James Murray

“ What was going to happen, at any rate, was that Murray would show himself as beautifully and consciously understanding—and it would be prodigious that Europe should have inoculated him with that delicacy. Yes, he wouldn't claim to know now till she had told him—an aid to performance he had surely never before waited for, or been indebted to, from any one; and then, so knowing, he would charmingly endeavor to "meet," to oblige and to gratify. He would find it, her case, ever so worthy of his benevolence, and would be literally inspired to reflect that he must hear about it first. ”

“ He, however, managed to shift from place to place till he found an opportunity to escape (Patten, p. 89) . On account of his share in the rebellion he was attainted, and the titles and estates of the family conferred on a younger brother, Lord James Murray. ”

“ Let us take the opportunity of this pause to explain how the Reverend James Murray got into the anxious position in which we find him. He was a minister of a well-known denomination of Nonconformists. When he left college he had been reckoned a young man of great promise and of considerable powers of persuasive eloquence, and he was expected to become a famous preacher. He was Invited to be the minister of a large and wealthy congregation in a northern manufacturing town. ”

“ You must not forbid me, Roger. I can't think of them without thinking of you. This is Christmas eve! Miss Murray told us that we must never let it pass without thinking of all that it means. But without Miss Murray, I have been thinking all day of things which are hard to name,—of death and life, of my parents and you, of my incredible happiness. I feel to-night like a princess in a fairy-tale. I am a poor creature, without a friend, without a penny or a home ”

“ Murray, in his exaggerated dread and humility, thought that the question who was to be minister must really have been settled before the young man left. Mr. Murray said nothing, but that did not embarrass Mr. Lloyd.
"I shall soon settle," he continued, "the hash of some of those frightened old fogies who want things to go on in the old, humdrum way. It's a fine place, and a magnificent chapel, and can be made a popular cause: and I'll make it, too, when I'm among them. Good, rousing, popular stuff—that's the thing to make a success; don't you think so, Murray?" ”

“ To say so indeed savours of flogging a dead horse, but it is surely an unkind stroke of fate for him that Murray assures ten thousand Britons every winter in the most emphatic manner that his Communion of St. Jerome is the "second finest picture in the world. If this were so one would certainly here in Rome, where such institutions are convenient, retire into the very nearest convent; with such a world one would have a standing quarrel. ”

“ I should be obliged if you would take a seat, sir, and allow me to do the same.’ He moved a chair towards the table with great deliberation, sat down leisurely, reached out for the decanter, filled his glass, emptied it and set it down—all with a certain look of weighty purpose. ‘I’m going to make a clean breast of it, sir. I should leave James to do it if he was capable of doing anything but whimper like a kicked charity boy. It’s a bit to my discredit to speak the plain truth, because I’ve got to admit that I have certainly made an effort to deceive you. ”

“ He’s an honest man himself, James—a very honest high-minded man indeed. I must look where he lives,’ he murmured, seeking for the envelope his son had given him. ‘He gave me his address.’
‘His address, sir,’ said Hornett. ‘You could almost lay your hand on him. He lives there. That’s his window with the light in it.’ Bommaney moved to the window, and followed with his glance the direction of Hornett’s outstretched finger. There was a window a few feet higher than the one at which he stood, and half-hidden from observation by a stone parapet. ”

“ James possesses. He is vastly the superior of the common run of men, but he makes his own knowledge of that fact too clear. It is a little difficult to see why so worshipful a person should take the trouble to write at all, but it is open to the reader to conjecture that he would not be at so much pains unless he were pushed by a compulsory sense of his own high merits. He feels that it would be a shame if such a man should be wasted. ”

“ James, but he is of stronger stuff—not less essentially a gentleman, as his books reveal him, but more essentially a man. He has a sterling courage, and has never been afraid of his own opinions. His declaration that ‘all the stories have been told’ is one of the keys to his method as a novelist A work of fiction is something which enables him to show the impingement of character on character, with modifying effects of environment and circumstance. His style is clean and sober, and his method is invariably dignified. ”

