ROBERT WILLIAMS BUCHANAN (1841 - 1901)
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ROBERT WILLIAMS BUCHANAN (1841 - 1901) |
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[Advert from The Daily Chronicle 6 March, 1896 - p.3]
The Daily Chronicle (1 November, 1895 - p.4) IT is a commonplace to say that a new novel by Mr. THOMAS HARDY is a literary event of the first order. Since the days of the “Trumpet Major” and of “Under the Greenwood Tree,” Mr. HARDY—not then quite the popular author that later works have made him—has shone for many of us in the heaven of contemporary fiction. Moreover, his star has shone for those who recognised it from the first with a fuller, more luminous, glow. Last year at this time we should have said that the ranks of English novelists held three conspicuous living figures. Of them one is still busy at Boxhill with the pen which has given us some of the best and finest stuff in fiction, drama, or romance; but another is buried upon the heights above Samoa, and it is the second of the survivors whose latest novel is published to-day. The example of “Tess” and those vague, and as a rule, pretty accurate rumours which prelude a new work of interest, and which hinted at such another tragic masterpiece, must have prepared most readers to find the take of “Jude the Obscure” sombre and tempestuous. A further and definite sign is made on the title-page in these lines from the Book of ESDRAS: “yea, many there be who have run out of their wits for women, and become servants for their sakes. Many also have perished, have cried, and sinned, for women . . . O ye men how can it be but women should be strong, seeing they do this”; and the preface foretells a story “which attempts to deal unaffectedly with the fret and fever, derision and disaster, that may press in the wake of the strongest passion known to humanity, and to point, without a mincing of words, the tragedy of unfulfilled aims.” A tragedy it is, and Jude is its victim, as Tess was the victim of the other story. But may there not lurk a second tragedy in this publication; and may not Mr. HARDY prove a second scapegoat? These are questions which frankly we are indisposed to answer offhand. That many people will answer with a loud and emphatic “Yes” is probable enough; it is possible, too, that they will make haste to convert their prediction into fact; but a perusal, which of necessity is hurried, does not seem to warrant us in pronouncing a final opinion. One thing, at all events, is plain. In the story of “Jude and his Woes” we have reached the very nadir of wretchedness and disaster, and there really is no room wherein another pessimist may go one better in future. ___
The Daily Chronicle (1 January, 1896 - p.3) LITERATURE IN 1895. [BY WILLIAM ARCHER.] . . . It is a far cry from the comfortable countryside, where the Lilac Sun-Bonnet hangs on the Bonny Briar-Bush to the Wessex of Mr. Hardy’s potent and sombre imagination. I take leave to regard “Jude the Obscure” as the book of the year, and, with all respect to Mr. Lang, the year which has produced it is far from a vacuous one. We have been informed that Mr. Hardy has here embarked on the flowing tide of sex-problem fiction. There could scarcely be a falser criticism, it seems to me, than that which classes “Jude the Obscure” with “Heavenly Twins” and “Yellow Astere,” and Women who Did, Didn’t, Wouldn’t, Couldn’t, and Shouldn’t. Only in a quite subsidiary sense is Mr. Hardy concerned with social ordinances and conventions. They are, in his eyes, mere accessory stupidities; the weight of his passionate indictment is directed against the cunning cruelties of Nature. The book is, so far as I know, the first sustained and deliberate utterance of philosophic pessimism in English fiction. It was saeva indignatio that tore at the heart of Swift; he condemned and contemned his kind. Mr. Hardy has nothing but an infinite pity for the human race, as the most highly organised, and therefore the most keenly sentient, of Nature’s victims. Regarded as an ordinary story-book “Jude” is open to cavil at a hundred points. But this is to regard it wrongly—it is in truth a great symbolic poem, a lyric of the sadness of earth. Here is a sentence which strikes its keynote—and surely though we may contest the truth of the image, we cannot fail to recognise its exquisite beauty. “Vague and quaint imaginings had haunted Sue, in the days when her intellect scintillated like a star, that the world resembled a stanza or melody composed in a dream; it was wonderfully excellent to the half-aroused intelligence, but hopelessly absurd at the full waking.” That is the burden of Mr. Hardy’s message—that in the first place; and in the second place a plea in mitigation of man’s in humanity to man and beast. And there are critics who can see nothing but “coarseness” in the book which enshrines that most tender and delicate of women, Sue Bridehead! ___
The Daily Chronicle (7 March, 1896 - p.3) OUR POET TO ANOTHER. “The Devil’s Case: A Bank Holiday Interlude.” By Robert Buchanan. (London: Robert Buchanan and all Booksellers. 6s.) Would you know how Bard Buchanan You may learn it for six shillings Mark the imprint—“R. Buchanan!” “Every man his own Barabbas!” Well, upon the Heath of Hampstead, Whereupon that damaged angel, And poured forth a rambling lecture, In the verse of “Hiawatha,” “Then, O indolent Reviewer!” He who runs may write it, speak it— I protest I cannot help it— “Though I’m anything but clever, What was Satan’s revelation, Simply this: that “Prince of Darkness” But, by some sad hocus-pocus, Till, on Hampstead’s sacred summit, Then he saw in Satan (so called) “Eighteen hundred years,” quoth Satan, “ ‘Love each other, help each other, “ ‘Pass from knowledge on to knowledge “ ‘Fear not, love not, and revere not (These four stanzas are authentic— Dost thou yearn for further samples, Thus, then, spoke the Prince of Bathos: “Thus, in spite of the Almighty, * * * * “ ‘Take no heed about To-morrow,’ “But the Devil, being wiser, “And To-day is, now and ever, “From which statement you may gather “This I merely state en passant, Why “Heraclitus,” O Robert? Nor is this the sole enigma Here you write a “Dedication,” Don’t you feel that these five verses Yet you did not lack idea, (See the force of bad example! ___
