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The Immediate Source of The Dynasts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 August 2021

Hoxie N. Fairchild
Hoxie N. Fairchild*
Affiliation:
Hunter College New York 21, N. Y.
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Extract

In my opinion Robert (“Fleshly School”) Buchanan's The Drama of Kings (1871) exerted so strong an influence on Hardy's Dynasts that it deserves to be regarded as the immediate source of that work. The contention would appear to be virginal. The biographies and critical studies of Abercrombie, Blunden, Brennecke, Chakravarty, Chew, Duffin, Florence Emily Hardy, Hedgcock, Holland, McDowall, Rutland, South-worth, Symons, Weber, and Webster provide, in their greatly varying degree, suggestions as to the philosophical and literary background of Hardy's trilogy. None of them, however, suggests any relation between The Dynasts and The Drama of Kings. In fact none of them even mentions the name of Robert Williams Buchanan with the exception of Edmund Blunden, who notes the interesting fact that Buchanan dedicated to Hardy his novel, Come Live with Me and Be My Love. He might also have observed that Buchanan elsewhere devotes a laudatory poem to Hardy and warmly praises “Tom Hardy” in another poem.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 67 , Issue 2 , March 1952 , pp. 43 - 64
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1952

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Footnotes

∗

The article by John A. Cassidy on “Robert Buchanan and the Fleshly Controversy,” which immediately follows, was accepted for publication on 8 June 1951, and Professor Fairchild's article was accepted on 20 June. On 21 June a letter arrived from Dr. Cassidy asking if PMLA would be interested in considering an article on the source of the Dynasts. Recognizing an ironic coincidence, the Editor wrote on 21 June to ask that the article be sent “at once,” explaining that an article on the same subject had just been accepted. Dr. Cassidy's essay arrived promptly and proved to be, in most essential respects, a duplication of Professor Fairchild's argument. In view of the chronology of events—and after an agreeable interchange of letters with both authors—the Editor eventually suggested that the second article be sent to Professor Fairchild, with a covering letter from Dr. Cassidy permitting the use, with acknowledgments, of any pertinent materials not already present in the first article. This was done, with results here evident.—Ed.

References

Notes

1 But see the Editor's note on the interesting coincidence by which the maiden topic has divided her favors between Dr. Cassidy and me. Dr. Cassidy informs me that he became convinced of Hardy's indebtedness to Buchanan in the fall of 1950; I stumbled upon the same fact in March 1951. Thus although, for reasons which the Editor of PMLA explains, I have been granted the privilege of making the announcement, Dr. Cassidy should be recognized as the first discoverer. I am extremely grateful for his kind permission to use his MS. article, “Buchanan's Drama of Kings and Hardy's Dynasts,” in revising the paper which I originally submitted to this journal. References to his findings in my text and footnotes indicate precisely the extent and nature of my indebtedness to his expert knowledge of Buchanan. They do not, however, adequately express my appreciation of the generous spirit which he has shown in this complicated affair.

2 Thomas Hardy (London, 1942), p. 95. Blunden probably gathered this fact from the description of Item 30 in the catalogue, Thomas Hardy, a Collection of Books from His Library at Max Gate (London: Maggs Bros., 1938). I have not read Buchanan's novel. Dr. Cassidy describes it as “a downright plagiarism of The Woodlanders and Far from the Madding Crowd.”

3 Buchanan, Complete Poetical Works (London, 1901), ii, 400, 403.

4 William R. Rutland, Thomas Hardy: A Study of His Writings and Their Background (Oxford, 1938), pp. 284, 288.

5 Ibid., p. 289.

6 Ibid., pp. 285-286. Corroboration is supplied by Dr. Cassidy, whose MS. article shows that at least one reviewer associated The Drama of Kings with the qualities of the Spasmodic school.

7 I am obliged to my daughter, Anne Fairchild, who transcribed this dedication for me from a copy in the Widener Library.

8 Florence Emily Hardy, The Early Life of Thomas Hardy (New York, 1928), pp. 140, 150. These and all other passages quoted from this book are used by permission of the publishers, the Macmillan Company. My statement does not necessarily imply that Hardy first read The Drama of Kings between May 1875 and June 1877. He may well have read it soon after its appearance in 1871 but tried at first not to do something that in any way resembled this work on a subject which had fascinated him since boyhood. And as late as March 1881 (ibid., p. 191) he has not quite abandoned the ballads idea, which of course is reflected in several of the Wessex Poems.

9 (New York, 1936), p. vi.

