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ROBERT WILLIAMS BUCHANAN (1841-1901)

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1840 - 1860

Autumn 1840

Robert Buchanan marries Margaret Williams at a civil ceremony in Manchester, attended by Robert Owen.

18 August 1841

Robert Buchanan born in Caverswall, Staffordshire.

[click here for copy of birth certificate]

January 1842

A serious physical assault on Robert Snr. at a Methodist chapel in Whitehaven, Cumberland, brings his missionary career to a close. He moves to London to work as a reporter on the Sun newspaper.

Information from Robert Snr.’s entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

c. 1842

Margaret and her son join the Ham Common community, in Surrey.

They do not stay long and the family eventually settle in Norwood, in the London borough of Lambeth. Buchanan attends Alexander Campbell’s school in Hampton Wick, then one at Merton. Their house in Norwood is visited by prominent Socialists including Louis Blanc, Marc Caussidière and Lloyd Jones.

1844

Mary Ann Jay born in Grays, Essex.

1850

Robert Snr. returns to Scotland to edit the Glasgow Sentinel.

1851. . .

According to the 1851 census (carried out on March 30th), Margaret Buchanan (34) and Robert Buchanan (9) are still living in Gothic Cottage, Norwood. Margaret Buchanan is listed as ‘wife of newspaper proprietor’ indicating that Robert Snr. had by now bought the Glasgow Sentinel.

Eventually they move to Glasgow and Robert is sent to boarding-school at Rothesay, on the Island of Bute. He begins writing poetry.

[click here for copy of 1851 census]

The census return for the family of Richard Jay is also available here.

c. 1853

After trying to run away from the school he is expelled and returns home to Glasgow to continue his education at the Glasgow Academy and then the High School. Robert Snr. is now the proprietor of three newspapers, the Glasgow Sentinel, the Glasgow Times and the Penny Post.

2 September 1853

Harriett Jay born in Grays, Essex.

[click here for copy of birth certificate]

c. 1855

First works printed (anonymously) in a Glasgow newspaper “one, moreover, which did not belong to his father.” (Jay)

Hugh Macdonald (who worked for Buchanan Snr.) encourages Robert’s literary ambitions, buying his first long poem and printing it in the Glasgow Times.

18 August 1855

Robert Snr. gives his son the one-volume edition of Wordsworth, published by Moxon, as a present on his fourteenth birthday.

c. December 1855

Writes a pantomime which is produced at the Theatre Royal, Glasgow.

Jay, Chapter XXIII.

1856. . .

Attends Glasgow University.

First becomes interested in the theatre. Impressed by Vandenhoff’s performance of King Lear. Meets Henry Irving. Spends time at the Theatre Royal Glasgow.

Meets David Gray at a cricket match on Glasgow Green. They become friends and send letters seeking advice and help from British literary notables. Buchanan writes to G. H. Lewes.

Both the D.N.B. and John A. Cassidy’s Robert W. Buchanan state that Robert Snr. was made bankrupt in 1856. This does not square with Jay’s account : “For years fortune favoured him, and everything he touched succeeded. It was not until he was tempted to extend his ventures beyond the locality where he resided that the tide of his fortunes seems to have turned. He became involved in serious liabilities and finally failed to meet his responsibilities.”  The 1856 date seems to suggest that the acquisition of the other two Glasgow papers led to bankruptcy, whereas Jay indicates that it was Robert Snr.’s attempt to expand his newspaper empire to the country beyond Glasgow with The Scottish Sentinel that led to his ruin in 1860. Apart from the Cassidy and the D.N.B. I’ve not come across any other mention of this, whereas there is a bankruptcy notice in The Scotsman on 28th April, 1860.]

1857

Poems & Love Lyrics, first book of poetry, published. (Glasgow: Thomas Murray and Son. Edinburgh: Sutherland and Knox. London: Hall, Virtue and Co.)
Reviewed by Gerald Massey in the Athenaeum, December 26, 1857.

1859

Mary, and other Poems, second book of poetry published in Glasgow. The book is dedicated to Hugh Macdonald.

1860

February 1860

Writes to Thackeray submitting two poems to the new Cornhill Magazine (edited by Thackeray), which were rejected.

David Gray goes to London. Sends letter to Monckton Milnes from 65, Deveril Street, Borough (Southwark).

This letter from Gray, printed in The Life, Letters, and Friendships of Richard Monckton Milnes, First Lord Houghton by T. Wemyss Reid (Cassell & Co., Ltd., 1890, Vol. II, p. 46), rather undermines Buchanan’s story that they were due to leave Glasgow on the same day but departed from different stations, although it does make more sense of the fact that Buchanan made no attempt to find his friend during his first months in London.