The Daily Chronicle (9 March, 1896 - p.7) THE DEVIL’S CASE. THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE. SIR,—I thank you. Tho’ your Poet, Donkey-like he makes, while prancing “Easier than Prose!” So easy? Let me, Sir, while bending meekly Sound sans sense for generations Till the Public, sick of verses, Better Prose of power and passion Pass the Form, and probe the Matter Calm and clear, not fierce and frantic, Free of tricks and rhymes redundant, Ask, however bald the Song is, Then, my Friend, you may discover POSTSCRIPT.—Since there’s no disguising Free, to men of every station, ___
The Star (9 March, 1896 - p.1) “THE DEVIL’S CASE.” TO THE EDITOR OF “THE STAR.” SIR,—As I know that your columns are always open to the ventilation of honest grievances, I hasten to inform you that the Daily Telegraph has declined to insert the advertisement of a new poem of mine, “The Devil’s Case.” The advertisement, which included a quotation from the work itself, was thought innocent enough by the Christian Daily Chronicle, but was boycotted by a newspaper which welcomes the advertisements f Jewish moneylenders, divorce agents, and vendors of patent medicine. I merely mention the fact, leaving your readers to draw their own inference. But my troubles do not end here. More than one bookseller has imitated the Daily Telegraph and boycotted the new book and the new publisher, and to-day is added to my lot the additional humiliation of having caused Mr. William Archer, the Ghoul of dramatic criticism, to dash off a copy of verses in what he calls “my manner”! He informs me, with natural pride, that the doggrel in the Daily Chronicle is from his pen, and that he can reel off such trochaics by the yard, the manufacture of them being so “easy.” Now Mr. Archer is honest, like the Ancient, and I am far from suggesting that he remembers with any bitterness my own estimate of his literary qualifications as embodied in certain well-known criticisms. So I accept, humbly and penitently, the rebuke he gives me, and frankly admit that my verses, if they “scan” like his, and my English, if it in any way resembles his, are only fit for execration. At the same time I cannot accept as authoritative the deliverance of Mr. Archer on any question of style or grammar. That the creator of “Criticism As She Is Wrote” should presume to speak on a literary question at all is, I think, a piece of extraordinary impertinence. But a far more serious issue to myself personally, and to all who attempt, however feebly, to contribute to English literature, lies under the attempt of newspapers to boycott, and of newspaper critics like Mr. Archer to vilify and misrepresent, an honest book. “The Devil’s Case” is described in one quarter as full of the sort of “atheism” preached every Sunday in Hyde-park, and this misconception of its character is, no doubt, the reason that it has been refused the advantages of the “largest circulation.” It is news for one who has been engaged all is life, so far as his poetic work is concerned, in preaching spiritualism to a materialistic generation, to be told that he is “an atheist.” It is no news, however, to find that newspaper critics make no distinction between what is uttered dramatically and what is the expression of the writer’s own opinion. Even with the inscription on the fly-leaf to guide them,— Please remember, gentle reader, such critics persist in blundering. The case against God is stated fully, absolutely, and unreservedly in my poem, but the statement is that of the Devil—that, in other words, of the Spirit of Pity, in revolt against the cruelty and injustice of Nature, and against the established creeds. It is clearly enough intimated, however, that this is only one side of the question; it is not only intimated, but asserted and reiterated. Would it not be fair to wait until the writer had something to say on the other side, and, in the meantime, to give even the poor Devil a fair and intelligent hearing? But no! That is just what criticism will never do. Now, as hitherto, a Poet is not judged by his peers, but by men who have done absolutely nothing to warrant their speaking at all on questions of literature. If Mr. William Archer, for example, could produce any one piece of genuinely original work, however modest, if he had ever written anything or done anything beyond digging up the corpse-like Plays and festering Tales of the Continent, and contributing scraps of ungrammatical abuse to society newspapers, he might be entitled to express an opinion on a piece of serious thought written by a man who is a littérateur, not a journalist. To garble and misrepresent, to vilify and parody, is easy enough; to write even twenty lines of English or a dozen verses that will “scan” is (as Mr. Archer proves by his blundering attempt to imitate my Devil) far more difficult. I placed him in the Pillory long ago, and there he will remain, long after his daily and weakly cacklings are forgotten, as a crowning example of the honest and uninstructed Criticaster, who might have done useful journeyman’s work, but who prefers to remain “the Ghoul of Grammar and the Stage.”—Yours, &c., ROBERT BUCHANAN. ___
The Daily Chronicle (9 March, 1896 - p.8) MR. THOMAS HARDY’S LATEST WORK— ___
The Star (10 March, 1896 - p.1) “THE DEVIL'S CASE.” TO THE EDITOR OF “THE STAR.” SIR—Mr. Robert Buchanan having intimated to me his intention of sending me a presentation copy of his new poem, I thought myself bound to give him the opportunity of reconsidering that intention, in view of the fact that I had written a somewhat unfavorable notice of the book. It would no doubt have been wiser simply to have “declined with thanks” the unexpected and embarrassing gift.—Yours, &c., London, 9 March. WILLIAM ARCHER. _____
A CURIOSITY OF CRITICISM. TO THE EDITOR OF “THE STAR.” SIR—I thought I had done with the Daily Chronicle, but this morning a thunderbolt has fallen in the shape of a leaderette in that newspaper, bewailing the suppression by a local library of Mr. Hardy’s “Great Work,” “Jude the Obscure,” and protesting that ’twould be as just and wise to suppress “Shakespeare and the Bible.” Amen to that, say I, though the said Jude never stirred me to any enthusiasm; but the mischief is, I was prejudiced against him at the beginning by the criticism (in the Chronicle!) which greeted his first advent. If your readers will turn up the file of this weirdly and wondrously edited Daily, they will discover that the Chronicle critic found in the new novel only coarseness, indecency, and moral turpitude, and that, not content with recording his contempt for it, he read into it the prurient filth of his own salaciousness, and labelled it dirty and disgraceful! Yet to-day it is a “Great Book”! ROBERT BUCHANAN. ___