10 I had already observed this curious dismantling of The Drama of Kings in the Complete Poetical Works of 1901. That edition, however, is in two volumes, in the first of which “Songs of the Terrible Year” and “Political Mystics” constitute successive sections. Hence the identity of the Drama is less completely obscured than in the three-volume 1874 Poetical Works more properly used by Dr. Cassidy, where the two batches of selections are printed in different volumes. Since the Drama is a comparatively rare book, these bibliographical details may help to explain why Hardy's indebtedness has so long remained unnoticed. Nevertheless it was a reading of the 1901 Complete Poetical Works which made me feel certain that the Drama, which I had not yet read in its entirety, would reveal a connection with Hardy.

11 Archibald Stodart-Walker, Robert Buchanan: The Poet of Modern Revolt (London, 1901), p. 332. This book was written when Buchanan was still alive but known to be dying of an incurable disease. Stodart-Walker devotes an entire chapter (pp. 89-111) to The Drama of Kings but hardly does more than summarize it. The title-essay of Henry Murray, Robert Buchanan: A Critical Appreciation, and Other Essays (London, 1901), was written, or at least completed, after Buchanan's death. It does not mention the Drama.

12 Florence Emily Hardy, The Later Years of Thomas Hardy (New York, 1930), p. 100.

13 Part ii, “Napoleon Fallen,” was separately published in 1871 before the appearance of the entire Drama of Kings. Using dates of reviews as evidence, Dr. Cassidy suggests January for the former and November for the latter, in which “Napoleon Fallen” was considerably revised.

14 Dr. Cassidy, however, instances a case (Drama, p. 83) in which Buchanan's Chorus directly warns Napoleon.

15 Of course their moods vary with the circumstances to which they respond. Dr. Cassidy would trace Hardy's sharper classification of his Spirits to the shifts of feeling in Buchanan's Chorus, but as to this point I feel rather sceptical.

16 The curious jumble of optimism and pessimism in Buchanan's thought reminds one of Winwood Reade's Martyrdom of Man, which was not, however, published until the year after the Drama. But Buchanan knew Charles Reade and may have had opportunities to converse with his nephew. See Harriet Jay, Robert Buchanan (London, 1903), p. 175.

17 Buchanan, The Drama of Kings (London, 1871), p. 55. Subsequent page references given in my text are to this edition.

18 Early Life, p. 266 (italics mine). Throughout the remainder of this article italics will be used to call attention to verbal resemblances.

19 Thomas Hardy, The Dynasts (New York, 1936), Part i, 53. Quoted, like all my other quotations from his work, by permission of the publishers, the Macmillan Company. References are to pages of the three Parts, separately paginated in this one-volume edition.

20 Early Life, p. 290.

21 Dynasts iii.254. On another occasion Napoleon is addressed in his sleep by the Spirit of the Years (ibid., p. 344).

22 Dr. Cassidy's manuscript shows that two of Buchanan's reviewers objected to this pretentious superfluity.

23 Rutland, Thomas Hardy, p. 319.

24 Especially for this reason I hope that Dr. Cassidy's dissertation on Buchanan may be published as a book.

25 Harriet Jay, Robert Buchanan (London, 1903), pp. viii, 21, 66, 76, 104 ff., 118 ff., 120 n., 127, 228.

26 Complete Poetical Works, i, 258. Italics are Buchanan's.

27 Ibid., ii, 52.

28 Dr. Cassidy enables me to say further that Buchanan became an active member of the Humanitarian League in 1894, and that a letter of Hardy's to the Secretary of the League in 1910 suggests that he also was either a member or strongly interested in its work. See Later Years, pp. 141-142.

29 Quoted by Harriet Jay, op. cit., p. 151.

30 Clive Holland, Thomas Hardy, O.M. (London, 1933), pp. 12, 13.

31 Quoted by Blunden, Thomas Hardy, p. 111.

32 Buchanan's father was a disciple of Robert Owen both as atheist and as socialist. In his Glasgow boyhood the poet “had become acquainted with the French socialists, Louis Blanc and Causidière, during their visits to the home of his father and from them he had developed an abiding admiration for the French people and their struggles for liberty.” (Thank you again, Dr. Cassidy.)

33 Early Life, p. 290. Italics mine. Ellipsis-periods as in source.

34 Conceivably, however, he used ellipsis-periods or dashes in his original notebook to separate his rough jottings, in which case it would not be necessary to suppose that he had deleted anything from his memorandum.

35 My Chat with Thomas Hardy (Webster Groves, Missouri: International Mark Twain Society, 1944), p. 26. Professor Carl J. Weber, who supplied the Introduction to Clemens' brochure, kindly sent me this reference in response to my appeal for help on the point in question.