Robert Buchanan | Page 2

I turned away with a great sob and threw myself into my sister's arms, clinging to her as the only mother whom I was thenceforth to know. As to the Poet, I was always taught both by his wife and his mother, to look up to him as a model of all the virtues, and my line of conduct was invariably determined by his approval or the reverse. If I proffered some childish request it was always met with, "Yes, if Robert says you may," or "No, I don't think Robert would like that," and though I was sometimes wayward and wilful as children too often are, I never wavered, I trust, in that great love which it was my duty as well as my pleasure to give. His frown always made me wretched, his smile made me glad, and I was never so happy as when I had earned his praise. When my sister died, it was her dying wish that I should remain with him, when his mother died the request was again whispered into my ear by lips which were fast growing cold. During his last sad, terrible illness my friends wrote to me praising me for what they called my "generosity and self-sacrifice," when indeed there was neither generosity nor self-sacrifice to praise. The greatest pleasure in life, it seems to me, is to be able to minister to the wants of those we love, and I did what I did because in the doing of it lay my only chance of happiness. When at length my task was ended I felt only as if all the happiness had been taken out of my life, but for his sake I rejoiced that his pains were ended, and that he had gone to rejoin those whom he had so passionately loved.
HARRIETT JAY. ?
SOUTHEND-ON-SEA.
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CONTENTS
PREFACE
I. HIS BIRTH
II. EARLY MEMORIES, 1841-50
III. BOYHOOD, 1850-56
IV. YOUTH, 1856-58
V. FLIGHT TO LONDON, 1859
VI. EARLY STRUGGLES, 1859
VII. DAVID GRAY, 1860
VIII. FRIENDSHIPS, 1864
IX. MARRIAGE, 1861
X. G. H. LEWES AND ROBERT BROWNING, 1862
XI. FIRST BOOKS, 1863-66
XII. RETURN TO SCOTLAND, 1866
XIII. SPORT
XIV. HUMANITARIANISM. (By Henry S. Salt)
XV. READINGS, 1868-69
XVI. THE FLESHLY SCHOOL OF POETRY, 1870
XVII. LIFE IN IRELAND
XVIII. FIRST IDEAS OF NOVEL WRITING
XIX. AN IMPRESSION, WRITTEN BY R. E. FRANCILLON
XX. "THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD," "GOD AND THE MAN"
XXI. "BALDER THE BEAUTIFUL"
XXII. THE DEATH OF HIS WIFE
XXIII. "THE CITY OF DREAM"
XXIV. PLAY-WRITING
XXV. A REMINISCENCE, (By George R. Sims)
XXVI. ON THE TURF. WRITTEN BY MR. HENRY MURRAY
XXVII. "THE WANDERING JEW"
XXVIII. THE LAST SHADOW
XXIX. CLOSING SCENES
XXX. THE LAST SCENE OF ALL
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CHAPTER I
HIS BIRTH
ROBERT BUCHANAN, poet, novelist, dramatist, was born at Caverswall in Lancashire on the 18th of August, 1841.
An unworldly man, whose life was chiefly occupied with the child's puzzle of natural religion. A worker, yet a dreamer who fought Don Quixote-like with many windmills; a lover of truth and beauty, yet darkly doomed to much ignoble pot-boiling, a dweller between the fringe of literary Bohemia and the beginning of mere cloudland, who, while giving a careless glance at the present generation, ever fixed a long, hopeful, wistful look towards posterity.
The story of his life which to the best of my ability I am about to set down, is in many respects a sad one. He had few friends and many enemies, and he received from the world many cruel blows. From the beginning I fear he lacked the true literary temper, but he always tried to preach the truth as he saw it, never counting the cost to himself. A fearless, upright, honest man, whose life, if rightly studied, cannot fail to be of interest to the world.
It was perhaps because he heard the name of God for the first time so late in boyhood that the mention of that name never grew tiresome to him. He was born in the strangest odour of infidelity, hence infidelity amused him less than most men, but for infidels and revolters he had ever a kindly feeling quite irrespective of their creed or his. His life was a lonely one--he was from first to last a lonely man; not unsociable by disposition, not unsympathetic, but seldom travelling far for sympathy--always climbing, climbing, but never quite reaching the heights on which he had set his intellectual ideals. Had his father not broken down in health and fortune all might have been very different with him; he would at least have had a foothold apart from the dangerous quicksands of literature. For many years he suffered a martyrdom from ill health, from the infinite delicacies of an over-wrought nervous system, thence came isolation, friendlessness, bitterness, misconception, and despair.
Perhaps no man has been oftener abused, yet no man needed kindness so much and received so little. He was stabbed again and again, and scarcely one arm was ever stretched out in his defence; yet he