The Daily Chronicle (11 March, 1896 - p.6) We had not thought that it would ever be our unpleasant duty to deal with Mr. Robert Buchanan personally in these columns. A letter, however, which he addressed yesterday to the Star concerning this paper compels us to make one brief, but, we think, sufficient, comment. Mr. Buchanan’s letter, so far as it relates to our criticism of “Jude the Obscure,” is a lie from beginning to end. If your readers will turn up the file of this . . . . daily, they will discover that The Chronicle critic found in the new novel only coarseness, indecency, and moral turpitude, and that, not content with recording his contempt for it, he read into it the prurient filth of his own salaciousness, and labelled it dirty and disgraceful! Yet to-day it is a “Great Book”! There is not a single word of truth in these lines. Mr. Hardy’s book was treated on the morning of its appearance—Nov. 1, 1895—not in a review, but in a leading article. The only unfavourable remarks in this article, which assigns to Mr. Hardy the highest ran k as a writer of fiction, are: (1) that some portion of the public might see in it a tragedy for Mr. Hardy, but that on this point we could not yet answer; and (2) that in one portion of the book there were “some serious risks of taste and judgment.” Our final verdict was pronounced in the following sentences:— There is an infinite beauty of style, marred by occasional infelicity; there are passages of rare spiritual beauty, and of a sad and fine irony; there is colour, quaintness, charm. The hand may have faltered, but it is the hand of a master. On two other occasions we have referred to this book. First, in a review of the literature of the year by Mr. Archer, in which he refers to it as the greatest work of 1895; and second, in the editorial note to which Mr. Buchanan refers. Having characterised Mr. Buchanan’s letter, we beg him to understand that our columns are not open to him for an expression of opinion upon this or any other matter. The only method of communication in future between ourselves and this gentleman will be through our solicitors. ___
The Star (11 March, 1896 - p.1) “THE DEVIL'S CASE.” TO THE EDITOR OF “THE STAR.” SIR—Mr. William Archer is quite right. I did send him a presentation copy of “The Devil’s Case.” Copies have been presented also to Mr, Stead, Dr. Parker, Rev. Price Hughes, Mr. W. E. Henley, Rev. Mr. Horton, and many other individuals who would be likely to fall foul of it; and if Mr. Archer will send me the address of anyone else who will promise to give me a column or half a column of criticism, abusive or otherwise, that person also shall have a copy. Why should Mr. Archer feel “embarrassed”? I knew I was certain to get the value of the book in bold advertisement of some kind. I had not studied the ways of Barabbas for nothing.—Yours, &c., ROBERT BUCHANAN. _____
The Daily Chronicle this morning refers to Mr. Buchanan’s letter in our issue of yesterday. That letter, says our contemporary, “so far as it relates to our criticism of ‘Jude the Obscure,’ is a lie from beginning to end.” It then quotes from the letter the specific accusation against it made by Mr. Buchanan, and describes the content of its leading article in which “Jude the Obscure” was reviewed on 1 November last, declaring that the only unfavorable remarks it contained were (1) “that some portion of the public might see in it a tragedy for Mr. Hardy,” and (2) that “in one portion of the book there were ‘some serious risks of taste and judgment.’” The Chronicle concludes:— Having characterised Mr. Buchanan’s letter, we beg him to understand that our columns are not open to him for an expression of opinion upon this or any other matter. The only method of communication in future between ourselves and this gentleman will be through our solicitors. ___
The Star (12 March, 1896 - p.1) BOOKS AND BOOKMEN. Mr. Buchanan’s “The Devil’s Case.” I am sorry to read Mr. Buchanan’s letter in Monday’s Star just as I sit down to write my poor criticism upon his book “The Devil’s Case” (Buchanan) for I did hope that he would keep quiet this time — whatever reception was given him. But no! here is he foaming and fretting as of old, even still more furiously, just because Mr. Archer has written what struck me as a very genial parody, and on the whole a very just criticism, of his poem. God bless us, what does Mr. Buchanan expect? Does he expect to preach unpopular doctrine, to run amuck at all his literary brethren throughout his career, and now—having finally alienated the booksellers by becoming his own publisher—to be kissed on both cheeks and fed with the milk and honey of criticism? With what measure ye mete, &c.: Mr. Buchanan seems to look upon himself as a very ill-used person. He is for ever posing as the “outcast,” the “pariah” of the literary cliques, and so on—in this new poem—he has the amusing egotism to compare his position in contemporary literature to Lucifer’s position in the cosmogony—Lucifer, Outlaw’d by the cliques of Heaven, Yet who, one cannot but ask, is to blame for all this but Mr. Buchanan himself? After all, the world began very kindly by him,. It could hardly do more than give him a pension quite early in his career—when, if I am not mistaken, he was younger than Mr. Watson was when he received his pension. Thus officially recognised at the outset, his undoubted talents have received the fullest recognition from the public. His novels have gone into many editions, his plays have enjoyed long runs, and his collected poems (an enormous volume of five hundred and thirty-four pages even in 1884) have long taken their placer among the “standard” poets in all properly furnished libraries. I think I am right in saying that even the very critics, whom it is Mr. Buchanan’s monomania to regard as his implacable foes, estimate his abilities much more generously than he realises—and