in a very different position, as I have accepted a definite appointment of no arduous kind. In the third, altho’ the Drama of Kings is not lucrative, other work—which I dare not name—is likely to be so.” |
No evidence of what this ‘definite appointment’ might have been. The lucrative work which he “dare not name” refers to Saint Abe and His Seven Wives: a Tale of Salt Lake City which was published anonymously by Strahan later that month. |
12 December 1871 |
Buchanan writes to the Athenaeum admitting that he is the author of ‘The Fleshly School of Poetry’.
He also announces that the article will be republished by Mr. Strahan “with many additions but no material alterations, and with my name in the title-page.” |
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16 December 1871 |
Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s reply to ‘The Fleshly School of Poetry’, entitled ‘The Stealthy School of Criticism’, is published in the Athenaeum.
At the end of the article, the Athenaeum printed two letters - a denial of Buchanan’s involvement from Alexander Strahan, and Buchanan’s admission that he was the author of ‘The Fleshly School of Poetry’. There was also a note from the editor criticising Buchanan. |
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23 December 1871 |
The Athenaeum prints a letter from Buchanan objecting to the editorial comment in the previous issue. A letter from Alexander Strahan, attempting to explain his earlier denial that Buchanan was Maitland, appears in The Pall Mall Gazette and (on 25th December) the Glasgow Herald. |
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December 1871 |
Saint Abe and His Seven Wives: a Tale of Salt Lake City published anonymously by Strahan & Co. (London) and George Routledge & Sons (New York).
Reviewed in the Athenaeum by Thomas Purnell, December 23, 1871. Reviewed in The New York Times, January 26, 1872. |
Jay states that the animosity towards Buchanan over the Fleshly School controversy was the reason Saint Abe and His Seven Wives was published anonymously:
“So cruel indeed and so relentless was this persecution of him, that when, in the year 1872, he published his poem “St. Abe and His Seven Wives,” he found it expedient not only to issue the book anonymously, but to take every precaution to prevent the name of the author from becoming known.”
Considering the book appeared in December 1871 (and was reviewed in the Athenaeum only the week after Rossetti’s reply to Buchanan’s original article) this seems incorrect. The plan to issue the book anonymously must have been arranged prior to the publication of The Fleshly School of Poetry, but presumably for a similar reason, to circumvent the hostile critics who had dismissed The Book of Orm and The Drama of Kings. |
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1872 |
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January 1872 |
‘Among the Hebrides’ (Parts 1 - 3) - ‘by An Idle Voyager’ - and the poem, ‘The Last of the Hangmen’, published in The Saint Pauls Magazine. |
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13 January 1872 |
The Graphic prints a dismissive review of Buchanan’s The Drama of Kings and follows it with a laudatory review of Saint Abe and His Seven Wives, which begins:
“St. Abe and his Seven Wives, a Tale of Salt Lake City” (Strahan and Co.) belongs to a very different class of poetry. The author has one advantage over Mr. Buchanan, that his muse deals in realism unmixed, and that nobody need be in any doubt as to what he means.” |
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February 1872 |
The February issue of The Saint Pauls Magazine contains three important contributions from Buchanan. His essay on Dickens, ‘The “Good Genie” of Fiction’, and two of his most popular poems. His name appears under the essay, but ‘Phil Blood’s Leap’ is ‘by the author of “St. Abe and His Seven Wives”’, and ‘The Ballad of Judas Iscariot’ is anonymous. |
Another poem, ‘Supreme Love’ is by ‘John Banks’, the pseudonym under which Buchanan’s essay, ‘Wintering at Etrétat’, was published in The Argosy in 1866. |
24 February 1872 |
The Saturday Review publishes an article, ‘Coterie Glory’, criticising the ‘Fleshly Poets’. |
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27 February 1872 |
Buchanan and family witness the Queen’s procession to St. Paul’s on the Thanksgiving Day for the Prince of Wales’s recovery. |
Mentioned in Isabella Fyvie Mayo’s Recollections of Fifty Years. |
March 1872 |
‘Tennyson’s Charm’ (which included another swipe at Rossetti) published in The Saint Pauls Magazine. This issue also included another poem, ‘Colonel Shark’, ‘by the author of “St. Abe and His Seven Wives”’. |
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4 March 1872 |
Letter to Browning from a new address in London, 10 a Park Road, Regents Park, concerning the ‘Fleshly School’ controversy. It includes the following:
“Strahan’s use of a pseudonym was a blunder, tho’ honestly enough meant.” A second letter to Browning in March contains the following:
“In the whole morale of the affair, I will only plead guilty to one instinct of recrimination. When these men, not content with outraging literature, violated the memory of the poor boy who went home from me twelve years ago to die, I made a religious vow to have no mercy; & I have had none. Thus far I have been revengeful. The main cause is nevertheless righteous & good.” |
Further confirmation that it was Swinburne’s passing mention of David Gray in his review of Matthew Arnold’s poems, which caused the whole affair.
