ROBERT WILLIAMS BUCHANAN (1841 - 1901)

LETTERS TO THE PRESS (21)

Two Novels

The Daily Chronicle (19 September, 1895 - p.3)

“NEW NOVELS.”

THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.

     SIR,—My attention has been called to he Daily Chronicle of this morning in which you announce a story called “Diana’s Hunting” as “a new novel” by me. A similar announcement, I observe, is made by Messrs. Chatto and Windus in issuing another story called “Lady Kilpatrick.” In justice to the public and to the author, it should be explained that neither of these works is “a novel” in the ordinary sense of the word—a hateful word in my opinion, but used ordinarily to describe long stories in three volumes. “Diana’s Hunting” and “Lady Kilpatrick” are merely short tales, three or four of which would be required to make up a story of the usual library length.—I am, &c.,

     Sept. 17.                                                                                                       ROBERT BUCHANAN.

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The New Don Quixote

[When Buchanan’s play, The New Don Quixote was refused a licence by the Lord Chamberlain he wrote a letter to The Observer, which was printed on 15th December, 1895. Extracts from this letter are available below.]

Edinburgh Evening News (16 December, 1895 - p.3)

MR ROBERT BUCHANAN AND THE
LORD CHAMBERLAIN.

     The Observer publishes from Mr Robert Buchanan an indignant remonstrance against the action of the Lord Chamberlain in refusing to license one of his dramas—“New Don Quixote,” a four-act play. He says: “I have no intention of resting quiescent under the imputations of the Lord Chamberlain, and I shall join issue with that functionary in the manner best fitted to justify me in the eyes of the public. Having been chosen as the scapegoat of my class, I accept the position, not altogether without satisfaction; for the time has come, I believe, when one man’s martyrdom may become the salvation of the English drama.”

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The Glasgow Herald (16 December, 1895 - p.4)

MUSIC AND THE DRAMA.

(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

                                                                                               London, Sunday Night.
. . .

     Mr Robert Buchanan has to-day issued a lengthy protest against the new Examiner of Stage Plays. Mr Buchanan states “The New Don Quixote,” a four-act play, “written by myself and another author,” and accepted by Mr Bouchier for production at the Royalty Theatre, has just been returned to the manager with the intimation that it will not be licensed for representation. Mr Buchanan goes on to say that the Lord Chamberlain will take no official knowledge of authors as such, having, of course, to deal solely with theatrical managers, and that the public know his own views on the subject of censorship. He continues:—“The play in question is, I contend, pure and wholesome, though it deals boldly and seriously with some of the great issues of modern life. Its offence, I presume, consists in this, that it is neither trivial nor indecent in the ordinary sense, but that it is fundamentally and not superficially unconventional.” In accordance with custom in such cases, Mr Buchanan, it is understood, proposes to publish his play, when the public will be able to determine for themselves whether the reader of stage-plays or the author is in the right.

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The Freeman’s Journal (Dublin) (16 December, 1895 - p.5)

     That stormy petrel of the drama, Mr. Robert Buchanan, has a new grievance against the Lord Chamberlain. He writes an indignant letter to the papers saying—“May I call your attention to the fact that the ‘New Don Quixote’ a four act play written by myself and another author, and accepted by Mr. Bourchier for production at the Royalty Theatre, has just been returned to the manager with the intimation that it will not be licensed for representation. No reason is assigned for this high-handed measure, and the licenser of plays on being appealed to by me to state the nature of the objections refers me to a clause in the Lord Chamberlain’s circular to the effect that the Lord Chamberlain has no official knowledge of ‘authors as such!’ Thus I am not only left under the stigma of having written a play which is unfit to see the light, but I am unable to ascertain in what respect I and my fellow author have offended!” As may be expected, Mr. Robert Buchanan is not going to lie quietly under the slur cast upon him by the Lord Chamberlain. At the same time it is impossible to see what effectual protest he can make, as there is absolutely no appeal from the decision of that functionary. Judging by his letter, the Lord Chamberlain does not merely take exception to any particular passages or scenes in the play, but refuses to license it on general grounds. Mr. Buchanan can, without the licence of the Lord Chamberlain, get the play produced privately at his own expense, but such a proceeding would be costly, and as far as one can see useless.

