So in the village inn the poet dwelt.
His honey-dew was gone; only the pouch,
His cousin's work, her empty labour, left.
But still he sniffed it, still a fragrance clung
And lingered all about the broidered flowers.
Then came his landlord, saying in broad Scotch,
'Smoke plug, mon,' whom he looked at doubtfully.
Then came the grocer saying, 'Hae some twist
At tippence,' whom he answered with a qualm.
But when they left him to himself again,
Twist, like a fiend's breath from a distant room
Diffusing through the passage, crept; the smell
Deepening had power upon him, and he mixt
His fancies with the billow-lifted bay
Of Biscay, and the rollings of a ship.
And on that night he made a little song,
And called his song 'The Song of Twist and Plug,'
And sang it; scarcely could he make or sing.
'Rank is black plug, though smoked in wind and rain;
And rank is twist, which gives no end of pain;
I know not which is ranker, no, not I.
'Plug, art thou rank? then milder twist must be;
Plug, thou art milder: rank is twist to me.
O twist, if plug be milder, let me buy.
'Rank twist, that seems to make me fade away,
Rank plug, that navvies smoke in loveless clay,
I know not which is ranker, no, not I.
'I fain would purchase flake, if that could be;
I needs must purchase plug, ah, woe is me!
Plug and a cutty, a cutty, let me buy.
His was the best good thing of the night's talk, and the thing that was
remembered. He excited himself a good deal over Rectorial Elections. The
duties of the Lord Rector and the mode of his election have varied
frequently in near five hundred years. In Murray's day, as in my own,
the students elected their own Rector, and before Lord Bute's energetic
reign, the Rector had little to do, but to make a speech, and give a
prize. I vaguely remember proposing the author of _Tom Brown_ long ago:
he was not, however, in the running.
Politics often inspire the electors; occasionally (I have heard) grave
seniors use their influence, mainly for reasons of academic policy.
In December 1887 Murray writes about an election in which Mr. Lowell was
a candidate. 'A pitiful protest was entered by an' (epithets followed by
a proper name) 'against Lowell, on the score of his being an alien.
Mallock, as you learn, was withdrawn, for which I am truly thankful.'
Unlucky Mr. Mallock! 'Lowell polled 100 and Gibson 92 . . . The
intrigues and corruption appear to be almost worthy of an American
Presidential election.' Mr. Lowell could not accept a compliment which
pleased him, because of his official position, and the misfortune of his
birth!
Murray was already doing a very little 'miniature journalism,' in the
form of University Notes for a local paper. He complains of the ultra
Caledonian frankness with which men told him that they were very bad. A
needless, if friendly, outspokenness was a feature in Scottish character
which he did not easily endure. He wrote a good deal of verse in the
little University paper, now called _College Echoes_.
If Murray ever had any definite idea of being ordained for the ministry
in any 'denomination,' he abandoned it. His 'bursaries' (scholarships or
exhibitions), on which he had been passing rich, expired, and he had to
earn a livelihood. It seems plain to myself that he might easily have
done so with his pen. A young friend of my own (who will excuse me for
thinking that his bright verses are not _better_ than Murray's) promptly
made, by these alone, an income which to Murray would have been
affluence. But this could not be done at St. Andrews. Again, Murray was
not in contact with people in the centre of newspapers and magazines. He
went very little into general society, even at St. Andrews, and thus
failed, perhaps, to make acquaintances who might have been 'useful.' He
would have scorned the idea of making useful acquaintances. But without
seeking them, why should we reject any friendliness when it offers
itself? We are all members one of another. Murray speaks of his
experience of human beings, as rich in examples of kindness and
good-will. His shyness, his reserve, his extreme unselfishness,--carried
to the point of diffidence,--made him rather shun than seek older people
who were dangerously likely to be serviceable. His manner, when once he
could be induced to meet strangers, was extremely frank and pleasant, but
from meeting strangers he shrunk, in his inveterate modesty.
