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The Life and Adventures of J. J. Audubon from The New York Times (6 December, 1868)

AUDUBON THE NATURALIST.
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THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF JOHN JAMES AUDUBON, the Naturalist. Edited from materials supplied by his widow, by ROBERT BUCHANAN. London: SAMPSON LOW, SON & MARSTON.

     If the truth that science is cosmopolitan and knows no country, clime or language, needed any demonstration, it might be found in the career of the illustrious AUDUBON. A native of Louisiana, he traveled over nearly every part of this country, spending months and indeed years in England and France to promote the great object to which he devoted his life; and now his biography, edited by a Scotchman, ROBERT BUCHANAN, the poet, has just been published in London, and it cannot be long before it shall be reproduced here, not only as the last mark of respect to one of the greatest geniuses to which our country can lay claim, but to show to all who may be called on to struggle with adverse fortune that there are no obstacles which energy and perseverance, guided by an indomitable will, may not overcome.
     AUDUBON came legitimately by that restless, wandering disposition which aided him so greatly in the production of his life-long studies. His father was a son, the twentieth child of a fisherman, poor in all save his progeny, of Nantes, in France. Beginning life as a boy before the mast, he was rated as an able-bodied seaman at the age of seventeen; at twenty-one commanded a vessel himself, and at twenty-five was the owner and captain of a little craft which was the first of a small fleet with which he voyaged to the West Indies, thus laying the foundation of a future which was subsequently augmented materially by his marriage in Louisiana, with a lady of Spanish extraction. JOHN JAMES AUDUBON was born in Louisiana, and was the youngest of three sons. His mother perished miserably in the negro insurrection in San Domingo, and his father, who had become a Commodore in the French Navy, found a second wife in whose care the boy was left, while the elder AUDUBON returned to this country in the employment of the French Government, where he finally became attached to the army under LAFAYETTE. During his father’s absence the boy had every indulgence from his step-mother. Dancing, fencing, music and drawing were among the accomplishments in which he became more or less proficient, and strange as it may seem, each one of them proved of service to him, even in the wilds of this country, in the pursuit of after life. Condemning such trivialities, his father, on returning from sea, took his son with him to Rochefort where, under his personal supervision, he had him spend a year in the close study of mathematics, with the view of fitting him for military life; but the Commodore soon became convinced that he must abandon this project. The young man had found time, during this brief interval, to indulge his growing desire to know more of natural history, and in this twelvemonth amused himself by drawing sketches of French birds, actually completing two hundred specimens. Making the best of his disappointment, the elder AUDUBON sent his son to this country to look after an estate which he had, with most singular foresight, purchased during his sojourn here some years before. Hardly had the young man landed in this City when he was attacked with yellow fever, which, as he states, he caught “by walking to the bank in Greenwich-street to cash his letter of credit.” Fortunately he fell into good hands. Capt. JOHN SMITH—to which branch of this numerous family the Captain belonged Mr. BUCHANAN omits to inform us—took the young emigrant to Morristown, N. J., where he was carefully nursed by two Quaker ladies, who, doubtless, preserved his life. Subsequently his father’s agent, Mr. FISHER, removed him to his own residence near Philadelphia, and soon afterward handed over to him his father’s property of Mill Grove on Perkiominy Creek. His life here was marked by several important events—the forming the acquaintance of Miss BAKEWELL, whom he afterward married; a narrow escape from drowning by falling into an air-hole while skating on Perkiominy Creek, and the conception of his great work upon American ornithology. That his life here was most agreeable is plain enough from the entries in his diary. He had ample means for all his wants, was gay, extravagant and fond of dress. He writes, “I had no vices; but was thoughtless, pensive, loving, fond of shooting, fishing and riding, and had a passion for raising all sorts of fowls....It was one of my fancies to be ridiculously fond of dress; to hunt in black satin breeches, wear pumps when shooting, and dress in the finest ruffled shirts I could obtain from France.” But this very agreeable existence was rudely broken in upon by the advent of one whom he describes as a “partner, tutor and monitor,” DA COSTA, who not only undertook to put the young man under various wholesome restraints, but even objected to his approaching marriage to Miss BAKEWELL. Revolting against this tyranny, AUDUBON succeeded, after overcoming numerous obstacles, in making his way back to France, where he had no difficulty in persuading his father to revoke the commission under which he had sent DA COSTA to this country. He spent a year in the paternal home, completing during that time, two hundred drawings of European birds, and finally yielding to the wishes of his father so far as to make one short cruise as a midshipman in the French marine. Upon his return, he formed an engagement with FERDINAND ROSIER for a term of nine years. and the two left France for this country just as the Government was making preparations for the gigantic conflict with Russia then believed to be impending. Returning to Mill Grove, he at once dismissed DA COSTA from his situation, and resumed full possession of the estate. Mr. BAKEWELL, afterward his brother-in-law, writes of him at this time, “He had great skill in stuffing and preserving animals of all sorts. He had also a trick of training dogs with great perfection, of which art his famous dog, Zephyr, was a wonderful example. He was an admirable marksman, an expert swimmer, a clever rider, possessed great activity, prodigious strength and was notable for the elegance of his figure and the beauty of his features, and he aided nature by a careful attendance to his dress. Besides other accomplishments, he was musical, a good fencer, danced well, had some acquaintance of legerdemain tricks, worked in hair, and could plait willow baskets”—a catalogue of varied accomplishments, which the chronicler winds up by stating that AUDUBON once swan across the Schuylkill River with him on his back; “certainly,” as Mr. BUCHANAN remarks, “no contemptible feat for a young athlete.”
     After his long sojourn in France, AUDUBON was naturally anxious to close his engagement with Miss BAKEWELL by marrying her, but the father of his intended insisted that he should first get some knowledge of commercial pursuits, and accordingly secured his future son-in-law a place in the counting-house of Mr. BENJAMIN BLAKEWELL, then a prominent merchant in this city. The loss of several hundred pounds in an indigo speculation; the mailing a letter unsealed containing $8,000, and several kindred exploits, speedily decided his unfitness for such pursuits, and receiving unlimited leave of absence he returned to Mill grove. Determined to put an end to his courtship, as a preliminary step he visited Kentucky with ROSIER, his partner, and deciding to settle in Louisville, sold his plantation at Mill Grove, invested his capital in goods, and having completed all his preparations for removal, married Miss BAKEWELL on April 8, 1808, and embarking on a flatboat at Pittsburg with his merchandise and household goods, made his wedding trip to Louisville in this primitive manner.
     ROSIER proved a thorough and capable business man, and AUDUBON took advantage of his partner’s close application to his duties to yield again to the old fascination of bird-hunting and drawing. Louisville finally proved an unremunerative field, and, taking his wife and young son back to his father-in-law’s, a removal to Hendersonville, and subsequently to Genevieve, was successfully made, after encountering numerous hardships. The detentions while voyaging on the Ohio and Mississippi in his flatboat gave AUDUBON numerous opportunities for indulging his tastes, which were eagerly improved, and of some of his adventures, hunting with the Indians, we have pictures from his pen as graphic as any he ever drew with his pencil.
     After describing one day’s sport, he writes:

     “When I awoke in the morning and made my rounds through the camp, I found a squaw had been delivered of beautiful twins during the night, and I saw the same squaw at work tanning deer-skins. She had cut two vines at the roots of opposite trees, and made a cradle of bark, in which the new-born ones were wafted to and fro with a push of her hand, while, from time to time she gave them the breast, and was apparently as unconcerned as if the event had not taken place. * * * *
     I was invited by three hunters to a bear hunt. A tall, robust, well-shaped fellow, assured me that we should have some sport that day, for he had discovered the haunt of one of large size, and he wanted to meet him face to face; and we four started to see how he would fulfil his boast. About half a mile from the camp he said he perceived his tracks, though I could see nothing; and we rambled on through the cane-brake until we came to an immense decayed log, in which he swore the bear was. I saw his eye sparkle with joy, his rusty blanket was thrown off his shoulders, his brawny arm swelled with blood as he drew his scalping-knife from his belt with a flourish which showed that fighting was his delight. He told me to mount a small sapling, because a bear cannot climb one, while it can go up a large tree with the nimbleness of a squirrel. The two other Indians seated themselves at the entrance and the hero went in boldly. All was silent for a few moments, when he came out and said the bear was dead, and I might come down. The Indians cut a long vine, went into the hollow tree, fastened it to the animal, and with their united force dragged it out. I really thought this was an exploit.”