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April 1872 |
The April edition of The Saint Pauls Magazine contains the poems, ‘The Asrai’ (‘by Robert Buchanan’), ‘Seraphina Snowe’ (‘by the author of “St. Abe and His Seven Wives”’) and the essay, ‘Criticism as One of the Fine Arts’ (by ‘Walter Hutcheson’). Buchanan opened his 1873 collection of essays, Master-Spirits, with ‘Criticism as One of the Fine Arts’, but omitted a paragraph containing the following passage referring to Swinburne and the ‘Fleshly School’: “We have lately had the spectacle of a group of drawing-room poets undertaking to blow the trumpet for each other till the world should ring again. And why not? There was no “editorial” deception. The thing was not criticism, but it was Fine Art, and everybody enjoyed the self-revelation of Mr. Swinburne as a man totally without perception of the meaning of words and the right measure of flattery, and the self-revelation of Mr. Swinburne’s friends as gentlemen gone mad with secret emotion-hatching. The knowledge so acquired is invaluable. We can hardly, in fact, grumble at any nonsense if it be signed, and if the signer shows us the sort of man he is.” |
Another poem in this edition is ‘Mazzini’ ‘by B.’ - which is possibly also by Buchanan. |
May 1872 |
The Fleshly School of Poetry and Other Phenomena of the Day (an extended version of the October, 1871 ‘Thomas Maitland’ article) published by Alexander Strahan.
Reviewed in The Examiner, May 18, 1872. ‘Faces on the Wall’, a sequence of 12 sonnets, published in the The Saint Pauls Magazine. Also, ‘The Capture of Eureka Hart’ (‘by the author of “St. Abe and His Seven Wives”’ - an extract from White Rose and Red) and another essay from ‘Walter Hutcheson’, ‘Pity the Poor Drama!’ |
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2 May 1872 |
Letter to Browning from the Regents Park address mentioning ‘Faces on the Wall’ (which includes a sonnet to Browning) and indicating that he will be leaving London. |
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June 1872 |
The poem, ‘Pan’, and ‘Among the Hebrides’ (Parts 4 - 5) - ‘by An Idle Voyager’, published in The Saint Pauls Magazine. |
There is another poem in this edition, ‘The Waxwork; or, Love and Rumour’ which is anonymous, but could be by Buchanan. |
5 June 1872 |
Letter to Roden Noel from Scotland refers to “my little secret”, which presumably is his authorship of Saint Abe and His Seven Wives. The letter also contains the following line about his poor health:
“If I were better I would say more; but I am still very very shaky.” |
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8 June 1872 |
Dante Gabriel Rossetti attempts suicide. |
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July 1872 |
Swinburne publishes his attack on Buchanan, Under the Microscope.
