Much is written about success and failure in the career of literature,
about the reasons which enable one man to reach the front, and another to
earn his livelihood, while a third, in appearance as likely as either of
them, fails and, perhaps, faints by the way. Mr. R. F. Murray, the
author of _The Scarlet Gown_, was among those who do not attain success,
in spite of qualities which seem destined to ensure it, and who fall out
of the ranks. To him, indeed, success and the rewards of this world,
money, and praise, did by no means seem things to be snatched at. To him
success meant earning by his pen the very modest sum which sufficed for
his wants, and the leisure necessary for serious essays in poetry. Fate
denied him even this, in spite of his charming natural endowment of
humour, of tenderness, of delight in good letters, and in nature. He
died young; he was one of those whose talent matures slowly, and he died
before he came into the full possession of his intellectual kingdom. He
had the ambition to excel, [Greek text], as the Homeric motto of his
University runs, and he was on the way to excellence when his health
broke down. He lingered for two years and passed away.
It is a familiar story, the story of lettered youth; of an ambition, or
rather of an ideal; of poverty; of struggles in the 'dusty and stony
ways'; of intellectual task-work; of a true love consoling the last
months of weakness and pain. The tale is not repeated here because it is
novel, nor even because in its hero we have to regret an 'inheritor of
unfulfilled renown.' It is not the genius so much as the character of
this St. Andrews student which has won the sympathy of his biographer,
and may win, he hopes, the sympathy of others. In Mr. Murray I feel that
I have lost that rare thing, a friend; a friend whom the chances of life
threw in my way, and withdrew again ere we had time and opportunity for
perfect recognition. Those who read his Letters and Remains may also
feel this emotion of sympathy and regret.
He was young in years, and younger in heart, a lover of youth; and youth,
if it could learn and could be warned, might win a lesson from his life.
Many of us have trod in his path, and, by some kindness of fate, have
found from it a sunnier exit into longer days and more fortunate
conditions. Others have followed this well-beaten road to the same early
and quiet end as his.
The life and the letters of Murray remind one strongly of Thomas
Davidson's, as published in that admirable and touching biography, _A
Scottish Probationer_. It was my own chance to be almost in touch with
both these gentle, tuneful, and kindly humorists. Davidson was a
Borderer, born on the skirts of 'stormy Ruberslaw,' in the country of
James Thomson, of Leyden, of the old Ballad minstrels. The son of a
Scottish peasant line of the old sort, honourable, refined, devout, he
was educated in Edinburgh for the ministry of the United Presbyterian
Church. Some beautiful verses of his appeared in the _St. Andrews
University Magazine_ about 1863, at the time when I first 'saw myself in
print' in the same periodical. Davidson's poem delighted me: another of
his, 'Ariadne in Naxos,' appeared in the _Cornhill Magazine_ about the
same time. Mr. Thackeray, who was then editor, no doubt remembered Pen's
prize poem on the same subject. I did not succeed in learning anything
about the author, did not know that he lived within a drive of my own
home. When next I heard of him, it was in his biography. As a
'Probationer,' or unplaced minister, he, somehow, was not successful. A
humorist, a poet, a delightful companion, he never became 'a placed
minister.' It was the old story of an imprudence, a journey made in damp
clothes, of consumption, of the end of his earthly life and love. His
letters to his betrothed, his poems, his career, constantly remind one of
Murray's, who must often have joined in singing Davidson's song, so
popular with St. Andrews students, _The Banks of the Yang-tse-kiang_.