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The Sporting Life (18 December, 1895 - p.6)

     Mr. Redford, the present “Examiner of Plays,” is on his trial—in the Court of Criticism and (to quote from Mr. William Mackay’s brilliant “popular Idol”) the Court of Common Sense. So far, we only know one side of the question, and Mr. Robert Buchanan puts it as follows:—

“May I call your attention to the fact that ‘The New Don Quixote,’ a four-act play written by myself and another author, and accepted by Mr. Bourchier for production at the Royalty Theatre, has just been returned to the manager, with the intimation that it will not be licensed for representation. No reason is assigned for this high-handed measure, and the Licenser of Plays on being appealed to by me to state the nature of his objections, refers me to a clause in the Lord Chamberlain’s circular to the effect that the Lord Chamberlain has no official knowledge of ‘authors as such!’ Thus I am not only under the stigma of having written a play which is unfit to see the light, but I am unable to ascertain in what respect I and my fellow-author have offended! My opinions on the subject of the Censorship are well known, and need not be recapitulated here. I know the tyranny under which the English drama struggles to exist, and I know also how indifferent the English public is to all questions which involve the independence of art and artists; but I really did not know that the Lord Chamberlain possessed the power to suppress a play and insult an author without assigning any definite reason. The play in question is, I contend, pure and wholesome, though it deals boldly and seriously with some of the great issues of modern life. Its offence, I presume, consists in this—that it is neither trivial nor indecent in the ordinary sense; but that it is fundamentally, and not superficially, unconventional. I need hardly say that I have no intention of resting quiescent under the imputations of the Lord Chamberlain, and that I shall join issue with that functionary in the manner best fitted to justify me in the eyes of the public. Having been chosen as the scapegoat of my class, I shall accept the position, not altogether without satisfaction; for the time has come, I believe, when one man’s martyrdom may become the salvation of the English drama.”

     My own opinion of the function which Mr. Redford fulfils is that it is an impertinent and intolerable nuisance, and ought to be swept away. The best Examiner of Plays is the British public. Mr. Buchanan pursues his present crusade against the accident who holds the office, supported by the sympathy of every friend of healthy free trade in dramatic literature. Most of us know no more of Mr. Redford than we do of the wire worker in a puppet show. So far as his performances have gone he has shown, at any rate, than an experience of banking is calculated to make an Examiner of Plays an excessively indulgent censor. Compared with “The Novel Reader,” which was vetoes years ago, there have been plays performed which reduce that production to the level of “Old Mother Hubbard” and “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” Has Mr. Buchanan in “The New Don Quixote” gone one better—or worse—than the authors of the works which bear the Redford stamp of approval? One is reluctant to think so, and yet to what inference is one reduced by Mr. Redford’s autocratic “No?” But there is another point concerning which everybody is agreed. Who is the Lord Chamberlain, and who is his man Friday, that they should decline to give their reasons for refusing to licence “The New Don Quixote.” They are public servants, and paid out of the public purse for what they do. The gentleman in the gallery at the Victoria Theatre was forgiving on the subject of grammar—he did not expect it—but, said he, with a pardonable conviction that he was at least entitled to that for his money—“You might jine your flats.” The Lord Chamberlain and his literary and dramatic adviser might at least be courteous.

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[After Buchanan had made changes to the play, a licence was granted on 28th December. On 2nd January, 1896, the Pall Mall Gazette published this letter from Robert Buchanan concerning these changes.]

Pall Mall Gazette (2 January, 1896 - p.3)

“MR. BUCHANAN AND THE CENSOR.”

To the EDITOR of the PALL MALL GAZETTE.
         SIR,—I have just seen your interview with Mr. Arthur Bourchier, under the above title, and the only comment on the subject which I care to make at present is to the effect that there is no material difference whatever between the original version of my play and the version licensed last Saturday. Certain suggestions from headquarters I declined to accede to altogether. What I did was to cut down certain passages of dialogue, leaving the situations intact, and tampering in no way with the characterization and psychology.
     Under ordinary circumstances I should publish the play at once, and take the public verdict on its “morality.” My contract with Mr. Bourchier, however, forbids publication until after the London production. I have no intention, nevertheless, of remaining under the stigma of having written a play which required to be expurgated and bowdlerized before it was fit for representation, and I shall take the very earliest opportunity of vindicating my character.  I claim the right, in the face of an inquisition which is a disgrace to civilization, of expressing my ideas in my own way and in my own language, but I have never felt any inclination to air these ideas at the expense of public decency.—I am, &c.,
                                                                                                                                 ROBERT BUCHANAN.
January 1.

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[Buchanan gave his account of the problems with The New Don Quixote in ‘The Ethics of Play-Licensing’, published in The Theatre on 1st May, 1896.]

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The Romance of the Shopwalker

Glasgow Herald (10 January, 1896 - p.7)

OUR LONDON CORRESPONDENCE.
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65 FLEET STREET,
     Thursday Night.

. . .