In 1886 Murray had the misfortune to lose is father, and it became,
perhaps, more prominently needful that he should find a profession. He
now assisted Professor Meiklejohn of St. Andrews in various kinds of
literary and academic work, and in him found a friend, with whom he
remained in close intercourse to the last. He began the weary path,
which all literary beginners must tread, of sending contributions to
magazines. He seldom read magazine articles. 'I do not greatly care for
"Problems" and "vexed questions." I am so much of a problem and a vexed
question that I have quite enough to do in searching for a solution of my
own personality.' He tried a story, based on 'a midnight experience' of
his own; unluckily he does not tell us what that experience was. Had he
encountered one of the local ghosts?
'My blood-curdling romance I offered to the editor of _Longman's
Magazine_, but that misguided person was so ill-advised as to return it,
accompanied with one of these abominable lithographed forms conveying his
hypocritical regrets.' Murray sent a directed envelope with a twopenny-
halfpenny stamp. The paper came back for three-halfpence by book-post.
'I have serious thoughts of sueing him for the odd penny!' 'Why should
people be fools enough to read my rot when they have twenty volumes of
Scott at their command?' He confesses to 'a Scott-mania almost as
intense as if he were the last new sensation.' 'I was always fond of
him, but I am fonder than ever now.' This plunge into the immortal
romances seems really to have discouraged Murray; at all events he says
very little more about attempts in fiction of his own. 'I am a barren
rascal,' he writes, quoting Johnson on Fielding. Like other men, Murray
felt extreme difficulty in writing articles or tales which have an
infinitesimal chance of being accepted. It needs a stout heart to face
this almost fixed certainty of rejection: a man is weakened by his
apprehensions of a lithographed form, and of his old manuscript coming
home to roost, like the Graces of Theocritus, to pine in the dusty chest
where is their chill abode. If the Alexandrian poets knew this
ill-fortune, so do all beginners in letters. There is nothing for it but
'putting a stout heart to a stey brae,' as the Scotch proverb says.
Editors want good work, and on finding a new man who is good, they
greatly rejoice. But it is so difficult to do vigorous and spontaneous
work, as it were, in the dark. Murray had not, it is probable, the
qualities of the novelist, the narrator. An excellent critic he might
have been if he had 'descended to criticism,' but he had, at this time,
no introductions, and probably did not address reviews at random to
editors. As to poetry, these much-vexed men receive such enormous
quantities of poetry that they usually reject it at a venture, and obtain
the small necessary supplies from agreeable young ladies. Had Murray
been in London, with a few literary friends, he might soon have been a
thriving writer of light prose and light verse. But the enchantress held
him; he hated London, he had no literary friends, he could write gaily
for pleasure, not for gain. So, like the Scholar Gypsy, he remained
contemplative,
'Waiting for the spark from heaven to fall.'
About this time the present writer was in St. Andrews as Gifford Lecturer
in Natural Theology. To say that an enthusiasm for totems and taboos,
ghosts and gods of savage men, was aroused by these lectures, would be to
exaggerate unpardonably. Efforts to make the students write essays or
ask questions were so entire a failure that only one question was
received--as to the proper pronunciation of 'Myth.' Had one been
fortunate enough to interest Murray, it must have led to some discussion
of his literary attempts. He mentions having attended a lecture given by
myself to the Literary Society on 'Literature as a Profession,' and he
found the lecturer 'far more at home in such a subject than in the
Gifford Lectures.' Possibly the hearer was 'more at home' in literature
than in discussions as to the origin of Huitzilopochtli. 'Literature,'
he says, 'never was, is not, and never will be, in the ordinary sense of
the term, a profession. You can't teach it as you can the professions,
you can't succeed in it as you can in the professions, by dint of mere
diligence and without special aptitude . . . I think all this chatter
about the technical and pecuniary sides of literature is extremely
foolish and worse than useless. It only serves to glut the idle
curiosity of the general public about matters with which they have no
concern, a curiosity which (thanks partly to American methods of
journalism) has become simply outrageous.'