     After a short time spent in Genevieve, AUDUBON became thoroughly wearied of business, and impatient to get back to his young wife who had come as far west as Hendersonville. ROSIER had married, and AUDUBON having sold out his interest to him determined to make his way across the country to Hendersonville. During this journey he met with the most thrilling adventure and the most narrow escape of his life. The story has, we believe, been told in substance before, and has probably been the basis of numerous dime novels and magazine narratives, but it is worth repeating, since the chief part shall be given in AUDUBON’S words. One night as he was making his way across a prairie near the Upper Mississippi, he sought shelter in a log hut, the only inmates of which were a muscular and repulsive-looking woman and a young Indian who had sought assistance there after having, by accident, nearly put out one of his eyes. AUDUBON chanced to let the woman get a glimpse of his watch, which was of rare workmanship, and the sight of it at once aroused her cupidity. Letting her take it to examine, he only managed to get possession of it quietly by a ruse, and not until the Indian had endeavored by pantomime to draw his attention to certain suspicious actions on the part of their hostess. Going out of the hut AUDUBON slipped a ball into each barrel of his rifle, picked the locks, and returning, called his faithful dog to his side, threw himself down upon a few bear skins, and feigned sleep. The rest of the story shall be told in his own words. He writes:

     “A short time had elapsed when some voices were heard, and from the corner of my eyes I saw two athletic youths making their entrance, bearing a dead stag on a pole. They disposed of their burden, and asking for whisky helped themselves freely to it. Observing me and the wounded Indian, they asked who I was, and why the d—l that rascal (meaning the Indian, who, they knew, understood not a word of English,) was in the house? The mother, for so she proved to be, bade them speak less loudly, made mention of my watch, and took them to a corner, where a conversation took place, the purport of which it required little shrewdness in me to guess. I tapped my dog gently, he moved his tail, and with indescribable pleasure I saw his fine eyes alternately fixed on me and raised towards the trio in the corner. I felt that he perceived danger in my situation. The Indian exchanged the last glance with me.
     The lads had eaten and drunk themselves into such condition that I already looked upon them as hors de combat; and the frequent visits of the whisky bottle to the ugly mouth of their dam I hoped would soon reduce her to a like state. Judge of my astonishment when I saw this incarnate fiend take a large carving-knife, and go to the grindstone to whet its edge; I saw her pour the water on the turning machine, and watched her working away with the dangerous instrument, until the cold sweat covered every part of my body, in despite of my determination to defend myself to the last. Her task finished, she walked to her reeling sons, and said: ‘There, that’ll soon settle him! Boys, kill yon—, and then for the watch!’
     I turned, cocked my gun-locks silently, touching my faithful companion, and lay ready to start up and shoot the first who might attempt my life. The moment was fast approaching, and that night might have been my last in this world, had not Providence made provision for my rescue. All was ready. The infernal hag was advancing slowly, probably contemplating the best way of dispatching me while her sons should be engaged with the Indian. I was several times on the eve of rising and shooting her on the spot, but she was not to be punished thus. The door was suddenly opened, and there entered two stout travelers, each with a long rifle on his shoulder. I bounced up on my feet, and making them most heartily welcome, told them how well it was for me that they should have arrived at that moment. The tale was told in a minute. The drunken sons were secured, and the woman, in spite of her defence and vociferations, shared the same fate. The Indian fairly danced with joy, and gave us to understand that, as he could not sleep for pain, he would watch over us. You may suppose we slept much less than we talked. The two strangers gave me an account of their once having been themselves in a similar situation. Day came fair and rosy, and with it the punishment of our captives.
     They were quite sobered. Their feet were unbound, but their arms were still securely tied. We marched them into the woods off the road, and having used them as regulators were wont to use such delinquents, we set fire to the cabin, gave all the skins and implements to the young Indian warrior, and proceeded, well pleased, towards the settlements.”

     Western Kentucky was then, possibly because the country was not “well settled,” troubled, as California is now, with earthquakes. The effect produced by the phenomenon is thus graphically described:

     “In the month of November the naturalist was riding along on horseback, when he heard what he imagined to be the distant rumbling of a violent tornado. ‘On which,’ says he, ‘I spurred my steed, with a wish to gallop as fast as possible to the place of shelter. But it would not do; the animal knew better than I what was forthcoming, and instead of going faster, so nearly stopped, that I remarked he placed one foot after another on the ground with as much precaution as if walking on a smooth sheet of ice. I thought he had suddenly foundered, and, speaking to him, was on the point of dismounting and leading him, when he, all of a sudden, fell a groaning piteously, hung his head, spread out his four legs, as if to save himself from falling, and stood stock still, continuing to groan. I thought my horse was about to die, and would have sprung from his back had a minute more elapsed; but at that instant all the shrubs and trees began to move from their very roots, the ground rose and fell in successive furrows, like the ruffled waters of a lake, and I became bewildered in my ideas, as I too plainly discovered that all this commotion in nature was the result of an earthquake. I had never witnessed anything of the kind before, although, like every other person, I knew of earthquakes by description. But what is description compared with reality? Who can tell of the sensations which I experienced when I found myself rocking, as it were, upon my horse, and with him moved to and fro like a child in a cradle, with the most imminent danger around me? The fearful convulsion, however, lasted only a few minutes, and the heavens again brightened as quickly as they had become obscured; my horse brought his feet to the natural position, raised his head and galloped off as if loose and frolicking without a rider.
     I was not, however, without great apprehension respecting my family, from which I was many miles distant, fearful that where they were the shock might have caused greater havoc than I had witnessed. I gave the bridle to my steed, and was glad to see him appear as anxious to get home as myself. The pace at which he galloped accomplished this sooner than I had expected, and I found with much pleasure, that no greater harm had taken place than the apprehension excited for my own safety. Shock succeeded shock almost every day or night for several weeks, diminishing, however, so gradually as to dwindle away into mere vibrations of the earth. Strange to say, I for one became so accustomed to the feeling as rather to enjoy the fears manifested by others. I never can forget the effects of one of the slighter shocks, which took place when I was at a friend’s house, where I had gone to enjoy the merriment that in our Western country attends a wedding. The ceremony being performed, supper over, and the fiddles tuned, dancing became the order of the moment. This was merrily followed up to a late hour, when the party retired to rest. We were in what was called, with great propriety, a log-house—one of large dimensions and solidly constructed. The owner was a physician, and in one corner were not only his lancets, tournequets, amputating-knives and other sanguinary apparatus, but all the drugs which he employed for the relief of his patients, arranged in jars and phials of different sizes. These had, some days before, made a narrow escape from destruction, but had been fortunately preserved by closing the doors of the cases in which they were contained.
     As I have said, we had all retired to rest. Morning was fast approaching, when the rumbling noise that precedes the earthquake began so loudly as to awaken the whole party and drive them out of bed in the greatest consternation. The scene which ensued was humorous in the extreme. Fear knows no restraint. Every person, old and young, filled with alarm at the creaking of the log-house, and apprehending instant destruction, rushed wildly out to the grass inclosure fronting the building. The full moon was slowly descending from her throne, covered at times by clouds that rolled heavily along, as if to conceal from her view the scenes of terror which prevailed on earth below.
     On the grass plat we all met, in such condition as rendered it next to impossible to discriminate any of the party, all huddled together in a state of almost perfect nudity. The earth waved like a field of corn before the breeze; the birds left their perches and flew about not knowing whither; and the doctor, recollecting the danger of his gallipots, ran to his office to prevent their dancing off the shelves to the floor. Never for a moment did he think of closing the door, but spreading his arms, jumped about the front of the cases, pushing back here and there the falling jars, but with so little success, that before the shock was over he had lost nearly all he possessed. The shock at length ceased, and the frightened females, now sensible of their dishabille, fled to their several apartments.”

     While residing at Hendersonville one misfortune after another overtook AUDUBON. His father died, and as he did not learn of the sad event for nearly a year, he lost, through the failure of a merchant in Richmond, Va., the sum of $17,000, which had been deposited with him by the elder AUDUBON for the benefit of his son. One unfortunate business venture followed another until hardly anything was left him but his sick wife, his gun, his dog and his skill in drawing with his knowledge of dancing, fencing, &c. Still his courage did not for a moment desert him. Foiled in one place he left it for another. From Kentucky he went to Cincinnati, where he was for a time curator of the Museum, and thence down the Mississippi to Natchez and New-Orleans. His diary during this time gives us most graphic sketches of every phase of Western life, with accounts more or less detailed of notabilities with whom he was now and then thrown in contact. Of RAFINESQUE, the eccentric naturalist, he tells this odd incident:

     “After a day’s pursuit of natural history studies, the stranger was accommodated with a bed in an attic-room. We had all retired to rest; every person, I imagined, was in deep slumber save myself, when of a sudden I heard a great uproar in the naturalist’s room. I got up, reached the place in a few minutes, and opened the door, when, to my astonishment, I saw my guest running about naked, holding the handle of my favorite violin, the body of which he had battered to pieces against the walls in attempting to kill the bats which had entered by the open window, probably attracted by the insects flying around his candle. I stood amazed, but he continued jumping and running round and round until he was fairly exhausted, when he begged me to procure one of the animals for him, as he felt convinced they belonged to a ‘new species.’ Although I was convinced of the contrary, I took up the bow of my demolished cremona, and administering a smart tap to each of the bats as it came up, soon got specimens enough. The war ended, I again bade him good night, but could not help observing the state of the room. It was strewed with plants, which had been previously arranged with care. He saw my regret for the havoc that had been created, but added that he would soon put his plants to rights—after he had secured his specimens of bats.”