     I UNDERSTAND that two pieces, both by Mr Robert Buchanan, are before Mr Weedon Grossmith, and that one of them will be the next production at the Vaudeville. The comedies are respectively entitled “Good Old Times” and “The Shop Walker.” They are said to be the survivors of nearly 800 plays by various stage aspirants which this unfortunate manager has had to peruse.

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The Era (11 January, 1896 - p.10)

ROBERT BUCHANAN’S PLAYS.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE ERA.

     Sir,—It is an old adage which says that the world knows more of one’s private business than one does oneself, and the truth is illustrated daily by the extraordinary statements of the theatrical gossip-monger. I see it stated in print to-day that Mr Weedon Grossmith will shortly produce one of two plays, the names of which are incorrectly given, “by Mr Buchanan.” May I ask you to state that, up to the time of writing, I have made no arrangement with Mr Grossmith to produce any work whatever, and that, in any case, I am only the part-author of any work which he may have had under consideration. I strongly object to have my business arrangements anticipated by the writers of newspaper paragraphs, and I also strongly object to have my unborn plays christened for me at the font of the Printer’s Devil.
                   Yours truly,                   ROBT. BUCHANAN.
     The Cottage, 44, Streatham-hill, S.W.,
         Jan. 9th, 1896.

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The Era (15 February, 1896 - p.13)

MR. BUCHANAN PROTESTS.
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TO THE EDITOR OF THE ERA.

     Sir,—I had occasion, some weeks ago, to protest in your columns against the conduct of a contemporary, which presumed to label and christen certain works of mine on the eve of production. This week my anonymous assailant returns to the attack, and, in revenge for the rebuke I thought it my duty to administer, prints two statements which are written merely to do me injury. While announcing, in the first place, that a new play by myself and Mr Marlowe will shortly be produced at the Vaudeville, he is careful to add that in April next Messrs Gatti will resume possession of their theatre—in other words, that the new play, however successful it may be, will be dispossessed and compelled to seek another home. I do not know if the writer is authorised by Messrs Gatti to make this announcement, but, in any case, it is premature and in the worst of taste.
     Not content with this, the same scribbler, in another paragraph, attempts to correct me with a lecture on the methods of criticism to be delivered next Sunday at the Playgoers’ Club. I am in no way concerned with that lecture, I do not know at all what Mr Henry Murray purposes saying, and I have politely declined to take the chair on that occasion, as I believe Mr Murray’s views and mine on this particular subject are not altogether in accord. It is quite true that I protested publicly, on a memorable occasion, against the animadversions of a well-known newspaper critic; but there, so far as I was concerned, the matter ended, and I have no intention of wasting my time in animosities which recall the spirit of the vendetta.
     It is one thing, I believe, to speak out one’s protest while smarting under the sting of injustice; it is quite another to retain a lifelong malice, and to recur ad nauseam to quarrels that can be forgotten. Whenever I have occasion to discuss my critics, it will be with my own voice or over my own signature. I am quite able to express my own views without any assistance.
     The malice in statements of the sort I have quoted is obvious, and it is a pity that the law affords its victims no protection. It is necessary, however, in the interests of the literary profession, to protest against the methods of certain anonymous individuals.
                                 Yours truly,                    ROBERT BUCHANAN.
     Vaudeville Theatre, Feb. 13th.

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The Era (14 March, 1896)

MR. BUCHANAN AND MR. MURRAY.
_____

TO THE EDITOR OF THE ERA.

