Robert F. Murray (Author of the Scarlet Gown): His Poems; with a Memoir

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 Condé, 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 Athenæum, 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.

They certainly celebrated

 
‘The faith our fathers fought for,
The kings our fathers knew,’
 

in a different tone in the North.

The perfect health of mind, in these letters of a dying man, is admirable. Reading old letters over, he writes to Miss – , ‘I have known a wonderful number of wonderfully kind-hearted people.’ That is his criticism of a world which had given him but a scanty welcome, and a life of foiled endeavour, of disappointed hope. Even now there was a disappointment. His poems did not find a publisher: what publisher can take the risk of adding another volume of poetry to the enormous stock of verse brought out at the author’s expense? This did not sour or sadden him: he took Montaigne’s advice, ‘not to make too much marvel of our own fortunes.’ His biographer, hearing in the winter of 1893 that Murray’s illness was now considered hopeless, though its rapid close was not expected, began, with Professor Meiklejohn, to make arrangements for the publication of the poems. But the poet did not live to have this poor gratification. He died in the early hours of 1894.

Of the merits of his more serious poetry others must speak. To the Editor it seems that he is always at his best when he is inspired by the Northern Sea, and the long sands and grey sea grasses. Then he is most himself. He was improving in his art with every year: his development, indeed, was somewhat late.

It is less of the writer than the man that we prefer to think. His letters display, in passages which he would not have desired to see quoted, the depth and tenderness and thoughtfulness of his affections. He must have been a delightful friend: illness could not make him peevish, and his correspondence with old college companions could never be taken for that of a consciously dying man. He had perfect courage, and resolution even in his seeming irresoluteness. He was resolved to be, and continued to be, himself. ‘He had kept the bird in his bosom.’ We, who regret him, may wish that he had been granted a longer life, and a secure success. Happier fortunes might have mellowed him, no fortunes could have altered for the worse his admirable nature. He lives in the hearts of his friends, and in the pride and sympathy of those who, after him, have worn and shall wear the scarlet gown.

The following examples of his poetry were selected by Murray’s biographer from a considerable mass, and have been seen through the press by Professor Meiklejohn, who possesses the original manuscript, beautifully written.

MOONLIGHT NORTH AND SOUTH

 
Love, we have heard together
   The North Sea sing his tune,
And felt the wind’s wild feather
   Brush past our cheeks at noon,
And seen the cloudy weather
   Made wondrous with the moon.
 
 
Where loveliness is rarest,
   ’Tis also prized the most:
The moonlight shone her fairest
   Along that level coast
Where sands and dunes the barest,
   Of beauty seldom boast,
 
 
Far from that bleak and rude land
   An exile I remain
Fixed in a fair and good land,
   A valley and a plain
Rich in fat fields and woodland,
   And watered well with rain.
 
 
Last night the full moon’s splendour
   Shone down on Taunton Dene,
And pasture fresh and tender,
   And coppice dusky green,
The heavenly light did render
   In one enchanted scene,
 
 
One fair unearthly vision.
   Yet soon mine eyes were cloyed,
And found those fields Elysian
   Too rich to be enjoyed.
Or was it our division
   Made all my pleasure void?
 
 
Across the window glasses
   The curtain then I drew,
And, as a sea-bird passes,
   In sleep my spirit flew
To grey and windswept grasses
   And moonlit sands – and you.
 

WINTER AT ST. ANDREWS

 
The city once again doth wear
   Her wonted dress of winter’s bride,
Her mantle woven of misty air,
   With saffron sunlight faintly dyed.
She sits above the seething tide,
   Of all her summer robes forlorn —
And dead is all her summer pride —
   The leaves are off Queen Mary’s Thorn.
 
 
All round, the landscape stretches bare,
   The bleak fields lying far and wide,
Monotonous, with here and there
   A lone tree on a lone hillside.
No more the land is glorified
   With golden gleams of ripening corn,
Scarce is a cheerful hue descried —
   The leaves are off Queen Mary’s Thorn.
 
 
For me, I do not greatly care
   Though leaves be dead, and mists abide.
To me the place is thrice as fair
   In winter as in summer-tide:
With kindlier memories allied
   Of pleasure past and pain o’erworn.
What care I, though the earth may hide
   The leaves from off Queen Mary’s Thorn?
 
 
Thus I unto my friend replied,
   When, on a chill late autumn morn,
He pointed to the tree, and cried,
   ‘The leaves are off Queen Mary’s Thorn!’
 

PATRIOTISM

 
There was a time when it was counted high
   To be a patriot – whether by the zeal
   Of peaceful labour for the country’s weal,
Or by the courage in her cause to die:
 
 
For King and Country was a rallying cry
   That turned men’s hearts to fire, their nerves to steel;
   Not to unheeding ears did it appeal,
A pulpit formula, a platform lie.
 
 
Only a fool will wantonly desire
That war should come, outpouring blood and fire,
   And bringing grief and hunger in her train.
And yet, if there be found no other way,
God send us war, and with it send the day
   When love of country shall be real again!
 

SLEEP FLIES ME

 
Sleep flies me like a lover
   Too eagerly pursued,
Or like a bird to cover
   Within some distant wood,
Where thickest boughs roof over
   Her secret solitude.
 
 
The nets I spread to snare her,
   Although with cunning wrought,
Have only served to scare her,
   And now she’ll not be caught.
To those who best could spare her,
   She ever comes unsought.
 
 
She lights upon their pillows;
   She gives them pleasant dreams,
Grey-green with leaves of willows,
   And cool with sound of streams,
Or big with tranquil billows,
   On which the starlight gleams.
 
 
No vision fair entrances
   My weary open eye,
No marvellous romances
   Make night go swiftly by;
But only feverish fancies
   Beset me where I lie.
 
 
The black midnight is steeping
   The hillside and the lawn,
But still I lie unsleeping,
   With curtains backward drawn,
To catch the earliest peeping
   Of the desirèd dawn.
 
 
Perhaps, when day is breaking;
   When birds their song begin,
And, worn with all night waking,
   I call their music din,
Sweet sleep, some pity taking,
   At last may enter in.