Love of the Border, love of Murray's 'dear St. Andrews Bay,' love of
letters, make one akin to both of these friends who were lost before
their friendship was won. Why did not Murray succeed to the measure of
his most modest desire? If we examine the records of literary success,
we find it won, in the highest fields, by what, for want of a better
word, we call genius; in the lower paths, by an energy which can take
pleasure in all and every exercise of pen and ink, and can communicate
its pleasure to others. Now for Murray one does not venture, in face of
his still not wholly developed talent, and of his checked career, to
claim genius. He was not a Keats, a Burns, a Shelley: he was not, if one
may choose modern examples, a Kipling or a Stevenson. On the other hand,
his was a high ideal; he believed, with Andre Chenier, that he had
'something there,' something worthy of reverence and of careful training
within him. Consequently, as we shall see, the drudgery of the pressman
was excessively repulsive to him. He could take no delight in making the
best of it. We learn that Mr. Kipling's early tales were written as part
of hard daily journalistic work in India; written in torrid newspaper
offices, to fill columns. Yet they were written with the delight of the
artist, and are masterpieces in their _genre_. Murray could not make the
best of ordinary pen-work in this manner. Again, he was incapable of
'transactions,' of compromises; most honourably incapable of earning his
bread by agreeing, or seeming to agree with opinions which were not his.
He could not endure (here I think he was wrong) to have his pieces of
light and mirthful verse touched in any way by an editor. Even where no
opinions were concerned, even where an editor has (to my mind) a perfect
right to alter anonymous contributions, Murray declined to be edited. I
ventured to remonstrate with him, to say _non est tanti_, but I spoke too
late, or spoke in vain. He carried independence too far, or carried it
into the wrong field, for a piece of humorous verse, say in _Punch_, is
not an original masterpiece and immaculate work of art, but more or less
of a joint-stock product between the editor, the author, and the public.
Macaulay, and Carlyle, and Sir Walter Scott suffered editors gladly or
with indifference, and who are we that we should complain? This extreme
sensitiveness would always have stood in Murray's way.
Once more, Murray's interest in letters was much more energetic than his
zeal in the ordinary industry of a student. As a general rule, men of
original literary bent are not exemplary students at college. 'The
common curricoolum,' as the Scottish laird called academic studies
generally, rather repels them. Macaulay took no honours at Cambridge;
mathematics defied him. Scott was 'the Greek dunce,' at Edinburgh.
Thackeray, Shelley, Gibbon, did not cover themselves with college
laurels; they read what pleased them, they did not read 'for the
schools.' In short, this behaviour at college is the rule among men who
are to be distinguished in literature, not the exception. The honours
attained at Oxford by Mr. Swinburne, whose Greek verses are no less
poetical than his English poetry, were inconspicuous. At St. Andrews,
Murray read only 'for human pleasure,' like Scott, Thackeray, Shelley,
and the rest, at Edinburgh, Oxford, and Cambridge. In this matter, I
think, he made an error, and one which affected his whole career. He was
not a man of private fortune, like some of those whom we have mentioned.
He had not a business ready for him to step into. He had to force his
own way in life, had to make himself 'self-supporting.' This was all the
more essential to a man of his honourable independence of character, a
man who not only would not ask a favour, but who actually shrunk back
from such chances as were offered to him, if these chances seemed to be
connected with the least discernible shadow of an obligation. At St.
Andrews, had he chosen to work hard in certain branches of study, he
might probably have gained an exhibition, gone to Oxford or elsewhere,
and, by winning a fellowship, secured the leisure which was necessary for
the development of his powers. I confess to believing in strenuous work
at the classics, as offering, apart from all material reward, the best
and most solid basis, especially where there is no exuberant original
genius, for the career of a man of letters. The mental discipline is
invaluable, the training in accuracy is invaluable, and invaluable is the
life led in the society of the greatest minds, the noblest poets, the
most faultless artists of the world. To descend to ordinary truths,
scholarship is, at lowest, an honourable _gagne-pain_. But Murray, like
the majority of students endowed with literary originality, did not share
these rather old-fashioned ideas. The clever Scottish student is apt to
work only too hard, and, perhaps, is frequently in danger of exhausting
his powers before they are mature, and of injuring his health before it
is confirmed. His ambitions, to lookers-on, may seem narrow and school-
boyish, as if he were merely emulous, and eager for a high place in his
'class,' as lectures are called in Scotland. This was Murray's own view,
and he certainly avoided the dangers of academic over-work. He read
abundantly, but, as Fitzgerald says, he read 'for human pleasure.' He
never was a Greek scholar, he disliked Philosophy, as presented to him in
class-work; the gods had made him poetical, not metaphysical.
