Extracts from the Diary of Sir Edmund Gosse

Robert Buchanan.    [by Edmund Gosse]

June 30^th 1876.

I saw B. For the first time today in the Court of Common Pleas where the case “Examiner” x Buchanan was being tried. I heard the whole of Hawkins’ speech, B. Being opposite to me and rather close. Dobson was with me. We could not help remarking his appearance. A pale dissipated-looking man, with reddish-yellow hair, moustache & whiskers, attired in a dirty white waistcoat & loud trowsers, altogether shabby-genteel and anything but gentleman-like. He wriggled under Hawkins, alternately burying his face in his hands & glancing up at the ceiling. When Hawkins denounced Whitman, B. Laughed and shook his head; as soon as the reading of his own poems began he hurried out of court.

July 1.

I hear that Buchanan is extremely cock-a-hoop at his gaining £150 and his case. It is said that at a party to-night he turned his back on M^rs. W. Black. Black & he have quarrelled. The party was at Gowing’s, the Editor of the “Gentleman’s Magazine.” Every one avoided B., and Malcolm Lawson sang one of Rossetti’s songs. B. professed to have never heard of it, “Oh! Is that by Rossetti?”

“Who wrote that song?” Buchanan said,
     They answered with one voice, “Rossetti.”
Embarassed, shuffling, pale and red,
“Who wrote that song?” Buchanan said;
They laughed till they were nearly dead,–
     This affectation seemed so petty.
“Who wrote that song?” Buchanan said,
     They answered with one voice “Rossetti!”

 

5. 7. ’76.

     W. B. Scott communicated the above-given triolet of mine to Rossetti, telling him at the same time the anecdote. He sent back the message “Give Gosse my love, and the triolet is great fun!”

March 30. 1878.

Buchanan has written to ask Dobson to write for “Light”, a new social paper he is editing. Dobson refused.

_____

Gosse, Sir Edmund, "Robert Buchanan" [2 pages of contemporary notes], 1876-1878, in: Original Manuscripts, John Alexander Symington Collection, MC 918, Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University Libraries.

***

(In Volume IV: From the Age of Johnson to the Age of Tennyson of English Literature: An Illustrated Record (London: William  Heinemann, 1903) by Edmund Gosse, the name of Robert Buchanan does not appear. In the section devoted to Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the ‘Fleshly School’ controversy is described as follows:

“... the Poems were at last published. They created a sensation, and Rossetti took his place at once as one of the leading poets of the day. His undiluted satisfaction, however, lasted but a few months; towards the end of 1871 a writer of the day, under a false signature, attacked the poetry of Rossetti with extraordinary fury and some little wit. “These monstrous libels.” Rossetti wrote, “cause me great pain;” other attacks followed, the importance of which the poet vastly overrated.” )

Back to The Fleshly School Controversy