     Of another eccentricity, a painter, whose name is not given, but whose oddities fascinated AUDUBON, we have this amusing sketch.

     “His head was crowned with a straw hat, the brim of which might cope with those worn by the fair sex in 1830; his neck was exposed to the weather; the broad frill of a shirt, then fashionable, flopped about his breast, while an extraordinary collar, carefully arranged, fell on the top of his coat. The latter was of a light green color, harmonising well with a pair of flowing yellow nankeen trousers and a pink waistcoat, from the bosom of which, amid a large bunch of the splendid flowers of the magnolia, protruded part of a young alligator, which seemed more anxious to glide through the muddy waters of a swamp than to spend its life swinging to and fro among folds of the purest lawn. The gentleman held in one hand a cage full of richly plumed nonpareils, while in the other he sported a silk umbrella, on which I could plainly read ‘Stolen from I.,’ these words being painted in large white characters. He walked as if conscious of his own importance; that is with a good deal of pomposity, singing, ‘My love is but a lassie yet;’ and that, with such thorough imitation of the Scotch emphasis, that had not his physiognomy suggested another parentage, I should have believed him to be a genuine Scot. A narrower acquaintance proved him to be a Yankee; and anxious to make his acquaintance, I desired to see his birds. He retorts, ‘What the devil did I know about birds?’ I explained to him that I was a naturalist, whereupon he requested me to examine his birds. I did so with some interest, and was preparing to leave, when he bade me come to his lodging and see the remainder of his collection. This I willingly did, and was struck with amazement at the appearance of his studio. Several cages were hung about the walls, containing specimens of birds, all of which I examined at my leisure. On a large easel before me stood an unfinished portrait, other pictures hung about, and in the room were two young pupils; and at a glance I discovered that the eccentric stranger was, like myself, a naturalist and an artist. The artist, as modest as he was odd, showed me how he laid on the paint on his pictures, asked after my own pursuits, and showed a friendly spirit which enchanted me. With a ramrod for a rest, he prosecuted his work vigorously, and afterward asked me to examine a percussion lock on his gun, a novelty to me at the time. He snapped some caps, and on my remarking that he would frighten his birds, he exclaimed, ‘Devil take the birds, there are more of them in the market.’ He then loaded his gun, and wishing to show me that he was a marksman, fired at one of the pins on his easel. This he smashed to pieces, and afterward put a rifle bullet exactly through the hole into which the pin fitted.”

     During the vicissitudes through which he passed at this period, he was nobly sustained by his self-sacrificing wife, who secured a position as governess in one or another of the families of wealthy Southern planters able to remunerate her well for her valuable services. AUDUBON had all the while been prosecuting the subscription which was to enable him to bring out his great work on ornithology, and, after securing three hundred names in this country, determined to go to England and take further subscriptions and get the plates under way, and he accordingly sailed from New-Orleans for Liverpool, in April, 1826.
     It would be interesting to follow AUDUBON through his stay in England, and to quote the racy sketches which he gives of men and things; to trace the vicissitudes through which he passed, to note the unfailing energy with which he conquered all obstacles, and then to follow him to France, where the same experiences awaited him, but we must content ourselves with simply alluding to the three years thus spent, which to him perhaps seemed the most eventful of his life. In May, 1829, AUDUBON returned to this country, and, after spending some weeks on the New-Jersey coast, and in “the great pine swamp” in Northumberland County, Penn., he went South to see his wife, from whom he had been so long separated. He spent three months with her at Bayou Sara, and on Jan. 1, 1830, they started for New-Orleans, whence they went North to Washington, and thence to New-York to sail again for Liverpool. During the year following important work was done in getting the Ornithology brought to public notice, and in pushing forward the work upon it, and in spite of what obstacles and with what success, the following paragraph from his journal, written under date of April 15, 1831, will tell:

     “I have balanced my accounts with the Birds of America, and the whole business is really wonderful; $40,000 have passed through my hands for the completion of the first volume. Who would believe that a lonely individual, who landed in England without a friend in the whole country, and with only sufficient pecuniary means to travel through it as a visitor, would have accomplished such a task as this publication! Who would believe that once in London, AUDUBON had only one sovereign in his pocket, and did not know of a single individual to whom to apply to borrow another, when he was on the verge of failure, in the very beginning of his undertaking; and above all, who would believe that he extricated himself from all his difficulties, not by borrowing money, but by rising at 4 o’clock in the morning, working hard all day, and disposing of his works at a price which a common laborer would have thought little more than sufficient remuneration for his work? ‘To give you an idea of my actual difficulties during the publication of my first volume, it will be sufficient to say, that in the four years required to bring that volume before the world, no less than fifty of my subscribers, representing the sum of $56,000, abandoned me! And whenever a few withdrew I was forced to leave London and go to the provinces to obtain others to supply their places, in order to enable me to raise the money to meet the expenses of engraving, coloring, paper, printing, &c.; and that with all my constant exertions, fatigues and vexations, I find myself now having but 130 standing names on my list.”

     On Sept. 3, 1831, AUDUBON again landed in New-York, and soon after went to Florida, where he had determined to spend the Winter. The “Live Oakers,” “Deer Hunting,” “The Wreckers,” “The Touters,” &c., furnish the material for graphic and thrilling sketches to which we can only allude. In August of the following year, with his wife and two sons, he made a journey into the State of Maine, thence through New Brunswick to Labrador, where he spent a summer. A visit to Florida was proposed, but abandoned, for the winter of 1833-34, and in April of 1834 he returned to London with his wife and sons. Soon afterward he called on Baron ROTHSCHILD with proper letters of introduction, hoping to secure his subscription to the Ornithology. He writes:

     “Soon a corpulent man appeared, hitching up his trousers, and a face red with the exertion of walking, and, without noticing any one present, dropped his fat, comfortable body into a chair, as if caring for no one else in this wide world but himself. While the Baron sat, we stood, with our hats held respectfully in our hands. I stepped forward and with a bow tendered him my credentials. The banker opened the letter, read it with the manner of one who was looking only at the temporal side of things, and after reading it said; ‘This is only a letter of introduction, and I expect from its contents that you are the publisher of some book or other and need my subscription.’ Had a man the size of a mountain spoken to me in that arrogant style in America, I should have indignantly resented it; but where I then was it seemed best to swallow and digest it as well as I could; so in reply to the offensive arrogance of this banker I said I should be honored by his subscription to the Birds of America. ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘I never sign my name to any subscription list; but you may send me your work and I will pay for a copy of it. Gentlemen, I am busy, I wish you good morning.’ We were busy men, too, and so bowing respectfully, we retired, pretty well satisfied with the small slice of his opulence which our labor was likely to obtain.”