Into chatter about the pecuniary aspect of literature the Lecturer need
hardly say that he did not meander. It is absolutely true that
literature cannot be taught. Maupassant could have dispensed with the
instructions of Flaubert. But an 'aptitude' is needed in all
professions, and in such arts as music, and painting, and sculpture,
teaching is necessary. In literature, teaching can only come from
general education in letters, from experience, from friendly private
criticism. But if you cannot succeed in literature 'by dint of mere
diligence,' mere diligence is absolutely essential. Men must read, must
observe, must practise. Diligence is as necessary to the author as to
the grocer, the solicitor, the dentist, the barrister, the soldier.
Nothing but nature can give the aptitude; diligence must improve it, and
experience may direct it. It is not enough to wait for the spark from
heaven to fall; the spark must be caught, and tended, and cherished. A
man must labour till he finds his vein, and himself. Again, if
literature is an art, it is also a profession. A man's very first duty
is to support himself and those, if any, who are dependent on him. If he
cannot do it by epics, tragedies, lyrics, he must do it by articles,
essays, tales, or how he honestly can. He must win his leisure by his
labour, and give his leisure to his art. Murray, at this time, was
diligent in helping to compile and correct educational works. He might,
but for the various conditions of reserve, hatred of towns, and the rest,
have been earning his leisure by work more brilliant and more congenial
to most men. But his theory of literature was so lofty that he probably
found the other, the harder, the less remunerative, the less attractive
work, more congenial to his tastes.
He describes, to Mrs. Murray, various notable visitors to St. Andrews:
Professor Butcher, who lectured on Lucian, and is 'very handsome,' Mr.
Arthur Balfour, the Lord Rector, who is 'rather handsome,' and delights
the listener by his eloquence; Mr. Chamberlain, who pleases him too,
though he finds Mr. Chamberlain rather acrimonious in his political
reflections. About Lucian, the subject of Mr. Butcher's lecture, Murray
says nothing. That brilliant man of letters in general, the Alcibiades
of literature, the wittiest, and, rarely, the most tender, and, always,
the most graceful, was a model who does not seem to have attracted
Murray. Lucian amused, and amuses, and lived by amusing: the vein of
romance and poetry that was his he worked but rarely: perhaps the
Samosatene did not take himself too seriously, yet he lives through the
ages, an example, in many ways to be followed, of a man who obviously
delighted in all that he wrought. He was no model to Murray, who only
delighted in his moments of inspiration, and could not make himself happy
even in the trifles which are demanded from the professional pen.
He did, at last, endeavour to ply that servile engine of which Pendennis
conceived so exalted an opinion. Certainly a false pride did not stand
in his way when, on May 5, 1889, he announced that he was about to leave
St. Andrews, and attempt to get work at proof-correcting and in the
humblest sorts of journalism in Edinburgh. The chapter is honourable to
his resolution, but most melancholy. There were competence and ease
waiting for him, probably, in London, if he would but let his pen have
its way in bright comment and occasional verse. But he chose the other
course. With letters of introduction from Mr. Meiklejohn, he consulted
the houses of Messrs. Clark and Messrs. Constable in Edinburgh. He did
not find that his knowledge of Greek was adequate to the higher and more
remunerative branches of proof-reading, that weary meticulous toil, so
fatiguing to the eyesight. The hours, too, were very long; he could do
more and better work in fewer hours. No time, no strength, were left for
reading and writing. He did, while in Edinburgh, send a few things to
magazines, but he did not actually 'bombard' editors. He is 'to live in
one room, and dine, if not on a red herring, on the next cheapest article
of diet.' These months of privation, at which he laughed, and some weeks
of reading proofs, appear to have quite undermined health which was never
strong, and which had been sorely tried by 'the wind of a cursed to-day,
the curse of a windy to-morrow,' at St. Andrews. If a reader observes in
Murray a lack of strenuous diligence, he must attribute it less to lack
of resolution, than to defect of physical force and energy. The many bad
colds of which he speaks were warnings of the end, which came in the form
of consumption. This lurking malady it was that made him wait, and dally
with his talent. He hit on the idea of translating some of Bossuet's
orations for a Scotch theological publisher. Alas! the publisher did not
anticipate a demand, among Scotch ministers, for the Eagle of Meaux.