April 1860

Robert Snr. declared bankrupt.

5 May 1860

Robert Buchanan leaves Glasgow for London.

He loses his train ticket and his luggage is confiscated. He meets a lad in a park who invites him back to his lodging house where he spends his first night in London.

6 May 1860

He looks up an old friend of his father’s, Mr. Merriman who helps him retrieve his luggage and invites him to stay at his house in Euston Road.

May 1860. . .

He stays with the Merriman family for a week or so, then moves to the garret at 66, Stamford Street, Blackfriars.

Visits Bryan Procter (Barry Cornwall), with whom he had corresponded while in Scotland, and who had “warned him not to attempt to live by literature”. Procter slips him three sovereigns as he leaves.

14 July 1860

First pieces published in the Athenaeum.

c. 1860. . .

Also writes for the Literary Gazette and Dickens’ All The Year Round and John Maxwell’s Temple Bar and the St. James’s Magazine. He also contributes a weekly leader on current politics to a newspaper in Ayr.

He also makes several acquaintances in the literary and theatrical world, including Edwin Danvers, the actor, and Westland Marston, the playwright. At Marston’s house he meets Dinah Mulock (Mrs. Craik, author of John Halifax, Gentleman and a fellow native of Staffordshire. She makes her library available to him. Also at Marston’s house meets Hermann Vezin (with whom he collaborated on Partners in 1884) and W. G. Wills (who provides a letter of introduction to Edmund Yates).

Meets up with David Gray in London. Invites him to stay at 66 Stamford Street. David Gray’s illness diagnosed.

This is perhaps the most confusing period of Buchanan’s life. Unlike the childhood and teenage years where the information is sparse, this period of Buchanan’s early struggles in London contains a lot of detail but little of it is dated by Jay. Buchanan also wrote of this period several times but without helping matters. Chapter 8 of Jay ‘Friendships, 1864’ opens with:“With the death of David Gray his loneliness in the Great City became complete; almost his only acquaintances being Hepworth Dixon of the Athenæum, and other editors for whom he did a little work.” According to Jay, Marston’s daughter Nellie “interested the poet exceedingly”, which, considering the next chapter starts, “It was towards the close of the year 1861 that he married my sister”, would suggest that the visits to Marston’s house preceded the death of Gray in December 1861. Buchanan’s ‘My First Book’ article which seem to be the source for this period in Jay, indicates this is the period after Gray’s first return to Scotland in October 1860.

October 1860

David Gray returns to Scotland

Letter in Jay from Gray in Scotland dated 10th November 1860. A letter in The Life, Letters, and Friendships of Richard Monckton Milnes, First Lord Houghton by T. Wemyss Reid (Vol. II, p. 49) from ‘an eminent Glasgow physician who had been consulted by Gray’ is dated 4th November and the doctor writes: “At the request of my friend Mr. Sydney Dobell, I visited poor Gray some days ago at his father’s cottage, Merkland...”

November 1860

Calls on Edmund Yates assistant editor of Maxwell’s new magazine, Temple Bar, with a letter of introduction from W. G. Wills.

Gray returns from Scotland and stays at Stamford Street while waiting for a place in a hospital in Torquay.

“He wrote a series of poems in our new magazine, the first one having ‘Temple Bar’ for its subject, and became a constant contributor.” (Edmund Yates : his recollections and experiences (1885)). Buchanan later falls out with Yates over his article, ‘A New Thing in Journalism’ (1877).

5 December 1860

Gray moves to a hydropathic establishment at Sudbrook Park, Richmond

Letter in Reid from Gray to Monckton Milnes.

22 December 1860

Gray leaves Sudbrook Park and moves back to 66 Stamford Street while waiting to go to Torquay.

Letter in Reid from Gray to Monckton Milnes.

1861

January 1861

Gray in the hospital at Torquay but does not stay long and returns to Stamford Street for a brief time before returning home to Scotland.

Letter in Jay from Gray in Torquay to his parents dated Jan 6th 1861.

February 1861

John Maxwell makes him editor of Welcome Guest.

Charles Gibbon, whom Buchanan met at Herne Bay, is now sharing the garret at 66, Stamford Street. They collaborate on an adaptation of Michael Banim’s Crohoore of the Billhook, retitled, The Rathboys.