     The point of this interview was in its result. Several numbers of the Birds of America were sent to the Baron by AUDUBON and after eight or ten months a bill for £100 was presented. “The Baron” writes AUDUBON, “looked at it with amazement and cried out, ‘What, a £100 for birds! Why, Sir, I will give you £5, and not a farthing more,’” and since the naturalist did not regard that amount of the Baron’s money as worth a £100 from any one else he was compelled to take back the numbers delivered.
     Returning to this country again in August 1836, AUDUBON visited Boston and Washington, at both of which places he was cordially received, dining at the Capital with President JACKSON, and thence he made another visit to Florida and afterward to Texas. In 1838 he again went to England, but came back to America in the following year and settled in this City where he fully expected to spend the remainder of his days. As he had commenced work on his drawings of the quadrupeds of North America, he found that it would be necessary for him to visit the great Western prairies, and accordingly in March 1843, he left New-York on an expedition up the Yellowstone River which occupied him for eight months. When he returned from this expedition he had nearly reached his seventieth year, yet he began to work again with his usual energy and diligence. “The interval of about three years,” Mr. BUCHANAN writes, “which passed between the time of AUDUBON’S return from the West and the period when his mind began to fail, was a short and swift twilight to his adventurous life. After 1846, his mind entirely failed him, and for the last few years of his life his eye lost its brightness, and he had to be led to his daily walks by the hand of a servant. This continued until the Monday before his death. On Monday morning he declined to eat his breakfast, and was unable to take his morning walk. Mrs. AUDUBON had him put to bed, and he lay without any apparent suffering, but refusing to receive any nourishment, until 5 o’clock on Thursday morning, Jan. 27, 1851, ‘when,’ says the widow, ‘a deep pallor overspread his countenance.’ The other members of his family were immediately sent for to his bedside. Then, though he did not speak, his eyes, which had been so long nearly quenched, rekindled into their former lustre and beauty; his spirit seemed to be conscious that it was approaching the spirit land. One of the sons said ‘MINNIE, father’s eyes have now their natural expression;’ and the departing man reached out his arms, took his wife’s and children’s hands between his own, and passed peacefully away.”
     The octavo volume from which we have gleaned these facts in the history of the most distinguished of American naturalists, has been condensed, as Mr. BUCHANAN tells us in the preface, from a manuscript which, if published entire, would have made a book five times as large. That the editor performed his task with judgment is evident, from the fact that this extended review gives but a glimpse at the graphic descriptions and thrilling narratives of adventure, as well as at the piquant and often amusing personalities in which the book abounds. Mr. BUCHANAN also displays his good sense in not yielding more largely to the temptation, which must have been in his case a serious one, to substitute his own narrative for that of AUDUBON himself. The large extracts from the journals of the naturalist bring before us the man more vividly than would have been possible in any other way.
     There is, however, a single blot upon Mr. BUCHANAN’S work, and this is the more unpardonable because it was wilfully placed there, and still more wilfully allowed to remain. At the close of the sixth chapter Mr. BUCHANAN remarks: “If AUDUBON had one marked fault, it was vanity; he was a queer compound of ACTAEON and NARCISSUS—holding a gun in one hand and flourishing a looking glass in the other.” The facts which Mr. BUCHANAN might quote from his biography of AUDUBON to sustain this harsh and sweeping judgment are so few and so easily construed more generously, that good taste, at least, would have dictated the withholding of such a verdict. When the passage we have quoted, and one or two others, but little less severe, came under Mrs. AUDUBON’S eye, she naturally wrote to Mr. BUCHANAN, protesting against their insertion, but so far from withdrawing them, he ungallantly retorts upon Mrs. AUDUBON in the preface, and not only reiterates his judgment with an emphasis which must prove painfully offensive to the personal friends of the great naturalist, but attempted to atone for his faults by complimenting Mrs. AUDUBON’S self-sacrificing spirit. In a matter of so little interest to the public, and which concerned AUDUBON’S family so closely, the slight concession called for might easily have been made, and if the volume shall be reproduced in this country, it is to be hoped that every trace of this unseemly breach of courtesy on the part of the editor may be eliminated from it.

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The Land of Lorne: including the cruise of the ‘Tern’ to the Outer Hebrides from The Scotsman (28 March, 1871 - p. 2)

     THERE is a general understanding that people had better not talk of things they don’t understand, or offer instruction in matters whereof they are ignorant; and it is also understood that it is better to refrain from saying anything insulting or even disagreeable, unless in the discharge of duty, or for the attainment of some worthy and adequate end. Both of these rules of good conduct seem to have been forgotten, or at least have been violated by Mr Robert Buchanan, poet, who, in a book dedicated to the Princess Louise, “with Her Royal Highness’s express permission,” volunteers to initiate Her Royal Highness in the art and mystery of Highland farming, gives a deplorable picture of the wrongs and misery of the people among whom the royal bride is to live, and climaxes by denouncing her father-in-law as the chief of oppressors and depopulators. Now, even if all this were true, “yet we would hold it not honesty to have it thus set down”—set down in such a form and on such an occasion. But, as all this is nonsense, the offence is multiplied—it is an offence not merely in taste, but in truth, arithmetic, and common sense. Mr Buchanan has put himself in a position to realise to some extent the force of Dryden’s lamentation—

“To die for treason is a common evil,
But to be hanged for nonsense is the devil.”

This, it is true, is no hanging matter—Mr Buchanan is not treasonable, and now-a-days they do not hang for nonsense, nor indeed for treason either. Moreover, Mr Buchanan is not a fit subject for anything like condign punishment—he writes not to make mischief, but only to make sentences; and his sentences so repeatedly rebuke one another, so making himself do justice upon himself, as to leave little scope to those whose business it is to look after transgressors.
     That the Highlands, and especially Argyleshire, have suffered great depopulation; that that depopulation was quite unnecessary, there being abundant agricultural employment on Highland soil for any number of Highlanders; that it has taken the shape chiefly of emigration to foreign or colonial lands; that in Argyleshire, especially, the class of small tenants has been exterminated; that the principal exterminator has been the Duke of Argyll, who, however, is perhaps taken rather as a type or embodiment of Argyleshire proprietors than on account of his actual transgressions; and that the Argyleshire population is wretched and depressed—are the chief facts which the poet draws from his imagination for the royal bride’s delectation. It is not necessary to go into all those old stories merely because they have been recurred to by Mr Robert Buchanan, who obviously has learned and thought less about the matter than almost any of the host who, whether in prose or poetry, have preceded him in the same strain; but, though the provocation may be weak, there can be no harm in a passing glance at one ot two of the questions at the angle in which he presents them. It may, for instance, be worth while to remark that the Highland counties, taken as a whole, are more populous now than they were before. A sort of admission of this truth indeed is made by Mr Buchanan himself, when, happening to be at the moment in pursuit of some other object, he speaks of “densely-populated Ross and Inverness”—a phrase which is rather new, and considerably overstates the fact. What has happened in the Highlands generally is just what has happened in the Lowlands generally—there has been a shifting of population from one district to another, though, of course, there has also been considerable emigration, probably not more from the Highlands than from the Lowlands. Without distinction of Highlands and Lowlands, one-half of the parishes, comprising two-thirds of the area, of Scotland, have decreased in population during a period in which the population of Scotland as a whole has nearly doubled. Taking the country in counties, it happens that only two or three Lowland counties and one or two Highland counties have diminished, and among the latter is Argyleshire, which may be admitted to show the steadiest decrease, though, after all, that decrease is slight. It is obviously a matter of chance whether, when there is a shifting of population, those who move shall settle down again in a parish which is within or in one which is beyond the boundaries of the same county; and this it is which operates upon the population taken in counties, and which, as we shall see presently, accounts especially for the decrease shown by Argyleshire.
     What has caused the diminution of population in some Highland as in many more Lowland districts? The want—the necessary want, we say—of sufficient employment in those localities, coupled with the attractions of better employment and pay in other localities, whether at home or abroad. Mr Buchanan thinks differently; he holds that “thousands and thousands of miles of waste territory in the Highlands” could be profitably cultivated if Highland lairds were not so characteristically blind to their own interests; and he is quite convinced that wheat could be more easily grown in the Hebrides than in Canada, where, he informs us, “the climate is not so good.” This startling contribution to meteorology might call for a remark were it not that, before he has talked two minutes longer, he says, not of the Canadians, but of the Highlanders, “Heaven help them in that terrible climate of theirs!”—a terribleness of which he seems to see the cause in the Duke of Argyll, and the cure in a more copious drinking of whisky. Now, look at the Lowland counties lying nearest the Highland counties. Some of them show just as little increase as the Highland counties; some of them, especially those lying next to Argyleshire, show an enormous increase in the last half-century— Lanarkshire, for instance, to the extent of fourfold. Why is this? Because, through the existence and spread of minerals and manufactures, employment has greatly increased. Yet in those very counties showing the greatest increase there are many parishes showing a decrease. These are the merely agricultural parishes — parishes actually growing the wheat which Mr Buchanan thinks could be as well grown in the Highlands. Take that most purely wheat-growing district, the Carse of Gowrie; every parish in it has decreased in population. Mr Buchanan should therefore see that, even though he were correct in his conviction that wheat could be grown in Mull and Morven, there would still ere long be room for some other poetical meteorologist, agriculturalist, and statistician to lament over depopulation. The idea in the mind of many people seems to be that population should go on increasing in this county and in that in the same ratio, without regard to the means of living supplied by nature and otherwise — which simply assumes that men are to make a fatal mistake, avoided even by birds and beasts, and refuse to seek their sustenance on any other spot than that of their birth, careless of the increased demand here and the increased supply there.
     The assumption that the so-called depopulation of this or that district, especially the Highlands, and more especially Argyleshire, has been caused by emigration beyond seas under compulsion of the landowners, is for the most part a wild dream, without basis either in fact or reason. As well assume that the contemporary increase of population in counties like Lanark, Renfrew, and Ayr has been caused by immigration under the compulsion of cotton-spinners and coal-masters. There is something significant in the fact that, whilst more Lowland than Highland parishes have decreased in population, we never hear Lowland depopulation ascribed to forcible expulsion by the landowners. If anything of the nature of compulsion has been employed in the Highlands, it has been because Highlanders had shown themselves more slow to see their own interests and necessities than Lowlanders. And, though the fact is not ascertainable from the statistics of the Emigration Commissioners, we would venture a surmise that a greater proportion of Lowlanders than of Highlanders go beyond seas in search of better fortune than the district of their birth is able to supply. Of the special case of Argyleshire, we would venture to say that, though it presents in its statistics the nearest approach to something that might be called depopulation, there have been in that county less both of forced removal and of expatriation than in the other Highland counties. What has operated upon population in Argyleshire is what we may call the suction of the closely neighbouring and easily accessible regions, offering abundant employment and high pay. Mr Buchanan speaks of the landlords of Argyle, and especially the Duke thereof, sweeping away small cultivators to make large sheep farms. The statistics of the Highland and Agricultural Society show that the land of Argyleshire is held in smaller portions than that of any other county, with the single exception, or half-exception, of Shetland. It would seem to follow that, if the Argyleshire Highlanders are, as Mr Buchanan represents them, more wretched than the corresponding classes elsewhere, ti must be because the old system has in that county been not more but less broken in upon than is for the good of all concerned.

