Analysis of Robert Buchanan’s Foxglove Manor

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on May 3, 2025

When Robert Buchanan wrote Foxglove Manor, he had experienced years of poverty, worsened by the illness of his wife. Her death in 1881 followed the failure of his journal, Light, leaving him penniless and desperate for funds. In order to produce quick money, he began to produce two novels per year, some falling into the “potboiler” category. They provided shallow entertainment through sensational love stories.

The first few honestly dealt with social and moral conflicts, and with Foxglove Manor, Buchanan focused on the corruption of the English clergy, emphasizing the devastating effects men in such positions of leadership can have on naïve female congregational members. As Buchanan wrote in a “self interview” later of his poem Wandering Jew, “Christianity had been a cloak to cover an infinity of human wickedness.” He wanted to emphasize, “how Churchmen had juggled and cheated and lied in the name of Christ, and forgotten the real sweetness of [their] humanity.”

Buchanan’s plot pits religion against science with no subtlety. Its protagonist, a clergy of the English church, bears the surname Santley, significant in its ironic suggestion of a saintly nature. Santley is vicar to the village of Omberley, where the also significantly named Edith Dove loves him. Her surname acts as foreshadowing of her later sacrifice upon the altar of Santley’s passion.

The narrator makes clear Santley’s devotion to ritual, which he incorporates in his worship services to combat his “age of spiritual disquiet and unbelief,” in which man’s natural yielding to the physical was necessary in order to combat the loss of souls to indifference or to Catholicism. This statement will prove essential to reader comprehension of the novel’s conclusion.

A hypocrite in every way, Santley rekindles an immoral passion for Ellen Haldane, a previous student of his, now wife of the master of the local Foxglove Manor. When Ellen attends his service, she means only to rekindle a platonic relationship, but Santley has other plans. Throughout the novel, he vigorously pursues Ellen, who retains her spiritual strength and consistently denies him the physical love he craves.

Edith understands from the first meeting of the two ex-lovers that Santley has changed his attitude toward her. Buchanan does not shape her as a foolish, blind devotee victim, but rather as a religious woman who remains open-eyed in her consideration of Santley. After witnessing his forcing an unwanted kiss on Mrs. Haldane, Edith accuses Santley of being unfaithful to his promise to marry her. With high rhetoric and the infliction of guilt, he convinces her to forgive him. Her trust is rewarded when he eventually impregnates and then abandons her.

In the meantime, Haldane acts as Buchanan’s mouthpiece regarding scientific theories, including evolution, as he works in his laboratory, an avowed atheist. Ellen’s attempts to convert her husband to her religion continue to fail, as he remains convinced that religion is folly and only appropriate for women. Long before his wife recognizes Santley’s evil hypocrisy, Haldane observes his mistreatment of Edith and labels Santley a satyr.

Haldane travels to the Continent for a scientific meeting, leaving behind his Spanish servant—Buchanan’s attempt to add an exotic touch to the novel—to watch over his wife and household. His absence renders Ellen vulnerable to Santley’s visits. Santley convinces himself in a melodramatic scene that his desire for Ellen is acceptable as he asks of himself, “What is sin? Surely it is better than moral stagnation, which is death. There are certain deflections from duty which, like the side stroke of a bird’s wing, may waft us higher.” He actually convinces himself that his immoral passion for Ellen will lift him closer to God.

When Haldane returns, he shares with his servant his discovery of a mysterious potion that places the body in a state resembling death. He experiments by giving his servant the potion and calling the horrified Ellen to observe his deathlike state. As Santley’s unwanted attentions to Ellen escalate, Haldane decides to interfere so as to discourage Santley while teaching him a lesson in faith as well.

Before the lesson begins, the pregnant Edith, driven to near-madness by Santley’s desertion and her pregnancy, runs away into the woods, feeling the stream there had called her. In midwinter, she lies down in the stream in a suicide attempt. She is rescued by the local Gypsy prostitute, Sal, a figure who allows Buchanan to emphasize that even the inherent goodness in the lowest socially placed human remains preferable to Santley’s treacherous hypocrisy.

Haldane executes his plan by administering the mysterious potion to the unknowing Ellen, placing her in a coma. He then convinces Santley, who almost swoons at the sight of her “dead” body, that he has murdered his wife, due to her involvement with a clergyman. He accuses Santley as the true murderer through his duplicitous deceit, with Haldane acting only as the instrument. Santley contracts a “brain fever” and runs mad, accusing Haldane of murdering his wife in the presence of several villagers.

When he recovers after a protracted delirium, he learns that Ellen Haldane is in perfect health and has moved to Spain for a time with her husband. Edith, following her recovery with Sal’s aid, has contacted her aunt, and they too have moved away. When Santley frantically sends Edith a letter asking her to return and declaring his newly realized love for her, she replies, “I, too, have had an illness, in which, also, God has been pleased to open my eyes.” She will never return to Omberley; her aunt, having realized all she suffered, “approves an eternal separation.” In an obvious, although ironic, pro-Protestant reflection, Buchanan concludes the novel by stating that Santley left his parish to enter the Church of Rome.

In addition to obvious aspects of interest to feminist critics in the treatment of women, the story will appeal to formalist critics as well, with its abundant use of symbolism, not only in character names but also in the traditional application of the seasons to signal the state of human existence. The heavy-handed symbolism and irony apparent in the conversion of Foxglove Manor’s chapel to a scientific laboratory seems humorous to 21st-century readers. However, Buchanan’s use of quotations from Shakespeare’s Macbeth and allusions to Jonathan Swift, Charles Swinburne, and various “natural” philosophers trusts the reader’s knowledge of cultural references for understanding, suggesting that Buchanan considered his readers neither dull nor naïve, but approached his subject matter with a suitable seriousness.

His “Prefatory Note” to the 1889 edition reflects that concern, as he states, in part, “I have simply pictured, in the Reverend Charles Santley, a type of man which exists, and of which I have had personal experience. Fortunately, such men are uncommon.” He adds in what may or may not have been an ironic pronouncement, “fortunately, the clergymen of the English Establishment are for the most part sane and healthy men, too unimaginative for morbid deviations.”

Bibliography
Cassidy, John A. Robert W. Buchanan. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1973.
Harriett, Jay. Robert Buchanan; Some Account of His Life, His Life’s Work, and His Literary Friendships. 1903. Reprint, New York, AMS Press, 1970.