Reviewed in The Examiner, July 6, 1872. The poem, ‘John Mardon, Mariner: his Strange Adventures in El Dorado’ (Part 1) (‘by the author of “St. Abe and His Seven Wives”’), and the essays, ‘The Fair Pilot of Loch Uribol: A Yachting Episode’ - ‘by An Idle Voyager’ and
‘The Laureate of the Nursery’, published in The Saint Pauls Magazine. |
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August 1872 |
‘The Monkey and the Microscope’, Buchanan’s reply to Swinburne’s Under the Microscope, published in The Saint Pauls Magazine. The August edition also includes ‘St. Laurence and the Gnomes: A Northern Legend’ (‘by B.’) and ‘Birds of the Hebrides’. |
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September 1872 |
‘John Mardon, Mariner: his Strange Adventures in El Dorado’ (Part 2) (‘by the author of “St. Abe and His Seven Wives”’), ‘Prose and Verse’ (by ‘Walter Hutcheson’) and
‘The Ballad of the Wayfarer’ (by ‘T. M.’) published in The Saint Pauls Magazine. |
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October 1872 |
‘John Mardon, Mariner: his Strange Adventures in El Dorado’ (Part 3) (‘by the author of “St. Abe and His Seven Wives”’) published in The Saint Pauls Magazine. |
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November 1872 |
‘The Song of the Shealing’ (anon.) published in The Saint Pauls Magazine. |
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December 1872 |
‘Bjornsterne Bjornson’ published in the Contemporary Review. |
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1873 |
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1873 |
Buchanan leaves the “White House on the Hill” in Oban, Scotland and moves to Ireland. |
Jay opens Chapter XVII: LIFE IN IRELAND with the following sentence:
“In the year 1874 his occupancy of the “White House on the Hill” came to an end, and he left Scotland for ever.”
Prior to this move, Buchanan spent some time in Great Malvern, Worcestershire undergoing hydropathic treatment. However there is some doubt that these two events occurred in 1874 and I have placed them in 1873. The evidence for 1873 is a letter from Buchanan to Roden Noel, dated November 5th of that year, from Rossport, Ireland. In case one suspects a simple error in the date on Buchanan’s part, the text of the letter also supports the 1873 date - Buchanan mentions having read Roden Noel’s “first paper on ‘Byron’”, which presumably refers to Noel’s “Byron and his Times” published in The Saint Pauls Magazine in two parts in 1873. (A scan of the first page of the letter is available here.) Other evidence that Buchanan was in Great Malvern prior to 1874 is a letter to Tennyson of June 4th 1873, with the address, “Chatsworth House, Great Malvern”, and the Prefatory Note to Master-Spirits dated “July 1, 1873, Great Malvern”. Also, one of Harriett Jay’s extracts from Mary Buchanan’s journal for March 12th states: “Robert finished and posted complete poem, ‘White Rose and Red.’” White Rose and Red was published in August 1873.
It is annoying that when Jay chooses to provide dates they are open to question. The extracts from Mary Buchanan’s journal, which it is implied are occurring in 1874, include one for February 29th. However 1874 was not a leap year. 1872 was a leap year but there is enough information to place Buchanan in London in February and March of that year.
The only corroborating evidence for 1874 is an item in The Guardian of January 12th 1874:
“Mr. Robert Buchanan, who is submitting himself to hydropathic treatment at Malvern, has, the Examiner is informed, another volume of smaller poems in hand, which will include some already printed, amongst a considerable number of original ones.”
And a letter to the Glasgow bookseller and publisher, James MacLehose (offered for sale by Richard Ford on abebooks.co.uk) from Chatsworth House, Great Malvern, is dated 30th March 1874. In a postscript to the letter Buchanan asks MacLehose for “local help” for the three volume collection of his poetry published by Henry S. King & Co. I have not seen the letter so cannot confirm the date, but taken with the notice in the Guardian, one possible explanation is that Buchanan visited Malvern again in 1874.
Further confusion concerning the move to Ireland is provided by a letter to Robert Browning dated October 27th 1875 in which Buchanan says he has been in Ireland for 18 months, which would place the move around April 1874. |
February 1873 |
‘The Great Snow’ (‘by the author of “St. Abe and His Seven Wives”’ - an extract from White Rose and Red) published in The Saint Pauls Magazine. |
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1 February 1873 |
Writes to Alexander Strahan:
‘I enclose “Kitty Kemble” for next month’s St Pauls. It is quite new and very strong. “Poetry & the Drama” by “Walter Hutcheson” in a day or so; and a St “Abe”.