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The Land of Lorne: including the cruise of the ‘Tern’ to the Outer Hebrides from The Scotsman (13 April, 1871 - p. 6)

Literature

THE LAND OF LORN; including the Cruise of the Tern to the Outer Hebrides. By Robert Buchanan. London: Chapman & Hall.

A PRELIMINARY chapter to this book which Mr Buchanan has written has already been discussed in these columns, and not favourably. It deals with the alleged depopulation of the Highlands, and charges the Duke of Argyll with having done as much as any man living to bring about that depopulation. Seeing that the book is dedicated to the Princess Louise, the taste of this might very well be questioned, and would be worth more notice, were it not that some of our young poets use habitually a strange licence not merely with regard to poetry, but to facts and other matters, including taste. But when the first chapter of the book has been read and forgotten—or, what is better, skipped—what follows can only please. Now and then, perhaps, the reader may be amused by the egotism of the writer; but it can scarcely be said to detract from the interest of the volumes. They contain a description not merely of the Land of Lorn, but of Skye and the Outer Hebrides, written by no means in the ordinary guide-book style, but with a wealth of poetic picturing and a fervour of admiration that can hardly fail to warm the imagination of even the coldest. Mr Buchanan seems to live at Oban, and he gives most delightful sketches of that gloriously beautiful spot—

          “Patens Oban maris in recessa
Baltea cinctus nitet insularum”

as Professor Blackie sung of it the other day. Yet Mr Buchanan’s first experience of the place was not such as to create any strong liking for it. He says:—
     “When he first came to dwell in Lorn, and roamed as is his wont up hill and down dale from dawn to sunset, the Wanderer (as the writer purposes to call himself in these pages, in order to get rid of the perkish and impertinent first person singular) soon grew weary of a landscape which seemed tame and colourless—of hills that, with one or two magnificent exceptions, seemed cold and unpicturesque. It was the spring-time, moreover, and such a spring-time! Day after day the rain descended, sometimes in a dreary ‘smurr,’ at others in a moaning torrent, and when the clouds did part the sun looked through with a dismal and fitful stare, like a face swollen with weeping. The conies were frisking everywhere, fancying it always twilight. The mountain loch overflowed its banks, while far beneath the surface the buds of the yellow lily were wildly struggling upward, and the over-fed burns roared day and night. Wherever one went, the farmer scowled, and the gamekeeper shook his head. Lorn seemed as weary as the Uists—weary but not eerie, and so without fascination. In a kind of dovecot perched on a hill, far from human habitation, the Wanderer dwelt and watched, while the gloomy gillie came and went, and the dogs howled from the rain-drenched kennel. The weasel bred at the very door, in some obscure corner of a drain, and the young weasels used to come fearlessly out on Sunday morning and play in the rain. Two hundred yards above the house was a mountain tarn, on the shores of which a desolate couple of teal were trying hard to hatch a brood; and all around the miserable grouse and grey-hens were sitting like stones, drenched on their eggs, hoping against hope. In the far distance, over a dreary sweep of marshes and pools, lay the little town of Oban, looking, when the mists cleared away a little, exactly like the woodcuts of the City of Destruction in popular editions of the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress.’ Now and then, too, the figure of a certain genial Edinburgh Professor, with long white hair and flowing plaid, might be seen toiling upward to Doubting Castle, exactly like Christian on his pilgrimage, but carrying, instead of a bundle on his back, the whole of Homer’s hexameters in his brain, set to such popular tunes as ‘John Brown,’ and ‘Are ye sleepin’, Maggie?’ Few others had courage to climb so high, in weather so inclement; and wonderful to add, the Professor did not in the least share the newcomer’s melancholy, but roundly vowed in good Doric that there was no sweeter spot in all the world than the ‘bonnie Land of Lorn.’ The Wanderer was for a time sceptical, but as the days lengthened, and his eyes accommodated themselves to the new prospect, his scepticism changed into faith, his faith into enthusiasm, his enthusiasm into perfect love and passionate enjoyment.”
     How he found out the beauties of the place Mr Buchanan describes; and how he made himself a home there, and the difficulties he had in doing it. But the great secret of his affection for the Land of Lorn is the way in which its many changeful aspects appeal to a mind that can see and appreciate the beautiful, even when it does not come in glowing guise. He says truly:—
     “The visitor to the west coast of Scotland is doubtless often disappointed by the absence of bright colours and brilliant contrasts, such as he has been accustomed to in Italy and in Switzerland; and he goes away too often with a malediction on the mist and the rain, and an under-murmur of contempt for Scottish scenery, such as poor Montalembert sadly expressed in his life of the Saint of Iona. But what many chance visitors despise, becomes to the living resident a constant source of joy. Those infinitely varied grays—those melting, melodious, dimmest of browns—those silvery gleams through the fine neutral tint of cloud! One gets to like strong sunlight least; it dwarfs the mountains so, and destroys the beautiful distance. Dark, dreamy days, with the clouds clear and high, and the wind hushed; or wild days, with the dark heavens blowing past like the rush of a sea, and the shadows driving like mad things over the long grass and the marshy pool; or sad days of rain, with dim pathetic glimpses of the white and weeping orb; or nights of the round moon, when the air throbs with strange electric light, and the hill is mirrored dark as ebony in the glittering sheet of the loch; or nights of the aurora and the lunar rainbow; on days and nights like those is the Land of Lorn beheld in its glory. Even during those superb sunsets for which its coasts are famed—sunsets of fire divine, with all the tints of the prism—only west and east kindle to great brightness, while the landscape between reflects the glorious light dimly and gently, interposing mists and vapours, with dreamy shadows of the hills. These bright moments are exceptional; yet is it quite fair to say so when, a dozen times during the rainy day, the heart of the grayness bursts open, and the rainbow issues forth in complete semicircle, glittering in glorious evanescence, with its dim ghost fluttering faintly above it on the dark heaven—

‘My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky!’