There was one other cause of his lack of even such slender commercial
success in letters as was really necessary to a man who liked 'plain
living and high thinking.' He fell early in love with a city, with a
place--he lost his heart to St. Andrews. Here, at all events, his critic
can sympathise with him. His 'dear St. Andrews Bay,' beautiful alike in
winter mists and in the crystal days of still winter sunshine; the quiet
brown streets brightened by the scarlet gowns; the long limitless sands;
the dark blue distant hills, and far-off snowy peaks of the Grampians;
the majestic melancholy towers, monuments of old religion overthrown; the
deep dusky porch of the college chapel, with Kennedy's arms in wrought
iron on the oaken door; the solid houses with their crow steps and
gables, all the forlorn memories of civil and religious feud, of
inhabitants saintly, royal, heroic, endeared St. Andrews to Murray. He
could not say, like our other poet to Oxford, 'Farewell, dear city of
youth and dream!' His whole nature needed the air, 'like wine.' He
found, as he remarks, 'health and happiness in the German Ocean,'
swimming out beyond the 'lake' where the witches were dipped; walking to
the grey little coast-towns, with their wealth of historic documents,
their ancient kirks and graves; dreaming in the vernal woods of Mount
Melville or Strathtyrum; rambling (without a fishing-rod) in the charmed
'dens' of the Kenley burn, a place like Tempe in miniature: these things
were Murray's usual enjoyments, and they became his indispensable needs.
His peculiarly shy and, as it were, silvan nature, made it physically
impossible for him to live in crowded streets and push his way through
throngs of indifferent men. He could not live even in Edinburgh; he made
the effort, and his health, at no time strong, seems never to have
recovered from the effects of a few months spent under a roof in a large
town. He hurried back to St. Andrews: her fascination was too powerful.
Hence it is that, dying with his work scarcely begun, he will always be
best remembered as the poet of _The Scarlet Gown_, the Calverley or J. K.
S. of Kilrymont; endowed with their humour, their skill in parody, their
love of youth, but (if I am not prejudiced) with more than the tenderness
and natural magic of these regretted writers. Not to be able to endure
crowds and towns, (a matter of physical health and constitution, as well
as of temperament) was, of course, fatal to an ordinary success in
journalism. On the other hand, Murray's name is inseparably connected
with the life of youth in the little old college, in the University of
the Admirable Crichton and Claverhouse, of the great Montrose and of
Ferguson,--the harmless Villon of Scotland,--the University of almost all
the famous Covenanters, and of all the valiant poet-Cavaliers. Murray
has sung of the life and pleasures of its students, of examinations and
_Gaudeamuses_--supper parties--he has sung of the sands, the links, the
sea, the towers, and his name and fame are for ever blended with the air
of his city of youth and dream. It is not a wide name or a great fame,
but it is what he would have desired, and we trust that it may be long-
lived and enduring. We are not to wax elegiac, and adopt a tearful tone
over one so gallant and so uncomplaining. He failed, but he was
undefeated.
In the following sketch of Murray's life and work use is made of his
letters, chiefly of letters to his mother. They always illustrate his
own ideas and attempts; frequently they throw the light of an impartial
and critical mind on the distinguished people whom Murray observed from
without. It is worth remarking that among many remarks on persons, I
have found not one of a censorious, cynical, envious, or unfriendly
nature. Youth is often captious and keenly critical; partly because
youth generally has an ideal, partly, perhaps chiefly, from mere
intellectual high spirits and sense of the incongruous; occasionally the
motive is jealousy or spite. Murray's sense of fun was keen, his ideal
was lofty; of envy, of an injured sense of being neglected, he does not
show one trace. To make fun of their masters and pastors, tutors,
professors, is the general and not necessarily unkind tendency of pupils.
Murray rarely mentions any of the professors in St. Andrews except in
terms of praise, which is often enthusiastic. Now, as he was by no means
a prize student, or pattern young man for a story-book, this generosity
is a high proof of an admirable nature. If he chances to speak to his
mother about a bore, and he did not suffer bores gladly, he not only does
not name the person, but gives no hint by which he might be identified.
