Robert Buchanan | Page 5

of men.
To the house of "Lawyer Williams" came from time to time all the
preachers of the cause. Among these men was the poet's father, who,
when quite a boy, had run away from home to seek his fortune. He was
a dark, somewhat reserved young man, an omnivorous reader, and a
fairly fluent speaker, but it was in the height of fiery argument on the
public platform that he appeared at his best. Some of his fellow
missionaries excelled him in oratorical gifts, but in knowledge of the
subjects discussed, and in range of general information he had no equal
among them. His manners were far from courtly, but his strong
intellectual qualities attracted Miss Williams, and before they had been

very long acquainted they were engaged to be married. The marriage
took place in the autumn of 1840, and on the 18th day of August, 1841,
Robert, their only son, was born. About twelve years later Mrs.
Buchanan gave birth to a little girl, who died in infancy, so Robert was
practically their only child.
The fact that his parents had no other surviving children was, I think,
the chief misfortune of his life, as well as its crowning blessing. An
only child, he became the idol of his mother, whose affection for him
he returned with absolutely overmastering intensity. His feeling
towards his father, he often said, was one of ordinary, though strong
affection, but towards his mother it was far from ordinary. His earliest
memories were of her beauty and quite girlish grace. She was a
particularly young-looking woman at all times, and he could never, at
any hour of his life, realise the fact that she was growing old. In
looking at her even when she was close upon eighty years of age, he
saw only the soft blue eyes and golden hair as he had seen them long
ago, and I have heard him remark again and again that it always gave
him a shock if any one happened to refer to her as "old." " I cannot
imagine my mother old," he would say, and again, the very day after
she died, "I do not feel that she is dead, for I cannot imagine the world
without my mother!" As I have said, he adored her, and was in turn
adored. Thus reared and sheltered from every harsh influence, he grew
sensitive beyond measure, and his naturally nervous temperament
became so highly strung, that he was ill prepared for the struggles of
the world. This was a misfortune, and the cause later on of infinite pain
and heartache. He was spoiled by too much tenderness and solicitude,
weakened by too many gusts of childish passion which wrung his heart
the more because he was not openly demonstrative, but given on the
contrary to the concealment of his deepest feelings. But the influence of
his mother was not merely emotional. He learned from her teaching to
be sympathetic and tender-hearted, to worship goodness and to rise in
revolt against any form of injustice or oppression. The words of the
great Humanitarians were on her lips, she had learned them at her
father's knee, and he learned them in turn at hers.
From his parents he had no religious training whatever, yet slowly and

imperceptibly there grew in him a deep and abiding sense of natural
religion, of awe and reverence for the mysterious Power which moves
the world. He could never remember when he first began to say his
prayers, but he knew that as a child he said them, and later on to my
knowledge on two memorable occasions he said them--first, by the
dead body of his wife, next by the dead body of his mother, she who to
him was the symbol of all that was beautiful and loving in humanity.
1 "Latter Day Leaves."
CHAPTER II.
EARLY MEMORIES, 184150
"THE reward of Socialist missionaries in those days was, I fear, quite
inadequate to their personal necessities, and my father was one of many
who found it necessary to eke out a subsistence by reporting for the
Press. Just after I was born he joined the staff of the Sun newspaper,
combining with his occupation of reporter that of small news-vendor. A
few months later, when I was still an infant, my mother went to join the
community at Ham Common, in Surrey, the manager of which was Mr.
William Oldham, whose chief eccentricity was a preference for wet
sheets to dry ones. The inmates of Alcott House, or, as it was called,
the Concordian, were vegetarians, objected to the use of even salt and
tea, and, naturally, to all stimulants, and advocated entire abstinence
from indulgences of the flesh, including marriage. My mother, as a
married woman, was refused admission to