The Iris comes and goes, and is indeed, like the sunlight, ‘a glorious birth’ wherever it appears; but for rainbows of all degrees of beauty, from the superb arch of delicately-defined lines that spans a complete landscape for minutes together, to the delicate dying thing that flutters for a moment on the skirt of the storm-cloud and dies to the sudden sob of the rain, the wanderer knows no corner of the earth to equal Lorn and the adjacent isles.”
     Somewhere in the book Mr Buchanan speaks of himself as possessing a receptive mind, upon which the poetic splendour of natural scenery does not make an instantly perceptible impression. Is not that the case with all minds that have a real sense of the solemnity, beauty, or grandeur of mountain scenery? The people who go into ecstacies at once over a sunset on the hills, or the grey sublimity of Glencoe, are not really touched. Their’s is but a sort of electro-plate enthusiasm in which the pure silver is very very thin. He who is most impressed drinks in the spirit of scene: he is more induced to quiet than to gushes of admiration; and it is only afterwards that the full force and appreciation of what he has seen comes to him. Anybody who visits Oban, and who will walk along the banks of the Firth of Lorn and Loch Linnhe to Ballachulish, crossing, as he must, Loch Elive and Loch Creran, may look on scenery now wildly grand now softly beautiful; now a strip of bog, now craggy and precipitous hills, now a stretch of green pasture land, now a patch of corn, now thick pine woods, now an avenue of beeches; and during most of the time there will be on his left hand, and once on his right, the sea, murmuring as it breaks on a pebbly shore, or carving out great hollows in the land. If it be autumn, there will be the fragrance and the beauty of wild flowers in addition, and with all and as result of all, a sense of pleasure not the less deep that it is quiet. But the full realisation of the charms of the scenery will only come after a time, and then the walk will be ever remembered as one of pure delight. Those people who spend holidays at meaningless English watering-places would be startled out of themselves as, going by the route just mentioned, they came upon bay after bay seemingly made for the enjoyment and rest of the weary people of great towns. There is no wonder that Mr Buchanan becomes enthusiastic about the district. He is right in his praise, even though it may seem rather showy.
     The chief part of the two volumes is taken up with the story of a “Cruise of the Tern,” a little yacht, in which Mr Buchanan sailed among the Hebrides, going as far as Loch Maddy. This part of the book has, almost more than the other, the fault of self-satisfaction; but no one can be angry with it for that reason. Mr Buchanan is a pleasant companion to Coll, and Muck, and Eigg, and Canna, and there is a good deal of interesting information in what he has to say about Loch Boisdale, Loch Maddy, and some of the smaller fjords in Uist and Benbecula. Skye he only touches, until he comes to Glen Sligachan and Loch Coruisk. He pays a compliment, which we can certify is well-deserved, to the neat and clean inn at Sligachan, though once upon a time it had not so good a reputation; and he does not say a word too much for the ponies which are there furnished to travellers who distrust their own walking powers, along what is, by way of sarcasm, called a path through Glen Sligachan. Nothing that he says about that savage pass, hyperbolical though it may appear, conveys a full sense of what it is. Scaur-na-Gillean, the Hart-o’-Corry, and Blaven cannot be described. Nor can the wondrous awe of Loch Coruisk, upon whose dark waters the sun at noon scarcely casts a beam, and upon whose shores no green thing grows, except on the neck of land that severs the Loch from the sea. Loch Coruisk is an appalling and fascinating spectacle; to a man capable of poetic imagining it must have been a trial to bivouac, as Mr Buchanan did, for a night on its bare margin. It may be doubted whether those who take the usual tourists’ track to Coruisk do wisely. If they go along Glen Sligachan to Camasunary, and there take a boat, they will be rowed into Loch Scavaig, itself grandly beautiful, and landed at the south end of Loch Coruisk, from which point they may look upon a scene that can never be forgotten. Any one who has seen Loch Coruisk will read what Mr Buchanan says of it with avidity, though he will be sure to come to the conclusion that the description fails to convey a full idea of the reality, simply because words could not describe the scene.
     There are two interpolations in the book—one the story of “Eiradh of Canna,” and the other the “Saga of King Haco.” The latter is very admirably done into English; but “Eiradh of Canna” is unique in its touching simplicity. It is a tale told by a Gael of Canna of the wreck of a family in that island. Homeliness and poetry are strangely blended in it; and it has a charm which goes direct to the heart. If there were nothing more in the two volumes than this one tale, it would redeem them from dulness. But Mr Buchanan, apart from his sentimental economy, has written brightly and enthusiastically; and these two qualities would have made even a less worthy subject than the Land of Lorn and the Hebrides attractive. He may well wonder that so much beauty at home is neglected; though that charge is year by year becoming less just. The facilities which Messrs Hutchison’s steam service affords are getting more and more known and used. “The Iona” is almost a household word. Yet those who would see more of the jagged western coast and the many islands “set in the silver sea,” should take the so-called slow boats, and double the Mull of Kintyre, and dare the swell of Ardnamurclian. The sea voyage is indispensable; but it is not all. Ashore there are places innumerable where tourists rarely tread, and yet where nature is to be seen in her grandest and best. If Mr Buchanan’s book, as it may, should stir up a desire to visit the Land of Lorn and the country thereabout, the impulse should not be checked. There is real and pure delight in store for those who spend a holiday in that region.

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The Land of Lorne from The New York Times (8 November, 1871)

THE LAND OF LORNE. BY ROBERT BUCHANAN. New York; FRANCIS B. FELT & CO.

     While Englishmen, with the restless energy peculiar to the Anglo-Saxon race, are searching in almost every country under the sun for pleasure and adventure, they have oddly enough, it seems, neglected their own island; for Mr. BUCHANAN says: “How little do men know of the wonders lying at their own thresholds! Within two days’ journey of the Great City lie these Hebrides, comparatively unknown, yet abounding in shapes of beauty and forms of life as fresh and new as those met with in the remotest islands of the Pacific.” We must make due allowance for Mr. BUCHANAN’S enthusiasm, however; whatever he is brought in contact with he sees with a poetical insight, and his prose is as rich and imaginative as his verse. The volume before us is a detailed account of a trip in a very small yacht through the islands on the west coast of Scotland, of which but little has been written since Dr. JOHNSON visited them, if we except the account given in SCOTT’S Lord of the Isles. Difficult of access, and on this account out of the beaten track of commercial intercourse, these islands still retain the customs and manners of life of two centuries ago. In the Outer Hebrides nearly every house has a spinning-wheel or loom, and it is by means of these that the entire community are supplied with clothing; yet this is within 500 miles of the greatest manufacturing centre in the world. The houses in which all but a few of the wealthier inhabitants live, are of the rudest description, being built of turf, and divided into two rooms, and held in common by the family and animals. The people, though staunch Catholics, are, like all the half-civilised races of the North, firm believers in witchcraft and its attendant superstitions, which has given a sad cheerlessness even to the expression on their faces. Nothing can be more vivid than Mr. BUCHANAN’S descriptions of Northern scenery.

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The Hebrid Isles:  wanderings in the Land of Lorne and the Outer Hebrides from The Scotsman (5 December, 1882 - p. 3)

     The Hebrid Isles. Wanderings in the Land of Lorne and the Outer Hebrides. By Robert Buchanan. A New Edition. London: Chatto & Windus.

     It has not been given to all to combine in a high degree the imaginative and the logical faculty. It has not, for instance, been given to Mr Robert Buchanan. He has an enthusiastic appreciation of the natural beauties of the Highlands, and can describe them with great wealth of poetic diction; but he cannot bestow sound advice on Highlanders. He has done well to republish, in a cheap form, and under another name, his Land of Lorne, which first appeared ten years ago. To such as know the West Highlands, and to those who have still that pleasure in store, there is real delight in following the “Tern” in her cruise among the islands of the Hebrides and into the recesses of the west coast firths and sounds, and to have the wailing voice of, and the spirit of, the misty mountains interpreted for us by so impassioned an admirer as Mr Buchanan, more especially when the strain of listening to his Ossianic rhapsodies is relieved by interludes, in which we have capital renderings of Highland song and legend, and snatches of conversation with shepherds, fisher folk, sailors, and pipers. It would be too much, perhaps, to grant his modest claim that, partly through the publication of these sketches, “the Scottish novel has taken a new departure, and many brialliant romances have familiarised southern readers with some of the scenes described in his Highland wanderings;” for it is, of course, open to question whether the romances in question have owed their origin to original inspiration from the scenes themselves, rather than Mr Buchanan’s description. Still, it is true, as he says, that the Outer Hebrides, with their wild scenery and associations, remain, comparatively speaking, “virgin ground for the poet and the novelist;” and, possibly, he is right in holding also that “the Celtic character is still little understood.” It may humbly be hoped that Mr Buchanan’s understanding of it is a mistaken one. In this edition he has relegated to the limbo of an appendix his former dedication to the Princess Louise—a piece of composition in such dubious taste that its appearance might have been spared altogether—and he has dedicated the book afresh to “The Crofters of the Island of Skye, whose “uprising against oppression,” he says, “is, just as surely as the might uprearing in Ireland, a precursor of a revolution which must come— when the cruel ‘clearances’ will be avenged, and when the blood shed wholesale in the glens will form the sacrifice of a new and happier dispensation.” In writing in this strain, Mr Buchanan, perhaps, like other “friends of the Highlander,” has spoken in haste, rather than from a spirit of deliberate mischief. Nevertheless, such language, addressed to ignorant and passionate men, is highly mischievous, and is the more censurable that the author of it does not expose himself to the penalties of the resistance of the law and the “bloodshed” which he commends.

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A Look Round Literature from The New York Times (17 April, 1887)

A VIGOROUS CRITIC.

A LOOK ROUND LITERATURE. By ROBERT BUCHANAN. New York: SCRIBNER & WELFORD. 1887.