indeed deserves. For, after all, why should his contemporaries love and adore Robert Buchanan? Has he behaved so nobly by them? With the exception of Charles Reade, and perhaps another writer or two, has he ever had a good word to say for anyone but himself? His early attack on Rossetti and Swinburne is proverbial. He has persistently sneered at Tennyson, and, not content with running down the men of his own and the preceding generation, he has belittled pretty well every “new man” that has dared to succeed since. Stevenson, Pater, Kipling, even Hardy and Meredith—I believe I am right in saying that he has scoffed in his boisterous fashion at all of them. He himself refers to his unprovoked attack on Mr. William Archer airily, as though it had been a frolicsome pleasantry no one would think of minding. Snapping an d snarling at every new reputation as he has consistently done, ever unwilling to live and let live, is it to be wondered at that literary critics have come to regard him as the mad dog of literature, whom it is equally dangerous to pet or to flog—and whom, alas! it is quite impossible to muzzle? If the so-called literary “cliques” have been against him, who is to blame? After all, human nature is human nature, and Mr. Buchanan cannot expect others to be just where he has been persistently ungenerous. The feud between him and the “heavenly powers” of latter-day criticism was of his own provoking, and if he may justly complain that it has been maintained against him with a somewhat implacable bitterness, he has this to remember, that the despair and degradation of a greater poet than himself is mainly to be placed to his account. No doubt the idea that any poet could be greater than himself will seem absurd enough to Mr. Buchanan—and indeed one sighs to think what a great poet he might have been! No one in our day except Mr. Swinburne has been possessed of such tremendous lyrical fervor, and there is a poignant emotional quality about his last work, an accent of Scotch pathos, translated, so to say, into English, which, with all its careless fluency, its disregard of form, and contempt for distinction, must, I think, keep it alive. Who that has read the passionate proem to “Balda the Beautiful” can forget its splendid storm and stress and the haunting cadence of its beautiful refrain— I was born in a dream, and I dwell in a dream, Yet the most splendid chaos is not the same thing as a cosmos—and, for the most part, in everything he has attempted, despite the poetic beauty and evidences of intellectual power scattered broadcast, in spite of its tremendous energy and remarkable range of theme and mood, Mr. Buchanan’s work has somehow just missed perfect success—chiefly, so far as one can judge, from that same lack of patience and control in his art which is so painfully evident in his temper. Moreover, though Mr. Buchanan is very much of a personality in his letters to the daily papers, he curiously misses personality in his more—or should we say less?—serious work. We gain the sense of an immensely clever man, with a many-sided temperament, open to innumerable interests, and yet we cannot say that the writer either feels life newly, sees it newly, or says it newly—gives it any expression personal to himself—and such, it seems to me, are the tests of an original writer. However, it is time to leave generalities, and to say that, of its kind, Mr. Buchanan’s new poem is exceedingly effective. He himself, in his opening lines, disclaims any attempt at high poetry. “Not,” he says . . . in great heroic measures Genius of the Greeks and Germans, For my perilous subject-matter With this admission to start with, it would be absurd and unjust to measure the poem against, say, “Paradise Lost”—which one need hardly say was undertaken in a very different spirit—or even against Mr. Buchanan’s own “Wandering Jew,” which seems to me less successful, because more ambitious. As an effective, perhaps rather cheaply effective, statement of the old Manichean position, the poem is good reading. But, of course, there is nothing new in its central idea, as it is merely a long commentary on one of the Devil’s oldest names, that of Lucifer—the light-bringer who discovered all the useful arts of life, stole the fire as Prometheus, invented the printing press as Fust, and so on. Sometimes Mr. Buchanan has a really fine conception, as when he represents the Devil as being willing to worship God for ever till the moment when—he first viewed his creations and saw the misery and mismanagement thereof. Indeed, there are no few fine lines, and many touches of beauty, and the poem is at least entertaining from end to end, particularly in its piquant personal allusions. There is one such allusion near the beginning which I confess to finding more poignant than piquant, for as one reads it, it is impossible not to feel a pang of sorrow and sympathy for the man of genius who thus bares so nakedly the anguish of a disappointed heart. The poet has been wandering an afternoon among the Bank Holiday makers on Hampstead-heath:— Sad my soul had been among them, Here is the genuine “cri de cœur,” and here, too, one feels the presence of that spirit of beauty which has never long deserted the poetry of Robert Buchanan. And the same applies even still more to the tender and lovely dedication. RICHARD LE GALLIENNE. _____
MR. BUCHANAN AND THE “CHRONICLE.” TO THE EDITOR OF “THE STAR.” SIR—The editor of the Daily Chronicle, with characteristic Christian delicacy, says that I have told “A Lie.” Now, I have not at hand that Imperial Dictionary which the Daily Chronicle, eager for the literary improvement of its readers, issues to them in cheap numbers; but, turning to my Webster, I find that a Lie may be either (1) “a criminal falsehood, a falsehood used for the purpose of deception,” or (2) “a fiction, in a ludicrous sense.” This relieves me of the necessity of imitating the Editor’s bad language, and enables me to suggest, by way of retort, that he is merely guilty of “fiction, in a ludicrous sense.” Webster, moreover, quotes Paley to show that “a man may act a lie, by pointing his finger in a wrong direction when a traveller inquires of him the road”; and this is exactly what happened when, some months ago, I asked my Fleet Street Guide whether “Jude the Obscure” was “safe” reading—as safe, say, as Shakespeare and the Bible”? This is what he said to me in the leader which he now garbles for my condemnation:— A tragedy it is. . . . But may there not lurk a second tragedy in this publication, and may not Mr. Hardy prove a second scapegoat? These are questions which frankly we are indisposed to answer offhand. That many people will answer with a broad and emphatic “Yes” is probable enough. . . . One thing, at all events, is plain. In the story of “Jude and His Woes” we have reached the very nadir of wretchedness and disaster, and there really is no room wherein another pessimist may go one step in further future. Then, after sundry irrelevant caperings and wanderings, my Guide continued: Their loves are tragic. Alas! and they are ignobly tragic. The girl marries and leaves her husband for her cousin, and her cousin for her husband. It is in this part of the story that Mr. Hardy treads on artistic cinders; the construction staggers, and there are some serious risks of taste and judgment. But the theme, if it sets a trap for his defects, displays eminently Mr. Hardy’s great qualities. . . . The hand may faltered, but it is the hand of a master. Why, may I ask, should the book prove “a tragedy” for Mr. Hardy, unless in the suggestion that he was committing literary suicide? The implication is that or nothing. How could the hand have “faltered” if it was writing a Great Book as worthy of preservation as “Shakespeare or the Bible”? Would not even he who runs while reading gather from the whole leader that “Jude the Obscure” was a highly unpleasant book, though written by a good writer? ROBERT BUCHANAN. 36, Gerrard-st., Shaftesbury-avenue, W., 11 March. P.S.—I am eagerly waiting to hear from the Daily Chromicle’s solicitors. Up to now (eleven p.m.) they have made no sign. Is this another case of “pointing the (editorial) finger in a wrong direction”? By-the-way, that leader must be Mr, Archer’s? Only the author of “Criticism as She is Wrote” could talk of construction “staggering,” “artistic cinders” (!), and a theme “setting a trap”!—R. B. ___
The Greenock Telegraph and Clyde Shipping Gazette (12 March, 1896 - p.2) There is a beautiful quarrel in progress between Mr Robert Buchanan and the Daily Chronicle. The ideals of humanity and brotherhood which both profess to cherish should teach them the glory of mutual love, but somehow or other they don’t quite see things in that light, and here we have the poet and dramatist talking of the “prurient filth” of the Chronicle critic’s “own salaciousnesss,” and the Chronicle rending the pugnacious Robert for a sad lack of truthfulness. Mr Buchanan, it seems, has taken up the cudgels on behalf of “Jude the Obscure” and accused the Chronicle of having found in the novel “only coarseness, indecency, and moral turpitude.” Spurred into anger, the Chronicle turns upon its libeller and declares in straightforward English that Mr Buchanan’s statement “is a lie from beginning to end.” Instead of damning the novel for coarseness and indecency, it spoke of it as a work of “infinite beauty of style,” of “Colour, quaintness, and charm,” and consistently praised it all through. “Having characterised Mr. Buchanan’s letter,” it continues, “we beg him to understand that our columns are not open to him for an expression of opinion upon this or any other matter. The only method of communication in future between ourselves and this gentleman will be through our solicitors.” Hoity-toity! There is splendid fury for you! Mr Hardy should really change the name of his novel. “Jude the Obscure” is obscure no longer. ___
The Star (14 March, 1896 - p.1) “THE DEVIL'S CASE.” TO THE EDITOR OF “THE STAR.” SIR—I should not say another word on a subject of which no one can be wearier than I am, if Mr. Le Gallienne, in his notice of “The Devil’s Case,” had not travelled far beyond his brief. He accuses me of never having had a good word for my contemporaries, with the possible exception of Charles Reade. Now, I have not only admired many of my contemporaries, but I have fought their battles, and my words are in print to prove it. Despite the persistent attacks of the superior person, I have paid life-long homage to Dickens. It was I, the “mad dog,” who first turned the tide in favor of Browning, and I have it in his own hand that I was “the most generous critic he ever had.” So far from sneering at Tennyson, I have praised him in and out of season. To Coventry Patmore, a neglected Master, to James Thomson, to Richard Jeffreys, and to many another I have spoken the right word of sympathy when it was needed. As to George Meredith, I eulogised him, too, and I can give chapter and verse to prove it; and if I cannot praise his later work, that is simply because I do not admire it. I have dedicated a book, with respectful admiration, to Thomas Hardy. I have compared W. S. Gilbert with Aristophanes, and I seriously count him as great a humorist. But why multiply illustrations? My books are open to the public. My real offence is that I do not, like Mr. Le Gallienne, go shouting at the tail of each new reputation, and buttering with sickly praise the literary parsnips of my friends; but so long as I see Logrolling and Nepotism displacing honest merit I shall frankly utter my protest. I have not, however, been content with a position of Heep-like adulation. When every petty penny-a-liner and Logroller was abusing Zola, I stood up (alone I did it!) in his defence, and with the exception of Mr. George Moore, I was the only man of letters in England who tried to save Henry Vizetelly from imprisonment and disgrace. I first proclaimed in this country the genius of Walt Whitman, and I was held up to derision in the law courts by the friends of Mr. Swinburne for having done so. And Dante Gabriel Rossetti? It is in his allusion to this unfortunate man that Mr. Le Gallienne proves how sycophantic Logrolling may be a device to hide the venom of the coward. He rakes up an article written a quarter of a century ago, and he talks of Rossetti’s “degradation.” Rossetti, with all his faults, was a man, and he would have scorned the champion who slurs his name while professing to vindicate it. Until the whole story of the great Fleshly School Dispute is written (and I am writing it) let the public, deluded by the Logrollers, continue