He had much to embitter him, for he had a keen consciousness of 'the
something within him,' of the powers which never found full expression;
and he saw others advancing and prospering while he seemed to be standing
still, or losing ground in all ways. But no word of bitterness ever
escapes him in the correspondence which I have seen. In one case he has
to speak of a disagreeable and disappointing interview with a man from
whom he had been led to expect sympathy and encouragement. He told me
about this affair in conversation; 'There were tears in my eyes as I
turned from the house,' he said, and he was not effusive. In a letter to
Mrs. Murray he describes this unlucky interview,--a discouragement caused
by a manner which was strange to Murray, rather than by real
unkindness,--and he describes it with a delicacy, with a reserve, with a
toleration, beyond all praise. These are traits of a character which was
greater and more rare than his literary talent: a character quite
developed, while his talent was only beginning to unfold itself, and to
justify his belief in his powers.
Robert Murray was the eldest child of John and Emmeline Murray: the
father a Scot, the mother of American birth. He was born at Roxbury, in
Massachusetts, on December 26th, 1863. It may be fancy, but, in his shy
reserve, his almost _farouche_ independence, one seems to recognise the
Scot; while in his cast of literary talent, in his natural 'culture,' we
observe the son of a refined American lady. To his mother he could
always write about the books which were interesting him, with full
reliance on her sympathy, though indeed, he does not often say very much
about literature.
Till 1869 he lived in various parts of New England, his father being a
Unitarian minister. 'He was a remarkably cheerful and affectionate
child, and seldom seemed to find anything to trouble him.' In 1869 his
father carried him to England, Mrs. Murray and a child remaining in
America. For more than a year the boy lived with kinsfolk near Kelso,
the beautiful old town on the Tweed where Scott passed some of his
childish days. In 1871 the family were reunited at York, where he was
fond of attending the services in the Cathedral. Mr. Murray then took
charge of the small Unitarian chapel of Blackfriars, at Canterbury. Thus
Murray's early youth was passed in the mingled influences of Unitarianism
at home, and of Cathedral services at York, and in the church where
Becket suffered martyrdom. A not unnatural result was a somewhat
eclectic and unconstrained religion. He thought but little of the
differences of creed, believing that all good men held, in essentials,
much the same faith. His view of essentials was generous, as he
admitted. He occasionally spoke of himself as 'sceptical,' that is, in
contrast with those whose faith was more definite, more dogmatic, more
securely based on 'articles.' To illustrate Murray's religious attitude,
at least as it was in 1887, one may quote from a letter of that year
(April 17).
'There was a University sermon, and I thought I would go and hear it.
So I donned my old cap and gown and felt quite proud of them. The
preacher was Bishop Wordsworth. He goes in for the union of the
Presbyterian and Episcopalian Churches, and is glad to preach in a
Presbyterian Church, as he did this morning. How the aforesaid Union
is to be brought about, I'm sure I don't know, for I am pretty certain
that the Episcopalians won't give up their bishops, and the
Presbyterians won't have them on any account. However, that's neither
here nor there--at least it does not affect the fact that Wordsworth
is a first-rate man, and a fine preacher. I dare say you know he is a
nephew or grand-nephew of the Poet. He is a most venerable old man,
and worth looking at, merely for his exterior. He is so feeble with
age that he can with difficulty climb the three short steps that lead
into the pulpit; but, once in the pulpit, it is another thing. There
is no feebleness when he begins to preach. He is one of the last
voices of the old orthodox school, and I wish there were hundreds like
him. If ever a man believed in his message, Wordsworth does. And
though I cannot follow him in his veneration for the Thirty-nine
Articles, the way in which he does makes me half wish I could. . . .
It was full of wisdom and the beauty of holiness, which even I, poor
sceptic and outcast, could recognise and appreciate. After all, he
didn't get it from the Articles, but from his own human heart, which,
he told us, was deceitful and desperately wicked.
'Confound it, how stupid we all are! Episcopalians, Presbyterians,
Unitarians, Agnostics; the whole lot of us. We all believe the same
things, to a great extent; but we must keep wrangling about the data
from which we infer these beliefs . . . I believe a great deal that he
does, but I certainly don't act up to my belief as he does to his.'