     Mr. Robert Buchanan has distinguished himself in verse, prose fiction, and the drama, so that what he has to say about the writers of his time will receive attention. As a dramatist he has failed; as a poet he has produced a number of beautiful works which have not, however, succeeded in placing him in the front of the bardic tribe. Perhaps in his romance, “The Shadow of the Sword.” a novel reflecting the spirit of Victor Hugo, he has accomplished the most vigorous and absorbing piece of work of all; certainly none of the seven other prose books and none of his books of verse have received so much appreciation. “A Look Round Literature” contains articles reprinted from the periodicals of the day, and owes most to the fact that Mr. Buchanan has the Scottish faculty of hitting hard without fearing that he makes himself disagreeable. With his quarterstaff he lays about lustily, and is never so happy as when he can hear the pates crack under his blows. There is an Irish quality in Mr. Buchanan, the Irish love of a fight, but his is a humor much less good tempered than that of the typical Irish fighter. He lacks wit and the jovial temperament. “The Character of Goethe” is an arraignment of the great German from the side of morals which will grieve all Teutons who have not placed themselves irrevocably and with bitterness on the Schiller side in the perennial discussions as to the genius of the two authors. For Mr. Buchanan has the audacity to question further the genius of Goethe, after explaining his utter selfishness and inability to appreciative love in a great sense. Thus, after jilting Frederika Briou, in order to build higher the pyramid of his existence:

     “My own belief is that this pyramid building was an afterthought, used by Goethe in fighting with his own sense of moral littleness. The simple truth, as I believe it to have been, is that Goethe’s conduct was far less owing to tremendous calculations of self-culture than to simple want of earnestness in any of the concerns of life, added to a tremendous æsthetic horror of that most unpicturesque of all things—matrimony as practiced in modern Germany. Throughout his whole career he never allowed any one feeling to strike deep root. He carefully watered his sentiments, trained his virtues, (such as they were,) daintily enjoyed his tastes—made, in fact, a sort of back garden of his affections, whither he could retire without any danger of being bored by the world, and where all was fine weather and perfect shade. * * * He loved pretty women and light women—he would even go to the length of temporarily adoring them to distraction—but his appetite was satisfied with sipping and he seemed never to desire like rasher lovers for full possession. Marriage thus repelled him on the æsthetic side and we scarcely wonder, seeing what sort of wives would have been made of any of these women typified in his heroines. * * * Then, again, he had ascertained at a preternaturally early age (and this, by the way, is a fact so unusual and strangely unnatural that it looks not only like genius but diablerie,) that every additional human tie, however delightful in the forming, is a source of anxiety and irritation. He feared responsibility not because he lacked strength, but because he was a moral coward.”

     Superficial because incomplete criticism of this kind on the character of Goethe is oftener seen in French than in English because the conservatism of English-speaking people has kept up the impetus given by Coleridge, Carlyle, and other worshippers of German literature earlier in the century. It is well to hear it as representative of the other side of the medal. “A note on Lucretius” is aimed especially at Dr. Tyndall, but is more effective in recalling the ancient and mediaeval guesses at the truths to which we have come a little nearer in this century with doctrines of evolution than in gainsaying anything written or said by Darwin, Huxley, and Company. “The Irish National Poet” takes up that charming little butterfly Tom Moore on the tip of the spear of Goliath, and leaves nothing of him—very pleasant reading, doubtless, to rabid Nationalists, who cannot forget that Moore exiled himself from the island whose champion in verse and prose he attempted to be, but not a remarkably fair statement of his case. Very charming, on the other hand, is the account of an interview with Shelley’s friend, the novelist Thomas Love Peacock, author of “Headlong Hall,” “Crotchet Castle,” and other satirical books which foreran Mr. Mallock and his “New Republic.” In “Flotsam and Jetsam” the eye catches an amusing bit of naïveté from Mr. Buchanan like this, showing that he does not suspect that the mirror might be turned his way and his own portrait take that of Mr. Anthony Trollope. “Yet I read in a newspaper the other day that Trollope considered Reade (Charles) almost a genius! *** Trollope, whose art was the art of Count Smorltork plus the pathos of vestrydom, Trollope, who could write a book about the West Indies without putting into it one poetical thought or line, passes judgment on a literary giant and pronounces him a genius—almost!” The articles which will give most enjoyment are those on “The Modern Stage,” for Mr. Buchanan has had parlous adventures in that field, and lays on with Scottish claymore like a true descendant of Roderick Dhu. Whatever may be said of the imperishability of the judgments given ex cathedra in this collection, whatever may be said regarding the English in which they are conveyed, nobody can deny liveliness and extreme “readableness” to Mr. Buchanan’s formulation of his likes and dislikes, his whims, literary opinions and religious views.

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A Look Round Literature from Catholic World (Vol. 45, Issue 267, June 1887 - pp. 418-419)

A CHAT ABOUT NEW BOOKS

     Mr. Robert Buchanan’s A Look Round Literature (Scribner & Welford) is, as might have been expected from the author’s previous reputation, impudent, superficial, and impertinent. Inflated rhetoric is necessary, in Mr. Buchanan’s opinion, to divert the reader’s attention from the fact that he has nothing to say. Prometheus is as quickly coated with Mr. Buchanan’s wash of words as Victor Hugo, Ouida, Æschylus, and George Eliot! A talk with the latter is included in the volume. To report the conversation of a dead person, one ought to have a thoroughly reliable memory and a thoroughly unimpeachable reputation. The dead are always wrong in a dialogue with the man who lives to report it. How few of us could resist the temptation to make ourselves more clever than we were in the presence of a celebrity! How easy it is to polish a repartee that might have been uttered, had we thought of it! It will be seen how in this dialogue —which is a good sample of the turgidity of the book—“myself” shines. Miss Evans, Mr. Lewes, and Mr. Buchanan were the persons present:

     “George Eliot. We are absolutely the creatures of our secretions. So true is this that the slightest disturbance of the cerebral circulation, say a temporary congestion, will pervert the entire stream of moral sentiment.
     “Myself. All this is doubtless very correct. I hold, nevertheless, that the soul, the ego, is invulnerable, despite all temporary aberrations—clouds obscuring the moon’s disc, so to speak.
     “George Eliot. Say rather disintegrations with the very substance of the moon herself. Where the very substance of the luminary is decaying, what hope is there for the permanence of your moonlight?
     “Myself. The analogy is imperfect; but, to pursue it, the lunar elements remain indestructible, and after transformation may cohere again into some splendid identity.
     “George Eliot. Moonlight is sunlight reflected on a material mirror: thought, consciousness, life itself, are conditions dependent upon the physical medium, and on the brightness of the external development. Cogito, ergo sum should be transposed and altered: Sum materies, ergo cogito.
     “Lewes. And yet, after all, there are psychic phenomena which seem to evade the material definition.
     “George Eliot. Not one. And science has established clearly that while functional disturbance may be evanescent, structural destruction is absolute and irremediable. An organism once destroyed is incapable of resurrection.
     “Myself. Then life is merely mechanism, after all?
     “George Eliot. Undoubtedly. It is very pitiful, but absolutely true.”

     It is very pitiful, if George Eliot said it. But, notwithstanding what the spicy Mrs. Carlyle calls her masquerading as an “improper woman” and her hopeless theories, the expression “absolutely true” seems to be a positive touch of Mr. Buchanan’s. George Eliot, so far as we can judge from her books, did not refuse at least to acknowledge the inexplicable “psychic phenomena” of which Lewes is made to speak. A Look Round Literature is a book to be avoided. Evil communications corrupt good manners. We have lately heard of a scholar who has permission to read his breviary in Greek, to prevent any injury to his Ciceronian style. Similarly A Look Round Literature should be avoided, for fear that a good literary taste should be even slightly injured by the influence of Mr. Robert Buchanan.

Maurice F. Egan

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On Descending into Hell: a letter addressed to the Right Hon. Henry Matthews, Q.C., Home Secretary, concerning the proposed suppression of literature from The New York Times (4 August, 1889)

LITERATURE IN CHAINS

ROBERT BUCHANAN’S PLEA FOR VIZITELLY.

A NEW PHASE OF THE MOVEMENT FOR FREEDOM IN LITERARY MATTERS—
ARGUMENT WHICH HELPS LITTLE.

     LONDON, July 24.—It is a familiar saying that the English are neither an artistic nor a literary people. All the Continental races hurl this commonplace of reproach at their British cousins on the slenderest provocation. Even Taine, whose study of English literature is a monument alike to himself and his subject, somehow manages to suggest an inner consciousness that English writers have been a species apart from their fellows, an alien and exotic growth in the garden of conventional and pharisaical dullness. The Englishman, as a type, in turn rather regards this foreign view of him in the light of a compliment. He is proud of a good many possessions, tangible and otherwise, and in truth it must be admitted that he has more to be proud of than most of his neighbors; but deep down in his heart he values most of all the universally conceded fact that he is a practical, slow-going, tenacious, conservative sort of man, with no tendencies to flippancy and very little nonsense about him. He likes to think of himself as always fighting against odds. He smiles when caustic visitors comment on the stupidity of this, that, and the other thing they find in England—and the smile is meant to convey his satisfaction at the thought that, in spite of this historic stupidity, England has gone up to the top of the tree and maintained her place there against all comers. The despairing gibe of the foreigner, “Those English haven’t intelligence enough to know when they are beaten,” has the place of honor in his national scrap book of comments on him by outsiders. His pride is to be the one man in the world who guides his actions by common sense. Other peoples—less substantial races—are ruled by perception, by logic, by feeling, by their impulses, their likes and dislikes, but the Englishman believes that he has a monopoly of common sense, just as he has of Burton ales and mixed pickles and machine guns that jam when they get into action.