to think that Rossetti was “snuffed out by an article.” If he had been, he would scarcely be worth considering. But Mr. Le Gallienne knows as well as I do what killed Rossetti, and so do his friends; and Mr. Le Gallienne knows, too, how faithful some of Rossetti’s friends have been to his memory! I have learned by experience how useless it is to reiterate all this. I have learned that nothing can silence scandal, and that the scandal of the feminine Literary Man is the worst. I have learned, too, that trimming and lying and logrolling is more in fashion than plain speaking. But what does it matter? Of one far purer than any of us it was said, “He hath a Devil,” and doubtless the Pharisees and Sadducees regarded the man who denounced them as merely “a mad dog.” For the rest, I suppose Mr. Le Gallienne is not by nature unkindly—he perhaps means well; he is merely, as I call him in my pamphlet, “feather-headed.” But in criticism the feather-headed person is most dangerous of all, for, without giving himself time to think, he echoes all the idle and ephemeral voices of the Hour.—Yours, &c., ROBERT BUCHANAN. ___
The Leeds Times (14 March, 1896 - p.4) STERN AND STRAIGHT. Mr. Robert Buchanan is familiar with adversity in newspaper comment, and possibly the castigation he receives from the “Daily Chronicle” has no other effect upon him than the proverbial water upon the duck’s back. He wrote a savage letter to the “Star” upon the “Chronicle’s” criticism of Mr. Hardy’s novel “Jude the Obscure.” Thereupon the “Chronicle” calls this letter a lie from beginning to end. In France this affront could only be wiped out in blood. In England neither Mr. Massingham nor Mr. Buchanan will salute the morn a minute earlier than usual. More ink may be spilled but no blood. ___
West of England Advertiser (19 March, 1896 - p.3) BUCHANAN AND THE “DAILY CHRONICLE.”—The Daily Chronicle has entirely broken with Mr. Robert Buchanan. The author of “The Devil’s Case” having asserted that in reviewing “Jude the Obscure” the Daily Chronicle had characterised Mr. Hardy’s work as coarse and indecent, that journal replies that the statement is “a lie from beginning to end.” To prevent Mr. Buchanan from replying in its columns to this serious charge, the Daily Chronicle declares that its columns are not open to him for an opinion on this or any other matter, and adds:—“The only method of communication in future between ourselves and this gentleman will be through our solicitors.” Is this a challenge to Mr. Buchanan to raise an action against the Chronicle, or is it a caution to the Bard that unless he is more guarded in his language the solicitors of the paper will be put upon his track? ___
The Spectator (21 March, 1896 - p.16) “THE DEVIL’S CASE.” SIR,—As you have informed me that you have no room for an elaborate letter, but will permit me to protest briefly against your criticism of “The Devil’s Case,” I must perforce confine myself to one or two points of importance. In the first place, let me assure you that I have never doubted the existence of evil, or sin, or temptation, although I hold that the very idea of evil is inconsistent with the idea of Omnipotence. God created man imperfect; consequently the imperfections of man, in others words his “sins,” are “God’s invention.” I assume that no sane person now believes that man has fallen from a state of innocence, or perfection? But you go further and accuse me of suggesting that all the instincts and appetites of men are to be sanctioned and encouraged! I don’t know where you discover this suggestion,—it is utterly opposed to anything I have ever thought or (I believe) written. ROBERT BUCHANAN. [Note: The Spectator’s review is available here.] ___
Otago Witness (New Zealand) (25 June, 1896 - p.49) An “up-to-date” style of reviewing was to be seen in the columns of the Daily Chronicle on a recent Saturday, when Mr Robert Buchanan’s new work, “The Devil’s Chase,” was not ill-naturedly guyed in metre a long way after the style of the original. Mr Buchanan duly replied in the same form:— Sir,—I thank you, tho’ your Poet, Ask, however bald the song is, Then, my Friend, you may discover __________
The Star (27 March, 1896 - p.3) THE NEW MEDICAL INQUISITION. TO THE EDITOR OF “THE STAR.” SIR—I am as yet unaware how the case of Kitson v. Playfair will end, and I have not the least intention of anticipating the verdict of the jury; but, in common with many of your readers, I have read with the deepest shame and anguish the reports of the trial, and I wish to ask one question—a question which has nothing whatever to do with the issue immediately before the court. I wish to ask whether a physician, a man called in to minister to the needs of the body, has under any circumstances whatever the right to assume the position of a Moral Inquisitor, and to betray the secrets discovered by him or confided to him, sometimes in the very shadow of Death? I have hitherto, sir, regarded a physician as ex officio a sanctified person, whose office is one of the very noblest and worthiest to be filled by any human being, and who is not only a minister of mercy but a Priest of Silence, worthy of whatever confidence a suffering human creature cares to give. But if the time has come when such an individual, under any circumstances, under any pretext, under any aberration or temptation, is to break his implicit vow of confidence and to retail as a Moralist the capital he has acquired as a Scientist, surely the very name of “Physician” must be henceforth a term of loathing and contempt? Science is degraded by the very suggestion that such a thing is possible, and Morality itself is stultified by the culprit who takes refuge under her mantle. No matter what the issue of this miserable trial may be, it is quite clear that Dr. Playfair, instead of respecting his sacred function as a healer of physical disease. confused the science of Medicine with the business of moral espionage, hovered feebly between his duty as a Doctor and his prejudices as a member of good society, and took the story of a miserable woman’s shame (as he conceived it) to his wife, who immediately carried it to a third person, and so instituted a family inquisition. Words would fail me, sir, to express my opinion of such conduct as this. 36, Gerrard-st., W., 24 March. ROBERT BUCHANAN.
