5483. Robert Williams Buchanan to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 170–171.
Woodlands Cottage
Iver
Uxbridge
16th Nov. 1864
My dear Sir–
Our meeting chez Mr Lewes enables me to recollect that you were interested in the pathetic story of the young Scotch poet David Gray, [1] whose remains have endeared him to so many true lovers of our Literature; and you may have heard of the endeavour, hitherto futile, to collect a fund sufficient to erect some simple Memorial in the Auld Aisle Burying Ground at Merkland. [2] It has been suggested to me that the best way to complete the Fund will be to compile & edit a small volume containing:
The Memento by Lord Houghton; the Life, reprinted from the Cornhill Magazine; [3] original contributions, of a miscellaneous character—by some few men of eminence; and some poetical remains of Gray: The Whole to be illustrated by a portrait of Gray (from a photograph in my possession) & a picture of the Cottage at Merkland. [4]
This Book, if blest with a moderate sale, would not only return a sum sufficient to erect the Memorial Stone, but would leave a surplus large enough to make Gray’s parents, now very poor & pinched, more comfortable. Mr Gray sen., uneducated as he is, has one of the gentlest & truest hearts that throbs.
Of course the attraction of the volume in the eyes of general readers would be the original contributions; and my object in writing to you is to ask if you will aid the good work with some lines from your pen? I prefer the request with some confidence, because I know how profoundly the biography & remains of Gray must have touched a heart like yours.
I write by the same post, & almost in the same terms, to Mr Tennyson, Mr Dickens, & Mr Lewes. [5]
Believe me My dear Sir
Most faithfully yours
Robert Buchanan [6]
Robert Browning Esq.
&c. &c.
Address: Robert Browning / 19 Warwick Crescent / Upper Westbourne Terrace / W.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Alexander Turnbull Library.
1. David Gray (1838–61), Scottish poet, eldest son of David Gray (1805–65) and his wife, Anne (née Cloggie, 1812–1905). His “remains” refers to The Luggie and Other Poems (Cambridge, 1862), “With a memoir by James Hedderwick, and a prefatory notice by R.M. Milnes.”
2. The village where Gray and his family lived. It is now part of the town of Kirkintilloch, about 8 miles N.E. of Glasgow.
3. An unsigned memoir, entitled “David Gray,” appeared in The Cornhill Magazine of February 1864, pp. 164–177.
4. As further correspondence indicates, this plan fell through. However, the following year a monument, funded by subscription, was erected over his grave at Merkland, with an epitaph by Lord Houghton: “This monument of / affection, admiration, and regret, / is erected to David Gray, / the poet of Merkland, / by friends far and near, desirous that his grave should be remembered / amid the scenes of his rare genius / and early death, and by the Luggie now numbered with the streams / illustrious in Scottish song” (Robert Buchanan, David Gray, and other Essays, 1868, p. 128).
5. “Tennyson promised a poem; Browning another; George Eliot agreed to contribute; Dickens, because he was too busy to write anything more, offered me an equivalent in money” (David Gray, p. 136).
6. Robert Williams Buchanan (1834–1901), poet, playwright, and novelist, was the only surviving child of Robert Buchanan (1813–66) and his wife, Margaret (née Williams, d. 1894).
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