The belief 'up to' which Murray lived was, if it may be judged by its
fruits, that of a Christian man. But, in this age, we do find the most
exemplary Christian conduct in some who have discarded dogma and resigned
hope. Probably Murray would not the less have regarded these persons as
Christians. If we must make a choice, it is better to have love and
charity without belief, than belief of the most intense kind, accompanied
by such love and charity as John Knox bore to all who differed from him
about a mass or a chasuble, a priest or a presbyter. This letter,
illustrative of the effect of cathedral services on a young Unitarian, is
taken out of its proper chronological place.
From Canterbury Mr. Murray went to Ilminster in Somerset. Here Robert
attended the Grammar School; in 1879 he went to the Grammar School of
Crewkerne. In 1881 he entered at the University of St. Andrews, with a
scholarship won as an external student of Manchester New College. This
he resigned not long after, as he had abandoned the idea of becoming a
Unitarian minister.
No longer a schoolboy, he was now a _Bejant_ (_bec jaune_?), to use the
old Scotch term for 'freshman.' He liked the picturesque word, and
opposed the introduction of 'freshman.' Indeed he liked all things old,
and, as a senior man, was a supporter of ancient customs and of _esprit
de corps_ in college. He fell in love for life with that old and grey
enchantress, the city of St. Margaret, of Cardinal Beaton, of Knox and
Andrew Melville, of Archbishop Sharp, and Samuel Rutherford. The nature
of life and education in a Scottish university is now, probably, better
understood in England than it used to be. Of the Scottish universities,
St. Andrews varies least, though it varies much, from Oxford and
Cambridge. Unlike the others, Aberdeen, Glasgow, and Edinburgh, the
United College of St. Leonard and St. Salvator is not lost in a large
town. The College and the Divinity Hall of St. Mary's are a survival
from the Middle Ages. The University itself arose from a voluntary
association of the learned in 1410. Privileges were conferred on this
association by Bishop Wardlaw in 1411. It was intended as a bulwark
against Lollard ideas. In 1413 the Antipope Benedict XIII., to whom
Scotland then adhered, granted six bulls of confirmation to the new
University. Not till 1430 did Bishop Wardlaw give a building in South
Street, the Paedagogium. St. Salvator's College was founded by Bishop
Kennedy (1440-1466): it was confirmed by Pius II. in 1458. Kennedy
endowed his foundation richly with plate (a silver mace is still extant)
and with gorgeous furniture and cloth of gold. St. Leonard's was founded
by Prior Hepburn in 1512. Of St. Salvator's the ancient chapel still
remains, and is in use. St. Leonard's was merged with St. Salvator's in
the last century: its chapel is now roofless, some of the old buildings
remain, much modernised, but on the south side fronting the gardens they
are still picturesque. Both Colleges were, originally, places of
residence for the students, as at Oxford and Cambridge, and the
discipline, especially at St. Leonard's, was rather monastic. The
Reformation caused violent changes; all through these troubled ages the
new doctrines, and then the violent Presbyterian pretensions to clerical
influence in politics, and the Covenant and the Restoration and
Revolution, kept busy the dwellers in what should have been 'quiet
collegiate cloisters.' St. Leonard's was more extreme, on Knox's side,
than St. Salvator's, but was also more devoted to King James in 1715.
From St. Andrews Simon Lovat went to lead his abominable old father's
clan, on the Prince Regent's side, in 1745. Golf and archery, since the
Reformation at least, were the chief recreations of the students, and the
archery medals bear all the noblest names of the North, including those
of Argyll and the great Marquis of Montrose. Early in the present
century the old ruinous college buildings of St. Salvator's ceased to be
habitable, except by a ghost! There is another spectre of a noisy sort
in St. Leonard's. The new buildings are mere sets of class-rooms, the
students live where they please, generally in lodgings, which they
modestly call _bunks_. There is a hall for dinners in common; it is part
of the buildings of the Union, a new hall added to an ancient house.