     Sir,—The critics have been almost unanimous in the opinion that Mr Robert Buchanan’s “new and original comedy,” now playing at the Vaudeville under the title The Romance of the Shopwalker, is founded on the late Samuel Warren’s “Ten Thousand a-Year.” As a matter of fact Mr Buchanan is indebted to Warren for a solitary episode. The rest of his plot he has lifted bodily from a book of mine called “The Way of the World,” which was published something like a dozen years ago.
     In Warren’s story a thorough-paced little cad inherits a fortune. In my story, also, a young man of very humble antecedents (but of a gentle and honourable nature) is suddenly enriched. There the similarity between Warren’s work and mine begins and ends, and that indebtedness on my side is openly acknowledged in the body of my book. But the plot of Mr Buchanan’s “new and original comedy” is, after this introductory episode, wholly and solely mine. The silly romantic affection in which the hero indulges for a lady of high birth before his accession to fortune is stolen from “The Way of the World.” The visit to “the castle;” the purchase of the mortgages which hang as a menace over the impecunious earl; the misconstruction of motive; the misunderstanding under which the heroine conceives herself compelled to self-sacrifice for her father’s sake; the hero’s retirement in favour of the high-born lover; the presentation of the purchased mortgages as a wedding dower to the lady whom he has released from her promise to himself; all these things, which are the very heart and soul of the plot, are mine, and were original in my pages. The election, like the rest, is lifted from my book. The episode of the cruel election-squib, for which the high-born lover is supposed to be responsible, is mine. The scene in which the younger sister of the hero’s titled fiancée instructs him in etiquette and pronunciation is mine. In short, the plot of The Romance of the Shopwalker, from the affectionate maunderings of the central person in the first act until the apology of the finally-successful lover in the third, is the plot of “The Way of the World.”
     I am, of course, without legal remedy, but I think I have a right of protest against an act of plunder which is at once so wholesale and so audacious. If the author of “The Ballad of Judas Iscariot” and “Saint Abe and His Seven Wives”—the one a masterpiece of weird and pathetic imagination, and the other a monument of felicity in satire—had sought my collaboration I should have been honoured and delighted. Had he merely acknowledged my book as the source of his play I should have been contented. But a respect for literary faculty, however genuine and ardent, does not inspire me to silence when the towering artist stoops to borrow my ideas.
                         Yours truly,                    DAVID CHRISTIE MURRAY.
     13, Tyrwhitt-road, St. John’s, S.E,

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TO THE EDITOR OF THE ERA.

     Sir,—Mr David Christie Murray avers that the play The Romance of the Shopwalker, of which I am part-author, and which is now running at the Vaudeville Theatre, is a dramatic version of his novel, “The Way of the World.” Now, suggestions for The Shopwalker were certainly found in the late Samuel Warren’s famous novel, “Ten Thousand a- Year.” I have never read “The Way of the World,” and am therefore unable to discuss it; but if it at all resembles our play it is pretty obvious to what source Mr Murray must have gone for his inspiration. Surely that source was open to all of us, and if Mr Murray could go to it for the theme of his novel, why should we not go to it for the theme of our play?
                   Yours truly,                   CHARLES MARLOWE.
     Vaudeville Theatre, March 12th, 1896.

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The Era (21 March, 1896)

MR. MURRAY AND MR. BUCHANAN.
_____

TO THE EDITOR OF THE ERA.

     Sir,—Mr Robert Buchanan is silent as to the very plain and serious charges I have brought against him. Mr Charles Marlowe’s contention that he has not read my book has no more to do with my accusation than if he were the man in the street. Mr Buchanan has read my book, and years ago suggested to me, through a third person, that he should dramatise it. Mr Marlowe’s pretence that The Romance of the Shopwalker is taken from Warren’s “Ten Thousand a-Year” proves merely that he has not even read the book from which he professes that he and his colleague borrowed their new and original comedy. Their story is not to be found in Warren’s pages. It is, as I have shown already, to be found in mine.
     I did not challenge Mr Marlowe, who has only established his ignorance of both the alleged sources of the comedy to which he has lent his name. My challenge was, and is, to Mr Buchanan, who has a high literary reputation to guard, and who keeps silence, although, as a rule, he is as apt for controversy as any gentleman alive. For years Mr Buchanan has affected the knight errant—“riding abroad redressing human wrong.” Has Mr Pecksniff been hidden behind Don Quixote’s vizor all this time?
                   Yours truly,                   DAVID CHRISTIE MURRAY.
     London, March 16th, 1896.

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TO THE EDITOR OF THE ERA.

