Beschreibung:

SWINBURNE, Algernon Charles (1837-1909). Autograph manuscript of his polemical essay, Note of an English Republican on the Muscovite Crusade, n.d. [December 1876] , in which he bitterly criticises the alliance of Thomas Carlyle and the liberals for advocating Russian intervention in the Balkans and expresses his violent dislike of Carlyle, 'the most foul-mouthed man of genius since the death of Swift', on blue paper, approximately 25 pages, 4°, written on 24 leaves (340 x 210 mm.), a few annotations by the printer (the first leaf having 2 small pieces of paper torn away with part loss of 3 words, slightly discoloured, the leaves pinned together with a paper fastener in the upper left corner) . The original manuscript of one of the great vituperative pamphlets of 19th-century English literature, sent by Swinburne to Mr Theodore Watts Dunton, his publisher at Chatto and Windus, on 5 December 1876. In that year public opinion was sharply divided over the Eastern question, the Bulgarian atrocities and the possibility of Russian intervention. Swinburne, who regarded the English liberals with distaste, found the alliance of many of his friends with the Bulgars comic, and sympathised with Disraeli. The appearance of a pro-Bulgarian letter by Carlyle in The Times on 28 November infuriated him, and prompted him to expand what he had at first intended as a letter into a pamphlet. His rage was triggered not only by what he regarded as Carlyle's hypocrisy (for the latter had supported the harsh suppression of a rebellion in Jamaica by the Governor, 'Eyre Pasha' and had written of 'nigger worshippers howling in the gutter'). Swinburne was also retaliating for Carlyle's description of him in 1874 as 'standing up to his neck in a cesspool while adding to it'. In this remarkable outburst he attacks Carlyle with a venom and style seldom matched, 'a preacher who defends the gallows, an apostle who approves the lash has lifted up his voice against oppression and has cursed 'the unspeakable Turk' by all his Gods'. Swinburne's own quarrel is not with the Russian people but with the Tzar and Tzarina - 'the crusade which has Alexander of Russia for its Godfrey de Bouillon and Thomas Carlyle for its Peter the Hermit'. 'What', he writes 'is the peculiar sanctifying quality in the Bulgarian which is to exempt him at need from the good offices of 'beneficent whip' and 'portable gallows' ... It must be no small satisfaction though it cannot but be no small surprise to discover that there is actually some limit however indefinable, to Mr. Carlyle's admiration of the strongest hand'. The pamphlet was published, in mid-December, priced at one shilling. Swinburne composed a 10-page letter to Watts-Dunton on 12 December to dispel the latter's fear that it might be libellous, particularly in the references to Governor Eyre, and in a postscript asked him to remind Chatto to return the manuscript. On 16 December he wrote to Andrew Chatto, complaining that it had not yet been returned. It appears likely that it never was, as a note enclosed with the manuscript describes it as 'from Mr. Chatto's sale'.