Can you let me have some cash to-day? Answer per Bearer.’ |
This letter (in the collection of the Folger Shakespeare Library) has the proof sheets for ‘Kitty Kemble’ attached. However, I’ve not yet found out when the poem was published and in which magazine. It certainly did not appear in The Saint Pauls Magazine in March 1873, or any subsequent editions during 1873. The same applies to the ‘Walter Hutcheson’ essay and the other ‘St. Abe’. |
28 February 1873 |
After consulting doctors in London, Buchanan goes to Great Malvern for hydropathic treatment at Holyrood House. |
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12 March 1873 |
Buchanan finishes White Rose and Red and posts it to London. |
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13 March 1873 |
With no improvement in Buchanan’s health, Mary advises him to leave Malvern, and “a few days later” they return to London. |
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29 March 1873 |
Buchanan’s symptoms persist and he decides to return to Malvern to try the hydropathic treatment again. |
According to Jay this second visit to Malvern “lasted several weeks”. She also quotes from a letter to Roden Noel:
“It is awfully dull and damnably dear, in fact a perfect catarrh of cash. . . . I got a lighter heart directly I had seen Reynolds and Gulley, and they to some extent dissipated my greatest dread.” |
4 June 1873 |
Writes to Tennyson from Malvern. The letter mentions Mary Buchanan having written to Tennyson, without her husband’s approval. Buchanan then launches into another attack on James Knowles, accusing him of revealing his authorship of ‘The Fleshly School’ article to Sidney Colvin “& others”. Buchanan ends the letter with the following:
“If you stay long in the Isle of Wight I should like to see you some day. I’m not well enough yet to visit, but I might perhaps see you en passant. My doctor tells me to get sea-air, & I might be in your neighbourhood.” |
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1 July 1873 |
Prefatory Note to Master-Spirits dated July 1, 1873, Great Malvern. |
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August 1873 |
White Rose and Red: a love story published anonymously (“By The Author of ‘St. Abe.’”) in London by Strahan & Co. and in Boston by J. R. Osgood & Co.
Advertised in The Times August 11, 1873.
Reviewed in the Boston Daily Globe, September 6, 1873. (The review begins: “Whoever may be the author of the poem, White Rose and Red, whether he is Robert Buchanan or another, he must have the credit of having given to the world a picture of an utterly contemptible hero.”)
Reviewed in The Graphic, October 4, 1873.
The book is dedicated: “To Walt Whitman and Alexander Gardiner, with all friends in Washington.”
The endpapers of the book announce the fourth edition (enlarged and revised) of Saint Abe: A Tale of Salt Lake City. |
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1 September 1873 |
Writes to John Chapman, publisher of The Westminster Review:
“I just send this line to remind you that the copy of “White Rose & Red” was sent to the Editor of the Westminster by mistake; it should have been addressed as what it is, a private copy to you. You will agree with me that it is hardly fair to submit any work of mine to a reviewer who, on your own admission, is personally hostile to me; and I must therefore beg you to suppress any review from his pen, as he is no doubt privately advised by this time of my responsibility for “White Rose & Red.” As a rule, I treat criticism favorable or otherwise with quiet contempt; but a critic who avows a prejudice has, you will agree, no right to be heard at all.” |
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October 1873 |
‘The Gifts’ published in Cassell’s Magazine. |
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November 1873 |
‘Robert Buchanan’ by George Barnett Smith published in the Contemporary Review. An overly effusive article which revealed Buchanan as the author of Saint Abe and White Rose and Red. |
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5 November 1873 |
Letter to Roden Noel from Rossport, Belmullet, County Mayo, Ireland. “My work this year has been nil, & my pecuniary troubles distracting. Happy man! gifted with plenty & total literary ease!—Money matters are bad enough when one is well, but when one is ill—ah!” “This is a wild place, breeding wild moods. There is nothing but dead waste, squalor, & the Ocean— all one sombre tint of gray. But I am happier here than in England.” |
This is the earliest surviving letter with the Rossport address. The actual date of the move to Ireland is not known, so presumably it was some time between July and November, 1873.
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December 1873 |
Master-Spirits, a collection of essays, published by Henry S. King.
Reviewed in The Examiner, 6 December, 1873.