[Note: This letter appeared under the report of the result of the trial, (Spoiler: Mrs. Kitson was awarded record damages of £12,000), and the page from The Star is available here.] _____
The Era (23 May, 1896) COINCIDENCES AGAIN. TO THE EDITOR OF THE ERA. Sir,—We observe that a farcical comedy called Josiah’s Dream was produced on Thursday evening at the Strand Theatre. Curiously enough, it bears a strong resemblance in subject to two works in which we have collaborated, and which have been completed for a considerable time. The prophetic vision of the Coming Woman, as she is to be a hundred years hence, is to be found in an opera, The Maiden Queen, while the structure of the farcical comedy— involving, as it does, two acts of contemporary life, and one act which takes place in a remote period—closely resembles the structure of a comedy which we wrote more than a year ago. We do not suggest for a moment that the author of Josiah’s Dream has plagiarised our ideas, but certainly the long arm of coincidence has been at work, and as both our pieces are set down for early production we think it desirable to make this explanation, lest in the fulness of time we ourselves should be accused of adopting any suggestions from Josiah’s Dream. ___
The Era (30 May, 1896) AN AUTHOR’S ANNOYANCES. TO THE EDITOR OF THE ERA. Sir,—Twelve months ago the late Charles Melville arranged to produce a play of mine called The King’s Highway, and advertised accordingly in the columns of your paper for a continued period of about three months, until owing to increasing ill-health he had to relinquish the project. Some little time after this I saw an announcement that Mr George Roberts intended to change the title of a play of his called Rookwood to that of The King’s Highway. I immediately wrote to him, explained the circumstances, and sent stamped envelope for reply. But none was forthcoming. Meanwhile the title was rushed to Stationers’ Hall, and I have the satisfaction of seeing another piece floating out with my title, at least mine morally and dramatically. Now, Mr Roberts is doubtless chuckling over this coup de main as a smart action, but I am not yet quite sure that he can deprive me of my title. Mr Roberts may learn that to rush an already claimed and published title into the bosom of Stationers’ Hall does not give him legal claim to it.
[Josiah’s Dream was produced at the Strand Theatre and ran from May 21 to June 10, 1896. William Archer summed it up as follows: “Let me merely put on record the production at the Strand of a farce named Josiah’s Dream, by Mr. Charles Rogers, and the revival at the Court of Mam’selle Nitouche, under Miss May Yohé’s management. The farce is a piece of harmless but pointless folly, one act of which consists of a dream-presentation of life in A.D. 2001—there is nothing like accuracy in dates.” _____
The Era (13 June, 1896) “GUESSWORK CRITICISM.” TO THE EDITOR OF THE ERA. Sir,—An author’s complaints concerning criticism are seldom of much public interest, and I personally am a little tired of posing as a martyr to journalistic prejudice; but there is one fact in connection with the production of The Wanderer from Venus at Croydon which should certainly not be overlooked. A very perfunctory and adverse notice of this production appeared next morning in the Daily Telegraph. So far, so good, or bad; but I wish to point out that the gentleman who wrote that notice, having to catch a train, was compelled to leave the theatre before the last and most important act of the play was performed, so that in point of fact he did not witness the play in its entirety at all, and had no opportunity of witnessing the enthusiasm which followed the fall of the curtain. I unhesitatingly affirm that no play with which I have been connected, since Sophia, has won such tokens of delight from a popular audience, and as I write for the public, not for the Daily Telegraph, I protest in the name of fair play and honesty against the criticism which deals adversely and insultingly with a production of which the critic has seen next to nothing. _____
The Daily Chronicle (16 June, 1896 - p.5) |
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The Star (17 June, 1896 - p.1) CHRISTIANITY UP TO DATE. TO THE EDITOR OF “THE STAR.” SIR—Christianity is a blessed word, like Mesopotamia. It means so much, and yet so little; it is a synonym not only for love, charity, and other-worldliness, but for the gospel of the Printer’s Devil and the doctrine of Loaves and Fishes. Daily, nay hourly, we are reminded that it is also a shibboleth, here in England, to disguise the nakedness of the human heart. Seldom, however, does the blessed word loom out so beautifully as in the newspaper report of this morning, describing how a certain Christian called Jenkins, a Reverend and M.A., emerged from his fold into Highgate Police-court, and, addressing a certain Christian called Bodkin, chairman of the Bench, spoke as follows, with the usual clerical defiance of mundane grammar:— 16 June. ROBERT BUCHANAN. P.S.—This red-letter interview following closely on the touching spectacles at the Old Bailey last week, makes one proud to be an Englishman, inheriting all the blessings of a full-blown Christian civilisation. [Note: Buchanan.s letter is followed by this unsigned poem. I have no idea whether it is by Robert Buchanan, there is no trace of it anywhere else. However, since it reflects Buchanan’s position as regards the Empire and war, and it is similar in style to his poem about the Jameson raid (which was only published in The Star) I think it may be his work, but with no further proof, I will just add it here.] ON THE ROAD TO KHARTOUM. (VERSES FOUND IN THE LOBBY.) On the road to Khartoum! On the road to Khartoum! ___
The Star (20 June, 1896 - p.2) IN REPLY TO ROBERT BUCHANAN. TO THE EDITOR OF “THE STAR.” SIR—If I rightly understand the meaning and purpose of Mr. Buchanan’s remarks in his letter of 16 June, he wishes to place Mr. Bodkin and myself beyond the pale of Christianity for what passed on the Highgate Bench last Monday. WILLIAM J. JENKINS, M.A, _____
The Daily Telegraph (20 February, 1897 - p.5) THE OLYMPIC THEATRE. TO THE EDITOR OF “THE DAILY TELEGRAPH.” SIR—Will you kindly correct the statement made in The Daily Telegraph that the Olympic Theatre is about to pass into my hands? I have nothing whatever to do with the management of that or any theatre.—I am, Sir, yours respectfully, ROBERT BUCHANAN. _____