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Naturally, the literary temperament does not flourish on this hard-baked soil. The Englishman, still speaking of the race type, has no desire to be regarded as literary. His great-grandfathers thought. that Johnson, Goldsmith, Nat Lee, and the rest were low pothouse scribblers, whose lives were one long device to get along without respectable employment—just as their ancestors in turn saw nothing in Shakespeare but a play-acting fellow, of whose goings and comings it was not worth any sensible man;s while to take note. So to-day this proud islander acquiesces in the existence of a writing class in his midst, but does not care to know more about them, and values the printing press chiefly as the agency which supplies him with news about the cricket matches and the horse races and the designs of the Russians upon his Indian Empire. When Matthew Arnold dies not an additional paper is sold in London. But the death of Archer the jockey throws every English town into a state of excitement, and extra editions race hot from a hundred presses in  the vain effort to supply the popular dumand.

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     This much by way of preface to a curious agitation now working its way slowly through what may be called the literary circles of London. There are very many of these little circles, revolving each on its own axis in a semi-covert way, but their motive power is more often the jealousy of exclusiveness than any impersonal desire to keep a sacred flame ablaze. The chances of contact among these various circles are
extremely limited. If fortune casts you in one the prospect of your ever having anything to do with the others is small. Only accident brings people of one group into touch with those of another, and when they separate it is for good. I saw yesterday, for example, three English novelists of established reputation gathered with other visitors in the drawing-room of an American authoress here in London. Each of these three looked with curiosity when they heard who the other two were. They had never seen one another before. I gathered no hint that any of them was occupied with the desire that they might meet again. Under such conditions of reserve—part diffidence, part the inborn sense of exclusiveness which prompts every landed Englishman to build as high a wall as he can between himself and the general public and cover the top of it with broken glass—it is very difficult to unite the writing class upon any given line of action, or even to interest them in any common grievance.

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     There is now a first-class misdemeanant in Holloway Jail, a venerable man whose offense is that he has published English translations of Emile Zola’s books. Henry Vizitelly, now seventy years of age, has spent his whole life in the service of art, journalism, and literature. His father was a book printer, and Henry, as a boy, learned the trade of wood engraving. He was in at the beginning of the Illustrated London News, and after some years of good work there, started publishing on his own account.He introduced “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and the works of Poe to English readers. He brought out the famous illustrated editions of Longfellow’s “Evangeline” and “Hyperion,” with the now world-familiar pictures by Sir John Gilbert and Birket Foster. He founded a weekly illustrated paper, and personally bore the brunt of the fight which ended in the abolition of the newspaper stamp impost. He went through the Franco-German war, the siege of Paris, and the Commune as the correspondent of the Illustrated London News. He has written several admirable books, and now again for nearly ten years has been one of the well-established publishers of London. He is in prison, as I have said, on a three months’ sentence for including in his publications some fairly literal and extremely clever translations from Zola.

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     Of the extensively-signed memorial for his release I cabled last week. A more recent development of the movement is a pamphlet of some forty pages, written by Robert Buchanan and printed by Redway, but not, of course, issued to the trade in the ordinary commercial channels. W. H. Smith & Sons, who control the railway and general minor bookstalls, and Mudie, who rules over the libraries, would not dream. of countenancing its circulation. The pamphlet is called “On Descending Into Hell,” and is in the form of a letter addressed to Henry Matthews, the present Tory Home Secretary. Mr. Buchanan is very much in earnest, and here and there throughout his long diatribe against “the proposed suppression of literature,” it is possible to pick out effective arguments expressed tersely and with vigor. But the pamphlet as a whole is a somewhat melancholy comment on the “literature” which its author is supposed to represent. He had a strong case, and he muddles it into a meaningless one. He begins by addressing the Home Secretary thus: “You are, I understand, a Roman Catholic; I am a Catholic plus an eclectic. I have the highest respect for the creed in which you believe, since it is perhaps the most logically constructed of all human creeds; but while I admire the logic, I do not admit all the premises, and cannot consequently follow you to all the conclusions.” There are two more pages of this sort of thing, with allusions to the Church having burned Bruno, and some obscure talk about Calvin. What the Catholic communion has to do with Zola and Vizitelly, in the mind of the author, one does not learn for fifteen pages. Then Mr. Buchanan develops the theory that Rome, while intolerant toward spiritual schismatics, has always been very complacent in the matter of secular pornography. To quote again: “One of her most logical postulates, indeed, has been that man is evil by inheritance and by predisposition, and that only by faith, by spiritual knowledge, can he be saved. Hence her gentleness to the literature of heathendom, her complacency in dealing with purely human art and letters. While preserving the Christian documents, she was quite content to leave humanity its Sappho, its Lucretius, its Juvenal, its Catullus, even its Aristophanes. For though she was persuaded to make short work of schismatics, who after all have little knowledge of life, she was ever kindly to the poets, the most incontinent of whom knew life thoroughly. She went with Dante into hell, and she ascended with Calderon up to Heaven, but loving also her cakes and ale, she preserved the gaudriole (Anglice; smutty joke) for the amusement of her monks.  *  *  *  Far less human and sympathetic has been her gloomy half-sister, Protestantism,” &c.

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     The idea of seriously appealing to the Home Secretary to step forward as a Catholic and vindicate the historic claim of his Church to be the protector of indecent literature could surely have occurred to no one but a Scotchman. And he really seems to pin more faith upon this phase of his argument than on the intelligent plea that Zola is an earnest worker in the field of social analysis, and has as much right to be printed, translated, read, as any preacher of them all. This is the ground which English writers who have expressed an opinion seem to take, and it is quite conceivable that out of this prosecution, covering as it does a period during which the ferment of Ibsen’s strange, strong work has begun visibly to work upon the English literary mind, some definite advance may come in the direction of English literary freedom. But this advance, if it does come, will scarcely have been assisted by Robert Buchanan’s pamphlet.

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     Speaking of Buchanan, although he has been in evidence here for a long time, writing poems and novels and producing plays with more or less success, he is still most frequently thought of as the subject of one of Edmund Yates’s most characteristically savage attacks. When Buchanan first came down from Scotland and looked about for friends and employment, he was taken up by Yates, who is the best-hearted man alive to those he likes, and the enemy most to be feared in Christendom. Years later, Buchanan in some way failed to requite the kindness he had experienced and managed, I forget just how, to anger his whilom benefactor. The scoring which he received in the World is still a sort of text-book of complete and merciless excoriation among London journalists. One sentence only lingers in my memory. Edmund Yates, after recounting how his midday meal was interrupted by the arrival of the needy Scotchman, and detailing his earliest impressions of his visitor, wrote: “I gave him food for his belly and sulphur for his back.” These words will be remembered when everything Buchanan ever wrote is dead.

                                                                               HAROLD FREDERIC.

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The Coming Terror, and other essays and letters from The Times (16 April, 1891 - p.10)

     THE COMING TERROR, and other Essays and Letters, by Robert Buchanan (Heinemann). The strength of Mr. Robert Buchanan’s opinion is well known—better known, indeed, than his opinions themselves. His own account is that he is a moderate individualist, who defends freedom with one hand and the reasonable conventions of society with the other—a very commendable attitude, in principle. How far this principle accounts for all his furious onslaughts upon things and persons it would take some time to discuss; but there is certainly something in Mr. Buchanan’s rather cross-grained mood which suggests the idea of a bull which lives in a phantasmagoria of red rags. All that can be affirmed is that some of the objects of this critic’s aversion—Socialist levellers, mouchard journalists, municipal meddlers, Ibsenite emancipators of society, and others—well deserve the caustic things he says of them; while in one and all of his sallies, whether extravagant or not, he displays an exuberance of pungent expression that is itself enough to secure the amused attention of the reader.

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The Truth about the Game Laws: a record of cruelty, selfishness, and oppression. By J. Connell, Poacher, with a preface by Robert Buchanan. From The Guardian (8 February, 1898 - p.4)

     The Truth about the Game Laws, by J. Connell (W. Reeves, 8vo, pp. 85, 6d.), with an introduction by Robert Buchanan, is one of the publications of the Humanitarian League. The author writes of the injury which the game laws do to farmers and of the social evils to which they give rise. He condemns the “battue” in common with many “good sportsmen,” as the phrase goes. Other points on which he insists (they are less obvious evils of the game laws) are the alleged cruelty to sporting dogs in the course of their training and “the disturbance of nature’s balance” by the artificial fostering of certain animals and the suppression of others which have their undoubted uses. Of shooting pure and simple over a dog we find no condemnation. It is a useful little pamphlet about a subject to which the majority of people have given little thought, and upon which they have, therefore, scarcely formed an opinion.

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