It was thus to a university with ancient associations, with a _religio
loci_, and with more united and harmonious student-life than is customary
in Scotland, that Murray came in 1881. How clearly his biographer
remembers coming to the same place, twenty years earlier! how vivid is
his memory of quaint streets, grey towers, and the North Sea breaking in
heavy rollers on the little pier!
Though, like a descendant of Archbishop Sharp, and a winner of the
archery medal, I boast myself _Sancti Leonardi alumnus addictissimus_, I
am unable to give a description, at first hand, of student life in St.
Andrews. In my time, a small set of 'men' lived together in what was
then St. Leonard's Hall. The buildings that remain on the site of Prior
Hepburn's foundation, or some of them, were turned into a hall, where we
lived together, not scattered in _bunks_. The existence was mainly like
that of pupils of a private tutor; seven-eighths of private tutor to one-
eighth of a college in the English universities. We attended the
lectures in the University, we distinguished ourselves no more than
Murray would have approved of, and many of us have remained united by
friendship through half a lifetime.
It was a pleasant existence, and the perfume of buds and flowers in the
old gardens, hard by those where John Knox sat and talked with James
Melville and our other predecessors at St. Leonard's, is fragrant in our
memories. It was pleasant, but St. Leonard's Hall has ceased to be, and
the life there was not the life of the free and hardy bunk-dwellers.
Whoso pined for such dissipated pleasures as the chill and dark streets
of St. Andrews offer to the gay and rousing blade, was not encouraged. We
were very strictly 'gated,' though the whole society once got out of
window, and, by way of protest, made a moonlight march into the country.
We attended 'gaudeamuses' and _solatia_--University suppers--but little;
indeed, he who writes does not remember any such diversions of boys who
beat the floor, and break the glass. To plant the standard of cricket in
the remoter gardens of our country, in a region devastated by golf, was
our ambition, and here we had no assistance at all from the University.
It was chiefly at lecture, at football on the links, and in the debating
societies that we met our fellow-students; like the celebrated starling,
'we could not get out,' except to permitted dinners and evening parties.
Consequently one could only sketch student life with a hand faltering and
untrained. It was very different with Murray and his friends. They were
their own masters, could sit up to all hours, smoking, talking, and, I
dare say, drinking. As I gather from his letters, Murray drank nothing
stronger than water. There was a certain kind of humour in drink, he
said, but he thought it was chiefly obvious to the sober spectator. As
the sober spectator, he sang of violent delights which have violent ends.
He may best be left to illustrate student life for himself. The 'waster'
of whom he chants is the slang name borne by the local fast man.
THE WASTER SINGING AT MIDNIGHT.
AFTER LONGFELLOW.
Loud he sang the song Ta Phershon
For his personal diversion,
Sang the chorus U-pi-dee,
Sang about the Barley Bree.
In that hour when all is quiet
Sang he songs of noise and riot,
In a voice so loud and queer
That I wakened up to hear.
Songs that distantly resembled
Those one hears from men assembled
In the old Cross Keys Hotel,
Only sung not half so well.
For the time of this ecstatic
Amateur was most erratic,
And he only hit the key
Once in every melody.
If "he wot prigs wot isn't his'n
Ven he's cotched is sent to prison,"
He who murders sleep might well
Adorn a solitary cell.
But, if no obliging peeler
Will arrest this midnight squealer,
My own peculiar arm of might
Must undertake the job to-night.
The following fragment is but doubtfully autobiographical. 'The swift
four-wheeler' seldom devastates the streets where, of old, the
Archbishop's jackmen sliced Presbyterian professors with the claymore, as
James Melville tells us:--
TO NUMBER 27x.
Beloved Peeler! friend and guide
And guard of many a midnight reeler,
None worthier, though the world is wide,
Beloved Peeler.
Thou from before the swift four-wheeler
Didst pluck me, and didst thrust aside
A strongly built provision-dealer
Who menaced me with blows, and cried
'Come on! come on!' O Paian, Healer,
Then but for thee I must have died,
Beloved Peeler!
The following presentiment, though he was no 'waster,' may very well have
been his own. He was only half Scotch, and not at all metaphysical:--