The collection includes two essays previously published in The Saint Pauls Magazine under the pseudonym, Walter Hutcheson. |
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1874 |
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7 January 1874 |
Letter to Browning from a London address, 51 Upper Gloucester Place, Dorset Square. Buchanan writes:
“For myself, I have been under a Shadow, but am beginning to see daylight.” |
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10 January 1874 |
Notice in The Examiner:
“MR ROBERT BUCHANAN, who is submitting himself to hydropathic treatment at Malvern, has, we are informed, another volume of smaller poems in hand, which will include some already printed, amongst a considerable number of original ones.” |
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February 1874 |
The Poetical Works of Robert Buchanan in 3 volumes, published in London by Henry S. King & Co. Advertised in The Graphic February 4th. The 3 volume edition is also published in Boston by James R. Osgood and Co. |
The advert in The Graphic states:
“Robert Buchanan’s Poetical and Prose Works. Collected Edition. 5 vols., crown 8vo, cloth extra, each 6s. Vol. 1 contains “Ballads and Romances,” “Ballads and Poems of Life.” With a Portrait of the Author. {Just out.”
I have found no evidence that the two volumes of the Prose Works ever appeared. |
May 1874 |
‘Spring Song in the City’ published in The Penny Illustrated Paper. |
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July 1874 |
‘The Wedding of Shon Maclean’ published in the Gentleman’s Magazine. |
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August 1874 |
‘Love in Winter’ published in The Gentleman’s Magazine. |
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3 August 1874 |
A Madcap Prince produced at the Haymarket Theatre, London, starring Mrs. Kendal and Mr. Buckstone, for one performance on the final night of the season. It then tours the provinces, including Liverpool, Edinburgh and Glasgow. Despite Mr. Buckstone’s announcement that it would open the Haymarket’s next season in October, this does not occur. |
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8 August 1874 |
The review of A Madcap Prince in The Examiner concludes with the following:
“We are sorry we cannot speak more favourably of Mr Buchanan’s first attempt at dramatic writing, because he has shown himself wonderfully accommodating in his desire to achieve success. Not only has he relinquished all possibility of his again appearing in the lofty character of a censor morum, and guardian of public decency; but in showing himself willing to gratify theatrical taste by repeating vulgar ridicule of the Puritans and vulgar glorification of the cavaliers, he has thrown suspicion upon the honesty of his somewhat blatant professions of advanced political views. In his eagerness to succeed as a playwright, he has sacrificed literary and political consistency, and he has not succeeded. He has signified his willingness to prostitute his talents, and has revealed the humiliating fact that in this particular line he has no talents to prostitute.” |
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September 1874 |
‘Giant Despair’ published in The Gentleman’s Magazine. |
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October 1874 |
‘The Character of Goethe’ published in The New Quarterly Magazine.
‘The God-Like Love’ published in The Gentleman’s Magazine. |
Buchanan’s essay on Goethe was written three years earlier and was originally intended for the Contemporary Review but was rejected by the editor, James Knowles, as revealed in a letter to Tennyson of 28th November, 1871. |
November 1874 |
‘O’Connor’s Wake’ published in The Gentleman’s Magazine. |
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Late 1874 |
Buchanan writes to William Canton suggesting they collaborate on a novel. Buchanan’s first idea (which will form the basis of A Child of Nature published in 1881) is rejected. |
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December 1874 |
‘The “Midian-Uara”’ published in The Gentleman’s Magazine. |
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20 December 1874 |
Writes to William Canton again with a second idea for a novel, which will eventually become The Shadow of the Sword. The working title is Romaine. |
Chapter XVIII of Jay includes several letters from Buchanan to Canton detailing this collaborative approach to novel-writing. |
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1875 |
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January 1875 |
According to the letters to Canton, Buchanan is still enthusiastic about the novel. |
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2 January 1875 |
Writes to the American theatre producer Augustin Daly, having read in a newspaper that Daly was planning a production of A Madcap Prince. Buchanan says he will send Daly a revised copy of the play and offers this explanation as to why the play only received the one performance in London:
“The reproduction of the piece in London has been delayed thro’ the unexpected return of Mr Sothern and the confinement of Mrs Kendal. As the Kendals have now left the Haymarket, & are out of all engagement, I dont know when it will be done again—I hope soon. Wherever played, it has been entirely successful, as you will doubtless have heard.”