“A little after this period he [John Maxwell] gave me the editorship of one of his publications, the moribund Welcome Guest, and it was while I was editing this publication that he sent to me the lady whom he afterwards married, Miss M. E. Braddon. I ran her first story through the Guest and about the same time reviewed in the Athenæum, at Maxwell’s request, her first and only volume of verse.” Buchanan’s review of Braddon’s ‘Garibaldi; and other Poems’ was published in the Athenæum on February 23, 1861.

If there is any truth in Buchanan’s story about setting out to kill a publisher, then Gibbon’s arrival at Stamford Street must predate Maxwell’s (the publisher in question) offer of the editorship of Welcome Guest.

April 1861

Buchanan visits Gray in Scotland.

The 1861 census was taken on the night of 7th April 1861. I have been unable to find a listing for Robert Buchanan. Checking the returns for Scotland I came across Robert Snr. in Glasgow (whose household also includes his mother-in-law) and David Gray at ‘Merkland’, but neither lists Buchanan. Mary Ann Jay is coincidentally also missing from the Richard Jay household and I have been unable to find her elsewhere. Richard Jay, listed as a labourer on Harriett Jay’s birth certificate is now a Foreman at the Grays Chalk Pit. Although these documents are peripheral to the subject of the timeline, they are available on the documents page.

1861 census returns:

Richard Jay.

Robert Buchanan Snr.

David Gray.

c. 1861

Robert Buchanan Snr. and his wife move down to London. They live in lodgings in Euston Road (Robert Snr. working as a journalist and writing cheap fiction), then take a small house in Kentish Town. Robert Buchanan and Charles Gibbon move in with them.

2 September 1861

Robert Buchanan marries Mary Ann Jay.

This is the date given in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, although I have not come across any record of the marriage myself. Harriett Jay gives no date, just: “towards the close of the year 1861”. It is strange that Harriett Jay deals with Buchanan’s marriage to her sister so briefly. There are no details of how and where they met. Perhaps this is due to her later attempts to conceal her real age. In September 1861, Buchanan would have been 20, his wife, 16 or 17, and Harriett, 8.

December 1861

‘A Heart Struggle. A Tale in Two Parts, Part I’ published in Temple Bar.

3 December 1861

Death of David Gray.

1862

1862

Stormbeaten:  or Christmas Eve at the “Old Anchor” Inn. A collection of poems and short stories, written in collaboration with Charles Gibbon, published by Ward Lock & Co.
The introduction to the book is dated December 1861 and signed, “Williams Buchanan”.

Buchanan visits G. H. Lewes and George Eliot. He had previously corresponded with Lewes before coming to London.

Jay gives the year as 1862. Buchanan also gives two accounts of his friendship with Lewes (in Jay and ‘My First Book’) where he mentions Lewes urging him to write the memoir of David Gray (published in February 1864 in the Cornhill Magazine) and arranging a publisher, Smith and Elder (later rejected in favour of Alexander Strahan)   for Idyls and Legends of Inverburn.

January 1862

‘A Heart Struggle. A Tale in Two Parts, Part II’ published in Temple Bar.

March 1862

‘Lady Letitia’s Lilliput Hand, Part I’ published in Temple Bar.

The poem, ‘Sir Tristem’, is published in Once A Week under the name, “Williams Buchanan”.

April 1862

‘Lady Letitia’s Lilliput Hand, Part II’ published in Temple Bar.

17 May 1862

The Rathboys; or Erin’s Fair Daughter, written by Buchanan and Gibbon, is produced at the Standard Theatre London. On one occasion Buchanan and Gibbons appear in the play themselves, Buchanan playing the hero, Shadrack the Shingawn.

21 June 1862

The poem, ‘Wife and I’, is published in Once A Week under the name, “R. Williams Buchanan”.

Summer 1862

Visits Thomas Love Peacock at Lower Halliford.

In Buchanan’s ‘Thomas Love Peacock: A Personal Reminiscence’ (New Quarterly Magazine, iv (April 1875) pp. 238-55) he writes “Mainly with the wish to be near him, I retreated to quiet Chertsey; and thence past Chertsey Bridge, through miles of green fields basking in the summer sun, and through delightful lanes to Lower Halliford.” And in Jay: “He was living at Lower Halliford, on the Thames, and in order to be near him I took lodgings at Chertsey, only sleeping occasionally under his hospitable roof. It was rest and inspiration indeed to pass from the roar of Grub Street and the strident Sixties into the peaceful atmosphere of the brave old pagan’s dwelling, to drink May Rosewell’s cowslip wine, and to boat on the quiet river with Clara Leigh Hunt, a bright-eyed little maid of fifteen and Peacock’s special pet. It was under Peacock’s influence that I wrote many of my pseudo-classic poems, afterwards gathered together in my first volume, ‘Undertones.’”