“ The oddness is not so much in the repetition as in the air of enjoyment and spontaneity worn by the grinder. He at least is not fatigued, and to readers who live from hand to mouth, and have no memories, there is no reason why he should ever grow fatiguing.
Mr. Henry James is a gentleman who has taken a little more culture than is good for the fibre of his character. He is certainly a man of many attainments and of very considerable native faculty, but he staggers under the weight of his own excellences. ”

“ James the fact of having been bred in the United States has proved a disadvantage. To the robuster type of man of letters, to the Dickens or Kipling kind of man, it would be impossible to wish better luck than to be born into that bubbling pot-full of things. But Mr. James’s over-accentuated refinement of mind has received the very impetus of which it stood least in need. He has grown into a humorous disdain of vulgar emotions, partly because he found them so rich about him. The figures which Bret Harte sees through a haze of romance are to him essentially coarse. ”

“ Murray, though he appeared only to be very quiet. For he thought: "A large congregation like this of Upton must necessarily have more people like these Browns than like my friends of last Sunday; and it must, therefore, needs be that this Mr. Lloyd—who has no harm in him, I daresay, but who is little more than a rough, noisy, presumptuous boy not long from school—it must be that he should be preferred by the majority to me. I may as well, then, give up all hope of coming here. But what then of Mary and the boy—the boy?" ”

“ Though the infant James was formally crowned, though the Reformed Church was established in Scotland, and Murray proved himself an able ruler, a strong reaction set in in favour of the imprisoned queen; and though unquestionably the great mass of the nation remained completely hostile, she was able to rally a party sufficient to cause a violent counter-revolution. The numerous adherents of the old Church, the whole body of the Catholic clergy, and a large minority of the Scottish nobility enlisted themselves on the side of Mary Stuart ”

“ Murray left a very large estate when he fled from Boston, and in 1778 he was prosecuted and banished, and in 1779 lost his extensive property under the Confiscation Act.
After the Revolution, Colonel Murray became a resident of St. John, N. B. He built a house in Prince William street, with a large lot of land attached to it, which became very valuable.
A portrait by Copley is owned by his grandson, the Hon. R. L. Hazen of St. John, a member of the Executive Council of New Brunswick. He is represented as sitting in the full dress of a gentleman of the day, and his person is shown to the knees. ”

“ Who that knows 'old Murray' does not love him? Gentle as a child, brave as a lion, a man without [Pg 166] guile, he was perhaps the most successful of all the naval blockade runners. In the Venus he had many hairbreadth escapes, notably on one occasion when he ran the gauntlet of the Northern fleet in daylight into Wilmington. ”

“ We were half-way to the James before he spoke.
"Dot Murray, he is a lucky feller. Always he gets what he wants."
"What does he want?" I panted.
"Now he gets rid of Flint andt der Walrus crew, ja."
"But he'll lose their half of the treasure if——"
"Maybe; maybe he don't. Andt after dot he gets rid of der James."
"You're crazy, Peter," I said indignantly, trying my best to keep pace with him. "He'd be stranded here."
"Oh, he don't do dot here—maybe he don't do dot at all; maybe der tdefil stops helping him, ja. But if he gets der chance, you watch him, Bob. ”

“ Amid all this turmoil what of the little fragile creatures which are known to swarm everywhere in the water of the sea? Do they retire to calmer depths? If not, how will they fare as the water which is their home is shattered into dust? Surely they must be crushed to death, and perish in multitudes! ”

“ Collecting his books, he escaped to Burlington, New Jersey, entered a boarding-school, and commenced to study French. His retreat was discovered, he was brought back to New York, and allowed a private tutor. His father still desired him to apply himself to commerce, but he stated arguments in favour of a literary profession so ably in writing that his father's lawyer advised him to let the lad study law. Four years later Murray was called to the bar, and practised as counsel and attorney in the province of New York. ”