     Sir,—Inasmuch as this matter has become one of a public nature by the publication in The Era of letters from the parties concerned, one of the public may perhaps be allowed to join in the fray. Soon after the production of The Romance of the Shopwalker, I remarked to a friend that the plot was exactly like that of a novel by Mr Murray. Others to whom I have spoken have seen the great likeness between the novel and the play. Mr Charles Marlowe’s weak arguments do not clear the matter up. I agree with him that “suggestions for The Shopwalker were certainly found” in Warren’s novel “Ten Thousand a-Year;” but I do not admit the conclusion implied—that these suggestions were made use of by the authors of the play. The said suggestions are merely indirect and contrary, whereas those offered by Mr Murray’s novel “The Way of the World” are direct. On first reading Mr Murray’s book, I saw a certain likeness between his novel and Warren’s, but that likeness was an artistic and not an actual one. It seemed that whereas Warren showed from an aristocratical point of view a type of man in humble life being raised to a higher position, and put him in a ridiculous light, Murray, urged by a sense of justice, took upon himself the task of showing another side of the picture—how that, though of lowly origin and education, the hero has the instincts of a gentleman.
     At any rate, the connection between the two novels is a vague and indirect one; besides, the general  idea, found in both novels, of a young man in humble circumstances coming into a fortune, is not even original in Warren’s. When, however, we deal with the connection between Murray’s novel and the play, we find another state of things—namely, all the incidents in the play and most of those in the novel being alike. There may be a similar general idea in two works, and yet no likeness as to details, as, for instance, the novels above mentioned of Warren and Murray; but when we come to details we are able to see how far one work is indebted to another. Since, in the case of Murray’s novel and Buchanan’s play, all the details are alike, it will need something more to the point than Mr Marlowe’s letter to convince us that the likeness is strangely accidental. As Mr Marlowe has “never read ‘The Way of the World,’” “it is pretty obvious” to whom we are indebted for putting The Shopwalker together, and that Mr Marlowe’s position as collaborator was purely an honorary one.
     Doubtless Mr Buchanan argues that it is the prerogative of genius to take any material it likes and mould it anew, infusing it with new spirit, &c., giving, perhaps, Shakespeare as an example; but with the taking of the material, unfortunately for our century, the likeness between the two dramatists ends. Playwrights nowadays seem fond of borrowing from novelists. There is a certain melodrama in existence called The Shadows of Life, and it appears to me to be a dramatised version of Miss Braddon’s story “The Cloven Foot.”
     Mr Marlowe’s last argument is a quibble. I advise him to read “The Way of the World,” and his eyes will be opened to what he has been let in for.
                                                           Yours truly,                   C. L. HALES.
     London, W.

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The Era (28 March, 1896)

“THE ROMANCE OF THE SHOPWALKER.”
_____

TO THE EDITOR OF THE ERA.

     Sir,—I had not intended to reply at all to Mr David Christie Murray, but to leave the question which he opens to public opinion. Mr Murray’s belligerent attitude, however, leaves me no option.
     I beg to say, therefore, absolutely, unreservedly, and finally, that “The Way of the World” is neither more nor less than a version—a clever and very superior version, I admit—of that insufferably vulgar and titanically tiresome book “Ten Thousand a-Year.” The incidents and characters in the two books are the same—a vulgar little snob suddenly succeeding to a great fortune, a “distressed” county family brought into collision with the snob, a little love affair between the snob and a titled lady, an aristocratic rival, a contested election, &c. Mr Murray has improved and altered his original; so, I think, have we; and while our monumental mother (as a critical wag calls her), our pawky Scotchman, and our matchmaking aunt have no duplicates in either book, our Thomas Tomkins, a study of the shopwalker “up to date,” bears little or no likeness to either Tittlebat Titmouse or Bolsover Kimberly. These, however, are points which your readers can decide for themselves by collating the two masterpieces of fiction, and comparing them with our unpretending little play.
     Once upon a time, but that was before I re-read “Ten Thousand a-Year,” I saw the possibilities of a play in “The Way of the World.” A very little reflection convinced me that the materials, being “twice told,” had become public property. Moreover, the real raison d’être of the later work being a savage attack on a personal friend of Mr Murray, a gentleman well known in journalism, I felt that I should much prefer to leave so delicate a subject in Mr Murray’s own hands, and not attempt the dramatisation of a Journalistic Vendetta.
     I am neither a Don Quixote nor, as Mr Murray politely suggests, a Mr Pecksniff. Mr Murray has good reason to know which I most resemble, for if he will cudgel his memory he will remember that I do occasionally attempt to “redress human wrongs,” and that I redressed a very patent one, in which he was personally concerned, not many months ago. This, however, is a subject into which I do not care to travel without further invitation on the part of Mr Murray.
     I have only one word more to say, and that is in reference to the person whom Mr Murray, with characteristic chivalry, describes as the “man in the street.” No one knows better than Mr Murray that “Charles Marlowe” is the nom de plume of a writer whom Charles Reade, shortly before his death, welcomed with pride and admiration into literature, and who has since then done memorable work both in fiction and on the stage. If The Shopwalker possesses any interest at all, it is because I had the help of that writer in its construction, its detail, its dialogue, and its production; and I may add, indeed, that very much of my dramatic work has had the advantage of the same invaluable aid, and the same carefully acquired experience of “stage” necessities. When any man in the street, Mr Murray or another, can offer me the same collaboration, I shall be ready to listen to him, but in the meantime I am satisfied to associate my name with that of the authoress of “The Queen of Connaught.” Yours truly,
                                                                                     ROBERT BUCHANAN.
     Vaudeville Theatre, March 23d, 1896.

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TO THE EDITOR OF THE ERA.

