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From Studies in Browning and His Circle (Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring, 1975) ROBERT BUCHANAN, F.J. FURNIVALL, AND
THE BROWNING SOCIETY: A LETTER In the years following his attack on D. G. Rossetti in “The Fleshly School of Poetry” (Contemporary Review, October, 1871), Robert Buchanan came to believe his own literary career greatly damaged as a result of the virulent critical war he had somewhat inadvertently started. In that war he did win a minor battle in 1876 when a jury awarded him £150 damages as the result of his libel suit against the proprietors of the Examiner, the publishers of a calumnious squib by A. C. Swinburne. But in general Buchanan found himself the loser, irremediably fixed as a conspicuous target for the growing coterie of Aesthetes. His apology to Rossetti in a dedicatory poem prefacing his novel God and the Man (London, 1881) served only to renew hostilities and provoke his enemies to further attack, the most devastating being that by George Moore in Confessions of a Young Man (London, 1888, pp. 276-77).
In an obvious effort to secure another ally within the literary establishment, Buchanan sent the eminent Shakespearean scholar F.J. Furnivall a complimentary copy of God and the Man with an inscription and a letter that reveal how much he felt himself the victim of a “literary Inquisition.” He undoubtedly viewed Furnivall as a potential friend because he had been engaged for several years in an acrimonious public quarrel with Swinburne over critical methodology in Shakespearean scholarship, a quarrel which had degenerated into an unseemly ad hominem squabble. Furnivall’s founding of the Browning Society in the late summer of 1881 gave Buchanan a proper occasion to enlist his sympathy and influence. For Buchanan was a personal acquaintance of Browning’s, being introduced to him in 1864 by George Eliot at a small gathering at her and G. H. Lewes’s home. As the result of that introduction, according to Buchanan in his reminiscences, he and Browning became casual friends, occasionally lunching together and discussing the current literary scene, but their friendship did wane over the years, to end decisively in 1888 after what seems a conscious slight on Browning’s part (cf., Harriet Jay. Robert Buchanan, London, 1903, pp. 110-14).
As a first step in honoring Browning, Furnivall compiled a bibliography of works by and about that poet, which included Buchanan’s two long, substantially favorable reviews of The Ring and the Book that were published originally in the Athenæum (December 26, 1868, and March 20, 1869; cf., Browning Society Papers, 1881, I, pp. 94-95). Apparently, Furnivall sent Buchanan a copy of this bibliography issued as a circular advertising the formation of the Society. Buchanan replied by sending a copy of his new novel, inscribed “To F. J. Furnivall, / from / Robert Buchanan / ‘The man o’ independent mind / Is king o’ men, for a’ that!’ / Robert Burns”, a quotation that obliquely flattered both himself and Furnivall, both being staunch, freethinking socialists and somewhat irascible literary critics. Accompanying the novel was a complimentary letter, which Furnivall, I presume, pasted to a flyleaf of the first volume, opposite a pasted-in review clipped from the London Daily News and annotated in his hand.
This previously unpublished letter corroborates John Cassidy’s thesis in his recent study of Buchanan’s works that “with the passing years Buchanan was convinced that his career had been blasted by the unfair criticism heaped upon him and his literary offerings as a result of the animosities engendered by the (Fleshly) controversy” (Robert Buchanan, New York, 1973, p. 58). It also reveals Buchanan’s acerbic attitude toward the Athenæum, for which he had written during the 1860’s but which was openly hostile to him and his literary works under the later editorship of Sir Charles W. Dilke. Buchanan seems to assume in the letter that Furnivall will concur with a denunciation of that journal, because of its generally favorable treatment of Swinburne in the quarrel about Shakespeare (cf., the review of Swinburne’s A Study of Shakespeare, January 31, 1880). The letter is of further interest in its suggestion that Browning likewise was the object of a literary persecution; therefore, I cite it in full, quoting from the original now in my possession:
Dear Mr. Furnivall, I have to thank you heartily for the Browning circular; and I take the opportunity to send you a copy of my new prose poem, ‘God & the Man.’ I know that you will apprehend its spirit & its purport, & I trust that it may secure for me ‘one more friend.’ Like Browning himself, I have suffered for years from the persecution of a literary Inquisition; and as it is such men as you that scatter light & fight on the side of minorities, I would gladly secure your sympathy in more or less measure.
I see that you quote some of my poor criticism from the Athenæum. It is not without a certain pain that I see my name connected in any way with a journal which, to my mind, is a synonym for nepotism & cowardly malignity. The only protection against such a publication is the large & free influence of the British press generally.
With my best wishes that your good works may prosper, & your independent spirit get fair play, believe me
He secured his objectives—Furnivall’s good wishes and potential friendship—as testified to, rather sadly, by a note written on stationery edged in black pasted to a flyleaf of the second volume:
Dear Mr. Furnivall, I thought to be in Queen Anne St temporarily this week, but on Monday night my beloved wife died here. While this great darkness is upon me, I cannot respond to your kindness as I could wish; but I look forward to seeing you some day soon. With kind regards
The formation of the Browning Society thus brought together, at least casually, these two Victorian men of letters, so similar in their irrepressible literary vigor, their moral earnestness, and their individualistic political radicalism. But that Furnivall was of any real help to Buchanan seems unrecorded. Jay Jernigan—Eastern Michigan University _____ (© S.B.H.C. used with permission of the Armstrong Browning Library, Baylor University, Waco, Texas) Back to The Fleshly School Controversy |
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