R. F. Murray

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Greek prose is a stubborn thing, and the biographer remembers being told that his was ‘the best, with the worst mistakes’; also frequently by Mr. Sellar, that it was ‘bald.’ But Greek prose is splendid practice, and no less good practice is Greek and Latin verse. These exercises, so much sneered at, are the Dwellers on the Threshold of the life of letters. They are haunting forms of fear, but they have to be wrestled with, like the Angel (to change the figure) , till they bless you, and make words become, in your hands, like the clay of the modeller. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They said ’twas Walter Tyrrel, and so it may have been,
But there’s many walk the forest when the leaves are thick and green.
There’s many walk the forest, who would gladly see the sport,
When the King goes out a-hunting with the nobles of his court,
And when the nobles scatter, and the King is left alone,
There are thickets where an English slave might string his bow unknown.
The forest laws are cruel, and the time is hard as steel
To English slaves, trod down and bruised beneath the Norman heel. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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, αίεν αριστευειν, as the Homeric motto of his University runs, and he was on the way to excellence when his health broke down. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Andrews is the abject city’s name.’
He was fond, too fond, of long midnight walks, for in these he overtasked his strength, and he had all a young man’s contempt for maxims about not sitting in wet clothes and wet boots. Early in his letters he speaks of bad colds, and it is matter of tradition that he despised flannel. Most of us have been like him, and have found pleasure in wading Tweed, for example, when chill with snaw-bree. In brief, while reading about Murray’s youth most men must feel that they are reading, with slight differences, about their own. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Dear Ritchie, I am waiting.
The sea is at its bluest, and the Spring is new creating
The woods and dens we know of, and the fields rejoicing lie,
And the air is soft as summer, and the hedge-birds all are mating. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 . ”

“ Contrives for her who weareth them.
No chance can snatch this diadem,
It trembles not with hopes or fears,
It shines before the rose appears,
And when the leaves forsake her stem.
Time sets his jewels one by one. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Red King’s gone a-hunting, in the woods his father made
For the tall red deer to wander through the thicket and the glade,
The King and Walter Tyrrel, Prince Henry and the rest
Are all gone out upon the sport the Red King loves the best. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And the days of our youth are ended.’
One fancies him roaming solitary, after midnight, in the dark deserted streets. He passes the deep porch of the College Church, and the spot where Patrick Hamilton was burned. He goes down to the Castle by the sea, where, some say, the murdered Cardinal may now and again be seen, in his red hat. In South Street he hears the roll and rattle of the viewless carriage which sounds in that thoroughfare. He loiters under the haunted tower on Hepburn’s precinct wall, the tower where the lady of the bright locks lies, with white gloves on her hands. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”