     Sir,—The letter of Mr David Christie Murray, which appeared in your issue of last week, is really too disingenuous for words, and were I to follow my own inclination I should treat it with the silence that such an effusion deserves. In adopting such a policy, however, I should be accused by that hot-headed gentleman of being unable to answer certain accusations which he has thought fit to make against me, and which, to any unprejudiced person, must appear as discourteous as they are unfounded.
     Mr Murray avows that his challenge is not to me, but to my collaborateur, Mr Robert Buchanan. It is to me, since it was I who first suggested the idea of our play The Romance of the Shopwalker to Mr Buchanan, and we afterwards worked it out together.
     Next, I am accused of having established my ignorance by my statement that I had never read the novel entitled “The Way of the World,” but that I had read “Ten Thousand a-Year,” and from it had taken suggestions for The  Shopwalker. I certainly have been grossly ignorant on one point, for I was quite unaware of the fact that to be acquainted with the novels of Mr David Christie Murray was considered a necessary part of a liberal education.
     But if, as Mr Murray goes on to state, “no part of our story is to be found in Warren’s pages,” how was it that the gentlemen of the press, who, I presume, are supposed to have ordinary common sense and insight, should almost without an exception have stated the fact that suggestions for it were to be found in “Ten Thousand a-Year?”
     It is a pity that Mr Murray, capable writer as he is in some ways, should have allowed his temper and ill-feeling to induce him to make his last and most ungenerous insinuation. The name of “Charles Marlowe” is certainly not widely known in either literary or dramatic circles, but Mr Murray when he wrote his letter was perfectly well aware of the fact that it was a mere nom de guerre, and that in using it Mr Buchanan had not bracketed with his own name as co-author that of a mere nobody or “man in the street.” He knew perfectly well that “Charles Marlowe” stood for “Harriett Jay,” and that the works of Harriett Jay, whatever their merits might be, were at least as well and widely known to the public as those of Mr David Christie Murray. Yours truly,
                                                                           CHARLES MARLOWE (HARRIETT JAY).
     Vaudeville Theatre, March 23d, 1896.

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THE DEVIL AND THE DRAMATIST.
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     There have been so many spiteful things written about our dramatists and their literature that when a celebrated playwright brings out a serious poem the event should not be allowed to pass without comment as a publication of no importance. Almost simultaneous with the success of The Shopwalker at the Vaudeville has happened the issue from the New Temple Press of a black book called “The Devil’s Case,” by Mr ROBERT BUCHANAN. We must be allowed to disregard the plea which he makes against being judged “line by line,” and we cannot deny ourselves the luxury of a few quotations from so startling a poem. Mr BUCHANAN starts with the assertion that he has interviewed the real Devil.

“I, the Interviewer, hated
Cordially by cliques and critics,
Railed at in a hundred journals
As a Scotchman lost and lorn.

“I, the Interviewer, banished
From the Eden of the poets,
Where the stainless laurel-wearers
Wander innocent and nude.”

In spite of all tribulations, however, Mr BUCHANAN assures us that he keeps in his possession

“Power to stand erect, while cravens
Roll the Log and bend the knee.”

Mr BUCHANAN’S interview with the Devil takes place on Hampstead Heath on the evening of August Bank Holiday:—

“All that afternoon I’d wandered,
’Mid the throng of Nymphs and Satyrs;
Now, at last, the Bacchanalian
August holiday was over.

“Sad my soul had been among them,
Envying their easy pleasures,
Since for many a month behind me
Wolf-like creditors had thronged;

“Since my name and fame were lying
In the gutter of the journals,
While the laws of Earth and Heaven
Seemed one vast Receiving Order!

“Far down westward, over Harrow,
Pensively the moon was shining,
Opening her dark bed-curtains
With a wan and sleepy smile.”

     Before we come to the interview with the Devil, we are incidentally informed of several facts interesting to all who admire Mr BUCHANAN’S talent and industry as a writer of plays. We learn that, spite of all his slips, he has ever loathed the foul materialistic serpent that surrounds the world; that, from the hour he first remembers, he was gazing at the stars, wondering, dreaming, speculating, and aspiring, and “reaching hands and feeling backward,” to the secret founts of Being. Those happy days soon passed over, and Mr BUCHANAN, so he says, became an eyeless Samson, doing his daily task-work, blind and sad, yet not despairing. Bitterly on that Bank Holiday evening—the “wolf-like creditors” thronging behind him in imagination—with all his load of woes upon him, Mr BUCHANAN bare witness against the Serpent who had made him see and know.
     At first we fancied that this reptile was meant to typify the Official Receiver, but our surmise was contradicted by what followed. Mr BUCHANAN sees an old gentleman sitting by a fallen, withered tree. He is clerically dressed, bareheaded and spectacled; and he is reading by moonlight the pink edition of an evening paper. Conversation follows; and the old fellow comments on the contents of the newspapers in the same strain as Mr Graves does in Money. After further chit-chat, the stranger dilates, throws out a pair of soot-black wings, and stands fluttering before the astonished dramatist like “some ragged ancient raven.”