Murray, in his innocence, was startled by the caution of the publisher,
who certainly would have been a heavy loser. 'I honestly believe that,
if Charles Dickens were now alive and unknown, and were to offer the MS.
of _Pickwick_ to an Edinburgh publisher, that sagacious old individual
would shake his prudent old head, and refuse (with the utmost politeness)
to publish it!' There is a good deal of difference between _Pickwick_
and a translation of old French sermons about Madame, and Conde, and
people of whom few modern readers ever heard.
Alone, in Edinburgh, Murray was saddened by the 'unregarding'
irresponsive faces of the people as they passed. In St. Andrews he
probably knew every face; even in Edinburgh (a visitor from London
thinks) there is a friendly look among the passers. Murray did not find
it so. He approached a newspaper office: 'he [the Editor whom he met]
was extremely frank, and told me that the tone of my article on--was
underbred, while the verses I had sent him had nothing in them. Very
pleasant for the feelings of a young author, was it not? . . .
Unfavourable criticism is an excellent tonic, but it should be a little
diluted . . . I must, however, do him the justice to say that he did me a
good turn by introducing me to ---, . . . who was kind and encouraging in
the extreme.'
Murray now called on the Editor of the _Scottish Leader_, the Gladstonian
organ, whom he found very courteous. He was asked to write some 'leader-
notes' as they are called, paragraphs which appear in the same columns as
the leading articles. These were published, to his astonishment, and he
was 'to be taken on at a salary of--a week.' Let us avoid pecuniary
chatter, and merely say that the sum, while he was on trial, was not
likely to tempt many young men into the career of journalism. Yet 'the
work will be very exacting, and almost preclude the possibility of my
doing anything else.' Now, as four leader notes, or, say, six, can be
written in an hour, it is difficult to see the necessity for this
fatigue. Probably there were many duties more exacting, and less
agreeable, than the turning out of epigrams. Indeed there was other work
of some more or less mechanical kind, and the manufacture of 'leader
notes' was the least part of Murray's industry. At the end of two years
there was 'the prospect of a very fair salary.' But there was 'night-
work and everlasting hurry.' 'The interviewing of a half-bred
Town-Councillor on the subject of gas and paving' did not exhilarate
Murray. Again, he had to compile a column of Literary News, from the
_Athenaeum_, the _Academy_, and so on, 'with comments and enlargements
where possible.' This might have been made extremely amusing, it sounds
like a delightful task,--the making of comments on 'Mr. --- has finished
a sonnet:' 'Mr. ---'s poems are in their fiftieth thousand:' 'Miss ---
has gone on a tour of health to the banks of the Yang-tse-kiang:' 'Mrs.
--- is engaged on a novel about the Pilchard Fishery.' One could make
comments (if permitted) on these topics for love, and they might not be
unpopular. But perhaps Murray was shackled a little by human respect, or
the prejudices of his editor. At all events he calls it 'not very
inspiring employment.' The bare idea, I confess, inspirits me extremely.
But the literary _follet_, who delights in mild mischief, did not haunt
Murray. He found an opportunity to write on the Canongate Churchyard,
where Fergusson lies, under the monument erected by Burns to the boy of
genius whom he called his master. Of course the part of the article
which dealt with Fergusson, himself a poet of the Scarlet Gown, was cut
out. The Scotch do not care to hear about Fergusson, in spite of their
'myriad mutchkined enthusiasm' for his more illustrious imitator and
successor, Burns.
At this time Edinburgh was honouring itself, and Mr. Parnell, by
conferring its citizenship on that patriot. Murray was actually told off
'to stand at a given point of the line on which the hero marched,' and to
write some lines of 'picturesque description.' This kind of thing could
not go on. It was at Nelson's Monument that he stood: his enthusiasm was
more for Nelson than for Mr. Parnell; and he caught a severe cold on this
noble occasion. Murray's opinions clashed with those of the _Scottish
Leader_, and he withdrew from its service.