According to The Letters of Thomas Love Peacock , edited by Nicholas A. Joukovsky (Oxford University Press, 2001) Clari Leigh Hunt came to live with Peacock in November or December of 1861 (remaining there until December 1863), so this would place Buchanan’s visit in the summer of 1862.

1863

December 1863

Undertones published by E. Moxon.
Reviewed in the Athenaeum by William Hepworth Dixon, December 19, 1863.

Undertones is dedicated to Westland Marston. The book also has a poem to David Gray (‘To David in Heaven’) as a prologue and one to Buchanan’s wife (‘To Mary on Earth’) as an epilogue.

Cassidy and the DNB both state that Buchanan was awarded a medal for Undertones by the Society of Fine Arts in 1864. I have been unable to confirm this.

Late 1863

William Black, a friend from Glasgow came to London “at the end of 1863” and took lodgings in the same house as Buchanan at 9, Granby Street, Camden.

William Black, novelist by Wemyss Reid (Cassell & Co., 1902).

Two letters (offered for sale by David Holmes Autographs) also place Buchanan in the Camden area around this time. A letter of 9th February 1864 to J.A. Langford, the Birmingham antiquary and journalist, gives Buchanan’s address as Grove Cottage, Haverstock Grove. Another letter from the same seller to William Hepworth Dixon has a similar address (102 Prince of Wales Road, Haverstock[?] Hill, N.W.) and although the date is ‘unclear’ it could refer to Dixon’s review of Undertones in the Athenaeum.

1864

February 1864

‘The Story of David Gray’ published in the Cornhill Magazine.

1864

Buchanan goes to Denmark, accompanied by his father, to report on the Second Schleswig-Holstein War (which lasted from February to October 1864) for the Morning Star.

Buchanan meets Hans Christian Andersen.

Mary Jay stays with her mother-in-law in Shepherd’s Bush.

Jay quotes the Pearson’s Weekly article, which says that he went ‘towards the end of the war’. Although the peace treaty was not signed until October 30th, the final battle of the war was the Battle of Lundby which was fought on the 3rd July.

8 October 1864

Buchanan’s second play, and his first solo dramatic effort, The Witchfinder opens at the Sadlers’ Wells Theatre, London.

22 October 1864

Final performance of The Witchfinder at the Sadlers’ Wells Theatre.

16 November 1864

First letter to Robert Browning (referring to their meeting at G.H. Lewes’ house), asking him to contribute to Memorials of David Gray. In order to give financial help to the family of David Gray, Buchanan was proposing to publish a book featuring contributions from the leading writers of the day.

Buchanan’s address is given as: Woodlands Cottage, Iver, Uxbridge.

3 December 1864

Letter to Browning saying the Memorials of David Gray has been abandoned. “All seemed well, when one or two objections were raised on the score of propriety; and it was even suggested that ‘it looked like begging for the father on the strength of Gray’s reputation.’” (Jay)

1865

21 March 1865

Notice in the Guardian:
     “Mr. Strahan will soon publish a volume called “Poems of Ploverdale,” by Mr. Robert Buchanan. The same publisher has also in the press a drama on “Judas Iscariot.”

2 May 1865

Letter to Browning soliciting his opinion of Idyls and Legends of Inverburn. The address on the letter indicates that Buchanan has now moved to Bexhill.

The address on the letter to Browning is “Belle Hill, Bexhill,  near Hastings”. Jay gives the following explanation for the move: “Just before the publication of “Idyls and Legends of Inverburn” the state of my sister’s health became such as to make it quite clear that a permanent residence in London was not to be thought of, so the young couple removed to the (then) little village of Bexhill, and settled down for a time in a quaint gabled house built of red brick and surrounded with wonderful stretches of garden ground and orchard.”

May 1865

Idyls and Legends of Inverburn published by Alexander Strahan.
Reviewed in the Athenaeum by John Westland Marston, May 13, 1865.

Death of David Gray’s father.

16 May 1865

Notice in the Guardian:
     “Messrs. Strahan will shortly put forward a new venture, termed the “Argosy,” to be freighted with the produce of the brains of Mr. Charles Reade, Miss Dinah Mulock, and others. Mr. Robert Buchanan will be the Orpheus of this bold band.”

6 June 1865

First letter to Roden Noel and the start of a long friendship.

Other friends mentioned by Jay at this time are Mr. Gentles and the painter, Walter MacLaren.

August 1865

Second edition of Undertones (“enlarged and revised”) published by Alexander Strahan.
Reviewed in the Athenaeum by William Hepworth Dixon, August 19, 1865.