“While the moonlight’s tremulous fingers
Smooth’d his woeful hoary hair!”

Then, boldly announcing himself as Satan, the old gentleman—it is the “old gentleman”—clutches up Mr BUCHANAN, who clings wildly to the fringe of the Devil’s dark raiment, and is wafted swiftly away. This scene, we are sorry to say, has not been one of those selected by the artist whose exquisitely comic illustrations are the most remarkable things in this very remarkable book.
     Here we must part with “The Devil’s Case,” whose vast philosophical aim is far beyond our scope. We have not been able to refrain from quoting the passages which bore personally upon Mr BUCHANAN’S interesting personality—a personality rendered more interesting just now by a kind of triangular duel which is going on in our columns between that gentleman, Miss HARRIETT JAY—the “Charles Marlowe” of The Shopwalker—and Mr DAVID CHRISTIE MURRAY, who opened the ball with the accusation that Mr BUCHANAN had taken the plot of The Shopwalker from that of a novel by Mr MURRAY called “The Way of the World.” Mr MURRAY said that if Mr BUCHANAN had sought his collaboration he (Mr MURRAY) would have been honoured and delighted, but he described the “act of plunder” as “wholesale and audacious.”
     The first reply came from Miss JAY, who stated that she had never read “The Way of the World,” though she admitted that the notion of The Shopwalker was taken from SAMUEL WARREN’S “Ten Thousand a-Year.” If “The Way of the World” resembled The Shopwalker, said Miss JAY pleasantly, it was pretty evident where Mr MURRAY must have gone for his inspiration. Surely, she observed, that source was open to all of us? Mr MURRAY returned to the charge and marvelled—as, of course, everybody had marvelled—at the silence of Mr ROBERT BUCHANAN, who, said Mr MURRAY, “has read my book, and years ago suggested to me by a third person that he should dramatise it.” “The story of the collaborators,” continued Mr MURRAY, “is not to be found in WARREN’S pages. It is, as I have shown, to be found in mine. My challenge was, and is, to Mr BUCHANAN, who keeps silence. For years he has affected the knight errant, ‘riding abroad redressing human wrong.’ Has Mr Pecksniff been hidden behind Don Quixote’s visor all this time?”
     This, as our readers will see by reference to our pages this week, has brought out Mr ROBERT BUCHANAN; and Mr MURRAY, as the Viceroy used to say in La Périchole, has “lost nothing by waiting.” Mr BUCHANAN lays on full sore on Mr MURRAY, calling “Ten Thousand a-Year” an insufferably vulgar and titanically tiresome book, and coupling it and “The Way of the World,” ironically, as two masterpieces of fiction. Mr BUCHANAN owns to having contemplated an adaptation of the latter novel; but, after re-reading “Ten Thousand a-Year,” he concluded, he says, that he might just as well borrow at first, as at second,  hand. Mr BUCHANAN alludes mysteriously to having, not many months ago, redressed a “very patent wrong” in which Mr CHRISTIE MURRAY was concerned. This is really very interesting; and the pleasant little remark of Miss HARRIETT JAY in another letter to the effect that she was not aware that an acquaintance with the novels of Mr DAVID CHRISTIE MURRAY was considered a necessary part of a liberal education, gives a fresh dash of piquancy to the discussion. Speaking of spurious fiends and devils in his poems Mr BUCHANAN says:—

“Though to other generations
They might seem appalling creatures;
Really they were not authentic,
Not the GREAT ORIGINAL!”

The “great original” in this case seems to have been SAMUEL WARREN. As regards the MURRAY - BUCHANAN - JAY controversy we must leave opinions to be formed by each of our readers according to his lights and data. Let us hope that in the end all may be satisfactorily explained, and that each of the three laurel-wearers may wander “stainless” and “innocent”—though certainly not “nude.”

___

The Era (4 April, 1896)

“THE ROMANCE OF THE SHOPWALKER.”
_____

TO THE EDITOR OF THE ERA.