“ Oh, well, life was a disappointment anyway, whichever way you turned. Now here was Murray! What a bitter disappointment he was! Just when he might have been a comfort. Of course there was a slight possibility of his being injured somehow, but if he had been able to take a girl to the hospital he couldn’t have been very badly off. No, he was probably off with the fellows somewhere having a good time, or off with his Countess, or his latest fancy! What a son! But he must do his duty as a father, anyhow. So Murray’s new car was smashed! That was probably the reason Murray did not come home. ”

“ On the other hand the ' Quarterly,' in spite of change and competition, fully sustained under Murray's auspices its reputation as an organ of the highest criticism. But perhaps the greatest glory of the firm under the third Murray's direction consists in the admirable series of illustrated books of travels, associated with the names of Miss Bird (Mrs. Bishop) , Dr. Lumholtz, Du Chaillu, Bates, and Yule, whose edition of ' Marco Polo ' was largely due to Murray's enlightened enterprise. ”

“ There was a little constriction in Murray's own throat as he studied the brave words. He saw at a flash their deeper meaning. "Make myself fit to live my life," he thought "and then--whether it's the life I want to live or not--let it go! Jane, you know how to fit the arrow to my hand--bless you! I will draw it to the head--and let it go!"
CHAPTER IX
SNAP SHOTS
"A letter from Montana for Miss Jane Bell," observed Peter, distributing the mail at the breakfast-table one May morning, nine months after the picnic at Grandfather Bell's farm. ”

“ Murray died on 1 Aug. 1907 in London after a long illness, during which he endured much privation. He was buried at Hampstead. A memorial tablet in copper with pewter medallion was unveiled at West Bromwich public library in December 1908. He was twice married. By his first wife, Sophie Harris of Rowley Regis, whom he married in 1871, he had a daughter, who died young; by his second wife, Alice, whom he married about 1879, he had one son, Archibald. Two sons and two daughters were born out of wedlock.
Besides his novels, Murray was author of several rambling volumes of autobiography. ”

“ His father, Robert Murray, a member of an old quaker family, was one of the leading New York merchants. Murray was the eldest of twelve children, all of whom he survived, although, he was puny and delicate in childhood. When six years old, he was sent to school in Philadelphia, but soon left to accompany his parents to North Carolina, where they lived until 1753. ”

“ I bless God, not only for the treasures of wisdom committed to his venerable servant, but also that his valuable life has been preserved to accomplish this work; a production, which will live, and be read with ineffable delight, when the rubbish of ages shall have been consigned to oblivion."
Should any curiosity exist respecting Mr. Murray's political sentiments, it may be sufficient to say, that he was in heart an American. America was the Country of his adoption. ”

“ Lord George Murray rose to greatness: so enduring, and so fearless, so careless of danger to himself, yet so solicitous for others. As a general, some great defects may be pointed out in his composition, without detracting from his merits as a private individual. ”

“ Born at Buffalo in 1860, Murray was reared in Venango county, whither his father was drawn by the oil-excitement. Correspondence 365for local papers naturally bore him into the journalistic swim. He whooped it up six years for the Blizzard. A regular hummer, he is at home whether flaying monopolists, taking a ruffian’s scalp, praising a pretty girl, writing a tearful obituary, dissecting a suspicioussuspicious job or reeling off a natty poem. ”

“ He was hanged on a gallows, about a quarter of a mile outside the village of Guayave.
Chapter XXX. WEST INDIA LIFE
I remained on the Upper Pearl estate, and found much to interest an inquiring mind. Murray, although there were some good points about him, was not considered trustworthy. In his cups he was quarrelsome and as choleric as a Welshman; and a fondness for liquor was his besetting sin. He was an excellent accountant and an efficient clerk, but could hardly be relied on when a clear head and cool judgment were required. ”