December 1865

First issue of The Argosy includes ‘Verner Ravn: A Dramatic Sketch’ and ‘Hermioné’ by Buchanan.

Winter 1865

Spends the winter in Etrétat, Normandy.

1866

January 1866

‘Wintering at Etrétat. Part I’ published (under the pseudonym, ‘John Banks’) in The Argosy.

February 1866

Returns to Bexhill.

Robert Snr. seriously ill in London. He is moved to Bexhill, accompanied by his wife.

Jay, as ever, is not helpful with dates. She states that they returned “in the spring of 1866” but considering the date of Robert Snr.’s death it is likely they returned some time in February. A letter to William Cox Bennett (offered for sale by David Holmes Autographs) is dated 19th January 1866 and bears the address, “Etretat, Seine Inferenie, France”.

March 1866

‘Wintering at Etrétat. Part II’ published in Argosy.

4 March 1866

Death of Robert Buchanan Snr.

Margaret Williams Buchanan continues to live with her son for the rest of her life.

April 1866

Poems published by Roberts Brothers of Boston. Buchanan’s first ‘collection’ it includes Undertones and Idyls and Legends of Inverburn, plus two selections from London Poems.

July 1866

London Poems published by Alexander Strahan.
Reviewed in the Athenaeum by William Hepworth Dixon, July 21, 1866.

London Poems is dedicated to William Hepworth Dixon.

4 August 1866

Buchanan’s review of Swinburne’s Poems and Ballads appears in the Athenaeum.

15 September 1866

‘The Session of the Poets’, a satirical poem, ridiculing Swinburne in particular, published in The Spectator.

October 1866

Swinburne’s Poems and Ballads. A Criticism by William Michael Rossetti published. It opens with the following statement:
“The advent of a new great poet is sure to cause a commotion of one kind or another; and it would be hard were this otherwise in times like ours, when the advent of even so poor and pretentious a poetaster as a Robert Buchanan stirs storms in teapots.”

December 1866

Wayside Posies: original poems of the country life edited by Robert Buchanan. An illustrated poetry anthology (engraved by the Brothers Dalziel) published by George Routledge & Sons.
Reviewed in the Athenaeum by Frederick George Stephens, December 22, 1866.

Ballad Stories of the Affections: from the Scandinavian published by George Routledge & Sons, an illustrated edition engraved by the Brothers Dalziel.
Advertised in The Times, December 17, 1866. Reviewed in the Athenaeum by Frederick George Stephens, February 23, 1867.

1867

October 1867

North Coast, and other Poems published by George Routledge & Sons, an illustrated edition engraved by the Brothers Dalziel.
Reviewed in the Athenaeum by William Hepworth Dixon, October 19, 1867. Reviewed in The Times, December 12, 1867.
Following the success of Ballad Stories of the Affections, Buchanan was offered £400 for North Coast, and other Poems by the Brothers Dalziel.

Swinburne’s essay, ‘Matthew Arnold’s New Poems’, published in The Fortnightly Review. It contains the following passage:
‘The poets that are made by nature are not many; and whatever “vision” an aspirant may possess, he has not the “faculty divine” if he cannot use his vision to any poetic purpose. There is no cant more pernicious to such as these, more wearisome to all other men, than that which asserts the reverse. It is a drug which weakens the feeble and intoxicates the drunken; which makes those swagger who have not learnt to walk, and teach who have not been taught to learn. Such talk as this of Wordsworth’s is the poison of poor souls like David Gray’s.’

Although 1868 is the usual date given for North Coast, and other Poems, and is the year printed in the book, the review in The Times (among other ‘Illustrated Christmas Books’) indicates its publication in late 1867.




 

In his unpublished autobiography, Latter Day Leaves (quoted in Chapter XVI of Jay) Buchanan cites this as the root cause of his ‘Fleshly School of Poetry’ article published in October 1871:
“To answer that question I must refer to the fons et origo of the whole affair. Not long before its publication Mr. Swinburne the poet had gone out of his way to print, in a note to one of his prose essays, an insulting allusion to the friend of my boyhood, David Gray, whose premature death I still mourned deeply. He spoke contemptuously and cruelly of Gray’s ‘poor little book,’ an allusion emphasised, I was assured, by other spiteful comments of the Coterie to which Mr. Swinburne belonged. ... Whatever motive inspired the allusion, it seemed to me most ill-timed, offensive, and cruel; and I vowed then and there to avenge it if ever I had the opportunity.”
Swinburne’s original essay contained no mention of “Gray’s ‘poor little book,’”, but that phrase was included in a footnote added to the essay when it was republished in  Essays and Studies (London: Chatto & Windus, 1875) and it is likely that this later attack on the memory of David Gray caused Buchanan’s libel case against The Examiner in 1876.