     Sir,—At last Mr Robert Buchanan has entered the ring. I could ask for nothing better.
     In that masterful tone which always characterises him in controversy, he declares “absolutely, unreservedly, and finally” that the novel from which I charge him with having lifted The Romance of the Shopwalker is neither more nor less than “a very superior version” of Warren’s “Ten Thousand a-Year,” and he implies, though he does not venture to assert, that he is not even remotely indebted to my work.
     Now, will Mr Buchanan be good enough to answer two or three plain questions? Where, if not in my pages, did he light upon the purchase and donation of the mortgages, which is the marrow of his plot and of mine? It is not to be found in Warren. Where, if not in my pages, did he find his snobbish central person (suddenly grown heroic) withdrawing his pretensions to the hand of the lady he truly loves, and bestowing upon his rival, as a wedding dower, the papers which he is supposed to have bought to coerce a noble family into submission? These things are not in Warren. Where, if not in my pages, did he find the kindly little sister of the heroine giving lessons in speech and etiquette to the vulgar hero? She is not in Warren. Where, if not in my pages, did he find the episode of the cruel election squib, which is wrongfully attributed to the aristocratic lover? Certainly not in Warren. Where, is not in my pages, did he find the gentleman’s apology to the snob? Assuredly not in Warren. These things make all the story of two acts of The Shopwalker. They make a part of the story of “The Way of the World.” There is not a hint of any one of them in “Ten Thousand a-Year.”
     There I could be content to let the matter rest, but Mr Buchanan advances a pretension so amazing and so fatal to all common honesty in letters that it deserves to be gibbeted out of hand. He argues with unmistakable plainness that the fact of B having robbed A justifies C in robbing A also. “The materials being ‘twice told’ had become common property,” says Mr Buchanan.
     I plead a legitimate debt to Samuel Warren. My book is in no sense a copy of his. It is, on the contrary, a sheer reversal, and differs alike in mechanism and in atmosphere. Warren had a sort of humorous loathing for his central personage. He took a vulgar-hearted and despicable little cad, and suddenly enriched him. He dragged him from one bog of scorn and contumely to another. He condemned him to a hateful shamelessness of greed and vulgarity and ostentation. “Here,” said I, “is only one statement of a case,” and I began to think what would happen to a gentle-natured, generous-minded little vulgarian who should suddenly be exposed to the cares and temptations which accompany great riches. So I invented Bolsover Kimberley, and sent him on his travels. I invented a story for him which is not to be found in Warren’s novel —a story which is the intentional and diametric opposite of Warren’s—a story not of a snob’s dirty greed finally covered with ignominy, but of his lofty self-abnegation crowned with the respect of those who began by regarding him with hatred and despite.
     It is one thing to take, openly and avowedly, the germ of an idea from a dead author, to reverse that idea in order to get a new light upon it, and to construct for its display a novel mechanism of plot, and it is another thing to take without acknowledgment an entire structure from the marketable work of a living  writer, to dub a production “new and original” whilst its every vital movement is borrowed, and to answer complaint by the contention that the accuser is himself a thief.
     One further word. Both Miss Harriett Jay and Mr Buchanan are very angry with me for having spoken of Mr Charles Marlowe as “the man in the street.” If they will honour my letter with a further reading they will find that they have forced a construction upon my words which they will not bear and were never meant to bear.
     I now leave the question finally, with many thanks for the courtesy extended to me by The Era.
                   Yours truly,                   DAVID CHRISTIE MURRAY.
     London, March 30th, 1896.

[Samuel Warren’s Ten Thousand a-Year and David Christie Murray’s The Way of the World (Vol. 1 and Vol. 3 only) are available at the Internet Archive. The Romance of the Shopwalker was never published. Personally, when first reading the reviews of The Romance of the Shopwalker the first thing I thought of was Kipps by H. G. Wells (to tell the truth it was actually Half a Sixpence with Tommy Steele) but, on checking the dates, that was published in 1905. One wonders where Wells got his idea from.

David Christie Murray (1847-1907) was the elder brother of Henry Murray, who had lived for a time in the Buchanan household (and whose suggestion that people would pay good money to see Lily Langtry dance led to their collaboration on A Society Butterfly which was the immediate cause of Buchanan’s bankruptcy in 1894) so he would obviously have been at least a casual acquaintance of both Buchanan and Harriett Jay. He makes no mention of Buchanan in his books, The Making of a Novelist: An Experiment in Autobiography (1894), My Contemporaries in Fiction (1897) or Recollections (1908), but the latter does contain transcripts of two letters from Buchanan, one of which is dated 17th June, 1897 and appears quite friendly in tone, suggesting that whatever animosity was caused by the Shopwalker incident had been forgotten.

I came across two items in The Boston Globe from October 1894, concerning David Christie Murray, who was visiting America at the time, which contain brief mentions of Buchanan. The first of these is on the subject of palmistry (!), the second, a review of a public performance by Murray - both are available below.]

Letters to the Press - continued

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