Just a week passed between the Parnellian triumph and Murray's retreat
from daily journalism. 'On a newspaper one must have no opinions except
those which are favourable to the sale of the paper and the filling of
its advertisement columns.' That is not precisely an accurate theory.
Without knowing anything of the circumstances, one may imagine that
Murray was rather impracticable. Of course he could not write against
his own opinions, but it is unusual to expect any one to do that, or to
find any one who will do it. 'Incompatibility of temper' probably caused
this secession from the newspaper.
After various attempts to find occupation, he did some proof-reading for
Messrs. Constable. Among other things he 'read' the journal of Lady Mary
Coke, privately printed for Lord Home. Lady Mary, who appears as a
lively child in _The Heart of Midlothian_, 'had a taste for loo, gossip,
and gardening, but the greatest of these is gossip.' The best part of
the book is Lady Louisa Stuart's inimitable introduction. Early in
October he decided to give up proof-reading: the confinement had already
told on his health. In the letter which announces this determination he
describes a sermon of Principal Caird: 'Voice, gesture, language,
thought--all in the highest degree,--combined to make it the most moving
and exalted speech of a man to men that I ever listened to.' 'The world
is too much with me,' he adds, as if he and the world were ever friends,
or ever likely to be friendly.
October 27th found him dating from St. Andrews again. 'St. Andrews after
Edinburgh is Paradise.' His Dalilah had called him home to her, and he
was never again unfaithful. He worked for his firm friend, Professor
Meiklejohn, he undertook some teaching, and he wrote a little. It was at
this time that his biographer made Murray's acquaintance. I had been
delighted with his verses in _College Echoes_, and I asked him to bring
me some of his more serious work. But he never brought them: his old
enemy, reserve, overcame him. A few of his pieces were published 'At the
Sign of the Ship' in _Longman's Magazine_, to which he contributed
occasionally.
From this point there is little in Murray's life to be chronicled. In
1890 his health broke down entirely, and consumption declared itself.
Very early in 1891 he visited Egypt, where it was thought that some
educational work might be found for him. But he found Egypt cold, wet,
and windy; of Alexandria and the Mediterranean he says little: indeed he
was almost too weak and ill to see what is delightful either in nature or
art.
'To aching eyes each landscape lowers,
To feverish pulse each gale blows chill,
And Araby's or Eden's bowers
Were barren as this moorland hill,'
says the least self-conscious of poets. Even so barren were the rich
Nile and so bleak the blue Mediterranean waters. Though received by the
kindest and most hospitable friends, Murray was homesick, and pined to be
in England, now that spring was there. He made the great mistake of
coming home too early. At Ilminster, in his mother's home, he slowly
faded out of life. I have not the heart to quote his descriptions of
brief yet laborious saunters in the coppices, from the letters which he
wrote to the lady of his heart. He was calm, cheerful, even buoyant. His
letters to his college friends are all concerned with literature, or with
happy old times, and are full of interest in them and in their happiness.
He was not wholly idle. He wrote a number of short pieces of verse in
_Punch_, and two or three in the _St. James's Gazette_. Other work, no
doubt, he planned, but his strength was gone. In 1891 his book, _The
Scarlet Gown_, was published by his friend, Mr. A. M. Holden. The little
volume, despite its local character, was kindly received by the Reviews.
Here, it was plain, we had a poet who was to St. Andrews what the
regretted J. K. S. was to Eton and Cambridge. This measure of success
was not calculated to displease our _alumnus addictissimus_.
Friendship and love, he said, made the summer of 1892 very happy to him.
I last heard from him in the summer of 1893, when he sent me some of his
most pleasing verses. He was in Scotland; he had wandered back, a shadow
of himself, to his dear St. Andrews. I conceived that he was better; he
said nothing about his health. It is not easy to quote from his letters
to his friend, Mr. Wallace, still written in his beautiful firm hand.
They are too full of affectionate banter: they also contain criticisms on
living poets: he shows an admiration, discriminating and not wholesale,
of Mr. Kipling's verse: he censures Mr. Swinburne, whose Jacobite song
(as he wrote to myself) did not precisely strike him as the kind of thing
that Jacobites used to sing.