The Saturday Review (12 June, 1897 - pp.653-654) Extract from ‘Words of Consolation and of Caution to Mr. Jerome.’ by Max Beerbohm: ... There is a rather acrid flavour in his story about the clever young man who violated all his own artistic canons by writing bad plays, in order to please the public— “he was rapidly climbing,” says Mr. Jerome, “into the position of the most successful dramatist of the day.” One wonders that experience has not taught the author of “Dick Halward’s Rise” and other plays that three or four acts of twaddling dialogue and threadbare episodes do not necessarily command success . It is quite true that the writer of plays, being more nearly exposed to the public, is more sorely tempted to fawn upon stupidity than is the writer of poems, novels or essays. But the public is an ungrateful body and, sooner or later, leaves its panders in the lurch. Honesty in playwriting, so long as it be backed by ability, is by far the best policy—it wins in the end—and Mr. Robert Buchanan has only himself to blame that he is not a very popular playwright. Indeed, Mr. Buchanan is one of the very few instances of the man who, with real ability for good work, is able to do bad work. Usually, when a writer of bad things says that he could be a great artist if only he were a man of independent means, one should take the statement with many grains of salt. It is almost impossible for an artist to degrade his pen; he may be obliged to write about trivial matters for which he cares little, but he cannot write badly about them. Well! This rather long digression was the only way to my particular point. Mr. Jerome’s recent plays have not, I believe, had long runs. Mr. Jerome seems to have thought that, therefore, vulgarity is not so popular as it once was. Mr. Jerome has always written on the low level, and what more natural than that he should wish to soar now (through the window of an empty box-office) to a higher, rarer atmosphere in literature? Probably Mr. Jerome does not realize that, in writing (as he thought) for the public, he was writing truly for himself. “Hang the public!” he seems to have whispered, “I will do something classy!” [Note: The full article is available at HathiTrust.] ___
The Saturday Review (19 June. 1897 - p.20) CORRESPONDENCE. MAX NOBISCUM! To the Editor of the SATURDAY REVIEW. SIR,—I am not sorry that Mr. Max Beerbohm, in the course of his tenderly appreciative remarks on Mr. J. K. Jerome, has taken occasion to allude to me, as a corpus vile on which to emphasize his youthful belief in a discerning Public. The reference enables me (for once) to return a kiss for a blow, and to say how much I love my Mx and how hugely I enjoy his cheeky comments on the men and manners of the day. Of his brilliant talents there is no question; of his optimism in matters artistic he will no doubt mend—or, rather, perhaps, I should say that he will, with riper and sadder experience, come in time to the conclusion that the judgments of Superior People are just as ephemeral and just as ridiculous as the judgements of the Mob. At present his buoyant faith and exuberant high spirits, tempered though they are by a certain gnome-like irrelevancy, are distinctly charming. After all, it is no ignoble enthusiasm which believes in Art with a capital letter, in Criticism up to date, in the pose of Culture, and in Mr. George Meredith; and which insists, moreover, that there is a public agape for Good Work, nay, for Great Work—when it is to be had. I myself had these illusions once. I myself did not always stand out in the cold wind of the Nob’s neglect. Once on a time I could have bonneted Mr. Jerome quite merrily. Now, alas! I am changed, and neither the Nob nor the Snob can make me glow with hate or flush with scorn. The wisdom of Mr. Spencer leaves me as cold as does the folly of Mr. Jerome. The capers of my Max seem to me as weird and unreal as the attitudinizing of the lady novelist whom he has satirized so deliciously. All these people who write about Work and chatter about Art seem to be Phantoms moving about in unrealized worlds of quasi-literary Boredom. I am lost, like Alice, in Wonderland, and vaguely dancing between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. What puzzles me most of all is the fact that the good work of which the Phantoms rave very seldom seems, from my obfuscated point of view, to be good work. I know very well, of course, when I disagree with the strange Jabberwocky Oracle whom men call Shaw that I am audacious even to imbecility; he himself would frankly tell me so, and refer my foolishness to the abuse of Scotch whisky and mutton chops. But the honest truth abides. The Master who fills his soul with rapture plunges mine in despair; the humour which makes him “chortle” makes me weep. The work which seemeth to him supremely great and good seems to me very often indifferent and frequently slipshod. Yet. pace the dear Oracle, I am not altogether a fool. When I read able criticism—e.g. the masterly little essay in these columns on “Alexander the Great”—I think I appreciate it. Nor am I blind to the message which the amazing Foreigner is said to bring, or to the subtle chords on which the Decadent often plays. Only, what strikes the Jabberwock as new moral philosophy seems to me disused and discarded charlatanism. I am positively certain that the creatures who pose before me are not human beings. Sometimes, indeed, I think that the great Jabberwock himself is not a human being. And when I reach this mood, I see in the Max whom I love only the Spectre of the Superior Young Person, a tantalizing and fantastic Jubjub Bird. ROBERT BUCHANAN. ___
The Saturday Review (26 June, 1897 - p.20) CORRESPONDENCE. “MAX NOBISCUM!” To the Editor of the SATURDAY REVIEW. 25 June, 1897. SIR,—Not to be held by Mr. Robert Buchanan in the darkest hatred and the deepest contempt, is a rare distinction for any writer. To be praised by him is surely a diploma of immortality. I do not think that David, had ne been patted on the head by Goliath, could have felt more surprised, more pleased, than I feel, as I read in your current number Mr. Buchanan’s graceful and kindly references to my poor slinging. So far as Mr. Buchanan praises my manner, I were not so churlish as to dissent from him; but I must confess that, when he falls back on his own views of criticism and its general value, I find his attitude more interesting than intelligible. When he sats that “the judgments of Superior People are just as ephemeral and just as ridiculous as the judgements of the Mob,” I can but suspect that Mr. Buchanan is trifling with us. Have the Superior People in tis generation forgotten Keats? Does the Mob still worship Martin Tupper? It is all very well for Mr. Buchanan to say that he “was born in Fairyland.” No doubt he was. But a man is not a horse because he was born in a stable, and Mr. Buchanan is not, I would submit, a Fairy. He is a mere mortal, like me, and cannot afford to ignore the plain facts of this prosaic world.—Yours obediently, MAX BEERBOHM. __________
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