November 1867

‘Walt Whitman’, Buchanan’s review of Leaves of Grass and Drum Taps, is published in the Broadway Magazine (No. 3).

1868

February 1868

David Gray and other Essays, chiefly on poetry published by Sampson Low, Son, and Marston.
Reviewed in the Athenaeum by John Westland Marston, February 15, 1868.

1868

Moves back to Scotland.

There is a degree of confusion about when Buchanan actually moved back to Scotland and settled in Oban. Jay offers little help. Chapter XII of the biography is titled, ‘Return To Scotland, 1866’, and contains the following:
‘After his father’s death he found himself unable to settle down comfortably in Bexhill, so as soon as his book [London Poems] was fairly launched, and its success assured, he set his face northward, and after pausing here and there in his flight he finally went to Oban, and settled down in what was afterwards known as “The White House on the Hill.”’
A letter to Benjamin Webster Jr. (Colorado College, Tutt Library - Alice Bemis Taylor Collection) is dated 28th June, 1867 and the address is Bexhill. In December 1868 Buchanan writes two letters to Browning from Gourock in Scotland., and a letter to Roden Noel from 3rd June 1869 also has a Gourock address.

October 1868

Edits The Poetical Works of H. W. Longfellow, published by E. Moxon & Co.
Advertised in Notes and Queries 10 October, 1868.

December 1868

The Life and Adventures of J. J. Audubon. Edited, from materials supplied by his widow, by Robert Buchanan. Published by Sampson Low & Co.
Reviewed in The New York Times December 6, 1868.

Notice in the Guardian (22/12/1868 - p.7): “The Scotch papers announce that Mr. Robert Buchanan has made a successful first appearance as a reader of his own poems.”

According to Jay, Buchanan tried Public Readings in imitation of Dickens, in order to raise money.

26 December 1868

Reviews the first volume of Robert Browning’s
The Ring and the Book for the Athenaeum.

1869

1869

Ballad Stories of the Affections: from the Scandinavian, an unillustrated edition published by Sampson Low, Son, and Marston, in London and Scribner, Welford and Co. in New York.

25 January 1869

Buchanan gives a Public Reading at the Hanover-Square Rooms, London. It was reviewed in the Penny Illustrated Paper (30 January 1869 - Issue 383, p. 71):
     “MR. ROBERT BUCHANAN, the author of “London Poems,” “Undertones,” and other poetical pieces, gave his first London reading at the Hanover-square Rooms on Monday evening. The programme included “Tom Dunstan, or the Politician,” “Attorney Sneak,” “Willie Baird, or the Drummer’s Story,” “Nell,” “The Wake of Tim O’Hara,” and “Widow Mysie, an Idyl of Love and Whisky.” Mr. Robert Buchanan possesses a good voice, which he knows how to modulate happily, and throws considerable feeling into his performance.”

Letters to Robert Browning suggest that Buchanan now has some kind of London base at 23 Bernard Street, Russell Square. Letters from No. 23 (then No. 4) continue until December 1871.

3 March 1869

Second Public Reading at the Hanover-Square Rooms, London

This was Buchanan’s final Public Reading.

13 March 1869

Reviews Beatrice, and other Poems by Roden Noel for the Athenaeum.

20 March 1869

Reviews the remaining volumes of Robert Browning’s
The Ring and the Book for the Athenaeum.

24 March 1869

Visits Browning, accompanied by his wife. A letter from Browning’s sister, Sarianna, to Annie Egerton Smith fixes the date of Buchanan’s visit. She also mentions that Buchanan is planning to produce a play “some time in May”.

Cassidy, in his Buchanan timeline, states that “Failure of second play, The Witchfinder, causes him to leave playwriting for ten years.” However it does appear that Buchanan was still writing plays although none seem to have been produced until A Madcap Prince in 1874. The letters to Browning in May asking for a loan mention two plays that he is waiting to be paid for.

c. May 1869

The Life and Adventures of J. J. Audubon, edited by Robert Buchanan, after three editions published in London and one in New York, is replaced by a revised edition, published by G. P. Putnam & Son, edited by Audubon’s widow, Lucy Green Bakewell Audubon, with a new introduction by Jas. Grant Wilson. Buchanan’s name is removed from this edition as well as those passages which offended the widow Audubon. This new edition continues to be published until 1901. The Everyman’s Library edition, published by J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd. (London) and E. P. Dutton & Co. (New York), in 1912, restores Buchanan’s name.