Daly’s production of A Madcap Prince never appeared, although Buchanan (according to the few surviving letters) continued to try to interest him in the play until 1886. |
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17 February 1875 |
Buchanan writes to Canton apologising for the delay in writing and says he is “neck-deep in work”. |
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26 February 1875 |
Buchanan writes to Canton:
“I have been very busy and much worried: far too much of both to write any of ‘Romaine.’ Nothing has miscarried that you sent. The days flash by like lightning, and I find hardly a moment to spare. ... I don’t know how you stand, but I fear I cannot touch my portion for some little time yet, for I must have everything else off my mind ere I begin. ... Thank God I am not ill, though always shaky more or less, like a man on thin ice.” |
An extract from another letter to Canton in Chapter XXI of Jay refers to Buchanan being busy writing Balder The Beautiful at this time. |
April 1875 |
‘Thomas Love Peacock: A Personal Reminiscence’ published in the New Quarterly Magazine. R. E. Francillon writes to Buchanan asking him to contribute a poem to be inserted in the novel he is writing for the extra Christmas edition of the Gentleman’s Magazine.
Buchanan’s poem (which proves unsuitable for the novel) is ‘The Changeling’. |
Chapter XIX of Jay is written by R. E. Francillon and includes a letter from Buchanan discussing the request, dated April 14, 1875. |
14 April 1875 |
Letter to Canton indicating the collaboration has stalled somewhat: “I have been distraught on various accounts; partly with work. And you, I suppose on your side have been so deep in the folds of that ‘top coat,’ as to have forgotten ‘Romaine.’ If so wake up! The first free week I get I mean to plunge headlong into that work, but it wants thought, silence, and care.” Buchanan also writes to Augustin Daly enclosing the manuscript of his new play, Corinne, inviting him to suggest revisions and offering him a co-writing credit. Buchanan also says:
“I have, however, resolved in my future dramatic efforts, to use a pseudonym.”
Buchanan is enthusiastic about the play, expecting it to be produced with Mrs. Vezin in the title role:
“I expect great things of “Corinne,” only you must have a first-class actress, full of passion, fervour, & fire.”
He also offers to sell the American rights to Daly, and mentions that Daly has not yet produced A Madcap Prince. Buchanan’s hopes for Corinne were not fulfilled and it was one of his least successful plays. There was no collaboration with Daly and no production with Mrs. Vezin. Instead the play was produced at the Lyceum Theatre by an amateur actress, Mrs. Fairfax, and ran for just two weeks from 26th June to 8th July, 1876. |
This could have been due to some of the reviews for A Madcap Prince, particularly the one in The Examiner which was extremely critical of Buchanan. However he also toyed with the idea of using a pseudonym later in his career before embarking on the series of melodramas for the Adelphi in collaboration with G. R. Sims. However on both occasions he rejected the idea. |
30 April 1875 |
In a letter to Canton Buchanan mentions “longing for a run to London ... The worst of this region is its inaccessibility!—the journey to Town being both arduous and costly.” |
Jay gives the annual rent of Rossport Lodge as £50 (half Buchanan’s civil list pension) but she also includes this from a letter to William Canton:
“I came here for economy and just now, calculating up, I find it costs me as much as London, though we only live in a tiny cottage. There are so many Poor who must and will be assisted.” |
May 1875 |
‘A Song of a Dream’ published in the Gentleman’s Magazine. |
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19 May 1875 |
Letter to Canton abandoning the collaboration.
“Shall you be very much— awfully—disappointed if I decide that the prose form won’t suit ‘Romaine’ after all, and that I should like to adhere to my original plan of making it a poem?”
He also promises to pay Canton for his trouble. |
Buchanan and Canton remained friends despite both the failure of the collaboration and Buchanan’s subsequent publication of the novel. |
June 1875 |
Swinburne’s Essays and Studies published by Chatto & Windus. Advertised in The Times, 14 June, 1875. The essay, ‘Matthew Arnold’s New Poems’, now has a footnote relating to David Gray. ‘The Peepshow’ published in the Gentleman’s Magazine. |
The insertion of this quite unnecessary (and rather cruel) footnote is an indication that Swinburne had not finished with Buchanan, since the most obvious reason for its inclusion is an attempt to draw Buchanan out to continue the ‘Fleshly School’ battle. |
July 1875 |
‘The Modern Stage’ published in The New Quarterly Magazine. |
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August 1875 |
Harriett Jay’s first novel, The Queen Of Connaught, published (anonymously) by Richard Bentley and Son. Advertised in The Pall Mall Gazette August 16, 1875.