22 May 1869

Financial difficulties. Letter to Browning asking for a loan of £20. Mentions two plays he expects to be paid for, one for ‘Sullivan’ and the other for ‘Hollingshead’. Also mentions that he needs to  “send off the cash to my people in Scotland at once.”

Browning lends him the money and in a second letter of 26th May Buchanan asks for more time to repay the loan, because “my managers wont pay up for a fortnight.”

3 June 1869

Letter to Roden Noel from Gourock, Scotland, thanking him for a loan. The letter also mentions Oban and Buchanan going to see his “Cottage”: “I have written to the Owner, insisting on several alterations before I settle.” This probably refers to Jay’s “The White House on the Hill” - Soroba.

21 July 1869

In a letter to Roden Noel Buchanan mentions being ill - “I’ve been headsore—very, but am trying ice again.”
 

Jay states that although the Public Readings had been successful, Buchanan’s “highly strung nervous system was unable to bear the strain of these public appearances, and after the second reading had been given he returned to Oban, so broken in health that for a time at least every kind of work had to be abandoned.” This is probably a conflation of time and events. The failure (for whatever reasons) of his attempt to launch himself as a public performer, and the apparent failure of his further attempts at play-writing (mentioned in the Browning letters), combined with the expenses of the move to Oban, presumably exacerbated his financial worries. The letter to Roden Noel of June 3, 1869 also mentions his wife being seriously ill “with internal inflammation. On Sunday she was in real danger. She is now better and the Doctor hopes for a slow but permanent cure—for the assurance of which she is ordered to keep her bed for weeks.”  All of these concerns probably combined to cause Buchanan’s ill-health which is mentioned in letters to Roden Noel on 21st July and again on October 16th. However the October letter also includes details of three books which Buchanan was working on at this time so it’s doubtful that “every kind of work had to be abandoned.”

16 October 1869

First (surviving) letter to Roden Noel with the Soroba address.
Buchanan begins the letter with: “Better a bit, thank God, tho’ still far from well. That’s the first news, & by far the most important—to me.”

16 November 1869

Notice in the Guardian:
     “Mr. Robert Buchanan, the poet, is so unwell with cerebral symptoms that literary labour has had to be entirely suspended, and it is not likely to be soon resumed. He has been more or less unfit for active work for some years past.—Athenæum.

22 December 1869

Browning writes to Lord Carnarvon recommending Buchanan for a civil pension. He writes a second letter on 31 December. Browning receives a reply from Gladstone dated 2 January 1870.

1870

1870

Buchanan awarded a Civil List Pension of £100 per year. This continued to be paid until Buchanan’s death.

29 January 1870

The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley edited by William Michael Rossetti reviewed in the Athenaeum.

William Michael Rossetti firmly believed that the uncomplimentary review of his edition of Shelley had been written by Robert Buchanan, although Buchanan never admitted as much and the The Athenaeum Index of Reviews and Reviewers: 1830-1870 ascribes it to Thomas Watson Jackson. However, Buchanan does refer to the book in his ‘Fleshly School of Poetry’ article in October 1871:
“This work was inscribed to his brother, Mr. William Rossetti, who, having written much both in poetry and criticism, will perhaps be known to bibliographers as the editor of the worst edition of Shelley which has yet seen the light.”
Whether or not Buchanan wrote the original review, the fact that W. M. Rossetti believed he did, added to the animosity felt towards Buchanan by the ‘Rossetti camp’.

26 April 1870

Poems by Dante Gabriel Rossetti published.

29 April 1870

Letter to Browning from Soroba:
“Long reflection makes me regret nothing in the Pension matter; & the money is a boon indeed. On first getting your letter of explanation I was somewhat disappointed,—having faintly hoped the kind helper was one of us, a singer, a brother-artist; but that wore off. All feels peaceful and pleasant.”

May 1870

The Book of Orm: a prelude to the epic published by Alexander Strahan.
Reviewed in the Athenaeum by William Allingham, May 28, 1870.
The following note appears in The Book of Orm, referring to Buchanan’s ill health during this period:
“Continued ill health compels the omission of two poems—”A Rune found in the Starlight,” and “The Song of Heaven”—which, although written, cannot at present be rendered perfect for press. Section IX., too, is incomplete, wanting the all-important “Devil’s Dirge,” which, however, will be added in a future edition.—R.B.”

Summer 1870

Buchanan reads Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Poems.
In a letter to Roden Noel (undated fragment) he writes: “I have just been reading Rossetti & Morris this for the first time. Rossetti is justly described by the North American Review as “a poetical man”; he has the instrumental without the shaping capacity; and his nature seems very poor & thin. ... A more barren week I never spent than when reading these men.”

June 1870

The Syren. A song by Francesco Berger, with words by Robert Buchanan (from Undertones) published by Lamborn Cock and Co.
Reviewed in The Musical Times June 1, 1870.

30 November 1870

Buchanan writes to Browning asking if he can dedicate his new book, Napoleon Fallen: a lyrical drama, to him.

7 December 1870

Letter to Browning includes the following passage:
“I cannot describe with what loathing & horror I have read such verses as those called “Intercession”, by that conscienceless & miserable inanity, little Swinburne:—verses which brooded, with a feminine fiendishness, over the prospect of physical suffering & torture to the subject. Dont think that I will ever develope the aesthetic instinct at the expense of conscience & feeling. I would rather die. Truth first; afterwards, if possible, Beauty.”

Buchanan’s two letters to Browning in December 1870 are from the 23 Bernard Street, Russell Square address.

12 December 1870

Letter to Browning cancelling the dedication of Napoleon Fallen following Browning’s objections.

1871

January 1871

Napoleon Fallen: a lyrical drama published by Alexander Strahan.
Reviewed in the Athenaeum by William Allingham, January 7, 1871.

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. Presumably Buchanan returned to Scotland in the interim.
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.

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]

Harriett Jay makes no mention of Buchanan’s grandmother, Anne Williams. She also appears on the 1861 census return for Robert Buchanan Snr. and could, of course, be visiting on each occasion. On the other hand, she could have been a permanent fixture in Buchanan’s female entourage.

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.

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 problem with the scattered remains of Buchanan’s correspondence is a tendency to read too much into it. In this case, coming so close to the publication of The Fleshly School of Poetry, one can presume that this is the subject under discussion. If that is the case, Buchanan’s defensive tone would suggest that Roden Noel had advised him against publishing the piece.
Whether or not this is the case, the letter is interesting in that it gives an insight into Buchanan’s state of mind at the time, believing himself to be “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.”

October 1871

‘The Fleshly School of Poetry: Mr. D. G. Rossetti’ published in the Contemporary Review, under the pseudonym ‘Thomas Maitland’.

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.

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”.

6 December 1871

Letter 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 Jan^ry 1^st. 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” probably 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.”

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.

23 December 1871

The Athenaeum prints a letter from Buchanan objecting to the editorial comment in the previous issue.

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.

1872

24 February 1872

The Saturday Review publishes an article, ‘Coterie Glory’, criticising the ‘Fleshly Poets’.

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 St. Paul’s Magazine.

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.

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.

‘Faces on the Wall’, a sequence of 12 sonnets, published in the St. Paul’s magazine.

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.

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.”

8 June 1872

Dante Gabriel Rossetti attempts suicide.

c. July 1872

Swinburne publishes his attack on Buchanan, Under the Microscope.

Not sure of the exact publication date of Under the Microscope, but considering Buchanan’s reply appeared in the August edition of St. Paul’s Magazine, it seems fairly safe to assume it would not have been long before that date.

August 1872

‘The Monkey and the Microscope’, Buchanan’s reply to Swinburne’s Under the Microscope, published in the St. Paul’s Magazine.

1873

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 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 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.
This 1873-74 section of the timeline should therefore be treated as slightly speculative.

28 February 1873

After consulting doctors in London, Buchanan goes to Great Malvern for hydropathic treatment at Holyrood House.

12 March 1873

Buchanan finishes White Rose and Red and posts it to London.

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.

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.”

1 July 1873

Prefatory Note to Master-Spirits dated July 1, 1873, Great Malvern.

post-July 1873

Master-Spirits published by Henry S. King & Co.
The book also carries adverts for The Poetical Works of Robert Buchanan in 3 volumes, and The Miscellaneous Prose Works of Robert Buchanan in 2 volumes. The Poetical Works were published by Henry S. King, but the Prose Works never appeared.

I have not come across any reviews or adverts for either Master-Spirits or the 3 volume Poetical Works, so I can’t confirm the publication dates for either. Presumably since Master-Spirits has the Prefatory Note dated July 1st, it appeared not long after.

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 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.

Shortly after the publication of White Rose and Red, Strahan’s Contemporary Review published an overly effusive article about Buchanan by George Barnett Smith, in which Buchanan’s name was linked to St. Abe and White Rose and Red.

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.

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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ROBERT BUCHANAN TIMELINE continued

2: 1874 - 1885

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