Reviewed in The Daily News September 3, 1875, where the reviewer assumed the anonymous author was male. |
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October 1875 |
Jonas Fisher published anonymously.
Advertised in The Examiner October 23, 1875. |
Jonas Fisher was written by James Carnegie, the Earl of Southesk, but the poem bore enough similarities in style and theme to the work of Buchanan, to cause Swinburne to assume he was its author. |
27 October 1875 |
Letter to Browning from the Dorset Square address, says he is in London for a short time and includes the following about Harriett Jay’s novel:
“You will be glad to hear that my sister-in-law, whom you know, and who has lived with us from childhood, has had a great success with her first story – “The Queen of Connaught.” A large first edition has been sold, & the second is out. You may guess how far more this delights me than any success of my own.”
In a postscript he adds this:
“The authorship of the “Queen of Connaught” is mentioned in confidence, but my sister particularly wishes you to tell Miss Browning, to whom she sends kindest regards (in which I join).” |
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5 November 1875 |
The Belfast News-Letter carries the following announcement:
“CHARLES READE’S NEW STORY.—It is announced that “The Queen of Connaught,” the novel recently published anonymously by Messrs. Bentley & Son, is by Mr. Charles Reade. It deals trenchantly with the abuses of the Irish priesthood, and has created much sensation in Ireland, having been strongly denounced by the Nation. The novel entered upon its third edition, however, on Wednesday.” The same story is repeated in The Aberdeen Journal on November 10th. |
I’m not sure of the origin of the rumour that Charles Reade had written The Queen of Connaught. Harriett Jay mentions it in Chapter 24 of Robert Buchanan:
“... in many quarters the book was spoken of as the work of Charles Reade. Fearing the great author’s anger, I wrote him a letter of apology, telling him that I was only a beginner in the art which I had adopted under circumstances so auspicious, and finally assuring him that I had had no hand whatever in the circulation of the reports which connected the book with his name. The reply which I received was courteous and kindly in the extreme.” |
17 November 1875 |
Letter to Richard Gowing (published in Chapter XX of Jay) agreeing to terms for the serialisation of The Shadow of the Sword in the Gentleman’s Magazine. Buchanan receives 180 guineas (payable in monthly instalments) for the book. |
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20 November 1875 |
Swinburne publishes the following poem in The Examiner, obviously aimed at Buchanan: He whose heart and soul and tongue
Once above-ground stunk and stung,
Now less noisome than before,
Stinks here still, but stings no more. |
The final sentence of Swinburne’s Under The Microscope describes Buchanan in similar terms: “But when once we have seen the fang, though innocuous, protrude from a mouth which would fain distil poison and can only distil froth, we need no revelation to assure us that the doom of the creature is to go upon its belly and eat dust all the days of its life.” |
27 November 1875 |
Review of Jonas Fisher in The Examiner speculates that Buchanan is the author:“This anonymous poem is said by the “London Correspondents” to be the work either of Mr. Robert Buchanan or of the Devil; and delicate as may be the question raised by this double sided supposition, the weight of probability inclines to the first of the alternatives.” |
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4 December 1875 |
Buchanan states in the Athenaeum that he is not the author of Jonas Fisher and has not even seen the poem.
Buchanan’s denial is also reported in The Examiner, the Manchester Times and the Glasgow Herald. |
“The denial brought forth an acrid retort from the London Quarterly that since the real author had not signed the poem, he “thus afforded Mr. Robert Buchanan a favourable opportunity (not altogether lost) of getting up another fuss about himself” (XLV, 527-528).”
(‘Robert Buchanan and the Fleshly Controversy’, John A. Cassidy.) |
11 December 1875 |
A letter from Swinburne, under the title ‘The Devil’s Due’ and signed “Thomas Maitland - St. Kilda, December 28, 1875” is published in The Examiner. |
According to The Letters of Algernon Charles Swinburne by Thomas Hake and Arthur Compton-Rickett (London, 1918 - p.120):
“Concurrently with the appearance of Swinburne’s article in Minto’s journal, The Devil’s Due was printed in pamphlet form, but suppressed immediately, for rumours of legal proceedings against the proprietor of the Examiner soon began to leak out.” The 12 page pamphlet version of the letter is now accepted as a Thomas Wise forgery from 1896. |
